I have applied for a junior Java developer position, with some courses behind (in Russia). Almost 9 months I have to earn my skills, with EPAM's help and absolutely free. Of course, 5 of them were a production experience with no fee. To apply for this job there were 3 steps of an interview. First of all, you have to answer the call and answer some technical questions (very simple) and tell about yourself (in English, of course). Secondly, you have to pass a technical interview. Questions were simple, almost about java core (syntax, OOP, etc). And the last one was a check your English level (write a letter and a "small talk" with a teacher). After all, after 9 months, there was a big technical interview (2 hours) before a job offer. This one included a theoretical part and two (sometimes more) practical tasks. You need to know Spring, Hibernate, Java Core (with concurrency), Stream API, JDBC, any CI/CD, GIT, SQL. All that knowledge you can get through 9 months of EPAM courses. This all worth it.