Deprecated Garbage Collections – Kenny Lee Chee Wei

If you log-in to jobsdb.com using Firefox, you see this message.

I wonder if jobsdb.com itself is hiring

No specific order of importance.

1. Know the company’s profile

• This is very important. It shows that you have taken interest in the company’s products, services or basic background. The least an interviewer expects is a candidate who isn’t interested in the company itself.
• Check out the company’s website. Check with the job agency if you’re using one about more info abt the company.

2. Know your bread and butter

• Depending on companies, you might be asked to take theory / practical test. This should be expected. Expect youself to be tested. Prepare for it. If you’re a java web programmer working on J2EE, spring, struts web framworks with ORM tools like hibernate, ibatis, do read up on basic J2SE knowledge. Brush up on your inheritances and polymorphisms. Do basic CRUD in web programming. Most of the time developers work on higher framework level stuff and forget the basics, which can be expected in interviews.
• Reverse string questions are the easiest to be tested on the spot. So expect that.

3. Prepare Other Skill/Puzzle Questions

• Well, this takes time to prepare and cannot be learnt overnight. Sometimes an interviewer want to know how smart are you. Knowing all the frameworks or version of java are sometimes insignificant as they get obsolete in a few years time. Hiring a smart person that can pick up these tools and knowledge ranks higher.
• http://classic-puzzles.blogspot.com/2006/12/google-interview-puzzle-2-egg-problem.html

4. Ask Questions

• As mentioned in many job interview tips, asking questions demonstrates your thoughts and shows keen interest in the company.
• I often ask about the technologies used in the projects that i will be assigned to. (I rejected a few offers that uses painful technologies such as pure EJB-JSP without an MVC framework.). I sometimes even asked to speak to the programmers there to know more if the interviewers do not consist of any technical personnel, though quite rare. This might sound picky, but the last thing i want is to join a project which has painful stuff. Life’s too short for that.
• http://www.career.vt.edu/JOBSEARC/interview/AskQues.htm#(tips)

So you thought being a Sun Certified Programmer would let you breeze through technical interviews with companies looking for java programmers/developers?

Not really the case with me. I’ve had to sit through 1 hr technical exams ranging from written ones to multiple choiced one (90 questions to be exact), even though i had that paper.

Yesterday, i had scheduled 5 interviews, 4 of which required a technical exam, which meant for that day i spent about 3-4hrs doin exam papers..cool eh.

To be honest, give me a practical exam anytime. i rather churn out code on the machine than a written test.

I do hope the certificate has more value in Singapore to be frank. Not too sure how is the certificate doing in other countries.