January 2nd, 2010 by lewis
History repeats itself. Here’s an excerpt from the recent Christmas Day terrorist plot:
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano brushed off the glaring mistakes that allowed a Nigerian bomber onto a U.S.-bound plane, stressing Sunday that everything worked “like clockwork” – after passengers foiled his plot.
“Once the incident occurred, the system worked,” she stunningly told ABC’s “This Week.”
“The traveling public is very, very safe,” she assured CNN.
Was Napolitano’s ‘The system worked’ this administration’s ‘Heckuva job, Brownie’?
Unfortunately, I see interview candidates make this mistake all the time. They make
unsubstantiated statements. What makes it worse is that the unverified statement doesn’t have reasonable
credibility. “Traveling public is very, very safe?”
Increased security measures likely means traveling is not safe.
How to avoid a self-promotion gaffe at the job interview? Here are a few things to keep in mind:
- Avoid superlatives. Don’t call yourself an “accomplished writer” or “very successful entrepreneur.”
- Use indisputable facts. Instead of “accomplished writer,” use “Business Week columnist.” Instead of “very successful entrepreneur,” use “founder of five startups, most recently a social network that helps new college grads.”
Resist the temptation to shove your own conclusions down the listener’s throat. Facts don’t lie. The listener will fill in the blanks and realize that you’re amazing, accomplished, and successful — on their own.
December 31st, 2009 by lewis
Here’s a list of Microsoft interview questions. Many of our clients have interviewed and received Microsoft job offers. Contact us for a free 15 minute interview analysis before your Microsoft interview.
Link to Microsoft interview questions for:
Microsoft Interview Questions: Program Manager (PM)
- What types of projects (academic or otherwise) have inspired you in the past?
- What are some self-directed missions that may have influenced your career direction?
- Did you have a moment of epiphany when you KNEW what you wanted to be when you grew up?
- How does Microsoft fit into your vision?
- What are some things that excite and motivate you?
- What are some examples of poorly/well-designed software? What makes the software this way and how would you change it?
- What is your favorite Microsoft product? Why?
- What is your least favorite Microsoft product? Why?
- Explain a database to a young child.
- Explain the Internet to your grandparents
- What is your favorite web site? Why? Now improve it.
- Steve Jobs calls and asks you to improve the iPod. Go.
- What’s an example of great product design?
- Why do mirrors reverse right and left instead of up and down?
- If a bear walks one mile south, turns left and walks one mile to the east and then turns left again and walks one mile north and arrives at its original position, what is the color of the bear.
- How would go about finding out where to find a book in a library. (You do not know how exactly the books are organized beforehand).
- A band is going in the street with a constant speed. Someone in the last row has a dog. The dog runs ahead, reaches the front row of the band and gets back to it’s owner. The dog’s speed was constant all the way and while it was running the band passed 50 feet. Find the length of the dog’s path,if the distance between the front and the rear row of the band is 50 feet.
- The government wants cars to keep track of whether or not they are speeding. The part to determine this is already able to determine the speed of the vehicle, how would you design the rest of the system.
- How many times a day do the hands on a clock overlap themselves?
- You have 8 balls. One of them is defective and weighs less than others. You have a balance to measure balls against each other. In 2 weighings, how do you find the defective one?
- There are 3 baskets. one of them have apples, one has oranges only and the other has mixture of apples and oranges. The labels on their baskets always lie. (i.e. if the label says oranges, you are sure that it doesn’t have oranges only,it could be a mixture) The task is to pick one basket and pick only one fruit from it and then correctly label all the three baskets.
- Why is a manhole cover round?
- How many cars are there in the USA?
- You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar to pay them. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day. If you are only allowed to make two breaks in the gold bar, how do you pay your worker?
- One train leaves Los Angeles at 15mph heading for New York. Another train leaves from New York at 20mph heading for Los Angeles on the same track. If a bird, flying at 25mph, leaves from Los Angeles at the same time as the train and flies back and forth between the two trains until they collide, how far will the bird have traveled?
