It was a telephone technical pre-screening held by a senior architect. It was supposed to take and effectively took 30 minutes.

He briefly introduced the global application (stocks) and the large team working on it (overseas, local, contract, permanent).

The questions were:

• If I wrote EJBs
• The life cycle of an EJB
• How to work with an EJB (create/find)
• Messaging: Diff between queues and topics
• XML: DOM vs SAX parsers
• Criteria to choose between Interface and Abstract class
• Unit testing: how to perform DB tests without an available instance --> Sandbox xUnit DB testing pattern
• How to implement Sandbox

Most of the questions were conducted over some experience items of my resume and he made emphasis in some aspects.

I had arrived to Toronto 2 weeks ago and it was my first interview in English at Canada (I'm a Spanish native speaker), I would rate myself with a 6 or 7 out of 10.

Next step, it was to be an in-place more landed technical interview (part in the machine, part oral). I thought they would want to move on to next stage but unfortunately not.

Anyway, the recruiter told me he had already sent 20 guys before me (and probably there were much more from other agencies) and the same story. So, considering it was my first try ... I don't mind too much.

Did you write EJBs from the scratch?

The life cycle of an EJB

How to work with an EJB (create OR find)

Messaging: Diff between queues and topics

XML: DOM vs SAX parsers