1. Please tell us how your education and experience are prepared for this position?

2. What methodologies have you used for software development lifecycle?

3. Please describe the most challenging project you have worked.

4. What is your experience as a team leader?

5. How do you advance your knowledge in information technologies?

As always, after these five core questions have gone through, the interviewer asked, “Do you have questions for us?”. Then at last, “Do you have last comment?”.

Since there is no detailed technical information asked, these questions should not be too hard to answer. Can you answer them?

1. Use the last project as an example, describe how you perform software development work?

2. What kind of testing tools have you used?

3. Tell us how you have worked in projects with a team.

4. If you went to vacation, and one of co-workers covered your job, what do you do when you come back?

5. If your project is already behind schedule but you get a lot of interruptions on work, and have to spend a lot time on customer support when clients call in for problems, how do you handle this situation?

6. When you and your co-worker have conflicts and disagreements, what should you do?

7. If you think you could not finish a task by deadline, what should you do?

8. How do you deal with errors in programming?

9. What’s your experience on version control tools?

10. Do you have experience for dealing with customers, such as when customers have problems and call in for support?

12. Have you worked in a production environment?

13. When an issue occurred in a software system in production environment, what could be the problem?

14. Do you have PL/SQL experience?

15. Rank your skills from 1 to 10 for Java, JSP, VB, PowerBuilder, and Oracle.

“I’ve worked on several data integration projects in the past.  I am not aware of any widely accepted methodologies specific for data integration.  In general I adapted systems development lifecycle methodology and worked through each phase of the data integration lifecycle.  The data integration projects I worked before were either focused on data conversion or data consolidation.  The first step was always analyzing the requirements and making a work plan.  Data mapping was one of the most important tasks.  In most of the projects I wrote my own customized scripts for data migration.  I used Informatica’s data conversion ETL tools in a few projects.  Database design tools like Oracle Designer and ERWin were very handy for me to manage repository and meta data for the data integration projects.”

“I have over 7 years of database application development experience using various computer languages.  My 4GL skills include Visual Basic and Powerbuilder.  I’ve coded many stored procedures, triggers, and packages using SQL, Oracle PL/SQL, and T-SQL with Sybase and SQL Server.  I worked on data migration projects and programmed scripting languages such as Perl and PHP to convert data from one database to another.  I also used C++ and Java to develop client/server and web-based applications.”

“Polymorphism refers to overload and override features in object oriented design. Overload is implemented by define multiple methods with the same name but different arguments. For example, getContractNum(String agencyNum) may overload getContractNum(). Override is implemented by defining the same method with the same signature in the derived class but may execute different functions from the parent class. Override is often used to included more functionalities in the constructors in the derived class.”

Using Java, you can develop any kinds of applications, — client/server, web-based, embedded, wireless, you name it. In today’s business world, Java is most likely used to build web-based, enterprise-wide systems. In the past years, Java SWING had been used to develop client/server desktop based, GUI rich applications. Therefore, if you are not sure what specific skills an employer want, the best approach is to present your knowledge and experience in developing SWING based client/server applications and web applications with JavaBeans and J2EE technologies like JSP, Servlet, and EJB.

Here’s an example answer:

“I started to program in Java 6 years ago and have developed many Java applications. My first Java project was a client/server application using Java SWING. All of my resent works are related to Java and J2EE based web applications. The project I am working now is a multi-tier web-based Java J2EE application, it’s contact management system for a state agency. I coded JSP pages for the presentation tier, build many JavaBeans for business logic processing on the middle tier, I also developed a few EJBs for business data persistence on the J2EE server.”

What if you don’t have real-life Java experience? Do your homework. Java is free, so if you know you would be asked with Java related questions, then build some quick experience by yourself and then sell them to the interview. Here’s how you could do it.

Download Java JDK and a middle tier application server like Tomcat or JBoss, they are all free. Follow the instructions to setup your local Java development environment. Then code a few JSP pages and JavaBeans, here you get Java development experience. If you have time, test a pilot project in your work. So on the interview you can say something like:

“I’ve spend a lot time to build hands-on Java skills and experience in the past years. I have my own local Java development and have learned a lot of the latest Java/J2EE technologies. Recently I just started a pilot project with our company to convert a Budget Reporting System from PowerBuilder to the Web-based Java/J2EE platform. I implemented Tomcat as the application server and programmed many JSP pages, JavaBeans, and Servlets for this system.”

Why garbage collector is needed? – When an object is no longer referenced by another object, then it is necessary to reclaim the system resources such as cache memory previously allocated by this object. A garbage collector periodically scans the active object space for objects no longer being referenced and released the system resources for any such objects.

Advantages – This automatic process relieves the application programmer from the duties of freeing objects that are no longer needed. This represents a substantial saving in the amount of detailed, low-level programming that the programmer must do.

Disadvantages – The garbage collection process is typically not under control of the application. This can lead to unpredictable delays in processing.

An object is a business entity with certain attributes and behaviors.    A class is the definition of an object.  It specifies that data elements and data formats that combine to reflect what an object presents.  A class also specifies the services that each object created form the class can be expected to perform.  The collection of all these services is the object’s interface, and represents what the object can do.

A class specifies the data and methods that operate on the data form each object that results form this specification.  The class definition also has some methods of its own that know how to create new objects.

A CASE tool usually provides functionalities to help us systematically move through the System
Development Lifecycle. Some of major functions include:

Business strategies
User requirements
System prototypes
Data model diagrams
Data flows
Construction
Testing
Quality assurance