- You have two jars, 50 red marbles and 50 blue marbles. A jar will be picked at random, and then a marble will be picked from the jar. Placing all of the marbles in the jars, how can you maximize the chances of a red marble being picked? What are the exact odds of getting a red marble using your scheme?
- Imagine you are standing in front of a mirror, facing it. Raise your left hand. Raise your right hand. Look at your reflection. When you raise your left hand your reflection raises what appears to be his right hand. But when you tilt your head up, your reflection does too, and does not appear to tilt his/her head down. Why is it that the mirror appears to reverse left and right, but not up and down?
- You have 5 jars of pills. Each pill weighs 10 gram, except for contaminated pills contained in one jar, where each pill weighs 9 gm. Given a scale, how could you tell which jar had the contaminated pills in just one measurement?
- If you had an infinite supply of water and a 5 quart and 3 quart pail, how would you measure exactly 4 quarts?
- You have a bucket of jelly beans. Some are red, some are blue, and some green. With your eyes closed, pick out 2 of a like color. How many do you have to grab to be sure you have 2 of the same?
- Which way should the key turn in a car door to unlock it?
- If you could remove any of the 50 states, which state would it be and why?
- There are four ants at four corners of a square of unit distance. At the same instant all of them start running with unit speed towards the person on their clockwise direction and will always run towards that target. How long does it take for them to meet and where?
- Design a music system for a car. What are the features? Draw a picture.
- Design a GPS navigation unit for a hiker.
- Design a communication device for Canadian park rangers.
- Design a remote control for an automatic window-blind system.
- Design a coffee maker that will be used by astronauts.
- Design an alarm clock.
- Design an alarm clock for a blind person.
- Design a search function.
- What are examples of poorly designed software?
- Design an instant messaging system.
- I am your grandmother. Describe what MATLAB is to me.
- How would you explain what a database is to a 5-year-old?
- Develop an algorithm for selecting objects in Visio.
- Tell me about a time when you made a decision and later found out that it was incorrect. What did you do to resolve the issue?
- Suppose you are one week away from the product shipping date and discover a bug in your software. What do you do?
- How would you test a keyboard?
- How would you test a pen?
- Imagine you have a closet full of shirts. It’s very hard to find a shirt. So what can you do to organize your shirts for easy retrieval?
- How would you test an elevator?
- How would you test a vending machine?
- How would you test a program that takes in two points and outputs the distance between the two points?
- Test the Windows scroll bar.
- Given a rectangular (cuboid for the puritans) cake with a rectangular piece removed (any size or orientation), how would you cut the remainder of the cake into two equal halves with one straight cut of a knife?
Microsoft Interview Questions: Software Development Engineer (SDE)
- You’re given an array containing both positive and negative integers and required to find the sub-array with the largest sum (O(N) a la KBL). Write a routine in C for the above.
- Given an array of size N in which every number is between 1 and N, determine if there are any duplicates in it. You are allowed to destroy the array if you like. [ I ended up giving about 4 or 5 different solutions for this, each supposedly better than the others ].
- Write a routine to draw a circle (x ** 2 + y ** 2 = r ** 2) without making use of any floating point computations at all.
- Given only putchar (no sprintf, itoa, etc.) write a routine putlong that prints out an unsigned long in decimal.
- Give a one-line C expression to test whether a number is a power of 2. No loops allowed.
- Given an array of characters which form a sentence of words, give an efficient algorithm to reverse the order of the words (not characters) in it.
- Give a good method to count the number of ones in a “n” (e.g. 32) bit number.
- What are the different ways to implement a condition where the value of x can be either a 0 or a 1?
- Reverse a linked list.
- Insert in a sorted list.
Microsoft Interview Questions: Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET)
- Why do you want to work for Microsoft?
- How would you deal with changes being made a week or so before the ship date?
- How would you deal with a bug that no one wants to fix? Both the SDE and his lead have said they won’t fix it.
- Write a function that counts the number of primes in the range [1-N]. Write the test cases for this function.
