Extreme Blue internship

nachos

Hi,
I'll be graduating next summer from DCU's computer applications (SE). IBM will be coming round in about 6 weeks to do the assessment tests for the internship.
Does anyone who has done the course have any recommendations what I should start reading up on?
If you have done the course, what did you think of it? is it worth doing? and did you get a job with IBM out of it at the end?!

Any help/advice much appreciated!

Stark

I did the Extreme blue internship this summer and I would highly recommend it. You're thrown totally into the deep end and you'll learn more in 3 months than many graduates would learn in 3 years. You're also 99% guaranteed a permanent job with IBM at the end of the 3 months. Other companies will also look at you very favourably.

You'll get two tests: A standard java test like most companies give, and also a general knowledge test to show that you're clued in on modern technologies in the industry - xml, web standards, stuff like that.

If you do well in the tests, the interview is quite straightforward. The way they work the interview is, they have 12 jobs, they take the 12 best people based on test results, interview them, and whoever's not a total screw-up gets the job. It is the easiest interview you'll ever have to do for a gruduate position. In fact when I did my interview, I was prepped from previous psychological warfare interviews and panicked that I couldn't discern an agenda from my IBM interview. I stammered half way through the interview from nerves and still got the job (It's that relaxed attitude towards their employees that I like most about the company).

Civilian_Target

You need to have experience in a group project of decent length (which is why I didn't get the job).

But other than that, Java syntactial questions (nothing too tasking) and a few tech questions relating to the job.

Stark: I dispute the "relaxed attitude to employees" part - maybe they're more relaxed if you come in through Extreme Blue...

Stark

Civilian_Target wrote:

Stark: I dispute the "relaxed attitude to employees" part - maybe they're more relaxed if you come in through Extreme Blue...

Really? Did you have problems interview wise, or work environment wise? I guess it does all depend on who you get, where you end up. From personal experience though, it was the easiest recruitment process I've had to go through by far (graduate interviews are nasty) and I still like the work environment there (though it is only a few weeks before I finished extreme blue, and started an actual job there).

Civilian_Target

No - interview was fine - I just didn't really have enough experience to go into Extreme Blue.

I found the DSL staff to all be quite sound and relaxed, but some of the external staff (some on-campus admin staff, but mostly people in the US) to be very demanding. Also, the move from Santry to the campus rather sucked. That, and also being a number was starting to annoy me.