Being involved as an interviewer I thought I would offer a few personal (as in from me not officially from any company) tips to potential candidates everywhere.

First a note to the recruiters... Look I went through a recruiter many years ago when I got out of the Navy. I'm aware that after I interview your first candidate you are having that candidate call you and tell you what I asked and then you are using that information to brief the next candidate however:

1. Making your second candidate show up late while you wait to brief this weaker candidate is not a good plan - I may run longer then you expect on the interview and making a candidate late so there is time to brief them is just a mark against them at the start.

2. I (and others) don't ask simple questions with a right and wrong answer. The questions tend to be much more open ended - tell me about object oriented programming or web services. So prep time with our questions from the last candidate to your next candidate is pretty much wasted - just make them aware of the advice below. Of note the second candidate I interviewed did worse in my opinion then the first candidate. (Also note - none of the candidates I interviewed last week got to the important elements in my web services question.)

Fact is I don't interview with questions that you are going to prep for... I don't care what your candidate thinks their weakest attribute is ("Oh I just overwork myself to finish extra-requirements...") or if they can name 5 collection classes from .NET or some such - I want your candidate to tell me what they know.

Next for candidates - two golden rules:

1. If you put it on your resume be prepared for a question related to it! This doesn't mean a simple question it means that if you say you are an expert I will ask you expert level questions. Your resume was your intro to us and if you say you have experience on your resume, I will see if you are representing yourself appropriately. One or more candidates last week were noted as having heavily padded resumes. (BTW - don't assume the interviewer cares what .NET language you are most familiar with - one candidate last week listed C# as his/her primary language, said he/she did 50+% of their work in it - but had to be prompted with VB keywords in at least two cases... which was really silly since I'm a VB MVP and would like nothing better then to ask my questions with VB keywords and to hire VB programmers! Only a fool limits their selection of talented .NET developers based on a language preference.)

2. If you say in the interview you know something - be prepared to be asked about it. I'll ask most every candidate if they have any experience with certain technologies that might not be on their resume. I know with as heavily as people are padding resumes this is probably pointless... but sometimes it yields surprising results. For example there is the occasional candidate who will say "I know a little but not enough to really talk to that" which I can respect and will ask a simple follow up question to judge what they do know.... then there are the people who with the first question say "Yes, I've been working a with that recently/on my own time (or whatever)" who then choke when I ask a follow up question. While they don't usually make the same mistake twice - bad news, don't tell me you've used "VS2005/SharePoint etc." and then choke when I ask you about your favorite feature - that looks REALLY BAD and you are pretty much headed for Rejectville on the first attempt to snow me. The really sad part is - I don't care if you haven't worked with it, I'm just curious. You would in most cases be best off telling us flat out that you haven't worked with it then trying to pretend you have - I read your resume it wasn't listed I wasn't expecting at this point in the interview for you to know it.

Overall as a candidate expect that you will have at least one person who is a .NET expert in the room to interview and that you will face some very technically oriented questions based on the experience you list in your resume. Your interview may involve as many as four engineers depending on our availability. Be on time and dressed neatly - you don't need a suit but show up as if you were going to a client site (I may be in shorts and t-shirts but I'm not headed for a client site if I am, and for the interview you need to make me think I can send you to a client without too much supervision on proper attire.)

In general any company will hire people with all kinds of different experience levels from Junior engineers through Senior Engineers.

Oh yeah and before I forget - classic interview tips:

1. Don't argue with the interviewer - you thought technology A worked like X - interviewer says "no it works like Y". The interview is not the time to make your case - the case you will be making is your ability to work and play well with others - and you won't be getting a passing grade. If you feel you were wronged make a note and send documentation after the interview...

2. Don't tell the interviewer(s) that you are only at the interview because "your hero" works here and that you wouldn't be interested otherwise - companies aren't looking to hire fans for someone else already at the company - they are looking for engineers.