FWIW, concerning the other side of the table—I’ve sat on hiring committees 10 or 12 times while working at two Fortune 500 companies and I disagree with almost everything sundialsvc4 said above.

Okay, fair enough ... care to elaborate for our friend?   What do you encounter and do?   What’s important to your teams, your decisions, your big-Co?   What directives does HR and so-forth hand to your team?

As Your Mother points out, every company is different, and so my perspectives and opinions are ... well, just that.   In fact, the larger the company grows, the more rigorously-defined is the makeup and actions of “hiring committees,” who to their credit are often faced with a lot of candidates.   I do not work in that world, and never have.

And, yes, there are always interviewers who are going to “try to out-tech you.”   It is just as impossible to characterize how an interview(er) might go, as to characterize any other behaviors of real people.   All that I can express is what drives me, personally ... and, to a lesser extent, those of the committees that I have been part of.

Obviously, any technical position presupposes a certain amount of basic familiarity with the tools and techniques that are being used in the shop.   “We’re not running a school here,” even though you did hear me using the word, “teach.”   Some baseline competency and understanding is needed.   But I don’t necessarily want someone who is hip-waders deep “in Perl,” who has done nothing else in his life than “Perl,” who interjects how great he thinks “Perl” is, and especially who’s just a little too-quick to tell me how great he is.   Someone who has worked with a cross-section of tools beyond “Perl and JavaScript” will certainly draw my eye.   Someone who sees the fact that there’s Python and Java and a little C-sharp going on, and who seems glad to hear about that, will do the same.   A long-winded answer to, “so, which is better ... waterfall or agile?” won’t win points, especially if you produce a bible.

Full disclosure:   I have never, ever, hired at “entry level.”   Consider these comments (or, throw darts at them) accordingly.

I personally try to sense, “greatness without attitude.”   Where I feel that I can give this person a piece of work to do ... ideally, not in exhaustive pre-digested detail ... and know, not only that he will do a good and competent job, but that he will freely share what he is doing with the others and will work with the others so that the entire team reaches a mutual goal, and none of them rest until all the tests (including all the new ones) run clean again.   I need strong players, sometimes very strong, but they must be players.   Ability, professionalism, but not ego.

But, again ... that’s just me.   Hiring is a very tough thing to do, and everyone does it more-or-less differently.   This is my Humble and not one whit more.

What they point out is that you are the least qualified person to give advice about Perl or programming using on the forum. Worst Nodes and your posting history are testament to this fact.