Technical test during interview for Java Developer role

GenericName

I'm due to attend an interview for a job as a graduate developer (Java) with a company that provides large customer management solutions. I've been told that the interview will involve a 15 question technical test.

I've heard of this sort of thing being done in interviews for software developers but I never had to do it myself. Can anyone tell me what sort of questions they are likely to ask. Not that I'm all that bad a programmer but I haven't looked at a line of Java in 4 months and I don't want to embarrass myself over something trivial!

Stark

It'll likely require to have a very fine-grained knowledge of syntax unfortunately.

Like "Is this legal?
System.out.println("test");;"

Stuff like pick the correct/incorrect code out of 4 snippets, stuff on threading, access modifiers, inheritance, things like that.

OfflerCrocGod

Stark wrote:

It'll likely require to have a very fine-grained knowledge of syntax unfortunately.

Like "Is this legal?
System.out.println("test");;"

Stuff like pick the correct/incorrect code out of 4 snippets, stuff on threading, access modifiers, inheritance, things like that.

Those questions are so pointless but I suppose it's the only way they can pick out people who know what they are doing......After all Eclipse will tell you if it's wrong. God I hate job hunting:(

rsynnott

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Those questions are so pointless but I suppose it's the only way they can pick out people who know what they are doing......After all Eclipse will tell you if it's wrong. God I hate job hunting:(

You don't really mean that, do you? About the threading and such? Eek.

Seth Brundle

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

God I hate job hunting:(

Having done a few telephone 'interviews' recently, Im starting to think the same.
In one situation, I was asked to answer a number of questions which were worded so badly that the correct answer wasn't what the guy was looking for.
In another 'chat' yesterday, I was told by an agent that it was for an ASP role and approached the chat this way. He asked me loads of vague Qs and I answered then with ASP/IIS in mind. After a while I was told that it was a php/Apache role resulting in me sounding clueless!

Stark

I usually find the technical tests to be the least of my worries interview wise. It's the "soft skills" portion of the interview, on which I choke. I just can't take myself seriously when I'm spouting out the "Yes I work well with people and I'm a good team player" crap.

GenericName

I got a heads up from the recruiter to say that it was gonna be a test on OO design methodologies. Which sounded easy enough - I tried to adhere to best practise as much as possible with my final year project.

...but as stark suggested it was more to do with the low level side to programming. They defined a fictional language which was almost java pseudocode. Had to follow the logic of mostly simple and sometimes complex code and report what I expected the result to be. Just arrays, for loops etc.

Cheers for the info