In various interviews, there’s been a split between the people who believe what you say on your resume and those who seem determined to make you prove it. The latter takes multiple forms. Technical interviewers have asked me various verbal questions, from explaining programming concepts to specific problems in specific languages. I walked into one face-to-face interview and was immediately handed a two-page written quiz, reminiscent of my CS 101 days. In another, after talking for about an hour, a developer sat me down in front of a computer and let me spend half an hour putting together a web front end for one of their database tools.
I tended to do the best in the last of those situations, since it was the closest to real life - write something practical while using your innate knowledge and the usual references you have at your disposal. I was less of a fan of the theoretical; I tend to know what works and only delve into the underlying basics when they stop working.
Of course, I tended to gravitate more towards interviewers who placed a little more faith in my background, and felt it out by asking about the details of previous projects. There were also some good questions asking my opinions of various technologies; these also tend to expose whether you’ve worked with something enough to understand it’s true advantages and disadvantages.
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