Take the 2-minute tour ×

if someone is getting a job interview in the domain of semantic web , this topic is a little bit not common so i wanted to collect some info about :

  • topics to revise before the interview and how to get prepared ?
  • what is the common interview Questions ?
  • what does recruiters seek for ?

i'll start by some and correct me if i'm wrong :

topics to revise :

  1. RDF / OWL
  2. SparQL Query language
  3. JENA , DotNetRDF frame works
  4. Virtuoso server installation and handling

and for common Questions : http://www.coolinterview.com/type.asp?iType=467

share|improve this question
Personally I would browse a bunch of books on Safari on Semantic Web and skim the table of contents and the first few sentences of each chapter. Programming the Semantic Web is probably the first book I would look at. –  John Moses Jul 12 '12 at 5:00

2 Answers 2

Programming! If I'm interviewing someone for a position, there's probably a project I have in mind for them and chances are there's more programming involved than semantic web minutia, so for me, this is an important thing.

Look, the semantic web is not rocket science. A good programmer will be able to pick up the basics very quickly and be able to get up and running on a project quite easily. Getting on board and contributing to a project quickly cannot be understated. So I won't dismiss a candidate sight un-seen just because they don't have loads of semweb background.

How good is your computer science? Remember complexity classes? Graph algorithms? Do you know how HTTP works? In short, I will ask questions to try and ascertain how good of a programmer and how interested you are in the art of programming. Hell, I want to know if you understand how a computer works! These are all as useful, or more so, than knowing every detail of RDF model theory.

But if you're going to claim you know OWL, I'm going to ask about ontology modeling. I'm going to ask about reasoning. Do you know about the OWL 2 profiles? Can you tell me what the differences are? What reasoners have you used?

How much of the existing semweb toolchain have you used? Do you know there are more libraries than Jena and .NetRDF? Do you know there are more triple stores than Virtuoso? How much SPARQL do you really know? What semweb apps have you built/worked on? Why did you use semweb and not something else?

These are mostly bullshit questions, I know. But if you're going to claim to know this stuff, I'm going to find out how well you really know it. As I said, detailed semweb knowledge is not strictly required, so I dont care if you don't know all the answers, but I'll find out of you're blowing smoke up my ass about your experience. Of course, if there's a position to work on OWL reasoning and you've read the DL handbook and can talk about classification, that's points in your favor, so experience absolutely helps, but inexperience does not strictly hurt.

Again, I don't expect someone to know semweb backwards and forwards as the primary requirement for the job. I expect someone to be smart and be able to get things done, that's what I need when I'm filling a position.

share|improve this answer

Your Answer