- Given a MAKEFILE, design the data structure that a parser would create and then write code that iterates over that data structure executing commands if needed.
- Write a function that inserts an integer into a linked list in ascending order. Write the test cases for this function.
- Test the save dialog in Notepad.
- Write the InStr function. Write the test cases for this function.
- Write a function that will return the number of days in a month (no using System.DateTime).
- You have 3 jars. Each jar has a label on it: white, black, or white&black. You have 3 sets of marbles: white, black, and white&black. One set is stored in one jar. The labels on the jars are guaranteed to be incorrect (i.e. white will not contain white). Which jar would you choose from to give you the best chances of identifying the which set of marbles in is in which jar.
- Write the test cases for a vending machine.
Sources
http://halcyon.usc.edu/~kiran/msqs.html
http://www.sellsbrothers.com/fun/msiview/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_interview
December 29th, 2009 by lewis
Trying to figure out your next career move?
The Career Within You is a new book that guides you through the process of finding the career best suited for you. It analyzes:
- Your traits
- Your strengths
- Your career wishes
Unlike other personality tests, the book not only helps you understand your character traits, but also explains the core values of the nine different personality types featured in the book.
I was excited when The Career Within You PR team asked me to review the book. I’m a big fan of personality tests; I’ve taken the
Myers-Briggs test at least three times. I jumped right in and found that I identify most closely with “The Achiever” personality type. Here are some of the strengths Achievers bring to the workplace:
- Inspire people
- Have a competitive spirit and drive to win
- Prefer efficiency
- Work hard
- Take risks
- Have big dreams
- Understand the importance of work/life balance
- Seeks mentors and mentors others
The authors also explain common weaknesses of each personality type. For the Achiever, common blind spots include being a workaholic and difficulty accepting failure.
From there, the reader is asked to answer a five question quiz. Based on the answers, the book recommends careers that fit one’s personality profile. Here are my recommended jobs, based on my personal profile:
- Brand manager
- CEO
- Finance & accounting executives
- Financial analyst
- Management consultant
- Technology executive
- Agent (for artist & performers)
- News journalist
- Symphony conductor
The book’s last section includes job hunting tips, which job seekers might find valuable when brushing up their resume, interviewing, or networking skills.
Steve Jobs once said, “You’ve got to find out what you love. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.”
It’s never too early or late to find your true passion. For those of you who are discovering a new career that matches your interests, Elizabeth Wagele and Ingrid Stabb’s book,
The Career Within You, is a quick, easy, and effective place to start.
December 28th, 2009 by lewis
I just read an interesting
Newsweek article featuring Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon.com. Bezos offers some interesting statistics on the Kindle’s success, along with some insights on why they focus on solving customer problems first.
December 17th, 2009 by lewis
My clients often wonder, “How much time should I prepare for a job interview?” Susan Britton Whitcomb offers some excellent advice, in her book Interview Magic:
Lou Adler, author of Hire with Your Head, advises his candidates to spend 10 or more hours preparing for every interview. Although some of that time will be devoted to research, a good portion should be spent verbally practicing your responses. Having information in your head and articulating that information with your mouth are two very different activities. In even more grueling advice, some speech coaches claim that an hour of preparation is required for every minute you are on stage. Sound like hard work? Consider the return on investment you will reap. Divide your annual income by the number of hours you spend preparing for the interview. At an annual income of $50,000 a year, 10 hours of preparation equates to $5,000 an hour. At $100,000, it’s $10,000 an hour. And, once you’ve become comfortable with describing your success stories and strengths, 10 hours won’t be necessary for each and every interview.
December 16th, 2009 by lewis
CNN/Careerbuilder has a nice article on top 10 interview mistakes. I’ve included my four favorite interview tips below.
Do some research: When you walk into a job interview, knowledge of the company’s history, goals and current activity proves to the interviewer that you are not only prepared for the interview, but also that you want to be a part of the organization.
