VB Forum / General / October 2004

Good luck, but I'd think if the interview is tomorrow there's little
point in "cramming" now, especially if you've been using VB for several
years...

As for what they'll ask, that's almost entirely dependent on who's doing
the asking...if there were a clue as to what type of job you were
seeking the would be the off chance of a random response being useful,
but w/o even that I'd think it would really be a crap shoot.

Go home, have a libation of your choice, get a good rest and enjoy... :)

Relax and take what comes.

In my experience with "technical interviews", the questions will depend
entirely on who makes them up - they may be gemane, they may be trivial,
they may be obtuse, and they may be quite silly in an attempt to be
'tricky'.

Often even 'correctness' will not matter if goes against a cherished opinion
of the interviewer.

Relax. The hiring process in America is pretty much a crap-shoot. Any
apparent relationship between that process and "finding the best candidate"
is purely coincidental.

-ralph

"How many gas stations are there in this town?"

"Draw me a diagram for this process/class/dependency tree."

"Implement THIS part of your diagram"

"Now . . what bugs are there in your code?"

When you do know the answer, answer the question succinctly, and then
bring up a project where you were faced with that particular aspect of
the technology.  This will highlight your experience.

When you don't know an answer, don't hedge.  Simply state that you don't
know it.  It's okay to add, "But if I had to make an educated guess...",
as long as you are up front that your guessing.  Don't do that if you
have no idea whatsoever.  

My standard is to make a mental note of the questions you couldn't
answer and address them in your thank-you letter.  That little touch
goes a long way toward demonstrating your problem solving abilities.

If, like Simon says, the other guy wants to upstage you then let him
have it.  I've had this happen in interviews.  It's most annoying, but
causes no harm.  In fact, this is often a good opportunity to get the
other guys talking about their pet projects and experience.  People
*love* to talk about themselves.  If you can steer the conversation into
this area then you'll be in good shape.  They will leave the table with
a very favorable impression of how things went.

I think the best you can do in an interview is have it turn into an open
flowing spontaneous conversation.

Good advice from the others.

I had two interviews that were "interesting"

In one, I was told that I got the interview because they saw that I
included in my resume that I had modified the source code for the
FDISK utility for DOS 3.x. I didn't get the "VB Programmer"
position because they felt that I did not have enough experience in
Javascript. Uhhh... ok <g>

In another interview for another VB position I was busy fielding
technical questions when a lady there asked me what I would do
if there was a problem with their satellite link up. Ok... "I would
find out what the problem was and try to get the best qualified
person to fix it" I said. I guess that was the right answer, since
she knodded in approval (keep an eye out for body language
and watch your own!)

In another interview I was posed this problem: "There are 3
cannibals and 3 missionaries on one side of a river. One of
the cannibals if the Chief. There is one row boat that holds
two people. Only the 3 missionaries and the Chief cannibal
can row. Describe the steps necessary to get all 6 people
accross the river using the row boat provided that there
are never more cannibals than missionaries at any given time
or side of the river.". Holy Cow! A logistics question! <g>
(For the record, I got that one right! But I did not calculate
the sales tax correctly on another question, but that was a
problem of not knowing how to calculate the tax, not because
I didn't know how to multiply.)

Watch out for question like "Did you watch yesterday's game?
What did you think of it?" Those are t get you off your guard.
They are NOT being chatty, they want to see how you express
yourself when talking about non job related stuff.

Years back, when it was my turn to be on the other side of the
interview, I wanted to know what made the interviewee tick.
Did they have long range plans? Had they ever been in an
uncomfortable position during a previous job? How did they
deal with that? Although exprience was a priority, I also needed
to know what they could do with it.

Good luck, even though I suspect that your interview will have
passed by the time you read this. Do tell us about it!

Saga

I once landed a job because I was out of my depth but I said so: every
time the guy would ask a question, I would say "I don't have the
answer (or some noise to that effect) BUT..." then I proceeded to
demonstrate HOW I would think my way through to possible solutions.

Those avenues and approaches got me in.
**********************************************************************
Richard Jalbert      Programmer-Analyst          Richmann@sympatico.ca

Dogs have owners, cats have staff.

http://www3.sympatico.ca/richmann/
**********************************************************************

I remember a 4 hour interview for a large company that included a
physiological  examination.  Lets just say I didn't get the job.

    <snip interview advices>

Hi all,

I had my interview and some of you wanted to know how it went so thought
I'd do a bit of a follow up.

The interview went very well, they did not make an offer but then again
I doubt very much that they would have, (one must never be to eager).

The interview was not really technical, by that I mean that I wasn't
asked to write code or solve a problem.
But rather I was asked to explain where I would use such and such tool.
Because I am familiar with VB6 and 7 they asked me a few question
regarding the differences and my thoughts on .NET in general.
I also had a few questions on Oracle but again the discussion was not
really technical, (I prefer Java vs PL/SQL so I had to be careful while
still expressing my opinion on the subject).

They also asked me a few general questions about ActiveX but the wording
of the question was more on the ActiveX I used/wrote in the past rather
than how I would go about writing one.

All in all I must say I was quite impressed, they never tried to "catch"
me, there was no difficult questions, (I am not blowing my own trumpet
here, I just think that they were genuinely trying to make me as
comfortable as possible and did not see the need to ask me obscure
technical questions).

I liked their approach to the interview, there was a manager that was
always making sure that the atmosphere was relaxed, (it wasn't, there
was 6 of them and one of me).
I think they were happy with a general, (loosely technical), discussion
because if I was not qualified I would have struggled to maintain an
hour long conversation  ranging from ADO/ActiveX to PL/SQL VB6/7 and
Oracle7->10.

Regards.

Simon

I once got a job on the merit of having superior technical skills to the one
other candidate, but the interviewer told me that I nearly didn't get it
because I didn't look directly into his eyes when answering, and therefore
appeared to be timid.