So Francesco says they refuse to do technical interviews and says their CV and Github are proof enough. The CV shows experience as a freelance engineer at Apple for a bit, then an engineer for Samsung which they were made redundant from. Their GitHub is 3 projects, a python script, a breakout board and then a beta libary. They argue that's fine though because they'd work for £1/hr, but the real cost of an upfront hir…
Well if it's freelance work there are situations where the upfront time cost is not massive, especially if it's a task with a limited scope. I know this because I hire freelancers.
But yea, I don't have a bag of small-scope, interesting and meaningful tasks lying around...