I applied through my university COOP program for a 4 month position. I was called in for an interview
after 2 weeks after applying. At first it was a phone interview, but later changed to a 1:1 interview.
I prepared by researching a bit about IBM, its history, the products it offers, and its vision statement.
I was interviewed by two very nice guys in their 40s who were both project leads at IBM. Interview started off with:
1) Tell us a bit about yourself
2) How do you handle conflicts
3) Talk about one of your development projects
4) Explain a time where you had to work with a team
5) Do you believe that software can be perfect? (The correct answer is NO)
Later on we got to technical questions:
1) Outline the steps of software development life cycle
2) How can you make a database more optimized
3) If you were required to take over a current role as a developer and you saw that the code could be improved (readability, efficiency), would you take the time to make it better? Would you take the time to make changes if you had a short time-tile to complete the project?
4) How would you write a program in JAVA to determine if a string contained any of the given list of characters?
5) Other JAVA related questions (quite fair if you know JAVA)
Overall, the experience was great. There were a lot of things in the job description that I did not know, infact almost the entire list of technical requirements, I had no experience with, or even heard of. However, I kept reiterating to the interviewers that I was a fast learner, and always took initiative to fulfill my responsibilities and would learn many required things before given the opportunity (I would have 2 months to prepare )
I was given the offer later on, and I accepted the opportunity over an offer from CIBC and TELUS.
Looking forward to working for IBM, starting january :)
TIP for future interviewees : KNOW what you put on your resume, don't make stuff up. With technical jobs like this one, interviewers like to test you about stuff you have added to your resume, so make sure you have an idea of what you wrote, and can talk about it in the interview.
Hope this helps.
