I have recently decided to take my life into my own hands and look for contracting work rather than permanent jobs.
I have an interview coming up and have been told there will be some sort of test on my knowledge of Business Objects Designer and Supervisor tools and Web Intelligence report creation. Has anyone else had to take one of these test, or given one? and if so do you have any example questions/answers I could look at?
We’ve discussed interviews in general many times before, so I’d suggest a search. One picky thing, your attention to detail needs to be excellent. You misspelt the word contractor…!
Be confident in your own skills and you’ll be fine.
I have tried searching this forum for information on interviews but only came up with other threads were people were told to do a search on interviews.
I did however read one helpful thread where it was clearly stated this forum isn’t used for this type of discussion anyway.
Many of these questions are covered in the training classes taught by Integra Solutions. If you have taken their classes, you can find the answers in the training materials.
The classes taught by Integra are very good. However, they teach the same material taught by every other authorized training center. Many of the training partners have excellent instructors.
So, don’ think that you can only get good materials and instructors by using Integra.
This is an old thread, but I wanted to add something here. I worked for many years at the mother ship (if you know what I mean), and one of the things that always bothered me was the lack of depth, in some of the consultants that we sometimes fielded. The first question I would definitely ask of a Business Objects consultant (umm, besides, you do know Business Objects, right?) is, really not a question, but I would ask how he/she took a deployment from an idea into full production. I think this is the acid test. BI is a wonderful thing. It has been likened to having a baby. First comes the good news (were having BI!) followed by the back-slapping, and the laughing. Then, comes the screaming, and the yelling, and poof! There is it is, in all its glory-- the BI baby with all its promises. This all after much pain. I would ask how they got through the pain.
You know what… I’m such a Pollyanna. I left big corporate America 10 years ago for the nomadic life of a contractor, specializing in all things data intensive, primarily BI. I have never prepared for an interview, beyond learning something about the client. I don’t know if I should be proud of that or not, but I’ve gotten every job I have ever interviewed for and made a very good living. Only a 4 day gap between my last 2 contracts. It’s getting the interview that’s getting harder and harder.
I find that experience and being able to think on your feet is the best way to prove who you are and what you can do. Studying things I’ve never actually done makes me look rehearsed and sort of confused . If I can explain the concept, I do. If I’ve never actually had my hands on the tool, I say so, making sure they know how much I want to learn new things. But I also make a big point of all of the other tools I’ve been exposed to over the years and how successful I’ve been with all of them.
Interview over your current level but never try to convince the client you know more than you actually do. You’ll look dishonest and then they will doubt you on everything. Let them know that you are excited to grow. I find that people respond very well to honesty, flexibility, adventurousness (sp?), and excitement.
I actually have two funny anecdotes as complete opposites to the above most excellent response. One of our consultants was phone interviewed before showing up for a scheduled gig. Two (2) hours into the interview the prospective client announce, o.k., we have enough, thanks! After they cancelled the engagement, we found out that they had used the interview to fix their environment issues and did not need the consultant on site anymore. On another occasion, I was put in the center of this IT question-and-answer circle, and for four (yup, 4) hours, the session went something like this, umm; question number 103, of 234, explain in two sentences or less, hyper-dynamic cubing Sometimes it is definitely not fun interviewing for BI work!
Been there too. It only happens once. 8) That’s the saying, right? Fool me once, shame on you… fool me twice, shame on me.
Now I will admit I’ve never been on either side of one of those… doesn’t sound like much fun. For some reason it reminds me of the Dilbert cartoon, where the pointy-haired boss comes in and announces, “We should get a SQL database.” Dilbert assumes that he has no clue what he’s asking, so in the next frame he asks, “What color?” The pointy-haired boss says, “I hear that mauve is the fasted.”
I would be templated at about question 222 of 234 to throw out something completely stupid just to see if they were really listening.
Whatever are they trying to find out in 234 questions ?? I would start forgetting what I know after an hour of interrogation …
In that case, they should save energy and have a written exam. Also, whats the point of asking grandiose theory and the likes when the “on the job” reality maybe totally something else ?
Anyway, on the other hand, if the above type of mega interviews are a widespread practise then this
would definitely not be a good strategy to adopt for someone looking for a job.
Hi, i am relatively new user of Business Objects, I guess www.geekinterview.com should definitely help you there are around 100+ questions there with the answers. ALL THE BEST MATE!!!