Furo's World

An IBM application

One of the company that attracted me since I’m jobhunting is clearly IBM. Indeed, everyone knows “Big blue” and their supercomputers, from the PS/1 to the Blue Gene! But since they have an office in Glasgow, I’ve decided to give it a try and apply to the Graduate Recruitment Program.

For me, the graduate recruitment process in IBM is composed by 4 steps.

Step 1, the online form.

This step is basically the writing of the CV online.

-A funny thing occured for me, I noticed that the “CV web engine” is powered by the same company than the one that does JPMorgan forms: since I’ve applied for their graduate program first, my IBM form was 60% already filled thanks to the Firefox cache :p -

The only “hard” work to do there was to write a small cover letter and to explain why did I choose IBM.

After completed that and having wait half a week, I was invited to complete step 2.

Step 2, the online aptitude test.

Unlike a lot of companies that use aptitude tests designed by SHL, IBM have designed their own: the Information Processing Aptitude Test On-line or IPATO.

This test is composed by 3 parts, timed, 3 web pages of questions each and the difficulty increasing on each page:

- Data matrices(13mins): Lots of reasonning about caracters in matrices. I found this part difficult because, since english is not my mother tongue, I lost lots of time to read carefully the questions.

- Number series(4mins): Or find the next number. Clearly the easiest test, I did it first, it is motivating

- Mathematical problems(15mins): Not really hard but a calculator, a pencil and a sheet of paper are required. This part was fun to me, espcially the first time I passed it. Why the first time? Well, the day I did the test, I completed part 1 and 2 then I started part 3. I managed to have 2 pages in 10minutes (which is not bad at all when you have 15 minutes to do 3 pages of questions) but when I clicked on the “Next page” button, an error occured and I was disconnected!!!!! Stunned, I tried to connect again, and again: same error. Of course at the third time, the system was blocked and my account was frozen!!! Of course!!! So I had to call IBM, make the thing un locked to be able to continue 3 days later. Unfortunately, they reinitialized the part and I had to do the 3 pages again, with differents questions and… different difficulty So in the end I completed 2 pages in 15 minutes. Morality: there were compatibility issues with Firefox, so if you have to take that test use IE (at least it will be useful for one more thing than downloading Firefox )!

Anyway, everything is detailed before each part: IBM give you examples and some advices. Just remember that you are not meant to do all the questions, but if you manage to do everything, good for you:) I did almost 75-85% of the total test.

Eventually, after a couple of days, I received an eMail saying that I succeded to the test, and that I was invited in Hursley (England) for the First Round Selection day.

Step 3, First Round Selection day.

This was the occasion for me to have a point of view of England more representative than Gatwick Airport!

It was indeed interesting: I had a night in a nice little hotel called Kings Head in Hursley. By the way, Hursley is a little village between Winchester and Southampton. However it is pretty isolated…

Anyway, the FRSD is globally, like you can read on IBM website, a presentation and confirmation day. Basically, I was in the IBM castle (really beautifull place) and I attended to different activities:

- Presentation of the company: of its needs and of the campus. Just to be sure that you are on the right place.

- Confirmatory IPATO test: to be sure that it was you that did the online one. I found it particularly difficult but I did obviously quite well.

- Group exercice: They check how you work with other persons This wasn’t a problem for me and I quite liked it: It reminded me meetings in my internships

- Written test: A one hour test to check you really are who you pretend to be! A software developer in my case.

Finally, for the software developper role, there weren’t interview so I suppose it depends on the role chosen.

Again, obvisouly I did well because I was invited to the next stage the Assessment center!

Step 4, Assessment Center.

I don’t know that much about that since I’ve just been invited. The only thing is that I’m really proud to have been invited because, according to what IBM said, less than the half of people that were present in the FRSD were selected, and I’m in

The only problem to all of this is that I don’t really know if there are jobs for Glasgow or not… And from what the people said in Hursley, I don’t think so… So I’ll try to get the information and we will see… But one thing is sure, I’m staying in Scotland