How to pass a programming interview with rusty skills?

I agree with Zed. It's not so much about the correct answer (it does help, but it's the final answer by any means), but more about how you get there. They want to know how you think, how you problem solve, if you can get along with the team, and if you're capable of doing the job. The technical specifics can be learned, or looked up. They kept asking you the same questions over and over because they want to see what you can deduce (perhaps given a hint or two), and see what kind of questions you ask in return -- basically, how your brain works. They will throw you a curve ball or two -- because the job will throw you curve balls. How are you going to handle it? On the other hand, some technical interviews (and interviewers) are just duds. If getting the job or not is based on whether or not you actually know the name of some random unix process, you probably don't want the job anyway. Another random note -- I really hope your technical explanations in the interviews are a lot more concise than this post... whoa. If you're frustrated by a lack of answers here, it's because this question is *really* long. Way too long.

When I saw the title of your question, I was ready to recommend Programming Interviews Exposed. Having read the substance of your question, I realize you're not asking for the usual "How do I pass programming interviews that have tricky algorithmic whiteboard questions?" but instead something more like the harder question, "How do I become familiar with a wide enough range of technologies to a depth great enough to be prepared for any hard technology-specific interview?" To this I have to echo the previous responses. You don't need the depth on specific technologies that are not on your resume. Eventually you'll get a "good enough" interview on the basis of your apparently-substantial skills and background that will get you in the door. There is one exception though; you say *nix is not on your resume, you're not expecting or prepared to be interviewed on *nix, but in a lot of places a baseline familiarity with the family of OSes and APIs covered by this wildcard is pretty highly valued as an indicator of breadth and depth of general understanding. It might be worth it to you, with your already strong background elsewhere, to bone up on Unix so you're able to handle the basic set of questions on this subject you can expect at most interviews. It may be that this one hole is a dealbreaker at various places across our industry.

You're doing two things wrong: 1) You're treating the interview process as though it were the SAT or a final exam. As Zed and cgg note, the correct answer isn't necessarily the goal; they're looking for evidence of problem-solving ability. "I don't know" is a better answer than trying to fake it based on cramming the night before. Especially if you follow up the "I don't know" with "but here's how I'd find out." (Some companies -- possibly including the one you described in detail above -- do seem to treat their interviews as trivia contests; those companies are generally not much worth working for.) 2) You're applying for the wrong jobs. It's hard to tell from your description what you actually know how to do (which may be part of the problem right there.) It's even harder to tell what you actually want to do. If you want to transition back into being a day-to-day coder, I'm sorry to say this but you need to stop pretending that "the latest tools and related technologies I have no experience in and the concepts are fairly fuzzy" constitutes "mastery of the technology." If you have no work experience as a .NET or Java developer, and want to get a Java or .NET dev job, you are going to need to accept a more junior role than you're accustomed to, at least to start out. "10 years industry experience" is completely irrelevant if the job is hacking code, and you have ten years experience at not hacking that particular kind of code. Either that or focus your efforts more on applying for managerial or administrative-level roles -- i.e. the stuff you actually know how to do. There are fewer of these, sure, so it'll be harder to find lots of interviews. But you don't want lots of interviews. You want one job. In current market conditions, how can I get the 10-15 "perfect" interviews that experience tells me I need in order to get one job offer? It's not a numbers game. You don't need "10-15 perfect interviews" - you need exactly one interview with a company that suits you, which has a role you're suited for. Finding that is the hard part. Given that, the interview should be easy. It sounds like you're doing most of your looking through job boards or recruiters; I suspect you'll have much better luck working through those friends and ex-colleagues. They know who you are and what you can do, so issues like your misleading job titles will be less of a problem.

If you have no work experience as a .NET or Java developer, and want to get a Java or .NET dev job, you are going to need to accept a more junior role than you're accustomed to, at least to start out. "10 years industry experience" is completely irrelevant if the job is hacking code, and you have ten years experience at not hacking that particular kind of code. This isn't necessarily true. I have twice been hired to write code as a senior dev in a language I had never touched (first C#, now Python). However, the poster's problem is more severe --- he/she has not been writing code as their "main" job. That is tougher to get around, and I'll admit it's rare I see such a candidate get hired. Whereas simply being proficient in a different language has rarely been an issue at places where I've been involved with hiring (mostly Microsoft and Google). Many companies rightly assume that if you're awesome at language X, you can pick up language Y in a small amount of time (assuming some reasonable comparison --- Assembly to Java might be a big leap. Java to C# is a tiny step. etc.) So, advice --- Some companies _will_ expect specific technology expertise. These are either small companies (who dont feel they can spend _any_ time on you getting up to speed) or those with crappy HR/hiring policies (focus too much on buzzwords and not skills). The former you might be able to get around with a stellar interview, the latter are probably a lost cause. But not all companies are like these. For the rest, what you need is to show you can code well in _some_ language. The only way I can think of to do that is to start coding right now in something fairly popular (maybe Java? depends on the industry). If they then ask you to solve a problem in a different language, ask if you can instead do it in the one you're comfortable with. Many large companies will be fine with this (and some smaller ones). As an example, I answered all my interview questions for Google in C# -- which I probably don't need to tell you isn't actually used here anywhere.