Keep it professional: Although interviewers often try to create a comfortable setting to ease the job seeker’s nerves, business decorum shouldn’t disappear. Avoid offering personal details that can be controversial or have no relevance to the position, such as political and religious beliefs or stories about a recent break-up.
Know what to expect: Expect to hear staple interview questions: “What’s your biggest weakness?” “Why do you want to work here?” “Tell me about yourself.” “Why did you leave your last job?” These open-ended questions are harder to answer than they sound, so think about your responses before the interview.
Put on a happy face: The interview is not the time to air your grievances about being wronged by a past boss. How you speak about a previous employer gives the hiring manager an idea of how you’ll speak about him or her once you’ve moved on.
December 15th, 2009 by lewis
This is the best job search article I’ve read in the last three months.
Good news for job seekers: not everyone will have the initiative, drive, or self-esteem to do this. Those who do, you will stand out!
December 14th, 2009 by lewis
MSN Careers has a good article featuring interview tips from real job seekers. Here are my six favorite interview tips from the article:
It’s not all about you
“The interview is not about the candidate, it’s about the job. No matter how great you are as a person or employee, the interviewer is trying to fill a position. Hence, talk about the job as much as possible. Ask what a perfect candidate would be like. Only occasionally talk about yourself and only to show how you suit their requirements.” – Dave Field
Can you take the heat?
“I’ve found that saying that I can take constructive criticism has a big impact on employers. They need to know that you are not going to fold under scrutiny. Especially with the younger generation, where we have been coddled quite a bit with excessive praise and self-esteem boasters, you need to show you are resilient.” – Liz Cauley, teacher
Make a list
List five things you’ve accomplished during your previous job and concentrate on those items during your interview. “Each time I prepared for an interview, I was reminded of five things that I had accomplished under my last employer. That gave me a boost of confidence when going to the interview. It helped me to decide how I wanted to frame the answers that I gave to the interviewer.” – Sue Chehrenegar
Know the job description
“Reviewing the job description will help you customize your answers by addressing the specific needs of the organization and requirements of the position to your skill set. Many people have no idea what the job entails or how their skill set makes them better qualified.” – Cristina Castro, director of marketing and communications
Keep your answers to questions short and to the point
“Don’t volunteer extra information. In my case, I talked about my children. We discussed that I had been a stay-at-home mom. Even though I had impressive writing credentials, he told me that I wasn’t a ‘corporate person.’ (His exact words.) Of course, I never learned if this was why a job offer wasn’t forthcoming but I’m 99.9 percent sure I said too much.” – Marilyn Pincus, author and ghostwriter
Speak as if you have the job
“Steal a page from the presidential candidates and talk if as if you already have the job. Say ‘I will,” not ‘I would.’ ‘I can,’ not ‘I could.’ This will remove doubt instead of inject it. Bosses like someone confident and proactive.” – Joel Schwartzberg, director of new media
December 11th, 2009 by lewis
What’s your role as product manager in the whole thing?
That’s a good question. Google is very loosely structured; there’s not a whole lot of top-down management. As a product manager, your role is to inspire the team, to really define what the product goals are, work closely with the tech lead and the engineers on the project management itself — so breaking down the project into manageable chunks and then following through on the schedule to make sure we’re meeting our goals. You’re the outward face for the product as well, so there’s a lot of interacting with partners. We have publishing partners, but also library partners, device makers and reading application partners. And then also interfacing with the various other entities within Google to make sure that our products work well together. So working with the search team so that Google Books is able to blend well into the Google search results product.
What’s your role as product manager in the whole thing?
That’s a good question. Google is very loosely structured; there’s not a whole lot of top-down management. As a product manager, your role is to inspire the team, to really define what the product goals are, work closely with the tech lead and the engineers on the project management itself — so breaking down the project into manageable chunks and then following through on the schedule to make sure we’re meeting our goals. You’re the outward face for the product as well, so there’s a lot of interacting with partners. We have publishing partners, but also library partners, device makers and reading application partners. And then also interfacing with the various other entities within Google to make sure that our products work well together. So working with the search team so that Google Books is able to blend well into the Google search results product.