I've had questions that drilled down into what bytes are in a TCP/IP packet on an interview. If you say you know about TCP/IP on a resume, it's fair game. FWIW

I've had questions that drilled down into what bytes are in a TCP/IP packet on an interview. If you say you know about TCP/IP on a resume, it's fair game. FWIW I got all the bytes but the checksum; apparently no one ever remembers the checksum byte. :) What's completely wrong with the situation is that the recruiter was saying "wrong" when he was giving detailed answers. The right solution is to have a non-skilled recruiter take careful notes, asking the candidate to repeat if necessary, in the cases where the candidate insists they know the answer. Then only in cases where the candidate can't answer a question should it be marked as "wrong." In other cases the answers should be run past someone knowledgeable. I've gone through a phone interview with Google myself, and it was nothing like this: I spoke with a real, skilled engineer, and there was nothing like a "gotcha" question where I had to guess the exact term he meant. Well, except where he asked "I bet you know what my next question is" and I didn't guess "How can the algorithm be faster?" But he didn't count that against me. :)