Unlike Microsoft, it seem that Google changed the interviewing process for many companies and I am grateful for it. My interviews pre-Google were primarily tri

Unlike Microsoft, it seem that Google changed the interviewing process for many companies and I am grateful for it. My interviews pre-Google were primarily trivia contests about the language used for the position I was interviewing for. I was never asked to actually write code or break down a problem. Phone screens were mostly used to verify a candidate had a pulse. Now I've noticed that almost all phone screens require some type of shared-document coding exercise, and some knowledge of algorithms, followed up by a series of whiteboard coding or problem solving face-to-face interviews. Some companies will ask for a homework problem or code sample as well. It was quite a shift for me as a developer, but a welcome one. The up side is that preparing for interviews now has actually improved my skills as a developer where before I'd learn about aspects of software languages that were often never used (such as details about EJBs when interviewing with companies that never used EJBs) and didn't translate into a hire actually being able to do the job they were hired to do.