I live in Sweden and we seem to have a very different interview culture. I've never heard of whiteboards or trivia questions, here.
I've only gone to four interviews (across eight years), and been lucky to get an offer each time (three of which I've accepted). They have all been primarily discussions about personal experience, hobby projects, personal interests, would-be responsibilities, benefits, and company culture.
At one place (Ghost Games, an EA studio and the only company which wasn't purely Swedish) I had to complete a code assignment (create a clone of a classic arcade game in C++) ahead of the interview.
I saw both sides in Sweden. Including being the interviewer who discovered that senior applicants with over 15 years of experience could not for the life of them figure out how to reverse a string. Not something that I could have found out during our casual conversation about past experiences, of course.
I've only gone to four interviews (across eight years), and been lucky to get an offer each time (three of which I've accepted). They have all been primarily discussions about personal experience, hobby projects, personal interests, would-be responsibilities, benefits, and company culture.
At one place (Ghost Games, an EA studio and the only company which wasn't purely Swedish) I had to complete a code assignment (create a clone of a classic arcade game in C++) ahead of the interview.