My buddy Bill from high school mentioned the company he worked for (
Chimes, Inc., then just a small division of
Computer Horizons Corp.) was expanding and hiring programmers; he knew I was a freshman in college in the computer science program, and knew what I could do (seeing some of the early Chief Delphi work, and other things I showed him in H.S.).
He set me up with an phone interview, and then a face-to-face. My (future) boss pretty much said "Bill says you're good, so .. what do you want to do? The software side of things, or hardware/networking side of things?" and that was the extent of my interview
*.
I went through school full-time, whille working here part-time (50+hr weeks is part-time, right?). When I was in my last semester of school I was hired on full time and am here still 6 years later (now a Lead Application Developer).
Disclaimer: The interview/hiring process I went through was nothing like a what a normal situation is (I should know, writing software to ease the hiring process). Make sure you go into an interview prepared to talk about your past experience, schooling, how you see yourself fitting into the company, what you want to do, how much you want to make, etc.
*We talked pay, hours, school, previous experience, etc., too, but after I was offered the job.