Q&A

Q1: tell me about yourself

(Match with Job AD requirement)

I completed my Bachelor degree of Computing in the National University of —. And I have – years working experience in the IT industry, mainly focusing on JAVA online system development, delivery and maintenance.
In my career to date, I have been involved in several Full Software Development Life Cycles (SDLC) in both government and commercial projects.

I have strong technical skills. I started my work as JAVA developer and was promoted to Senior Developer – ago. As a senior developer, Besides the development task, I was also involved in guiding junior developer, assisting project managers to handle projects.

In my spare time, I like to play badminton and go jogging. And also I like to read and watch movies, not those romantics but more like the sci-fi styles. I migrated to Melbourne 3 months ago, and I would like to continue my IT career here. I am very looking forward to learning more about the position and thanks for the invitation for this interview.

Q2: Where do you see yourself in 5 years future?

I think in 5 years, I would like to be well established with your company. I would like to be very familiar with company processes, structure, set up good relations with colleagues and develop my career within the company.

Q3: What are your weakness?

Since I started my career as developer, I tended to focus too much on the technical details and solutions when I faced a problem. However, in the some situation, the best solution or the most suitable solution may not be a technical solution. and It might be better to solve some problems by communication with users or discussion with team members. I became aware of this weakness, especially when I was promoted to senior developer and started to handle stakeholders and requirements. So Nowadays when the problem surfaced, instead of focusing only on the technical aspects, I explore more about the problem. i.e what is the root cause of the problem, what does the user really want? what are the other impacts or risks to make the change. Instead of getting things done quickly, I learned to do the right thing and to do the things right.

Q4: Are you applying for any other positions:

Yes, I have applied for some other jobs. But I am interested in this one the most. I found the requirements matched my skill set, my background and experience. and I really glad to have this interview opportunity. I would love to have the opportunity to contribute the growth of your company.

Q5: Why would you migrate to Melbourne ?

I love the people, the culture and the life style here. In Melbourne, I can also enjoy outdoor activities, like hiking which is not that easy to access in Singapore. and since the common practice and process in IT industry in both Singapore and Australia, I hope to be able to apply my work expertise into Australia easily. So I decided to migrate to Melbourne to setup my family here and meanwhile I hope I can continue my IT career here.

Q6: What is the biggest achievement ?

The biggest achievement in my career, I think, was an– project for online application submission and process. The system was to allow the global users to submit investment-applications online. and for government agency side, the cases submitted would flow according to business process.

The major challenge of the project was the tight schedule and shortage of resources, as one of main team members had to leave the project and go back to India due to some family emergencies. The manager decided to invoke a vendor to help out with the resource issue. So besides my development task, as senior developer, I needed to manage and monitor vendor progress, and communicate with users for clarification of requirements. Meanwhile, I also needed to provide technical support for junior developers from offshore.

To monitor the project progress closely, we occupied a meeting room as a war room, and had an everyday agile stand up meeting. It was a busy and stressful 3 months. but the result was good. I , together with my teammates, managed to deliver the project on time. And the customers were happy with the result, and awarded my company the 2nd phase of project. In recognition of the effort and success, my team was awarded of Quality Of Difference prize in the annual company D&D meeting

Q7: Tell me about your skills as a team player.

I am a reliable person in a team. I ensure all my task and assignment are done correctly and consistently. So my team members can trust my work and are willing to work with me. Also I am good at empathizing with and sensing others’ feelings. And I am a good listener. Teammates are happy to approach me to discuss the difficulties and problems. And if I sense any teammates having any problems, I also will initiate the discussion to see whether I can help out. So many teammates and I became good friends after work. and we are still in contact even after I came to Melbourne.

