5 points reckoner to prepare for Netweaver Portal Interview

Reason I am writing this quiet obvious. Too many searches on “SAP EP interview question” on one of my other websites urged me write this post. While it is extremely important to prepare for an interview, at the same time it doesn’t matter. You’d think this guy is damn crazy and out of his mind. But seriously, as I mentioned in this post that you should be preparing what you didn’t work on rather prepare something that you worked blindly on. For e.g. Why do you set product state as released while creating NWDI track? If you have diligently followed what is documented and do not know the answer to this question, you must be read to take pain to read and get the answer your own or be ready to take the beatings in the interview.

1. Basic is a savior as well as a foe

You just cannot take chance with basics. As I wrote here, SSO is domain specific and you better know this even if you do not know what’s the transaction related to SSO. Is it Rz10 or RZ 70? If you’ve worked extensively in Administration, you better read 5 things you must knwo as a Portal Administrator.  Read the basics like delta links, what are isolation methods, what is the difference between EP and EP Core usage type etc..

2. Don’t boast about your technical skills

Seriously, even if you think you’re Larry Page or Sergey Brin, you shouldn’t be boasting of it. Even if you’re a certified consultant or an associate, calmly tell what is correct. The guy sitting across you perhaps not be knowing what you know, but interview is not only about technical skills, it is also about selection a person whom interviews would like to work with.

3. Stay Hungry Stay Foolish

In short, stay updated and hungry about what’s coming up in your domain. Reading SAP road-map would be the best source for keeping yourself updated. So considering SAP’s portal road-map, would you recommend a solution in GP or a BPM? And which Portal version you should refer as EP and which as Netweaver Portal? Come on!! these are indeed serious questions. Oh by the way, are you aware about next major portal release 7.3?

4. Know better approach to something, but don’t be unaware of other approaches

Indeed, sometimes it happens that your mentor used to follow certain way to implement or configure a functionality and inadvertently you also started to follow the same approach. For e.g. SLD configurations like manual and automatic. Or how to test SSO is configured correctly without creating a transaction iView. In short, it’s advantageous to know 2 ways of doming something rather than just knowing the best way. For e.g Do you know that there are 4 different ways to configure portal timeout parameter

5. Check your skills by answering some questions

A caution here, do not use these interview questions for mugging them up but rather to cross check you indeed know the write answer. Or to recall something that you’re not able to remember at this moment. For e.g. Portalapp.xml is also called as deployment descriptor. You can read some more questions here. Perhaps you can also ask your friend to ask you a few questions as a quick test.

I have used links to many usefull posts in this post. Do take some pain to read them out. Sometimes it is worth it.

Ameya