I've run into similar problems... I don't have any good solutions that you aren't already working on. Maybe work on smoother ways of saying "I don't know"? E.g. "I haven't had much opportunity to use Unix, so how do you do that?" People like to talk, so inviting them to do so may make them like you better. I've been on the other side of the desk, too, and I came to distrust the technical trivia interviews. It's often some too-clever guy who thinks he's found a way of weeding people out; but it doesn't really test programming skill. A good interviewer should either ask you to demonstrate your skills (by writing a short program) or ask in detail about work you've done. In an actual job when you need to know that trivia you Google it.

1. Given that I've now not done any hacking in at least a year and a half, how can I bring my technical knowledge up to the point where I have a reasonable chance of achieving a "perfect" interview? That caught my attention a bit. Well, try 3 years wandering around the globe and doing no work AT ALL and then jumping into programming after a month and a half all out reviewing and studying. That's what I did and I work at a well known software company. Just study AND practice like you did in school for the programming area you are interested in. Code up algorithms and pay your dues. The single most important thing will be motivation. I lacked that for 3 years and now I'm back at it. 2. In current market conditions, how can I get the 10-15 "perfect" interviews that experience tells me I need in order to get one job offer? Due to family commitments I can't relocate. The best online resource for interviews I found is www.careercup.com. Other than that go back to your textbooks. Good luck.

Do you have friends who work in industry and do technical interviews at their companies? Practice sometimes makes perfect, though I recognize it's still possible to choke. It sounds to me like a big problem is that you lack confidence that you can hack the hacking questions - interviewers can smell a lack of confidence and while some of them can see past it, some of them can't or will choose not to because they don't want to work with someone who's constantly looking for validation. The only way you get that confidence is by having some good interviews and feeling like you're in the swing of the process, and it's not very productive to use real interviews for that practice. So call in some favors and get some friends to fake-interview you - maybe ask them to ask the hardest questions they've ever been asked in interviews so they're not violating any NDAs about their company's list of questions. Yes, it's awkward to fake-interview a friend, but sometimes friends do awkward things for each other. Practicing will probably help you. Sometimes, though, it's just luck. You are in a great mood that day for some unrelated reason and smilingly sail through every question like some glorious new god of code; you happen to get questions on topics that interest you particularly or that you've solved or even asked before (how great is that feeling in a technical interview when you get asked one of "your" questions? It's like finding $20 in your pocket or something); you really hit it off with the interviewer because you like the same kind of jokes or worked at the same company previously or have the same hobby, etc. You can try to make your own luck by studying hard and practicing, so you'll go in relaxed and feeling good about yourself, but ultimately a lot of this is out of your control, and that's something you've just got to accept. Interviewers try to pick the best person technically, but they're only human. Sometimes that just doesn't happen. In a way, this can be freeing, because you can tell yourself truthfully that just because you didn't get this job doesn't mean you didn't deserve it or you couldn't do it well. I would love to believe that interviews always pick out the best person for the job, but sometimes that just isn't the case and the best person has a cold and decides to power through it, or just failed a test and thinks she is a moron and spends the whole day of interviews thinking "Of course I don't know the answer to this because I'm the kind of moron who fails her calculus final" before mumbling through half-assed solutions, or gets asked only questions about operating systems internals when she has never taken an operating systems class, and then some other person gets the job instead. Circumstances happen. All you can do is prepare as best you can, and think positive, and try to tip the scales in your favor. Chin up, I know it isn't easy. Best of luck to you.

From the OP:I just wanted to say thanks to everyone for such thoughtful replies. I paid attention to every word. This morning I had a really great interview in which I was able either to answer every question or turn it around to what I did know. There weren't any trivia questions at all, so obviously, the non-trivia-style interviews that have gotten me jobs in the past weren't the never-to-be repeated, freak occurrences I feared they were. Looking back, I think the thing that scared me into treating interviews like final exams was the number of times I got turned down with the explanation: "we really liked him, and we'd have hired him if we didn't urgently need someone who knows this exact technology stack inside-out", and the technology stack would of course be different at every interview. I don't think I'll get the job because I know for a fact that another candidate has higher qualifications, which fit very specifically into this company's rather exotic area of the market. But I did pretty well. So I just have to accept that trivia questions aren't my forte and keep practising.