This is almost a month old now, but Dave Ranck has a great set of .NET interview questions.

Luckily, I can answer all of these! Back in November, I was involved in interviewing a candidate, and we asked two questions that aren't on this list, but ones we felt were key to know:

1. What is the difference between a user control and a server control?
2. Explain the differences between a DataGrid, a DataList and a Repeater, and explain why you would use each.

There's definitely some vagueness there, but that's on purpose. Listening to someone work through it will tell you if they know what they are talking about or not.

Of course, this raises another question. Are technical questions useful for an interview? Yeah, it shows they know the technology today, but is that enough? I guess it depends on the reason you're hiring.

For my first real job, the interview had no technical questons in it. I was coming out of college, and all the questions were designed to see if I knew how to learn and adapt, rather than what I knew now. I guess if you recruit right out of college, then you're probably more willing to invest in the development of the employee. Their goal was to find out if I could learn. If I can learn, than I can figure out the syntax of whatever the current language is. But if I can't learn and adapt, then even if I know the current technology, I'm not going to be useful in the long term.

Maybe it's more important with an experienced hire, but I'm not so sure about that either. When I moved to Sagestone, the interview wasn't technical either, other than to learn about my previous experiences. No specific questions. Of course, in that situation, I didn't blindly apply for that position - I was recruited by an employee there, and had a pretty good in already.

So what do you think? I know Microsoft asks technical questions in their interviews, but the more I read about those, it's more about the process you go to get to the answer than the answer itself. So, does asking technical questions really get you the best candidate? I don't think so, but they do give you insight into how someone thinks.