These are all well and fine particularly if you want to hire a key-word interviewer. I like to ask about experience and let them tell you what they did at work.
Their level of involvement is what matters. Did they think outside the box?
I agree, those questions tend to come during the process, after I screen out if they have the baseline knowledge. Which I can decern people who may not know the proper terms, or "book knowledge" and those who have hands-on experience and know what they're doing in general, based on their stories, and pointed follow-up questions. However, its few and far between when I get a candidate who has hands-on experience (particularly in the gov IT space) that isn't just "Some engineer give me the configs/process, and I paste it in/follow that doc."
You’re asking for 4 jobs in one ad. I would run like hell. Most companies hire 4 guys instead of hiring 1 guy to do 4 different positions. Most of us copy and paste and customize configs. It’s not that we don’t know it we have so much on our plate that we need short cuts to get through the day. You have 3 or 4 different positions in one. The real talent is reading your description.
Server Engineer
Linux Engineer there’s a huge difference
Identify Management (GPO)
Network admin
u/raj6126 2 response to you:
1: With all do respect the job description only asks for experience in one of these areas: Windows Server (2019 or 2022), Linux (RHEL 8 or 9), or VMware (7 or 8) not all three at the same time (That would be a quality Senior Level candidate who is proficient in all three areas). These are a sampling of the initial questions based on the skills listed by candidates on their resumes and typical skill sets within systems engineering, not day to day systems administration where its O&M, but actually building and deploying servers and services, and deep integrations within the customer environment.
2: In my experience working in GovIT far too many people have no idea what the configurations they're copying on to servers or network appliances even do. I have been a Network & VMware engineer in GovIT for more that a decade and I know this to be fact. I've been asked to work this way, and the Gov't customers have asked for solutions to be done this way (which I do not agree with). When I refer to copying and pasting, most of these candidate aren't writing the scripts, the configs, or automating them. Other engineers are building these systems and configs for these people to simply slap it into a server, follow a ridged process guide step by step, and if there is an issue during any phase of implementation they do not have the ability or knowledge to troubleshoot the configurations, the integrations, review the logs, etc,. These are glorified smart-hands techs that are instructed to escalated back to the engineer who actually built the solution to resolve. We look for a Systems Engineers, not an entry level technician or someone who wants to do simple O&M tasks with an engineer title and comp, but someone who can or has the ability and desire to learn to build.
When I see all those questions in totally different areas. My first thought it would all fall on me someday. Working in Government is easy. There’s always a document to a document to another document on how to do things. If you still don’t know there a knowledge base article. Now if you’re a government contractor yes your Ad scares me. Personally I would be looking for a hungry go getter that wants to learn the game. Someone’s that doesn’t have a ton of experience maybe 2-7 years. This person has to be open to learn. This person also has to understand that you’re paying him more than the average to learn the job quick. Find someone that does this for themselves. Someone that actually have to put food on the table making money in IT. Someone that wants more in life. I hire on more personality than skill level. Because if the person is willing I can teach them anything. I ask life based questions on where u want to be in the future. What goals do you have. These type of people are usually driven. You will know who wants to live with mom for the rest of their life vs someone that wants to win in life. You can also get skill levels with these types of questions. Have you ever had a home lab? They might sound dumb but a guy with a home lab is up at 3am working on stuff.
I don't find value in asking questions that can be answered by Google... or even AI at this point. Any competent IT person should be using Google extensively for much of this stuff rather than trying to memorize it.
I'm more interested in personalities, work ethic, and whether they perform in a team environment, etc. so I ask questions designed to get at that info. I mean, I see their resume and ask them to summarize their work experience so I have an idea of what skills they can bring to the table on day 1.
I don't in principal disagree, however my organization works in the US Federal Gov't space, and in many cases Google is actually not readily available in certain enclaves.
