Are we hiring developers who can build, or developers who can prompt?

I recently interviewed some fresh graduates and noticed an interesting pattern.

The projects on their resumes looked impressive:

• Beautiful UI
• Modern tech stacks
• AI-powered features
• Clean GitHub repositories
• At first glance, they looked like strong candidates.

But when we started discussing their projects:

• Why did you choose this architecture?
• How does this API work?
• What challenges did you face?
• How would you scale this?
• What happens if this component fails?
• Many struggled to explain their own work.

This made me think:

AI has lowered the barrier to building software, which is great.

But are we changing how we evaluate developers?

Maybe a project demo is no longer enough.

The real evaluation should focus on:

• Understanding of fundamentals
• Problem-solving approach
• Ability to explain decisions
• Debugging skills
• Ownership of the work
• AI will help developers build faster, but understanding what they are building and why still matters.

Curious to hear from hiring managers and developers:

How are you evaluating fresh graduates in the AI era?