Recent Project

The interviewer may ask to explain about your most recent project.
 
Always remember that it is another great opportunity to highlight and sell the skills that you have used on your recent project for the position you are being interviewed for.
 
Start with the high-level use case of the problem you are trying to solve.
 
For example, if you are working on a Tours and Travel application.

Our application allows the end-users to book their flight tickets and Hotel reservation form online (the browser or through mobile applications).
 
You then draw the high-level architectural diagram, which will show them the various components of your application.
 
Feel free to use the whiteboard if it is a Face-To-Face interview.
 
If there is a whiteboard available, grab the whiteboard with their permission, of course, and draw the high-level architectural diagram and show the flow in between these components.
 
If a whiteboard is not available, use a white sheet of paper.
 
But now, all the interviews are commonly happening through virtual meetings; feel free to share your screen and paint the picture. Try to use some technology-related tool such as draw.io. it is free and easy to use.
 
This will leave a lasting impression on them.
 
As you showcase your presentation skills, you can talk a little more about how you have implemented these components.
 
If it is completely a Java-based full stack development, talk about it.
 
If the backend is in Java and the Frontend is developed using other JavaScript frameworks, talk about them.
 
You can then jump into the layered architecture of your Java back end.

Typically will have the data access layer, services layer where the business logic leaves the presentation layer, and the integration layer where you can use restful web services or messages.

You can also talk about each of these layers and the technologies you have used in these layers.
 
 So we have a lot of technologies that fall into these layers.
 
Again, this is where your responsibilities on your resume under your current project will come in.
 
So go through all those responsibilities and highlight those required for the current job opening you are being interviewed for.
 
Don't stop with just the development side of things.
 
Talk about how you wrote unit tests using unit test frameworks like Junit, Mockito, etc., how we have reported the test coverage of those unit tests, and the servers to which you have deployed your application.
 
If you did that, if you have used messaging, talk about the messaging provider or the broker you have used, and if you have developed the front end using Angular react, etc., do talk about that as well.
 
Once you are done with the development side of things,
This is very important, and this is where you can highlight those technologies that are really required for the job on hand.
 
The data access layer typically will use spring data JPA with Hibernate for the restful web services layer.
 
We would have use spring-boot web or frameworks like Jersey, and the list goes on and on.

Move on to the DevOps side of things.
 
This is where you highlight your skills, working with one of the build tools like Maven, Gradle, etc.

Talk about how you how Docker is used in your project, how you have created the docker file or the docker-compose file for the application components within your architecture.

If they say yes, you can walk them through the classes and interfaces which you typically create in a Java application, starting with the model classes, then the data access layer classes, as the service layer classes, the restful and Web controllers, the utility classes in your application, the validators
views and many more.
 
This will give them a lot of confidence that you are a very hands-on guy and ready to start coding whenever required.

Also, talk about how you have implemented the non-functional requirements or the ILities, as we call them, the security, scalability, reliability, adaptability when it comes to your project.
 
If not, they will ask you these questions later on anyways.
 
They will ask you how did you secure your recent project or what are the security best practices?
 
How do you ensure that your application is scalable?
 
And all those questions will come in throughout the interview.
 
And if the job requirement needs Kubernetes, highlight that as a container orchestration tool.
 
How you have deployed your containers to the Kubernetes
cluster if it needs AWS or if your last project has used one of these clouds, highlight that as well.
 
Always try to keep the conversation interactive. This is very much necessary for a Peer-to-Peer programming interview or TDD interview.
 
Don't let it be a one-side affair.

You can always stop and ask them if they want to know more details of any of these as you mention them, especially you can ask them if they want to hear more about how you have implemented these layers at a shallow level.