Programming Interviews Exposed: Secrets to Landing Your Next Job, 3rd Edition

Preparation

Knowledge-based questions generally come from two sources: what you said on your résumé and your answers to questions earlier in the interview.

Questions drawn from your résumé are usually short and simple — just long enough to verify that you actually know the technologies you claim to have used. It’s a good idea to review your résumé prior to your interview to make sure you’re prepared to answer questions about every item on the résumé, no matter how small. Some interviewers even go through your résumé and ask you general questions about each item — “What is X?” and “What have you done with X?” For example, if you put SOAP on your resume, be prepared for the questions “What is SOAP?” and “What have you done with SOAP?” If you can’t intelligently answer either question, you should remove the SOAP reference from your résumé.

NOTE Be prepared to answer questions about everything on your résumé.

In a similar vein, be careful with what you say during the interview. The interviewer may want some more in-depth explanation of technologies and techniques you mentioned, just to ascertain how deep your knowledge goes. Sometimes the questioning seems quite innocent. If you say you “started programming in Java several years ago,” don’t be surprised if the interviewer asks you what version of Java you started with. If all you did initially was read a book about Java 1.4 and didn’t do any real programming until Java 6 was released, don’t say you started with Java 1.4. If ...