What's in YOUR resume?

BBritain

VIP Member
What\'s in YOUR resume?

I have taken a new job with a company that is hiring lots of developers. Part of my job involves interviewing the candidates.

I recently had an interview with a candidate - with a very impressive resume - and it went something like this:

Q: What percent of your work is Applications versus Reports.
A: 10% Apps, 80% Reports

Q: What style of reports are there.
A: Columnar, Group, Tabular and Financial.

Q: Suppose you have a columnar report and wanted to display the Branch/Plant
whenever it changes.
A: Use a report footer.

Q: What do I do if I want to display the totals of sales for each customer
A: Use a report footer.

Q: How would I display all the phone numbers for each of my customers.
A: Not sure

Q: Do you know what a subsystem join is?
A: Don't know.

Q: What is a level break header/footer used for?
A: Don't know.

Q: How would I combine two strings into a third string?
A: Don't know.

Q: How would you increment a number?
A: You mean like Next Numbers?

Q: How many different logic loops are there? (One - While Loop)
A: Dialog is Initialized, Post Dialog Is Initialized, Do.

Q: Are you having any trouble understanding what I am asking?
A: No.


Am I crazy? I really thought these are basic questions, yet this candidate couldn't answer them. What kind of questions would you ask - in order to determine if the candidate really knew how to develop?

Ben again,
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Hi Ben,

[ QUOTE ]
What kind of questions would you ask - in order to determine if the candidate really knew how to develop?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your questions are more then enough to determine, that the candidate does NOT know at all, how to develop.
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Regards,

Zoltán
P.S.: By the way, what subsystem join is?
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Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

hrm. Technical interviews like this are a little difficult for me sometimes, but I feel very well versed in RDA and somewhat in FDA. Either the person was a little nervous at the time, or really didn't know RDA and was trying to get by. The question about adding a phone number to a report... no being able to answer that one would make me nervous. I mean, did he even TRY to answer that one?

Laurie
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Let me rephrase.... I would be nervouse hiring someone who could not think through the process of adding phone numbers to a report.
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RE: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Hey, that sounds about par for the course. I used to interview consultants
to do projects for our clients. Here's a typical scenario:

Opening was for an Advanced Pricing functional consultant.

So I would call candidates who said they were good at it, and ask them one
question:

"Can you name any of the tables in Advanced Pricing?"

Most of them couldn't. Very unimpressive! Even a functional consultant
should know the database design and the table names.

Andy
www.JDEtips.com
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

"... with a very impressive resume "

did the resume experience include several years of OW/E1 experience?

was the guy currently out of a job? i.e. desperate.

Did the "impressive" part come from years with a big accounting/consulting firm? They seem to be the worst at resume padding (for billing purposes).

At least you interview prospective employyes, many firms don't. I might have also asked the following q's:

- Name some of the object types in E1 (Table, Application, UBE, ...)
- Describe what happens what you compile a NER.
- What do you do when you need to know how to use a particular BSFN? (read the source code, put a post on JDELIST, ...)
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Maybe he meant joining sections - subsection?
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Yes, I misstyped and meant subsection join.

Also, this candidate professed to have 6 years experience with OneWorld and the resume was even fairly specific as to the reports that were changed.

I do like all the suggestions as to the questions and if you have more, I could certainly use some more ideas.

Ben again,
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

But I have thrown some misnomers in to see if the candidate caught it, such as 'generating bsvws' or asking what the 5 types of forms there are.

Ben again,
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Hi Ben,

First of all, you are welcome back again.

Some new idea for interview questions to developer candidants:

Q1.)
What does it mean Path Code & Environment? (for consultants too!!!)

Q2.)
What are the differences between them, and what is th relation each to other?

Q3.) What do it mean for you the following abbreviations:
- OCM
- OL
- OMW
- APPL
- UBE
- TBLE
- DSTR
- BSVW
...etc.

Q4.)
Have you ever heard about "OCM Mappings"?

Q5.)
Fat Client, WTS, Citrix... What does it mean for you?

Q6.) What kind of servers can be in an installation?

Q7.)
Where and How can I run a Batch application?

Q8.) What does happen, when I promote an OMW project?

Q9.) What is the "Token" in scope of OMW?

Q10.) What is the difference between Business and Cotrol Tables data sources?

