A recruiter at Transamerican Information Systems contacted me and asked me if I wanted to work with HCL America on a 6 month contract. I agreed because I had about 80% of the requirements.
She then arranges a 1-hour F2F interview at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel with the HCL representatives.
I arrive at the hotel 30 minutes early. There is no sign for HCL America, so I ask the Help Desk. I’m told to go to the 2nd floor. On the second floor, there is a desk where people sign in for interviews. They ask me for my resume, and I tell them they have it on their records. They look and find me there. I am then escorted to a room with at least 50 people and wait. A few minutes later, the interviewer escorts me to a room where 2 other people are interviewing.
The interviewer sits me down at a desk and asks me questions such as “what is a class?”, “what is polymorphism?”, and “what is inheritance?”. I wasn’t prepared for theses entry-level questions, since I have been developing software for years. The interviewer never asked about my programming experience. This was strange because Microsoft experience was a pre-requisite.
It didn’t help that he was an auditory type person and I’m visual. As a result, I wasn’t able to properly answer his questions. As a result I did badly. We shook hands and parted.
Based on my experiences, I wrote a blog, giving suggestions on how technical interviews could be conducted more effectively. I hope this is useful: http://trevy-corner.blogspot.com/2009/08/conducting-technical-interviews.html