State Farm Systems Analyst interview questions

Great experience. Really happy with the whole process. First job after graduation and really excited to go to work for State Farm. First interview was by phone. Studied up a lot on "Tell me about a time..." type questions. I can usually handle those questions quite well, but studying paid off immensely as I had rehearsed notes directly pertaining to a few of the questions asked. Only one caught me off guard, but I answered the rest pretty well I think. For the second interview I flew to Atlanta. Was interviewed by three Systems Analysts. With only a handful of exceptions, the questions were all technical. All questions pertained to either Java, object oriented concepts, software design principles, or databases. I was really weak on my databases and bombed nearly all those questions. I program Java on a daily basis and nailed all those questions OOP questions. As for the database questions, after they finished their questions I knew I screwed those up and explained took the time to explain why. I hadn't worked with databases directly in over a year, but I was confident I could re-learn them quickly and it wouldn't be a hindrance. I find honesty is the best policy in these situations, and I think the interviewers thought I was sincere. The DB questions were mostly basic vocabulary. Advice for fresh grads if you get a second interview: Study up on all the basic OOP fundamentals. Study your database vocabulary and know things about basic queries: joins, locks, transactions, etc. You should already know Java. If you don't, good luck.