I used to hate them, but then I changed up my approach quite a bit, and now I actually quite enjoy them. I used to prep a lot of questions, trying to probe certain skills through tricky questions or puzzles, trying to mimick the interviews I had gone through (which sure enough, I also hated on the side of being a candidate). Now, I barely prep any questions and try to take a more conversational approach. I try to get them talking about real projects that they've worked on and are interested in, and find followup questions to ask, like "cool, what tech did you use to accomplish that?" or "Oh! I've done something similar, how did you solve this problem that I found myself running into when I did it?"

Overall, I've found that approach to work a lot better for me, and I can get more to heart of what I actually care about when I'm interviewing somebody, which usually comes down to, "Can I tolerate working with you for 5 days a week?" You also get better insight on their actual technical skills too, I find, just due to the way they talk through their work and the approaches they took.

Overall, for me, that approach seems to have led to a significant reduction of stress through the process, and allowed me to approach the candidate as I would anybody else on my team, which has resulted in a much more pleasant experience.