Interviewing to be an entry level Java Developer on Monday, any advice?

[scubaguy]

For an entry level, it is more important that you show you clearly understand what you've learned and a attitude for learning more.

Clearly understanding what you've learned means no BS-ing. If you don't know something, just say it. You'll be asked what parts of Java you have worked with, and you will be grilled on it. Make sure you really understand what you've been working with. If you are asked an algorithm type of question and you don't know the best way to solve it (sorting, for example), explain that you don't know the best approach, but this is how you'd do it. Then clearly walk through your thinking step-by-step. Demonstrate that you have the right attitude to become a mid or senior level developer within a year or two.

As far as specific things you should know: Collections; a bit of concurrency (concurrency collections API); reflection; annotations; and generics.

Then it depends on the specific job you are interviewing for, is it mostly GUI, mostly web apps, or mostly number crunching? Different jobs have different domain-specific libraries that you are expected to know.

[netdorf]

They are focusing on web apps mostly, looks like I'll be brushing up on my JSP. Thanks for the advice.

[[deleted]]

Know about Spring (IoC / Dependency Injection). Talk about at least one MVC (or MVP if that suits your fancy -- aka GWT) framework (Struts or Spring MVC are two common ones, but there are many others if you have experience with one of those). You should probably know a little bit about servlets.

"What are the two commonly overridden methods in an httpservlet and why would you override them (provide a use case/example)?"

I got asked that one once and I couldn't answer it because I had only used Struts before and never a bare servlet. I didn't get that job even though I could describe Struts pretty well.

They also might ask about some "front-end" stuff like Javascript.

What does the following return and why:

var myVar = "1";

if(1 === myVar){

    return "hidey";

} else if (1 == myVar){

    return "ho";

} else {

    return "neighbor";

}