my interview with HP was today! bloody ordeal... well, actually it was kinda easy in a way la. just felt like a long day. The whole sessions starts at 12.45pm, but I woke up at 9 to get ready and find out how to get there. I had to take a bus down to Central station, take a train to Chatswood and then another bus to the company. I think it would take about 1 1/2 hours average to get there. just that I took extra long today cuz I couldn't figure out where to go. Alot more convenient than Favco, cuz the bus drops me off right in front of the business park, and its fairly close to Chatswood as well. Roughly 10 minute drive.

About the whole assessment thing. There was about ermm....13 other people in my session. Mix and match group... most of them still studying though. I think i'm the oldest graduate there (/paiseh). There was a presentation at first. Some guy gave a briefing of the interview process, and just some background knowledge regarding HP. Then they had some '05 graduates come up and talk a little about their experience. After that was a group assessment thingie. They divided us into groups of 4 (well..5,4,4 to be exact) and gave us a relatively simple management scenario. It was basically a list of 6 employees that you have to meet during the day and the question asks you in what order you will see them and why. Relatively easy question la...do you see a guy that has cancer first? or a guy that you need to fire? or someone that you need to promote? etc etc. stuff like that

After that was a individual written assessment. Kinda easy as well. Its nothing technical, but more to assess you on your ability to communicate. E.g. your client is getting his panties in a bunch and started hassling you. Write an email to him explaining blah blah blah. Pretty simple...the hardest part for me was having to write it out using a pen o_O My handwriting seems to have gotten worse than it originally is...and i think i wrote at a 30 degree angle. Hmmmmm...

There was coffee break after that...and then the interviews started *doom* Wasn't too bad though. We had to do 2 interviews. One with HR and another with one of the business managers. The HR interview is fairly simple, and the girl that interviewed me was bright and chirpy. So could relax a little more. Questions are more general in a sense, easy enough to draw on my own experiences, and I've been to enough interviews to kinda know what to expect :p

The business interview went ok as well. The manager looked kinda slack too, so I wasn't too nervous during the interview *note: making small chat b4 getting to the interview helps* I was asked some software/programming related questions as well, but I could answer most of them. So no biggie. I only missed out on what SOA was. It stands for Service Oriented Architecture btw, not that most of you guys would need to care :p

Anyway, if I did well enough, I'll get a call within 1-3 weeks. If not...no biggie :'( Incidently, just some statistics

4,952 people applied for the HP grad programme
801 people got a phone interview
164 (or thereabouts) got invited to the assessment centre (what i did today)
and only 52 will get a job.

Nice to know that I'm in the top 3% of the mass of applicants ^_^