How to get a good J2EE job

Some thoughts on what a good J2EE developer should know. I am not saying I know all this well but it's good to see what the standards are

What does a good J2EE developer have to know in addition to understanding
the difference between abstract classes and interfaces?

Usually employers are looking for people with at least 10 of the following skills:

• Java Servlets
• JSP
• Struts or a similar framework
• EJB
• JMS Any commercial message-oriented middleware
• JDBC
• JNDI
• HTML
• XML
• Ant
• SQL
• One of the major application servers(Websphere/Weblogic/JBoss)
• Couple of relational database management (Oracle/MySQL/DB2) systems
  
• Any UML modeling tool, several design patterns (at least a Singleton!)
  
• Familiarity with Unix. Next year JavaServer Faces and Hibernate will most likely be included in this laundry list.

Understanding why a particular J2EE component is being used in your project is equally important. If the interviewer asks you, “Why did you use EJB in this project?”, have your own opinion and explain why you think it was a good or bad choice for this particular project.

Good knowledge of the business terminology of your potential employer is also important. I’m not sure about the Silicon Valley or Europe, but here in New York just being a techie may not be good enough to get a senior job.

For example, if you’re applying for a Java position in a financial brokerage company and don’t know what a short sale is, this may be a showstopper. If you are a senior developer, you should
be able to hit the ground running.
Try to find out from your recruiter as many details as possible about the business of your potential employer, do your homework, and you’ll get the job!