Q8: What makes you think you are the right person for the job? (similar with strengths)

I have–years working experience in IT online system development, delivery and maintenance. In my previous positions, I was involved in several – projects and used several tools and frameworks similar to the KITS system. (Briefly mention, if already talked about it previously In one of my previous project for Singapore Post Department, we needed to build an online mail system to replace the physical snail mail system in Singapore. It required extremely user-friendly and interactive functions and UI in the web presentation layer. The front-end was implemented with Web tools and technologies including HTML5, CSS, JavaScript, AJAX, jQuery. JSON format message was used to communicate between the presentation layer and business layer with REST protocol. ). Also I have an easy going inter personality. And I have good communication skills and negotiation skills for project management and stakeholder management. All in all, I think I am a good fit for this position and I am very interested in this position. I hope my previous government project experience would utilize my expertise and contribute to the KITS project.

Q9: Tell us about a time when you had to deal with a difficult colleague?

When I worked in a – project, part of my job scope was to manage the project delivery in phases. I needed to prepare the package and instruction of deployment, and pass them to the Operation team who were doing the deployment actually.

One day, just a day before the deployment, one of the operation team member called up and complained that the instruction had a mistake, and she refused to perform the deployment.

My first instinct was to respond angrily on the phone, but I knew it was not the best response to settle the conflict, so I tried to calm her down, and promised to check on the procedure again and let her know ASAP. After the call, I checked the instructions again, it was not a mistake but a special step which was different from the previous usual deployment. I called her and explained it, and we agreed that for any special deployment steps, I would put up special note beside the steps. Also I invited her to have a lunch session sometime. During the lunch, I found out that, she had another project deployment on the day, which caused her a lot of stress. She apologized for her bad mood on the phone.

This built up a good rapport between us, and we cooperated very well in all the following project deliveries.

Q10: Give me a example of a time that you showed initiative and took the lead.

When I was in my previous job in – , we had some problems to prepare production deployment package when there were some concurrent changes on the same piece of code. So I initiated and pushed through a process improvement for existing code control practice. The improvement was to add a multi-branch feature to the current process. I set up a trial process as a POC (Proof of concept), then I prepared and distributed the checkout and commit guidelines to all the developers and vendors. And I also hosted a meeting with all parties to explain the detailed changes for this improvement. After the improvement process has been adapted, the feedback was very positive as it provided better control of concurrent development of the same piece of code, as well as simplified production release management.

Q11: Tell me about a time when you felt you were unable to meet your responsibilities.

I remember a time when I worked in a project for the Singapore Economic Development Board. I joined the team in the middle of the project, because one of the team member left the company for some reason. However, the project used a new technology (Adobe Livecycle tools) which was quite different from that I had worked with. I tried to study the technology in my spare time, but I found that the learning curve was a bit stiff, and it could have delayed the project. So I approached my manager with this situation, together with 2 possible solutions. One was to send me to the training course to acquire the necessary skills, or to hire a vendor for this part of work, and I could learn from the vendor during the project. After the discussion, the management fully understood the situation and was happy that I had raised this potential issue that might have delayed the project. In the end, a vendor with required skills was hired and the project completed according the schedule. Meanwhile I learned the skill from vendor and the skills were applied in the 2nd phase of the following projects.

Q12: Describe a time when you had to negotiate a compromise or had to help others arrives at a compromise.

There was a time when I was in my previous job at – , and there was a user requirement to develop a new search function with a wild card keyword. I was involved in the design and development for this charge. However, I found that due to huge size of data, the wild card search would have impacted the system performance, and causing the slowness in other functions. So I arranged a meeting with the users and explained the impact of this changes. I also proposed 2 possible solutions to compromise this issue. One was to change the wild card search to a concise search, or we need some more search criteria to constrict the search range. The user fully understood the situation, and they also didn’t want a change that would slow down the system performance. So they agree to compromise to the first approach, which was to use concise searching. In the end, the change deployed the system without impacting the system. The user was happy to use the search function as it improved their work efficiency as well.

作者：Wu Chen
链接：https://www.zhihu.com/question/21951947/answer/34772314
来源：知乎