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Sunday, June 12, 2011

Feedback on the university graduates

First of all, this is not criticism of university or students! This is meant as a feedback one might benefit from. 

Why do I want to give a feedback on university graduates?
Well, I am working in quite big company (Tieto) and a lot of students (mainly from VSB Ostrava) want to work there. I am responsible for hiring Java developers for our unit. I have done more than 100 interviews. It took me more than one year of interviewing. I am trying to find out what applicants know and if they are capable to join our teams. I have gather a feedback on what are the applicants weakest areas. 
Team work 
    1. They don't know how to...
      1. work in a team (because they don't have the experience).  
      2. share the source code.
      3. properly plan / divide work tasks.
Project set-up (from technical point of view)
    1. They don't... 
      1. know how to set-up project in IDE using Maven. 
      2. know about code quality and code checkers. 
      3. understand to the importance of javadoc. 
      4. know what is the continuous integration. 
      5. understand to usage of automatic testing (JUnit + Mocking) 
Modelling and Software engineering
    1. They don't... 
      1. know why it is important to draw class diagrams. 
      2. know how to make class diagrams from requirements. 
      3. know how to implement the class diagram! 
      4. have any experience with usage of the design patterns, so they don't see the difference between using and not using the design patterns.
English skills
    1. Most of the graduates are saying "English on the school is very poor and it gave me nothing". 
Here is my message to the students who want to be code developers. 
  • Your teachers in the school can show you the way and explain the basics. The rest is up to you! Don't relay only on what the school teaches - be active and take the responsibility for career life.
  • You must get the experience. There are many ways how to get it. For example: join open source projects, create your own project, work in a company or work on a project with other students. 

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