After my whirlwind tour of uptown Dallas (ok, so most tours have more than 2 stops), I feel fairly confident in how I did on the interviews. Yeah, one company, but I got a LOT of face time - apparently they believe in an approach similar to the one employed by Joel of 'Joel on Software', where the interview process is intense. Here's a quick overview:
1) Technical skills type interview, some important questions being: 'Describe object-oriented programming', 'What is polymorphism', and 'What's the difference between an inner and an outer join'.
2) Case study/analytical skills test: Given a small set of customer interviews, create an ERD for the solution (45 minutes allowed), then present the solution to a panel of 4 reviewers.
3) Behavioral interview: lotsa talk about sucesses and failures, how I handled them.
4) Lunch: Technically not an interview, but spending an hour with someone at a similar level to what I'd be coming in at, so I'm certain if I'd been a cretin, or antisocial, it wouldn't have been good.
5) Another interview, ostensibly to discuss the analytical process (as opposed to the earlier analysis/design testing).
6) The B-APT (someone's "Aptitude for Programming Test". If this is a test, I'd suspect it's designed for people who don't know if they'd be any good at programming - though I suppose there *could* be more subtle checking going on than is obviously tested.
All in all, I think it went well. They're supposed to let me know in a couple of days (when the test comes back, and the people who grilled me have a get-together). I'm a lil nervous now. |
