ITT qualification impression from job hunting view

theTinker

For anyone who is just about to graduate or passed in previous year.
How has the job hunting been for you particularly in regards to cert/diploma/degree from ITT? Have you found the skill sets apt? any complaints or positive comments?

I've pretty much found no eye brows raised in any negative/postive waybut everyone has shown some recognition when I mention the college so i'm happy about that.
Alot of the interviewers seem impressed by the technologies covered in it + the fashion and scope of the 3rd + 4th year projects.
They seem to be impressed also by the rapid approach we use too(research, analysis, design, implementation, testing, and pir for the less jargon inclined.)

A few have asked about testing which i admit i never really followed much of a structure to. If you can get yourselves a proper testing structure to follow for a project. do it. The return on resume validates it completely. Being able to throw the document at them with an impressive system being followed will impress them lots.
Doing a J2EE project in 3rd year like most people also seems to be highly impressive. They like the different database exposure, oracle, MySql, Sysbase and objectivity. Lots of telecommuncation jobs are available so mobile phone projects and Jimmy doody's 4th year class on mobile phone development(future + present) were quite liked.

Only skillset flaw i found was the less defined testing structure comparing to the other project phases, and perhaps Ive practiced a slightly less systematic approach to designing the UML models than industry peeps desire. I usually just started out blank and just 'came up with it'. They were just the two minor faults i found with my experience incase any current student feels like being proactive. Could be me though. If anyone is into web site development (non gui :P), learning java+xml usage is a nice skill add on.

So overall im very happy with the degree and course from ITT. I can get a good chance of an interview with most I send my CV off to and Nearly all are impressed with the broad range of topics.

theTinker

Oh how insightful theTinker.
Can you tell me if thier is any other skill sets that i could pick up in the computing course that would give me a really good advantage in the industry when i leave?
Thanks in advance.

theTinker

Of course I can tell you.

A few times i've been asked about using "hibernate" for a back end on my database. Its a Object relational mapping front that sits on ur little db. It will cut down on your program jdbc code. Which is typically above 20% of project code. It lets u treat ur database as an OODB but its really relational. Companies seem to be doing to because it means they dont have to learn or rely on OODB since all thier exp is on relational and non OO progs can use the db without the hibernate part.

alot this one has come up. "Struts" . another tech. Well its frame work based on the model view controller 'model 2' to be precise. It seperates the presentation from business logic and the data model. If u can use this, it will impress many J2EE employers which has huge openings since most applications are becoming enterprisey now.
There is excellent tutorials on coreservlets.com about it.

These are the main two ive found atm that i wish i had learnt in the computing ITT course which i didnt. Struts being the more valid one.

Third years or anyone else do J2EE ecommerce sites which is the norm, should definitely stick to the MVC model 2 or struts way, it is a big advantage since it means u know the architecture and have exp at the lil enterprisey thing

I start my job tomoro, anyone gonna wish me luck?

token

Hi theThinker, not many people come in here you might get a better reponse if you copy n paste at http://www.nemo.compsoc.com. Im tired so quick response. Ya i didnt seem to have much trouble in the interviews i had. The stuff i learned in ITT covered majority of questions i got, except covering automated testing and version control (mutiple people writing to same class etc). Nothing you would really have expected to have experience with in college

I hadn't come across struts before even tho its on my job spec (i started this week too). Ill be learning spring which is pretty much the same thing next week apparently going by an email i received to my job mail a/c a week before i was there :rolleyes:. I came across hibernate too while browsing through some code today that i might be soon working on. Both seem similar to stuff we covered in J2EE so ya J2EE while not seeming overly important at the time has proved quite useful .

Ya the xml stuff we did was useful too, they use it in work. I was asked about it in the interview. i just about rememberd the name JDOM and SAX (i think its SAX).

gerTheGreat

I went for a job interview last summer, where the guy interviewing me scoffed at the thought of ITT. He even went as far to ask me why I didn't go to a real college. The most laughable thing about this guy was that he hadn't even gone to college himself. Suffice to say, I didn't get the job. That said, probabaly a good thing.

Giblet

Was it in Macari's? Jesus, some employers are idiots.

theTinker

token wrote:

except covering automated testing and version control (mutiple people writing to same class etc).

I was lucky there, Some guy did a talk before at lunch time and mentioned version control so even though i didnt actually use it, i learnt before interviews about the terminology and basic constructs of it. esp Eclipse CSV. I agree about the testing, as i said already it was one of the very few weaknesses in it.

token wrote:

I hadn't come across struts before even tho its on my job spec (i started this week too). Ill be learning spring which is pretty much the same thing next week apparently going by an email i received to my job mail a/c a week before i was there :rolleyes:. I came across hibernate too while browsing through some code today that i might be soon working on.

Your job sounds similar to mine, Started monday . I had a contact in it that told me Struts and Hibernate were being used so i learn't struts last week and this week did hibernate, XStream(easy 2 min java/xml tech that is brilliant), and java/LDAP(sees big usage for user management).
I'm shortly starting a Struts-XML(XStream)-LDAP thingy for basic user managment.

The IT department just got me to make a library with 30+ new IT books from amazon, and the very first thing i took today from it was the Spring FrameWork .

@gerTheGreat: I think I would lose my temper if somebody scoffed at my Qualification. Very **** of him. I've found it far more practical than a few other friends degrees who have done the same course in different colleges.

Giblet

For my 3rd year project I'm doing some J2EE application with Spring and Hibernate. It's going pretty well too, it cuts down on so much code and messing about (well, after the initial messing about with XML files ) JSTL & Spring have removed about 40% of the code I would usually do, and Hibernate has cut down about 50%.

Zillah

gerTheGreat wrote:

I went for a job interview last summer, where the guy interviewing me scoffed at the thought of ITT. He even went as far to ask me why I didn't go to a real college. The most laughable thing about this guy was that he hadn't even gone to college himself. Suffice to say, I didn't get the job. That said, probabaly a good thing.

It was probably just a cheap trick to see if you'd defend the worth of your college and qualifications. If you went "Actually I think you'll find ITT is a great college for the following reasons..." then he might have been impressed.

If however you just looked awkward and didn't defend it then maybe you wouldn't get the job...

theTinker

Giblet wrote:

For my 3rd year project I'm doing some J2EE application with Spring and Hibernate. It's going pretty well too, it cuts down on so much code and messing about (well, after the initial messing about with XML files ) JSTL & Spring have removed about 40% of the code I would usually do, and Hibernate has cut down about 50%.

Thats a really impressive arsenal to be doing a third year project with. Although the learning curve is high on some, the benefits are well worth it. Cleaner, efficent app, much better re use, no hack code.
Most of all though, it will really stand to you in interviews., The job market for spring is opening up hugely and Hibernate is a great skill to have in any decent IT department.

Giblet

It's difficult alright, but I have most of the work done now without much worry due to all the documentation about. It's pretty easy to add functionality and some of the spring tag libs are excellent for stuff like forms which help with validators when showing where the errors are without needing javascript to add the data back into the forms and stuff like that.