Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java, J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle interview questions! (IT Job Interview series) [Paperback]

Janet Burleson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0974599328 | ISBN-13: 978-0974599328 | Publication Date: April 1, 2004

Offering accumulated observations of interviews with hundreds of job candidates, these books provide useful insights into which characteristics make a good IT professional. These handy guides each have a complete set of job interview questions and provide a practical method for accurately assessing the technical abilities of job candidates. The personality characteristics of successful IT professionals are listed and tips for identifying candidates with the right demeanor are included. Methods for evaluating academic and work histories are described as well.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Janet Burleson is an executive at BEI and has experience recruiting, hiring, and managing IT professionals. She also provides high-level web consulting services that improve the market status of Fortune 500 companies. She lives in Kittrell, North Carolina.

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Rampant Techpress (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974599328
• ISBN-13: 978-0974599328
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,935,408 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #43 in Books > Computers & Technology > Operating Systems > Unix > Administration
  • #47 in Books > Computers & Technology > Business & Culture > Careers

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars abysmal, January 13, 2007

By 

Alex Martelli "Aleax" (Palo Alto, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java, J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle interview questions! (IT Job Interview series) (Paperback)

I often interview programmer candidates, so I bought this book to calibrate my interviewing style and skills. I am appalled at the advice in the book -- I guess I should hope other firms do interview this way, so they'll gather the programmers I definitely don't want and leave the good ones for me.

Besides the defects other reviews have already mentioned (in this day and age, if you only hire candidates who show up in suit&tie as this book recommends, you'll end up missing many of the best techies!), some parts are positively creepy -- e.g., under "Gleaning Demographics" it claims that, while some questions are illegal, you should still slily ask questions to hiddenly gather that kind of information, since aspects such as whether the candidate has small kids (illegal to ask about that) should "factor strongly into a hiring decisions" -- so, ask what the candidate does to relax, that will dupe them into revealing whether they have a family.

Disgusting, really, and I find myself hoping somebody ends up in lots of trouble for practicing such weaselly duplicity -- meanwhile, all I can recommend to anybody but outright weasels is to carefully avoid this horrible book.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Rigidly conventional, July 18, 2005

By 

Sorin (Toronto, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java, J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle interview questions! (IT Job Interview series) (Paperback)

This book is full of uptight opinions and puts the job candidate under the magnifying glass. It is almost impossible to please the author. You have to wear a bussiness suit(only white shirt is acceptable), if you don't, you may be considered disrespectful. Knowing the klingon language may indicate a personality disorder!! Let's get serious.
As for the interview questions some of them are ridiculous. Example: C++ section - How do you end a comment started with '/*'? I don't think a hiring manager can make up his mind after asking such questions.

I give it one star just because I can't give it none.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars too general to be useful, February 15, 2006

By 

Zed (New York) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Conducting the Programmer Job Interview: The IT Manager Guide with Java, J2EE, C, C++, UNIX, PHP and Oracle interview questions! (IT Job Interview series) (Paperback)

The advice on interviewing is very general and can be found to the same detail with google. The advice is all useful, but it's not worth the price and the style is a little goofy for what I expected to be a more professional book.

The technical interview questions are atrocious. As others have commented, the "easy" questions are useful (e.g. how do you indicate comments?) and some of the solutions to the "hard" questions are incorrect (e.g. they try to illustrate a common C pointer bug in correctly written code).

The book just lacks content.