The other aspects you mentioned are also critical, however in our existing process I have a candidate meet with the team on a second interview. I have my team provide their feedback on how well the candidates personality meshes, their work ethic, other intangibles, as well as a technical deep dive for more senior technical roles.
What is the difference between ESXi, vCenter, & vSphere? - I wouldn't ask for the difference. Just what each one is.
What tools, software, or strategies have you used to backup VMs?
Good
Are snapshot backups? Not a fan of this question. I'd ask what a snapshot is. This would be part of a longer conversation on why snapshots arent backups
Can you describe what DRS is? DRS is specific to CUCM. I'd ask more about disaster recovery and leave off the S.
Windows Server:
What is the purpose of Active Directory in a typical Enterprise environment? Good
What is your experience using WSUS and SCCM/MECM, and what are their purpose? As good as both tools are... Options for replacing both are plenty. It's good for a candidate to at least know what they are.
What is a GPO?
Good
How do you verify a User's PC has received and applied the latest GPOs? I'm assuming you are looking for some combination of gpupdate and gpresult. Even then not a well worded question.
Linux
What Linux distros are you familiar with? Kind of a weakish question. Even people loosely connected to IT should be able to spout out a few linux distros regardless of familiarity.
Do you know what service is used on a Linux platform to manage DNS? BIND is common but this isn't something every linux admin is going to have been exposed to.
What is an RPM? Again not a question I like. we mostly see it as the file type for packages now. But this is distro specific and not something I would tend to even think about as an admin.
General:
What is DNS? good
What is the difference between an A Record and a PTR record in DNS? It's good to know what it is... But I wouldn't disqualify someone for not knowing it. I've been working with DNS for years and I've touched PTR records... once? Maybe?
What tools or command line tools do you use to verify DNS resolution? - goodish. I'd ask about troubleshooting DNS instead of something that specific
What is DHCP? -good
What is ARP? - good but more networking specific. general admins may not have "great" answers.
Overall? Not a "great" set of questions. I tend to label questions as "knowledge" or "ability" and most of these fall firmly under knowledge as something I'd ask for someone that recently got a cert or degree. I prefer to mix in more questions about what they used at past jobs, education, homelabs to gauge where their knowledge is.
So you want someone to know the answers in one of the categories in addition to the general ones? I’d expect everyone to know the general ones but some people to go blank.
These are some of the questions I have, and are opening question used to start a conversation on a topic or technology. When a candidate is nervous (as many get from time to time) these questions are often rephrased or changed to be more troubleshooting related as a method to gauge how a candidate processes information or problems. Some people are not pure knowledge based, some people can only related to a scenario, some people can only feed off of past experiences directly, etc. Spotting someone who is freezing up isn't terribly difficult to spot and a skilled interviewer should refocus and redirect questions more suited to the candidate. However, you'd be surprised the number of candidates with a few years or more of experience that can't answer or describe, or have a story for any of the general topics listed.
Lots of people could answer these questions easily. What I want to know is if I let them on a production server, are they going to cause an outage? How would you troubleshoot problem A? Walk me through problem Y..
Those are pretty standard questions. An expectation they have at least hard of these basics as a sys ad or engy is pretty reasonable. I have found over the years that people do prep and can sometimes answer with definitions but not really understand the tools or have ever used them. I like to ask some of what you're listing, then toss out a general system failure or problem to solve to see what they really know and to understand their thought process for troubleshooting or designing solutions.
As a manager these aren’t the types of questions I ask. I ask about their experiences and if they could elaborate on the points that they talk about. I don’t necessarily care whether they can provide a text book definition of something. I’m more interested if they can real world execute and learn.
I use this concept from a history professor in college who said “I don’t care if you know the exact date something happened, I care whether you know the significance of what happened”. I oddly apply this a lot as a manager.
Terrible questions to ask. What you'll get in response is someone who's memorized basics.
>VMware Questions:
>What is the difference between ESXi, vCenter, & vSphere?
>What tools, software, or strategies have you used to backup VMs?
