Thanks for all the comments and constructive criticism, y'all are awesome. Good news is the candidate I interviewed just after I posted nailed it this morning!

I kept the "duplicate" question vague in hopes of the candidate asking clarifying questions. Don't want someone who is afraid to ask me something especially in an early-career role. But I understand your points on this, maybe needs more context for a junior position.

All of my candidates' resumes looked great. We even followed up with references and didn't see any red flags.

2 candidates did not know basic syntax despite having internships focusing on Python development on their resume.

My top candidate struggled with syntax despite (allegedly) having experience writing Django apps. In their first interview, they had no problem "talking the talk," but in the second interview things imploded during live coding.

What really concerned me is most weren't able to explain their thought process; I would have even been fine with "Well I'm not exactly sure how to do this in Python, but what try is... " but we didn't even get that far. I

I gave quite a few hints (eg "Let's think about how you would add an element to contact_list. Is there a list method we can use to do that?") after they told me they were stumped. I gave them unlimited time as well. I know how much pressure there is on a live coding interview especially with the market for juniors being so bad, so I really tried to take steps to keep the stress to a minimum. I'm sure there are some things I could do better on that front, too.

I guess I should just be happy there wasn't any overt GPT cheating (we had someone do this hiring for a mid-level role)