This was in Illinois. Chicago has a vastly different hiring environment than any other place I've lived in. The interviews are long, there are a ton of behaviour questions (one interview had a solid hour dedicated to behaviour questions; and they wanted really detailed specifics).
It's a far departure from other markets I've worked in. I've personally never even asked behaviour questions during an interview, and really I think you can get a good judge of behaviour just by watching the candidate answer technical questions.
I'm not sure if non-competes are the norm. I have a feeling they might be as they recently passed laws to ban them for low income earners. I've only had one job offer, and they refused to remove it. I have no problem signing NDAs, IP wavers, patent wavers, etc. But I refuse to sign anything that restricts my right to work after a company stops paying me. If it turns out all of them do the same thing, I might have to head back to the west coast.
A company presented one to me a few years back and said that it was "standard". The non-compete covered anything tech-related (so...my job in its entirety) within 50 miles of the business (so...the entire city).
I can say I looked up the ruling history in Oregon and the longest one that I found held was ~6months. Generally courts in OR state are narrow towards non competes. So that's at least some evidence it varies by state.
