TM1 interview topics

[sreesuku]

Test

[Alan Kirk]

I am preparing for some TM1 interviews..
Can you please tell me some common interview topics/questions which can be asked.

Clarity is the essence of any question. In this case, whether the "tm1 interviews" you are preparing for involve you interviewing someone for a TM1 role, or whether they are interviewing you for one.

If it's the former, then any questions should focus on:
- Can they do the job; do they have the technical skills;
- Will they do the job? If the job is an assistant administrator role you don't want someone who sees themselves as a BI superstar or they'll just get bored, resentful and leave. In other words, ensure that they aren't likely to see the role as either beyond them or beneath them; and
- Can they fit in well enough? Not whether they like to go out for drinks after work as "team building" which is, admittedly the kind of thing that too many managers look to, notwithstanding that most people actually have a life outside of work (OK, I haven't for the last few months) and really want to just do their job and then go off to that life[1]. No, I'm talking about whether they can communicate with others, co-operate with them as much as is necessary and so on.

If it's the latter, it will depend entirely on:
(a) The nature of the job (build an end to end BI system from scratch, just maintain and update an existing TM1 installation, or something in between?);
(b) The experience and temperament of the interviewer (a hands on TM1 system manager is likely to ask more technical questions, a hands off manager is likely to probably look more toward the third of the issues above since they often don't know enough to ask the first two).

But if you are being interviewed, a decent interviewer would probably at least ask some hypothetical questions such as "How would you deal with the following situation". In such case there is often no "right" answer but they're more seeing what your level of understanding is. Without letting yourself ramble it would generally be best to just enumerate the options and a short list of the pros and cons of each.

And incidentally, if you are the one being interviewed, then it's worth considering these things:
- No decent manager cares whether you "are a dynamic, proactive, results-oriented team player who assisted in developing the mission statement and goals of your department".
- No decent manager cares what a team that you were a member of did... they care about what you did.
- No decent manager cares whether you have IBM certifications. Those are icing, not cake and to be honest pretty thin icing unless they've ramped up the course content of late.
- No decent manager has time to read a 12 page resume detailing every trivial thing that you have done down to and including "doing flow charts to document the data flow". Since documenting a system is a bread and butter task you may as well write "turned up for work".

You'd be better off stating your claims and experience concisely in your CV. If you do have an adequate level of TM1 skills, all you then need to do is listen as much as talk in the interview. Really listen to any questions asked and don't try to second guess the "right" answer as there may not be one. If you don't know something, don't try to BS your way through it. NOBODY knows every single aspect of TM1, certainly not off the top of their head, and admitting that you would need to consult the manuals is not a badge of dishonour. Just as importantly, listen to anything that you're told about the job (and the company for that matter), and make sure it's one that you will fit in with, not just the other way around. If your goal is just to "get the job" you're probably doing a disservice to both you and your potential employer. If it's to get the right job, then really "being in the room" during the interview and showing the interviewer how your skills can get them to where they want to be should be enough.

----------------------------
[1] In the immortal words of Tim Canterbury: "The people you work with are just people you were thrown together with. Y'know, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family. But probably all you've got in common is the fact that you walk round on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day." There are some jobs with make you feel like you're part of "something bigger" and become ingrained into your life but realistically, they tend to be in the minority and certainly have been since the Apollo program ended. The majority, you may want to do the job well... but then you want to go and live.

[Anuradha]

Hi Alan, like the immortal words you mentioned and the essence of listening. Thank you