what sample work to show in job interview?

[Matt]

For a job interview, what sample work we should show? We cannot show
the source code we did in previous jobs, or documentations in previous
jobs, because of company's propreitary, correct?

please advise. thanks!!

 

[Andrew Thompson]

For a job interview, what sample work we should show?

Why don't you show them transcripts of some of the
many times you have helped people learning Java through
the public discussion groups?

--
Andrew Thompson
http://www.PhySci.org/codes/ Web & IT Help
http://www.PhySci.org/ Open-source software suite
http://www.1point1C.org/ Science & Technology
http://www.lensescapes.com/ Images that escape the mundane

 

[Michael Saunby]

Why don't you show them transcripts of some of the
many times you have helped people learning Java through
the public discussion groups?

Wicked

Is in common (in the USA ?) to ask job applicants to provide examples of
work done in past employment? In the UK I reckon you're more likely to be
asked to describe projects and answer more general questions. How would
you even know that the work was really their own?

Maybe if coding skills are really crucial it might be better to set a few
problems and leave them at a PC for an hour or two.

Michael Saunby

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Michael Saunby coughed up:

Wicked

Is in common (in the USA ?) to ask job applicants to provide examples
of work done in past employment?

No. Very unusual, IME. Never happened to me in 20ish years.

 

[iamfractal]

For a job interview, what sample work we should show? We cannot show
the source code we did in previous jobs, or documentations in previous
jobs, because of company's propreitary, correct?

please advise. thanks!!

A personal home page with a couple of servlets running on it did it
for me. I mentioned in a cover-letter they they should have one of
their techies look at it; the logs showed that someone played poker
for half-an-hour. That job interview held no fear ...

..ed

www.EdmundKirwan.com - Home of The Fractal Class Composition

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

(e-mail address removed) coughed up:

(e-mail address removed) (Matt) wrote in message


A personal home page with a couple of servlets running on it did it
for me. I mentioned in a cover-letter they they should have one of
their techies look at it; the logs showed that someone played poker
for half-an-hour. That job interview held no fear ...

.ed

www.EdmundKirwan.com - Home of The Fractal Class Composition

Good idea.

Perhaps another good idea in applying in general is to supply a cd-rom with
a fully blown application that you've written on the side. And make it
glitzy as hell using skinning.

To the side of the interview process, my favorite idea (for resume
submittal) is instead of placing the phrase

"references available upon request"

in your resume, supply a sheet with 7 reference /quotes/ from your 7
greatest fan co-workers. A sentence or 2 or a paragraph, as in the first
page of novels, extolling your abilities just shy of nauseum

"This guy taught me more about OO than 10+ prior
years of world experience. He did this and that {etc....}"
Dwight Shmidlap, principal architect
Smedly Corp, (e-mail address removed)
123-456-7890 x123

And then they'll be faced most resumes with unknown references, and then
yours which 7 known opinions, and names and emails to go with them. This
works in another way too. People often dread checking references, and often
don't do them at all. When you supply them ahead of time, you'll have
references in their heads, and the others might not get checked at all.

You'll appear as a /known entity/. A bird in the hand, to overuse a
metaphor.

IMHO.

 

[Rogue Chameleon]

To the side of the interview process, my favorite idea (for resume
submittal) is instead of placing the phrase

"references available upon request"

in your resume, supply a sheet with 7 reference /quotes/ from your 7
greatest fan co-workers. A sentence or 2 or a paragraph, as in the first
page of novels, extolling your abilities just shy of nauseum

"This guy taught me more about OO than 10+ prior
years of world experience. He did this and that {etc....}"
Dwight Shmidlap, principal architect
Smedly Corp, (e-mail address removed)
123-456-7890 x123

And then they'll be faced most resumes with unknown references, and then
yours which 7 known opinions, and names and emails to go with them. This
works in another way too. People often dread checking references, and often
don't do them at all. When you supply them ahead of time, you'll have
references in their heads, and the others might not get checked at all.

You'll appear as a /known entity/. A bird in the hand, to overuse a
metaphor.

IMHO.

This is an absolutely brilliant idea! Thanks!

 

[the Aloha Spirit]

Is in common (in the USA ?) to ask job applicants to provide examples of
work done in past employment? In the UK I reckon you're more likely to be
asked to describe projects and answer more general questions. How would
you even know that the work was really their own?

NDAs and contracts have forbidden me to go into too much detail about
projects with prior companies. Instead I show a project I developed off
to the side and released as freeware.

For my first real job after graduation, I let them see some school
projects, the problems my team solved at the ACM regional programming
contest (where we took 10th out of more than 60 teams), and some special
projects I did for my professors off to the side. These samples landed me
a great job with a start-up.

Maybe if coding skills are really crucial it might be better to set a
few problems and leave them at a PC for an hour or two.

Michael Saunby

During my three days of interviewing at Novel, they gave me a sheet of
some advanced code then asked to think out loud as I figured out what it
does. Then they gave me a sample problem and had me work it out on the
white board.

HTH,
La'ie Techie

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Rogue Chameleon coughed up:

"Thomas G. Marshall"


This is an absolutely brilliant idea! Thanks!

Thank you! And you're welcome. I hesitated giving it, because I not only
wanted to pretend that I thought of it (no ideas are truly unique, give or
take), and that I didn't want /everyone/ doing that.

LOL

 

[Thomas G. Marshall]

Thomas G. Marshall coughed up:

Rogue Chameleon coughed up:

Thank you! And you're welcome. I hesitated giving it, because I not
only wanted to pretend that I thought of it

What I mean is that even though I /did/ conujur this on my own, I wanted the
pretend glory that I was the only one in the universe who /ever/ thought of
it. Emphasis on "pretend".

Ah well.

 

[Scott Ellsworth]

For a job interview, what sample work we should show? We cannot show
the source code we did in previous jobs, or documentations in previous
jobs, because of company's propreitary, correct?

Depends on what you wrote for the previous job. At one client, I was
part of an open source effort, which made finding sample code easy.

I also usually have a few personal projects lying about that get used.
For a long time, PCGen was a great example of a project written mostly
by Java newbies with just a few experts. This was great, as I could
show places where I had made substantial useful changes, but could not
re-engineer the whole API. I also could show the utility of a profile,
unit tests, and refactoring. Since then, the code base has dramatically
improved, as the previous experts have had more time to fix up the code.

I usually craft something new for each batch of interviews. I then tell
the interviewer up front that for NDA reasons, I do not have any client
code, so I put together the following small application to demonstrate a
technology, solve a problem, or demonstrate how I might approach a task.

Scott
(e-mail address removed)
Java and database consulting for the life sciences