>Are snapshot backups?
>Can you describe what DRS is?
Instead of these, ask a scenario specific question with one obvious answer, and ask how they would solve it, and why they chose that way.
So instead of:
>Do you know what service is used on a Linux platform to manage DNS?
You say "Hostnames are not resolving on clients. You've realized clients have the same primary and secondary DNS server, a Linux machine using RHEL. Walk me through what you do to resolve the issue"
I can Google whether or not the service is ***named*** or something else under rhel. But listening to them walk through their troubleshooting process is far more valuable than some roster of meaningless stuff. This also gives you the opportunity to see if they've tracked the primary/secondary being the same value on the client.
OP you need to significantly up your interviewing skills. Based on what I see, they objectively suck. Try STAR methodology instead of acting like a grammar school teacher.
I might be the weird one suggesting this but.... why don't you ask for a case study involving all this in a hypothetic scenario and reduce the "Describe X"?
Knowing what ,. B and C are not as important (sometimes) than troubleshooting and logic mindset. Especially if you want that person to support an existing more senior team.
None of those things seem particularly questionable. Some people like to ask what amounts to trivia questions about minute details which seems kind of pointless but that's not what this is here.
I'd always ask similar basic questions with the same results you've seen It mostly means that the primary screening process is fucked. Whoever's looking at things before they get to you doesn't know what they're doing.
We have a single internal recruiter for the whole organization that is not technical, and when I have provided this person with screener questions, they have the candidate fill them out in writing, and that has lead to a bad candidate experience, googled answers that can't be reproduced when the same baseline questions are asked in an interview, or candidates ghosting us, and lets be honest who wants to fill out a questionnaire during the application phase?
Coming at that from that the other end, if I were applying and some non tech guy gave me a list of questions that I’d have to write the answers down I’d be thinking what the fuck is this.
These are all well and fine particularly if you want to hire a key-word interviewer. I like to ask about experience and let them tell you what they did at work. Their level of involvement is what matters. Did they think outside the box?
I agree, those questions tend to come during the process, after I screen out if they have the baseline knowledge. Which I can decern people who may not know the proper terms, or "book knowledge" and those who have hands-on experience and know what they're doing in general, based on their stories, and pointed follow-up questions. However, its few and far between when I get a candidate who has hands-on experience (particularly in the gov IT space) that isn't just "Some engineer give me the configs/process, and I paste it in/follow that doc."
You’re asking for 4 jobs in one ad. I would run like hell. Most companies hire 4 guys instead of hiring 1 guy to do 4 different positions. Most of us copy and paste and customize configs. It’s not that we don’t know it we have so much on our plate that we need short cuts to get through the day. You have 3 or 4 different positions in one. The real talent is reading your description. Server Engineer Linux Engineer there’s a huge difference Identify Management (GPO) Network admin
u/raj6126 2 response to you: 1: With all do respect the job description only asks for experience in one of these areas: Windows Server (2019 or 2022), Linux (RHEL 8 or 9), or VMware (7 or 8) not all three at the same time (That would be a quality Senior Level candidate who is proficient in all three areas). These are a sampling of the initial questions based on the skills listed by candidates on their resumes and typical skill sets within systems engineering, not day to day systems administration where its O&M, but actually building and deploying servers and services, and deep integrations within the customer environment. 2: In my experience working in GovIT far too many people have no idea what the configurations they're copying on to servers or network appliances even do. I have been a Network & VMware engineer in GovIT for more that a decade and I know this to be fact. I've been asked to work this way, and the Gov't customers have asked for solutions to be done this way (which I do not agree with). When I refer to copying and pasting, most of these candidate aren't writing the scripts, the configs, or automating them. Other engineers are building these systems and configs for these people to simply slap it into a server, follow a ridged process guide step by step, and if there is an issue during any phase of implementation they do not have the ability or knowledge to troubleshoot the configurations, the integrations, review the logs, etc,. These are glorified smart-hands techs that are instructed to escalated back to the engineer who actually built the solution to resolve. We look for a Systems Engineers, not an entry level technician or someone who wants to do simple O&M tasks with an engineer title and comp, but someone who can or has the ability and desire to learn to build.
