My Thoughts on Your Questions
In a recent post about my interview experience I was asked to tell the recruiter what I was most proud of so far in my career and the answer was my current track record. This answer has generated quite a few emails and I thought I would try to address most of them in this post, rather the replying back to each person individually.
What do you do to prepare for an interview?
I have never been the type of person to cram for an exam or interview, and this is because I feel that if I don't know the material well enough walking through that door in the morning, there is nothing that I am going to learn the night before that's going to really be beneficial.
One could argue the point above that I could memorize the complexity of certain algorithms, the way to explicitly solve a problem, or even the answer to every MS question I can find on the internet, and this is true, but HOW DOES IT HELP? In my mind it doesn't. You are only putting on a show for the person that is interviewing you and all you are doing is reciting data. If the company wants something to recite data, the can write a program to scour Google for data. The company is interested in YOU and the knowledge and wisdom YOU have, not the raw data.
The night before an interview I always just do what I love doing. The night before the MS interview it was solving a FreeBSD LDAP authentication problem with Windows Server 2003 and Active Directory.
Are there any books that you read or review before the interview?
The simple answer to this question is no. I do try to read a lot of books when I have time, but lately I have been very busy. The most recent books I have been reading are Threat Modeling, Object Thinking, Code Complete 2, and Programming the Windows Driver Model.
Assuming you have been in the situation with multiple offers at once, how have you dealt with salary negotiations?
This is very true that I have been in the described situation and I have actually never taken advantage of it. The primary reason is that, I look at the value I will be bringing to the company and the value the company will give to me. Obviously if the company did not make a good initial offer then they really do not see the value in me and this may not be a company I really want to work for. This is not to say I will always work for the company that pays more either, I will work for the company that together we provide the most value to the customer.