Things Are Swinging My Way
Yesterday I went back to to Parsippany, New Jersey, for my technical interview for the Set Focus Master's Program . I'd be interviewing for a spot in the C# evening track of The Master's Program.
WARNING !!! Geek Speak follows...
My interview was at 11 AM. So I got there aboot 1 hour early, but I stopped at a Supermarket, and then hit my Java book for one last review. The format of the interview would be in Java.
The interview consisted of three parts...
Part one was a computer based test. There were 20 questions, and you had 30 minutes to do it. It was basic syntax questions... look at code, ad answere would the output would be, or if it would even compile or throw an exception. Some questions were give mes, like "Waht does garbage collection do ?". Some were more subtle. I finsihed the test quickly, but reviewed my answers. Sure enough, I made a few stupid mistakes because I REALLY didn't read the question fully, or I thought I saw things that I didn't. Example: One question had a "switch" statement, and you had to guess the output. I'm so used to seeing "break" statements that I never realized that they weren't there !!! So the answer was simple... the selection would fall all the way down to the "default" statement.
Part was an oral exam. I was asked questions aboot Object Oriented Program, and had to explain the concepts in my own words. This part was pretty easy.
The last part was a programing assignment on the computer. I had aboot 20-30 minutes to write a Java app that accepted one and only one command line argument. It had to take that command line argument, and print out the characters in reversed order. The catch... I was not allowed to use the reverse() method of Java's StringBuffer class. I basically got it, but I was making it harder than it was. The interviewer gave me a hint to that, and then i realized how I was making it harder. He said very good, as well as "You obviously know your way around a computer."
Vito (the interviewer) finally said "you passed". He then got Henry, the dude with whom I had been corresponding with. He told me I got a 75 on part 1; the avg. score is 60, and they have accepted people with a 50 %, but they had to do well on the coding portion. I was informed that Vito gave me a 4/5 on the oral portion of the tech interview, and that I got an A- on the programming part.
Henry then said that SetFocus would like to extend me an offer for the C# evening track of the Master's Program. I was accepted !!!
I was under the impression from the career night that I wouldn't get the results right away, so I guess I really impressed.
Out of 2,000 applicants per quarter, only aboot 15 get accepted into the program, which made me feel REAL GOOD after my current IBM manager told me that I am not a match for IBM, and that I should look for work in another field. Obviously my manager is wrong, especially after being offered a job last week by an IBM manager.
Now the scary part... as soon as I sign the training agreement, I shall be sent the first book. The first day of class would be April 19th, and on that day, there will be an exam on the first nine chapters of the book !!! They said the program is intense... I guess they really mean it. :-)
Now to decide whether taking this grueling, 39 week part time course is soemthing I should do... I will be an expert at .NET, C#, SQL Server 2000, ASP.NET, ADO.NET< XML, and a few other things when I'm done.
I'm leaning towards it.
WARNING !!! Geek Speak follows...
My interview was at 11 AM. So I got there aboot 1 hour early, but I stopped at a Supermarket, and then hit my Java book for one last review. The format of the interview would be in Java.
The interview consisted of three parts...
Part one was a computer based test. There were 20 questions, and you had 30 minutes to do it. It was basic syntax questions... look at code, ad answere would the output would be, or if it would even compile or throw an exception. Some questions were give mes, like "Waht does garbage collection do ?". Some were more subtle. I finsihed the test quickly, but reviewed my answers. Sure enough, I made a few stupid mistakes because I REALLY didn't read the question fully, or I thought I saw things that I didn't. Example: One question had a "switch" statement, and you had to guess the output. I'm so used to seeing "break" statements that I never realized that they weren't there !!! So the answer was simple... the selection would fall all the way down to the "default" statement.
Part was an oral exam. I was asked questions aboot Object Oriented Program, and had to explain the concepts in my own words. This part was pretty easy.
The last part was a programing assignment on the computer. I had aboot 20-30 minutes to write a Java app that accepted one and only one command line argument. It had to take that command line argument, and print out the characters in reversed order. The catch... I was not allowed to use the reverse() method of Java's StringBuffer class. I basically got it, but I was making it harder than it was. The interviewer gave me a hint to that, and then i realized how I was making it harder. He said very good, as well as "You obviously know your way around a computer."
Vito (the interviewer) finally said "you passed". He then got Henry, the dude with whom I had been corresponding with. He told me I got a 75 on part 1; the avg. score is 60, and they have accepted people with a 50 %, but they had to do well on the coding portion. I was informed that Vito gave me a 4/5 on the oral portion of the tech interview, and that I got an A- on the programming part.
Henry then said that SetFocus would like to extend me an offer for the C# evening track of the Master's Program. I was accepted !!!
I was under the impression from the career night that I wouldn't get the results right away, so I guess I really impressed.
Out of 2,000 applicants per quarter, only aboot 15 get accepted into the program, which made me feel REAL GOOD after my current IBM manager told me that I am not a match for IBM, and that I should look for work in another field. Obviously my manager is wrong, especially after being offered a job last week by an IBM manager.
Now the scary part... as soon as I sign the training agreement, I shall be sent the first book. The first day of class would be April 19th, and on that day, there will be an exam on the first nine chapters of the book !!! They said the program is intense... I guess they really mean it. :-)
Now to decide whether taking this grueling, 39 week part time course is soemthing I should do... I will be an expert at .NET, C#, SQL Server 2000, ASP.NET, ADO.NET< XML, and a few other things when I'm done.
I'm leaning towards it.