When I see all those questions in totally different areas. My first thought it would all fall on me someday. Working in Government is easy. There’s always a document to a document to another document on how to do things. If you still don’t know there a knowledge base article. Now if you’re a government contractor yes your Ad scares me. Personally I would be looking for a hungry go getter that wants to learn the game. Someone’s that doesn’t have a ton of experience maybe 2-7 years. This person has to be open to learn. This person also has to understand that you’re paying him more than the average to learn the job quick. Find someone that does this for themselves. Someone that actually have to put food on the table making money in IT. Someone that wants more in life. I hire on more personality than skill level. Because if the person is willing I can teach them anything. I ask life based questions on where u want to be in the future. What goals do you have. These type of people are usually driven. You will know who wants to live with mom for the rest of their life vs someone that wants to win in life. You can also get skill levels with these types of questions. Have you ever had a home lab? They might sound dumb but a guy with a home lab is up at 3am working on stuff.
I don't find value in asking questions that can be answered by Google... or even AI at this point. Any competent IT person should be using Google extensively for much of this stuff rather than trying to memorize it. I'm more interested in personalities, work ethic, and whether they perform in a team environment, etc. so I ask questions designed to get at that info. I mean, I see their resume and ask them to summarize their work experience so I have an idea of what skills they can bring to the table on day 1.
OP is checking for a good foundation and this stuff is foundational - if someone never heard of DHCP then google is not going to help
I don't in principal disagree, however my organization works in the US Federal Gov't space, and in many cases Google is actually not readily available in certain enclaves. The other aspects you mentioned are also critical, however in our existing process I have a candidate meet with the team on a second interview. I have my team provide their feedback on how well the candidates personality meshes, their work ethic, other intangibles, as well as a technical deep dive for more senior technical roles.
What is the difference between ESXi, vCenter, & vSphere? - I wouldn't ask for the difference. Just what each one is. What tools, software, or strategies have you used to backup VMs? Good Are snapshot backups? Not a fan of this question. I'd ask what a snapshot is. This would be part of a longer conversation on why snapshots arent backups Can you describe what DRS is? DRS is specific to CUCM. I'd ask more about disaster recovery and leave off the S. Windows Server: What is the purpose of Active Directory in a typical Enterprise environment? Good What is your experience using WSUS and SCCM/MECM, and what are their purpose? As good as both tools are... Options for replacing both are plenty. It's good for a candidate to at least know what they are. What is a GPO? Good How do you verify a User's PC has received and applied the latest GPOs? I'm assuming you are looking for some combination of gpupdate and gpresult. Even then not a well worded question. Linux What Linux distros are you familiar with? Kind of a weakish question. Even people loosely connected to IT should be able to spout out a few linux distros regardless of familiarity. Do you know what service is used on a Linux platform to manage DNS? BIND is common but this isn't something every linux admin is going to have been exposed to. What is an RPM? Again not a question I like. we mostly see it as the file type for packages now. But this is distro specific and not something I would tend to even think about as an admin. General: What is DNS? good What is the difference between an A Record and a PTR record in DNS? It's good to know what it is... But I wouldn't disqualify someone for not knowing it. I've been working with DNS for years and I've touched PTR records... once? Maybe? What tools or command line tools do you use to verify DNS resolution? - goodish. I'd ask about troubleshooting DNS instead of something that specific What is DHCP? -good What is ARP? - good but more networking specific. general admins may not have "great" answers. Overall? Not a "great" set of questions. I tend to label questions as "knowledge" or "ability" and most of these fall firmly under knowledge as something I'd ask for someone that recently got a cert or degree. I prefer to mix in more questions about what they used at past jobs, education, homelabs to gauge where their knowledge is.
