Tonight I was being interviewed by a US based product development start-up company. It was an overseas call, and after it was over, this thought was even more profound in my mind. My sense of interview is a interactive discussion, might often be an debate on some topic, but it's never a set of questions and answers around the syntax of a certain language or database or tool. Lucky me, 75% of my past job interviews consists of the former type; and I feel sad for myself as well as for the interviewer for the rest 25%.
Once, in a face-to-face interview, I was provided a laptop, and asked to code a concept, using any kind of online help I need. It was getting boring on the initial 10 minutes of coding, but the next 1 hour discussion on the code (from conceptual angle, not at all syntax related stuff) went on in a really encouraging and interesting note. In another one, this one telephonic, the interviewer and myself decided upon a research paper (available online), which would be the topic of discussion and analysis in the second round.
But this is my experience, whereas the surrounding IT world majorly stands on the other pattern. Here I see people revising syntax before an interview, and jobs being offered on basis of how one has mugged up the bits and pieces of a language or a tool. Is this the normal way, and am I making a fuss over a silly issue?
