Customer Reviews

Ace the Technical Interview: Includes Y2K Job Opportunities

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

If you are a job seeker, this book will probably not be a big help. If you are a recruiter seeking technical questions to ask in an interview, this book offers a wide variety of technical questions in many different areas including C/C++, VB, Java, SQL, and many more.

I thumbed through this at Borders, and I had to post commentary here to keep people away. The errors just in the web section were enough.

"What are ways to emphasize text"? they ask in the web section. "Use the Blink tag"?!?

They also refer to TCP/IP as a generic name for a suite of protocols such as SMTP, HTTP and DNS. Wrong wrong wrong.

On the other hand, I figure that if someone is buying this book to scam their way into a job that they don't know anything about, perhaps the incorrect answers are what they deserve.

I have a solid background in C/C++ and I was hoping to fill in some gaps in other areas with this book. Unfortunately, given the poor quaility of the C/C++ information (and the sometimes-silly stuff in the "how to interview" section), I really don't trust what's in the rest of the volume.

The C/C++ chapter is divided into "beginner", "intermediate", and "advanced" sections. Instead, they should be labeled "unbelievably trivial", "very trivial", and "trivial". Even worse, much of the information is presented in a misleading or incorrect fashion. I suppose this is to be expected, given that the main credentials of the person who wrote the C/C++ section are a music degree and the ability to play the string bass.

If I were giving an interview and I heard a candidate parroting the C/C++ answers in this book, I would promptly show him/her to the door.

Instead, get a copy of: "Programming Interviews Exposed" by Mongan and Suojanen.

The Visual Basic 5.0 section contains errors too numerous to skip over. Here are some examples. Most are from question and answer format. These are not picky errors. They are total misrepresentations of the language. I know enough VB to find these answers. I would like to use the other sections of the book to learn from, but if these mistakes can get printed, the other sections can not possibly be worth the risk of learning from. p428 q1 Totally false. There is no Menu Design window. It is a Menu Editor window located under the Tools menu. q3 "What does the "at" sign character (@) in front of a letter do?" Answer is totally false. Should be the ampersand character (&). q4 Menu Design reference q5 " q7 These do not match what I have. All versions should have Exit. Correct? p429 q11 Not the Environments tab, the Editor Format tab q12 Your answer produces an error. Should be "...as String*20" p430 q3 Wrong. You use F8 to Step Into code, Shift +F8 to Step Over, and CTRL +Shift +F8 to Step Out p431 q8 Wrong. Just use ListCount. That is 9 errors on 4 pages. Many more follow. The writer did not know VB 5.0!

The book is filled with valuable information but you generally have to read the answers, and sometimes the questions, at least twice because the book is poorly written. It's as if nobody took the time to proofread - which is pretty sad for a FOURTH edition. Even the entries that are well thought out tend to be filled with sentence fragments and clauses, making it very difficult to read and more importantly, COMPREHEND! I'm no English professor but I can recognize when something can be written more clearly.

As a MCP, I was asked to review the VB5 section and found over half of the questions didn't prove anything other than you knew the answer to the question. They don't have anything to do with knowing how to program business solutions in VB. Many of the questions have wrong answers.

I liked the concept of this book, presenting some typical questions that might be asked during a technical interview. But in the section that I read (Visual Basic 5.0), I found that many of the answers were totally incorrect. A study guide that gives out wrong info is worse than no study guide at all. To be fair, I only read through the VB5 chapter, and the other chapters may be more accurate. But if you're thinking about purchasing this book, be warned.

No peoplesoft like the editorial review claims. Plus, this book has very little useful information about interviewing. It's just a bunch of technical questions organized by chapter. The Oracle questions are out of date, for version 8i which was released in 1999. Don't get this book for help on how to interview. Get "Ace the IT job interview". I am glad I only paid $3 for this. It is barely worth that.

There's a lot of useful information in this book, but I use it for a different purpose than for that which it is advertised. It's good for IT managers and other computer generalists, who want to stay on top of the trends, compare and contrast technologies, etc. For example, I've never worked with Oracle in my life. What does it do? What is included with Oracle? I can answer these basic questions here.

The detailed "sample interview questions", on the other hand, are completely useless. I would say it is dishonest to pretend you have more experience in technology X than you actually do for the purposes of lying your way into a job for which you are not qualified. Reading the little "sample questions" section on X is not going to turn you into an X expert or even a competent X professional, and you won't be able to maintain the illusion long once you are actually on the job, and working with X in all its hairy reality.

I was planning to buy this book on-line. Good thing I borrowed this book first from our company technical library. COBOL, DB2 & MVS questions are most frequently asked basic questions that I faced in tech interviews in past 10 years. However, Visual Basic section has unfavourable readers review. Since I am upgrading my skills in Client/server technology, I am quite concerned about accuracy of questions of VB and Web sections. I would rather continue to earn triple income as a Mainframe Y2K consultant (as book suggested) than land a best job in Visual Basic or Java/Web, based on wrong or misleading answers from this book. Publisher/Authors need to pay attention to an unbiased on-line reviews of this book. However, the initial sections of interview prep, Y2K strategies, Project Management etc. are really good and useful. In conclusion, don't judge this book just by the cover with a listing of impressive technologies and also remember, your Y2K triple income won't last much past Y2K!! It's *not* a 'get rich quick' scheme.