Conducting the J2EE Job Interview: IT Manager Guide for J2EE with Interview Questions (IT Job Interview series) (Paperback)

~ Jeffrey M. Hunter (Author), Don Burleson (Editor) "Since its official debut by Sun Microsystems in 1995, Java has matured from a tool that makes Applets, to an enterprise development environment able to..." (more)
Key Phrases: application development shops, code depot, deployment descriptor file, Low Expected, Intermediate Expected, High Expected (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

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.

About the Author

Jeffrey M. Hunter is an Oracle Certified Professional, a Java Development Certified Professional, and currently works as a senior database administrator for CoManage. His work includes advanced performance tuning, Java programming, capacity planning, database security, and physical/logical database design in a UNIX, Linux, and Windows NT environment. He lives in Butler, Pennsylvania.

Product Details

• Paperback: 150 pages
• Publisher: Rampant Techpress; illustrated edition edition (April 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0974435597
• ISBN-13: 978-0974435596
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 7 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,042,322 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Seriously flawed--and frightening, June 8, 2005

By	kbk (Los Angeles CA) - See all my reviews

This book (and the series of books like it) are addressed to managers who do not know the technology that they are trying to hire for. It gives what many of us consider bad information, such as: People with BSEE's generally make the best programmers. Most knowledgeable hiring managers I know believe exactly the opposite, and that is certainly my experience. Being an Electrical Engineer is usually associated with poor software development skills--that isn't what EEs train for. And CS degrees differ so much among different schools that the BS cannot be relied upon as a serious discriminator with regard to software development skills.
In a recent visit to the SUN facility, I asked what they thought of these books, and they were horrified. The idea that people who don't understand the technology could be making decisions by asking questions they don't understand, and evaluating answers they don't understand based on a book like this would be laughable if it didn't have such serious consequences. Perhaps the worst consequence is that hiring managers will feel qualified to conduct these interviews as a result of reading this book. They will get what they deserve. However, great developers who give non-textbook answers will suffer. So the message to managers is: get someone who understands the technology conduct the technical interview. Or pay the consequences.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A really bad book ..., March 11, 2006

By	MrWhooHoo "WhooHoo" (Berkeley, CA United States) - See all my reviews

The author appears to have no serious managerial experience: he seems to be a self-employed DBA. And it shows. Bigtime.

The model candidate, according to the author, would appear to be a conformist left-brained banking clerk. I have worked with and hired developers with a varied range of dress habits, personal manners, backgrounds and education. Good developers come in all sorts of shapes, sizes and colors. The best programmer I ever worked with never had a high-school education. Following this book's guidelines for assessing candidates' personal qualities would have excluded 2/3 of the best developers I know.

It's riddled with prejudice: "the female job applicant with three children less than five years of age may not be appropriate for an IT position that requires long hours on evenings or weekends." But it would be OK for a man with three such children to neglect them? And what does it say about a company and management which cannot organize projects without expecting excessive overtime?

The author appears to have no idea of the existence of employment legislation, anti-discrimination law, management techniques or how to motivate people. One has the impression that the recommendations would be more appropriate for a correctional facility or a kindergarten school than a twenty-first century development shop.

The technical questions reveal immaturity and inexperience. Design abilities are far more important to the fate of a project than technical minutiae. Yet no questions are included that would enable a manager to distinguish someone who really understands good principles of object oriented design. Just asking questions about patterns that a trained parrot could answer is hopelessly inadequate.

The technical questions are about half the book. But they are repetitious, the 'answers' are often too specific - one 'right' answer when several alternatives are equally appropriate. Some are obscure and totally academic: 'What is the Java Remote Method Protocol(JRMP)?'. Who cares? JRMP goes on completely under the covers and a developer has no need to know even of its existence. Some questions are plain wrong: 'What are the two transport protocols used by J2EE web-based client applications?'. 'HTTP and HTTPS transport protocols' comes the answer. First, HTTP is not a transport protocol but an application level protocol. Second, there is no HTTPS protocol: HTTPS is a URI scheme which is used to indicate that HTTP will be tunneled through secure sockets.

By the time the candidate has been asked Non-Technical Questions 8 ('If you were a vegetable, which vegetable would you be?') and 9 ('Describe the month of June'), any sensible candidate will already be asking themselves Non-Technical Question 10: 'Why do you want to work here?'

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Useless advice, December 3, 2005

By	Isystek, Inc. "reviewer" (MI United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Sometimes I wonder if the author's advice is very biased towards their own knowledge of the technology and qualifications. I mean, come on, proper dress code???, education in the ivy league schools???

1. Dress code is the responsibility of each employer, some larger corporations might adhere to a stricter dress code, some smaller ones (especially technology companies) could care less if you wear jeans to work, as long as you are knowledgeable and productive.

2. College degree. I disagree with the statement that "You **must** possess a certification and/or degree. You truly can't make such hard qualifying statements, since most IT jobs in the industry require degree or equivalent experience. I mean, come on, I know plenty of great developers who didn't finish college, but have many years of Enterprise Application Development under their belt. What if you are an industry acknowledged expert, book author, and have many years of experience, do you disqualify that candidate if they don't have a formal degree?

Basically I almost felt like the author is a psychology expert (which half of this book is dedicated to), vs. sticking strictly to technical questions and qualifications. Does the author also have a **degree** if psychology? Otherwise based in his statements, he's definitely not qualified to make such recommendations.