Q11.) What's you oppinion, why are tables in different Data Sources ( e.g. Business Data vs. Control Tables vs. System Tables, etc.)

Q12.) Please, explain me the differences between Checck-Out and Get.

...and a lot of more, but this time that's all.

NOTE: forgive me my English.

Best Regards,

Zoltán
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Yeah,

What about the following tables:
- F0010
- F0006
- F0101
- F011*
- F421*
- F431*
..,F000*

...and Do Not ask them: Have you ever heard about JDEList
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...and at all, what does it mean System Code, Reporting Code?

Regards,

Zoltán
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

I think I'd even have trouble interviewing with some of those questions. Types of report sections?. . hehehe, I don't think I've committed those to memory yet. I've been writing this stuff since before it was OneWorld too!

I guess if you have to root out the imposters you have to start at this level. That 'increment a number' question is so elementary that 'add 1 to it' is too obvious an answer (am I right? Do I get the job?). It's no wonder the guy went for something more complicated like 'next number' which is a number ‘incrementor’.

As for interviewing, for 2 years I was the last tier of technical interviewer for a consulting company and I've been called on to interview candidates for several former clients. I rarely ask the kind of canned question/answer you have illustrated here. I do have a set of general questions to warm up the conversation, but I try to get away from the atmosphere that inspires 'give the answer the interviewer wants to hear.' There's always some of that, but I try to get away from there. Certainly, you need to know if they meet the minimum qualifications, but there’s much more beyond those.

I typically aim for 45 minutes to an hour for an interview. If it falls short of that I would consider it a bad interview. There are a lot of reasons I have for that, but typically an interviewee falls short if they obviously don't have the experience, they can't talk to their successful work, they can't describe their work, or they have no initiative to drive a conversation. I want that interviewee to be excited to brag about all the challenging work they've done. It will be very clear if they don’t have anything to talk about.

Let me step back a bit too. You first need to know what type of employee you want to hire. When it comes to consultants I'm looking for motivated people who can stand in front of a client and speak clearly, truthfully, and be able to offer solutions with confidence. Often times, those solutions are not in any manual. So, my consultant hires really need to be top notch. They have to know the product and how to problem solve. They're operating in the unknown after all, and are sent out alone sometimes. You can't send a mouse to a client alone. Even at JDE I was almost always sent to clients alone. I learned quickly to stop talking like a geek and talk in short sentences to management.

Now, the flip side of this is the worker bee. Some companies are looking for the quiet type to sit in a cube and go on cruise control. Putting ambitious people in this role will mean they'll leave fairly quickly. I have seen some places look for the 'outside the box' thinkers. I don't generally interview the worker bees, they’re easy to find.

So, this is how I do an interview (it’s actually very loose and free form): First I get the preliminary stuff out of the way if it hasn't been done by someone else. What tools have you used, etc? I don't ask if they know what a loop is. If someone asked me that I’d wonder just how low in the organization this job really is. In fact, I’d probably ask if they were joking.

Then I follow this up with asking about what they've done with the tools. Which tools have you used? What types of projects have you worked on? What was your role? How many were on your team? What specifically did you do? They must be specific. It’s possible they only did Voucher Match for 3 years. That’s ok, but just how rounded is their knowledge? Can they demonstrate an ability to learn? Did they stretch themselves somewhere in there and go for unique solutions?

Now, these questions are geared towards getting them to start talking. I want them to talk and I want to hear the pride they should have in having done a good job. Now, what they say actually drives my questions. I have some goals, mind you. I want to know what they liked, and what they hated, and what they did about it. I want to hear about turmoil with others and problems they encountered. I certainly want to hear them criticize the product. E1 tools are a big pain in the butt sometimes, so you know they have used the tools when they tell you about the terrible work-arounds they had to use. You will also get a good feel about the ‘types’ of jobs they did.

This is where the good technical people can shine. They demonstrate that they’ve exhausted the tool and had to devise a solution outside of it. For instance, one guy got hold of free-ware encryption software and created a checksum solution to test whether transmitted files had been received already. This was critical because outside orders sometimes got transmitted to HQ twice. His description was actually kind of interesting. That had to happen in a C++ program outside of E1.

