Here's another interview tip. If you're looking for a career change and would really like to work at a company that's notorious for doing those heavily involved technical "solve this problem" phonescreen or onsite interview, learn this very important lesson my friends. In this day an age, it's very RARE that anyone goes to these interviews cold...Almost everyone prepares for these interviews, and there are websites dedicated to vetting all the technical phone screen questions that a particular employer gives. You would be wise to review all these questions, and know how to solve these problems ahead of time (only pretending to stumble on them and take more time when you actually do them in the interview). Google, for example, actually sends you a nice study guide(s) before the first round of interviews done via phone screen + Google Docs online during the interview...Amazon does the Google Docs thing too....And while you can "prepare" for these types of interviews, I find it much more effective, that you simply ask your friend to interview for the company first...Have him/her go through the process, gathering all the questions that were asked, and bring it back to you. In most cases, the interviewers are way too lazy to rotate the technical questions, so usually it's the same questions repeated, over and over again... For example, I can't remember how many times I was asked to write an O(n) version of computing a fibonnaci sequence, or find the subset of numbers in an array that produces that largest number, given the array can contain both positive or negative numbers. And every single time, I sort of need to pretend that I've never seen these stupid questions before and slow myself down to pretend I was actually solving these questions in real-time. The Q has a unofficial "software interview question guide" that consisted of roughly 200+ questions that we used to screen candidates, and that same guide was pretty useful of other employers as well, that asked more or less the same questions...So make a copy of it and keep that guide. You never know when it's going to come in handy again.
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Where's the manual? anonymous link for download please?
A few years back, I interviewed at Google--before they had a "study guide," so I didn't study. They did the 100+ problem thing. I missed one. (The weird thing is, my wife got the answer right away, and she's not an engineer. So a lot of them have nothing to do with software or math.) The Q might have a manual of 200 questions, but I don't recall ever using them in interviews. I've been working with algorithms, various programming languages and Linux/Unix systems for years, so it was easy to look at someone's resume and then make up something tricky on the fly that people couldn't prepare in advance for. I mention this because every once in awhile a company will have experienced people vet the applicants to make sure the applicants' qualifications are as represented on their resumes.
Oh, and i forgot to mention. It doesn't matter if you're senior or not senior or are fresh out of school or have 20+years of experience. You will get these stupid questions that although might be meaningless to the actual job at hand that you want, nevertheless will stand in the way of you getting hired. Think of it as this being a fraternity, and these stupid questions being initiation.