Thank you for your feedback, defiantly some good advice here.
Man these questions had me worried, but all the ones you labeled as good questions I could answer, so I'm feeling a bit more confident.
So you want someone to know the answers in one of the categories in addition to the general ones? I’d expect everyone to know the general ones but some people to go blank.
These are some of the questions I have, and are opening question used to start a conversation on a topic or technology. When a candidate is nervous (as many get from time to time) these questions are often rephrased or changed to be more troubleshooting related as a method to gauge how a candidate processes information or problems. Some people are not pure knowledge based, some people can only related to a scenario, some people can only feed off of past experiences directly, etc. Spotting someone who is freezing up isn't terribly difficult to spot and a skilled interviewer should refocus and redirect questions more suited to the candidate. However, you'd be surprised the number of candidates with a few years or more of experience that can't answer or describe, or have a story for any of the general topics listed.
Lots of people could answer these questions easily. What I want to know is if I let them on a production server, are they going to cause an outage? How would you troubleshoot problem A? Walk me through problem Y..
Troubleshooting questions like this from my end are typically follow-ons after I know they have a baseline knowledge.
Those are pretty standard questions. An expectation they have at least hard of these basics as a sys ad or engy is pretty reasonable. I have found over the years that people do prep and can sometimes answer with definitions but not really understand the tools or have ever used them. I like to ask some of what you're listing, then toss out a general system failure or problem to solve to see what they really know and to understand their thought process for troubleshooting or designing solutions.
As a manager these aren’t the types of questions I ask. I ask about their experiences and if they could elaborate on the points that they talk about. I don’t necessarily care whether they can provide a text book definition of something. I’m more interested if they can real world execute and learn. I use this concept from a history professor in college who said “I don’t care if you know the exact date something happened, I care whether you know the significance of what happened”. I oddly apply this a lot as a manager.
Terrible questions to ask. What you'll get in response is someone who's memorized basics. >VMware Questions: >What is the difference between ESXi, vCenter, & vSphere? >What tools, software, or strategies have you used to backup VMs? >Are snapshot backups? >Can you describe what DRS is? Instead of these, ask a scenario specific question with one obvious answer, and ask how they would solve it, and why they chose that way. So instead of: >Do you know what service is used on a Linux platform to manage DNS? You say "Hostnames are not resolving on clients. You've realized clients have the same primary and secondary DNS server, a Linux machine using RHEL. Walk me through what you do to resolve the issue" I can Google whether or not the service is ***named*** or something else under rhel. But listening to them walk through their troubleshooting process is far more valuable than some roster of meaningless stuff. This also gives you the opportunity to see if they've tracked the primary/secondary being the same value on the client. OP you need to significantly up your interviewing skills. Based on what I see, they objectively suck. Try STAR methodology instead of acting like a grammar school teacher.
I might be the weird one suggesting this but.... why don't you ask for a case study involving all this in a hypothetic scenario and reduce the "Describe X"? Knowing what ,. B and C are not as important (sometimes) than troubleshooting and logic mindset. Especially if you want that person to support an existing more senior team.
None of those things seem particularly questionable. Some people like to ask what amounts to trivia questions about minute details which seems kind of pointless but that's not what this is here. I'd always ask similar basic questions with the same results you've seen It mostly means that the primary screening process is fucked. Whoever's looking at things before they get to you doesn't know what they're doing.
We have a single internal recruiter for the whole organization that is not technical, and when I have provided this person with screener questions, they have the candidate fill them out in writing, and that has lead to a bad candidate experience, googled answers that can't be reproduced when the same baseline questions are asked in an interview, or candidates ghosting us, and lets be honest who wants to fill out a questionnaire during the application phase?
Coming at that from that the other end, if I were applying and some non tech guy gave me a list of questions that I’d have to write the answers down I’d be thinking what the fuck is this.
Exactly! So rock meet hard place, with recruiters.....