You can see where this leads, and that’s what I want. I want the interview to lead me somewhere. If they can’t be specific and can’t describe what they did in great detail and with some energy then they probably didn’t do much. This whole process will reveal how articulate they are and can go down some interesting tangents. You may discover tools you didn’t know could be used, find yourself asking for examples of their written documents, or just bored dumb as the conversation peters out after 10 minutes. As all of this unfolds you can steer the conversation to important parts of the job like: ”what did you do about the procrastinator on your team.” You know, get to the interpersonal skills if that’s important to the position. Take notes as they talk and then back them up to go down another road. Obviously, if you need to you can go way back to the beginning and try to get them to talk to specific areas if their first answers aren’t going where you want.

And that’s how I interview someone; I want to see energy, pride in good work, personality, and determination. I also want to hear some good stories of hard solutions. The technical ability will shake out when you get them to talk in a conversation. Canned questions serve their purpose, but they don’t get to the heart of the person you’re talking to, nor do they really reveal where the person has been and in what context.

Oops a book! Is anyone out there a publisher
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Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Hey!!

I went through an interview with you!!! How in the heck did I ever get the
job??? :)
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Yeah, well. . sometimes one will slip through.
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Actually, Mr Guitar guy here could sell ice machines to Eskimos. And, I've seen him code his way out of a paper bag.
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

It's hard being in an interview when the interviewer throws something at you that isn't terminology that you are familiar with. One example you gave with Level Breaks. Anyone who has written RPG, especially using the Cycle ought to know what that means, but if you write C you probably use a different terminology for that.

However, the principals of file joining, inner and outer etc, are common from the more traditional AS400 Query through to SQL, so everyone ought to understand those.

Also the primary JDE files are common to both World and One World - if you don't know the main files then you really don't know JDE. Whether as an Analyst or Programmer you need to know the database structure of a system and where to find data.

It seems today more than ever there are people who try to boast a lot on their resume, but if you question them enough it's not hard to figure out how little they really know. As much as anything a lot can be gleaned by a candidate's references from past employers I'm sure.
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Zoltan---I know most of them but can u please explain me the following:
1.difference between Business and Cotrol Tables data sources
2.OCM Mappings
3.why are tables in different Data Sources
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Very simple questions. If someone is a real developer and says he/she spends most of their time with ERW and does not know what you have asked is flat out; how do I put this; not telling the truth of their experience. Don't know what your job description is but you questions are okay. All except the subsystem join? I think you mean sub-section join. I too have ran into many people that say they have worked in E1 or similar and could not answer simple questions. Are there really that many "bad" developers out there. I know when I was a Director pre Y2K I hired 20+ developer, systems analysts etc and had to settle for any warm body in some cases. Some I would get lucky. In my opinion there is not a great pool of developers for E1, World. Do others feel the same way. And now I know the market is really booming so it is going to be even harder to find good candidates. Where I work it is hard to find someone , if they have what I am looking for I can't afford them. That is why I am no longer in management. I do handle the technical interview though. I think your questions are fine if most of what you want is only developer skills. I would ask more functional questions, a good developer must know a lot functionally also. I do have a list of questions I ask but don't want to just it here, let me know and I can e-mail it to you - Good luck - Angelis
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

This reply is mainly to Darren. I loved your response. I would love for the interview to go just like you said. I have many times ask the 'report section' question and they couldn't answer them all and it became clear that they were VERY good developers ANYWAY. Please notice that the questions started at a reasonable level and only became simpler as the 'incorrect' answers continued to come forth. I have even started saying - "Now I don't want to offend you, but I have to ask some questions to establish your level of expertise". I hate having to do that.

One other thing I notice, I usually ask them to rate themselves between 1 to 10 for Apps, Reports, Business functions. I have not gotten a response less than an 8. I good friend put this into perspective by saying "They don't realize just how much there is in OneWorld and so the less experienced they are the higher they think they are!" or at least something like that.

Anyway, I love all the questions, keep them coming!

Ben
 
Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

I think you're giving Mr. Guitar too much credit - when he hired me, he asked things like "How many gas stations are there in the US?" and "How do they make M&Ms?"

That is why a little stretch of the truth never hurts - he just smiled and accepted my answers as gospel - like my code!
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Re: What\'s in YOUR resume?

Ben,
I must have missed your posting this on the OPPORTUNITIES board.
Also, I could spend at LEAST 45 minutes cursing about lost specs and such.....
 
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