YPP 2012 Examination. Information System and Technology

Hello dear visitor,


With all the changes that occured within the UN recruitement system since the NCRE 2010 and the fact that there was no IST job family in 2011, I actually haven't got so much opportunities to blog about the new YPP Examination system... Anyway, here are my two cents for those of you who might get lucky enough to participate in future YPP competitions in the IST job family. I took the test yesterday and everything is still fresh enough in my head;

First of all a few major changes:

• The drafting skills are still eliminatory but you don't have to start with that particular part of the examination anymore, nor do you have to stop writing after 45 minutes. This is a major improvement guys! It means that for those of us who aren't very literature-minded, we still get the chance to wrap it all even if it takes a bit more time, and hopefully not get eliminated right away :-)
• The slightly worse news is the International Affairs part. Well, how will I put it... The basic facts about the UN book alone contains more than 300 pages (it's a brief condensate we're talking about). So it goes without saying that the 40 MCQ is a bit of guess play... Note it could be worse; like in 2011 when people had to write the answers with no help whatsoever!
• Then you have 4 essays from which you may choose 3 as you want. Also rather nice to give us this kind of choice.
• Only 8 questions in the end.
• The rest is as usual: 4h30 of work and 6h00 in total (administration)

The first essay went something like this

A. A brief description of what PRINCE and PMBOK and a series of general questions that you can answer based on any of them (I remember only a few but the idea is pretty clear):

• Give a broad commonly admitted definition of what's a project 

• Name (5) risks associated to projects
• Name (5) measures used to evaluate project's success
• Why can we say that a project has failed in some extent if more functionality is provided to the client than initially asked?
• ...

The second essay

B. This one is a classic academic OO/Relational exercise. Given a global description of a system with clients, files, lawyers working on files for client within a juridical section, a chief of section and a lot of other constraints put on that system:

• Provide a high-level UML diagram with main use cases clearly visible;
• Provide a Class Diagram OR a relational model;
• Provide pseudo-code or SQL excerpts to generate indicated reports;

The third essay

B. Telecom related question. I shamefully skipped it (one had to be skipped anyway). Had to do with Multiprotocol Label Switching; what's MPLS? Advantages and so on.

The forth essay

B. A very bizarre and practical question about Helpdesks. How does an ideal helpdesk work. Describe the procedures to follow in different scenarios. And that's it basically. I guess they were just testing our field-experience or so.

 

Question1

In the relation world: what's an index and its advantages. What's a grouped index?

Question2

What's agile development. Advantages and inconvenients.

 

Question3

What's the difference between encryption and cryptographic hash algorithms? When to use the one and when the other?

Question4

Define the concept of taxonomy in the context of Record Management Systems. Why is it important?

Question5

Stateful Firewalls. What is it and when are there used? Name two examples of security rules they do not allow to implement.
 

Question6

Cloud computing: name the main characteristics, the service models and the deployment models
 

Question7

IPv4 vs IPv6. Why the change? What does it imply for ISPs?
 

Question8

Virtualization is becoming all the more popular in computer industry. What examples of virtualization are you aware of and why are they advantageous?
 

 

I will of course try to keep these questions up-to-date, and also try to give my answer (even though I am afraid it will probably hurt sometimes);

PS. The NCRE2010 obviously didn't go very well mostly because of the mandatory drafting paper. Not enough time :-(