Computer pros! Help us keep bad IT workers out of America

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Here's the deal:

Singapore processes a lot of temporary working visas, mostly for Indian nationals trying to work in the US. Some of these are valid, but some are not, either because the applicant doesn't know that much about computing of because the "company" he's going to work for is really a low-wage placement service being run out of somebody's tract house in suburban Dallas. Because there's a fixed number of worker visas worldwide, every bad visa means a good tech worker loses a shot at the US and a good company loses a chance to hire him (something my brother-in-law, who's with Texas Instruments, gives me no end of grief about).

The truth is, the problem with these cases is not so much with the applicants here, but mostly with the folks doing the hiring in the US (who are supposed to be vetted by DHS -- and we all know how well they do their "heckuva job"). Still, there are some bad applicants, too.

Here's how you can help:

Most of the applicants coming through Singapore claim knowledge of XML, Java, and "Oracle-based programming." The problem is that the interviewers aren't tech types, and don't know what questions to ask to see if these guys know their stuff. They can ask a cruise-ship bartender how to mix a Manhattan, or ask a nurse when not to give a child aspirin for a fever, but IT stuff is beyond them.

So what would be useful are some relatively straightforward computer questions (and answers), especially about the types of programming I just mentioned, that interviewers could use to check applicants out -- the kinds of questions anybody claiming that kind of computing background, with several years of work in the field, should know.

Any suggestions?

[SlowwHand]

Oracle interview questions

http://www.techinterviews.com/?p=158

Top 10 Interview Questions When Hiring XML Developers

http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2001/04/11/10questions.html

Java Interview Questions

http://www.allapplabs.com/interview_questions/java_interview_questions.htm

http://www.javacamp.org/jobinterview.html

[Rufus T. Firefly]

I'll start there, Sloww; thanks!

The only problem is, if you can google them up, so can the applicants.

[SlowwHand]

It's a shot anyway. If you can't weed them all out, many will be.

[Ari Rahikkala]

And if the interviews go wrong, there's always http://thedailywtf.com to post the results of their work at. I eagerly await your contribution

[Eroberer]

http://brainbench.com/

That place is probably good for employers. I took their PHP test and got about a 48 (out of 100, maybe). I was "claiming knowledge of PHP," and the the "technical" recruiter on the other end wanted me to demonstrate this on Brainbench's site. There were about 30 questions, most of them multiple choice, and a lot of them dealing with PHP syntax, and the questions were timed, so you couldn't google them easily.

Anyway, I'd only ever done a little bit of PHP programming, and I hadn't done it for couple years, and the quiz called me out on this. Unfortunately, recruiters also don't understand that it's very easy for geeks with a lot of programming experience to pick up new languages very easily. Fortunately though, I would've hated such a simple job back then and am better off now for not getting it. =)

[chequita guevara]

Brainbench is a bit of a joke, since you can have a book open while taking the test. That's not really a problem since in real life situations you'll have books, but they give you too much time, when someone who knows the subject should be able to find answers quickly.

[Dr Strangelove]

Hey I've got an idea! Why not train and hire more Americans for those jobs?

[loinburger]

I think you'd be best served in training the HR people about what buzzwords to look out for, and to ask applicants to rephrase their answers in such a way that they don't include the buzzword. The uncomfortable candidates are the ones who don't know what the hell they're talking about. I'll see what I can do about assembling some Java buzzwords for you (I try to avoid "oracle-based programming" and XML like the plague, but I might be able to whip up some XML buzzwords by asking my co-workers who are always fapping over XML to "explain" XML to me ("it's like HTML, except it's extensible, and it's got buzzwords, and you can make ontologies with it, and I'm fapping already!")).

A complementary route is to ask nonsensical questions. People who know what they're talking about will recognize that the question is nonsensical, people who read "how to fake a Java interview" will try to pull something out of their ass. "Why does Java use multiple-inheritance instead of single-inheritance?" "Why do nested XML schemas require a canonical ordering for their ontological identifiers?" "Why does Oracle forbid the use of offline SQL modification scripts?" All you've got to do is let the interviewer know which questions are fake. Hopefully they're also well-versed in spotting bull****ters.

[loinburger]

A word of caution on the "ask nonsensical questions" advice -- you need to ask more than one of these, and if the applicant bull****s the first few then give him/her some leeway. Going off of sloww's list, if I were asked an interview question like "What is the difference between HashMap and HashTable?," assuming I didn't know the answer (and, god help me, I do ) I'd either respond with "let me look at the API and I'll tell you " or else I'd try to come up with something plausible and hope to get past the HR "let me ask you questions that I don't even understand so how can I possibly hope to understand your answers to said questions" bureaucrat and talk to somebody who can competently guage my technical expertise. In other words, don't penalize the "it's preposterous that these clueless HR people are asking me nit-picking tech questions" people -- a loathing for HR marks an auspicious start down the road of an IT career.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Hey I've got an idea! Why not train and hire more Americans for those jobs?

Because we're just better at them, duh.

[SlowwHand]

Cheap fakes doesn't equal better. Read OP.
When American businesses get burned enough, they'll pay a living wage to American citizens that are easier to run checks on references.
I'm sure there are plenty of American geeks out there.

[LordShiva]

I was hoping Dr Strangelove would bite before someone else did

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Hey I've got an idea! Why not train and hire more Americans for those jobs?

Technically, anybody bringing over a foreign worker is supposed to demonstrate that there are no Americans who can do the job. In practice, however, these petitions seem just to be rubber stamped by both the Dept. of Labor and DHS.

Think about that: the Dept. of LABOR uses zero due diligence before greenlighting bringing in foreign workers, and the Dept of HOMELAND SECURITY is rubber-stamping their end of the immigration process. It then falls to those of us in the State Department -- which has the smallest budget of the three cabinet departments, and the smallest domestic presence -- to suss out what DoL and DHS missed.

Originally posted by SlowwHand
Cheap fakes doesn't equal better. Read OP.
When American businesses get burned enough, they'll pay a living wage to American citizens that are easier to run checks on references.
I'm sure there are plenty of American geeks out there.

Unfortunately, it's mostly American business that are doing the burning - usually by promising jobs that don't exist and wages they have no intention of paying. Bad applicants are a far, far smaller problem here than bad US petitioners. And most of the bad ones aren't really doing more than most job applciants everywhere do: inflating their credentials. Still, there are other, more deserving applicants in line behind them.

[SlowwHand]

You misunderstand, it's American businesses I'm criticizing.
Same goes for illegal immigrants "doing jobs Americans won't do". Solution, pay a rate that they will take. If they don't and hire illegal aliens, bust their ass and fine them.