1. Basically I am looking for what is it that you goof up and you are out from the remaining process ?
2. Are elimination rounds a fair way to judge a person ? Anyone can have a bad hour :-(
3. Should you code the best possible or should you get the Algorithm right ? I generally first code a workable solution and then work on it till a level I think it looks beautiful to me. Is this a wrong approach ?

Recently I had a telephonic interview in which I was asked to write a variation of Level Order traversal in 20 minutes. I could get the Algorithm and working code in 20 minutes but couldn't get the Exception handling and the coding convention right, after which I didn't hear back from them :-( All the other questions in the interview went very well this was the only thing which was 'not upto the mark'.

Needless to say I like the company and will apply again but want to get it right the next time :-)

Please share your experiences and valuable suggestions.