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The IBM graduate software development interview process is one I have undertaken once before, in 2006. I didn't get the job that time; it formed part of a two-and-a-half-year-long period of misery which I have already documented in great detail.

Since my contract at G was set to expire at the end of September this year I decided I might as well look into applying for graduate roles again. IBM was the first place I applied to. Since IBM responded in fairly good order I never got around to applying for any others. Step zero was to pass an online test which was fairly hectic but not particularly difficult other than in terms of time limit. Passage to step one was trivial.

I took the train down to Winchester the day before round one and stayed overnight in the exact same place that I had on my previous trip through, the King's Head in Hursley, which is just a few minutes' walk down the hill from IBM itself. I didn't need dinner, having eaten it at lunchtime before leaving Nottingham, but I did slouch about in the bar reading "Glasshouse" by Charles Stross - which is a tremendously enjoyable book, let it be known - and slurping Adnam's Broadside, an equally impressive beer. Made conversation with the bartending girl (is "barmaid" still politically correct?).

Slept well. The exact same room as last time, I seem to recall. The keyring for the room had an enormous silver "1", intended for nailing to a front door, threaded on it. A novel way to number your keyrings. Stops working once you get to 21 rooms: "Are these the keys for room 12 or 21?" But the King's Head only has about three anyway. It also now has wireless internet, which always sounds fun until you realise that there are no exotic foreign internets you can taste when you leave home; the internet is the same boring internet, wherever you access it from.

In the morning I toddled up the hill to Main Reception and signed in. There were maybe a dozen of us there for the assessment, all guys. I haven't actually mentioned yet that I started growing a beard recently; by this point it was about six weeks long. When I sat down the very first thing one of the others asked me was "Are you a recent graduate?" which confirmed my twin fears that 1) being three years out of university no longer qualifies one as a "recent" graduate and 2) my beard makes me look thirty-five.

The process was precisely identical to the last time I went through it. We were given an amusing group exercise involving logical deduction which we completed successfully - it was the same exercise as previously but I didn't remember the answer on account of that being two years ago. Expenses forms were completed and filled in. There was a talk about what IBM and the graduate scheme do. We were given paper tests - effectively rehashing the online tests completed in step zero, to make sure none of us had cheated. There was also a paper programming test ("What is wrong with this program? What would it output?"). Both were very straightforward. Lunch was passable but I never really enjoy buffet lunches. Too much salad in the way. We toured the Hursley site with a recent graduate. I was feeling supremely confident all the way through the day on account of already having passed this round of interviews once before.

Turnaround time was pretty swift; on Thursday 14th August I was to turn up for round two. I made a tactical decision and shaved the beard off for this one. This one wasn't at IBM North Harbour as it had been previously but instead was at a conference venue called New Place on Shirrel Heath, which is a long, LONG way from the nearest city of Southampton. (When I got the email inviting me to this it said "Location: New Place" which I initially took to mean that someone had created a new location in a database, and not bothered to change its default name.) I was trying not to shirk work this time, so I didn't leave Nottingham until about 6:30pm on Wednesday, meaning I reached Southampton Airport Parkway station around 11pm. I stayed at the Premier Inn (after wandering around for a while, including into the airport itself, attempting to find it). The Premier Inn has an amusing, entirely unexplained lighting system which requires the keycard for the room to be inserted permanently into a slot in the wall, otherwise the lights cut out after thirty seconds. The extractor fan in the bathroom was noisy and seemingly impossible to deactivate, even by switching all the lights off; luckily, I discovered that allowing the 30-second limit to expire cut out the fan as well as the lights.

The New Place website suggests that people travelling by public transport take a taxi from Southampton Airport Parkway station. This costs almost a round twenty pounds. It is truly a highly inaccessible location for non-drivers. Still, it is quite nice to look at, being a converted monastery/stately home/stables/etc./whatever.

There were only six of us on this round, only one of whom I recognised as having been present at round one. The hard part of the day was the waiting - between any two given activities there was usually about fifteen minutes of breaktime while the interviewers collated their notes, but in which we interviewees had nothing to do but drink coffee (water in my case), read newspapers and overanalyse our performance in previous exercises. There was another group exercise, much harder than the previous one, which, like my previous effort, we did not complete, but I think we showed good teamwork, which was the point. The "here is a company considering implementing an IT system in-house, pitch your company's IT solution instead and make it convincing" exercise appeared again, and this time I think I did better not because I had seen the questions before (I could barely remember them) but because I knew what I was actually talking about. I also had more fodder for my actual face-to-face interview, which was good. I guess I probably did better in the negotiation exercise than I had before. Lunch, for what it was worth, was delicious meatballs and tagliatelle.

So it was a long day. I walked away from the second interview thinking it could go either way, as I always do. I was told to expect a response within ten working days.

On Wednesday 27th August (working day eight, on account of a bank holiday) I was phoned and told that rather than being offered a position, or even not being offered a position, I had fallen through to some sort of "exception process" which apparently happens when somebody turns up about whom they aren't sure. I wasn't sure whether to take this as a good sign or not. I agreed to come down for two more one-on-one interviews that Friday. I arranged to be there for the afternoon, which would allow me to make it a day trip rather than staying overnight for the sake of two hours of interviews. The email I was sent said to turn up at 1:30pm. I arrived at 12:30pm, waited in Reception until 1:00pm, at which point it was discovered that the email that Reception had been sent had said 12:30pm. On average, then, I guess I was on time. Whatever the case, this was a solo mission for me, the recruitment lady who'd been present the previous two interviews wasn't around, and everybody else involved seemed to be entirely non-rigid about specific times, so it didn't seem to matter at all.

Interview one was with one of their most senior middleware managers. He was a really articulate and interesting guy and he certainly did a good job of putting across what his job entailed to me. I would like to think I was able to be interesting in return as we went through my C.V. but I think I may have made a minor blunder by being uncertain as to the relationship between the Hursley software labs, the Hursley site (which includes much more than just the software labs) and IBM's many other sites (which mostly do other, non-software-centric things). "Are you certain you want to work here?" is kind of ambiguous when "here" can mean so many different things.

Interview two was with a relatively technological guy and got a lot more technical. He pressed me for details about my actual software development process - which I don't, really, explicitly have, and certainly don't know the terminology for. On this subject I fear I may have been unclear and vague. Tough questions like "tell me about IBM's history" caught me WAY off-guard - I had researched IBM's history prior to interview number two, but that was all and I couldn't remember anything! And "sell yourself to me in two minutes" and "what was your hardest technological challenge". I mean, eek. Of the two interviews I'm less worried about the outcome of the first. This: well, I can't point to specific reasons, but I came out of there with a terribly familiar sinking feeling. "It could go either way", for me, means "It can only go one way".

That was a few hours ago. I'm writing this on the train back. More as it happens.

Note

I did indeed write that on the train home on 29th August but I held off on actually blogging it because I suspected that my interviewers might actually catch the blog entry and become influenced by it. I held off until now because I have now had a response from IBM and it was positive.

Yeah, I have successfully interviewed for a job for the first time ever. EVER. The curse is broken! This December I shall most likely be moving down to Winchester and joining IBM's graduate software developer course, and after that, who knows?

At this point my main problem is figuring out just how many people I need to tell about this.

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