I applied in-person. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at Sage (Scottsdale, AZ) in Oct 2009
Interview
worked there back in 99 in training dept. Kept in contact with a buddy that was still working there and said they were hiring. Had one interview with the dept head and got hired.
Difficult interview
Application
The process took 1 day. I interviewed at Sage (Tampa, FL) in Aug 2010
Interview
Initial HR guy called me and we did the usual meet and greet. Scheduled a phone screen call with 3 other folks: A director and two managers.
Each asked questions in turn, each with a specific topic: OO Concepts, DB Concepts, and Project Management/Team concepts.
OO Concept questions were such like "Describe polymorphism", and "What is inheritance". Many more questions along these lines.
DB Concepts: "What are primary and foreign keys used for" and "What is the purposes of indices in databases?" etc, etc.
PM/Team concepts: "Describe your understanding of Scrum". And so on.
The group/Panel interview was much different. I went to their location, and they discussed a recent project that I had worked on. This discussion essentially broke down the project so that they could understand how it was architected. They neatly (and respectfully) picked apart every single aspect of the project, asking questions and challenging ideas.
After that, they had me use a greaseboard to demonstrate any piece of that project that I worked on and was proud of. This was further analyzed and questioned.
Finally, there was a challenge in which they wiped the greaseboard clean, and presented me with a simple problem to solve. I was given a simple input and output requirement, and told not to use any existing libraries that I know of but to solve it using logic and pseudocode. This was again analyzed.
The panel interview was grueling, highly technical, and detailed. They expertly identified where I was weak and where I was strong, but they treated me with dignity and respect.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Describe an algorithm or class library that you wrote that you are particularly proud of, and help us understand the OO concepts that you implemented in its design.