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jim truds posted:Apparently I an doing interviews for candidates for a help desk position tomorrow. I am mostly looking for someone who can answer a phone, has a basic level of troubleshooting skills, and won't try to kill an end user because the stress got to him. Do goons have any interview questions they like asking? Not so much a question, but see if anyone has a customer service background. If someone can handle fast food or retail, they can handle the helpdesk. I waited tables in a previous life and then did inbound techsupport for an ISP. Also, I prefer to focus on how a person thinks rather than their pure technical knowledge. I can teach the tech, I can't teach them not to be an rear end in a top hat, or how to logically think a problem through. Comradephate posted:I do this a lot, and I watch a ton of stand-up, so inevitably most of the things I quote are unfamiliar to people around me. It generally leads to people either thinking I'm much cleverer than I am, or just weird. One of my good buddies at work doesn't have cable and doesn't get 80% of the pop culture references I make. I told him one day he needed to get in tune with his star player and he looked at me like I was retarded.. I was so disappointed. skipdogg fucked around with this message at 05:35 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 05:28
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NippleFloss posted:Portland has a strict urban growth boundary and a lot of green space which limits the amount of real estate available in the city proper, driving up prices some. The flip side is that it doesn't sprawl and it's relatively easy to get from one place to another, and you're often very close to amenities. It's very easy to cut costs by using your car less, or simple go carless. The mild weather keeps heating and cooling costs relatively low. No sales tax saves money. Do you work in downtown? Let me know if you want to grab a drink some time with Countofnowhere and myself if so.
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Jul 3, 2014 05:28
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Alfajor posted:I ask real questions, but you do have to have some fun and throw out something weird. This is an easy go-to: "Please escalate to your mom."
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Jul 3, 2014 05:29
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*pick up phone and pretend you're calling interviewer. Gesture to him to roleplay along if needed* "Listen, candidate, I need help tying my shoe! How do I do this?"
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jim truds posted:Apparently I an doing interviews for candidates for a help desk position tomorrow. I am mostly looking for someone who can answer a phone, has a basic level of troubleshooting skills, and won't try to kill an end user because the stress got to him. Do goons have any interview questions they like asking? I -hate- interviewing for entry level jobs. What you need to find out is "Will you come to work sober and still legally alive? Will you swear at customers? Can I tolerate you for 8 hours a day?" But there aren't a lot of questions that reveal a genuine answer to any of those questions. One that I do like is roleplaying an extremely stupid and/or stubborn customer and see how the person reacts. just keep demanding the same stupid/impossible poo poo like 4-5 times and see if he handles it in a reasonable way. (escalating to a superior is probably a good answer, while snapping at the user probably is not.) Beyond that, just try to have a conversation with the person, find out if he is a  "normal". Don't ask super hacky poo poo like "What's your biggest weakness?!" because A: that is a solved question that every interviewee knows the "right" answer to, and B: it's loving stupid and will, at best, disqualify bad candidates, but it won't tell you anything about good candidates.Also pay special attention to their response to "Okay, I think that's all I have. Do you have any questions for me?" Because there is absolutely a wrong answer to that question, and that wrong answer is "No."
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Jul 3, 2014 05:58
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psydude posted:Your clearance level has nothing to do with your work experience, but rather what you need access to. Somebody has to go un-delete the recycle bin on the JWICS desktop in the intel sperg's office, and they'd rather the senior systems engineer not have to take time out of his day to go do it. I realize this, it's more like, how the hell is someone looking for entry-level work going to have a TS/SCI.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:02
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Fag Boy Jim posted:I realize this, it's more like, how the hell is someone looking for entry-level work going to have a TS/SCI. The military creates boatloads of these folks.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:04
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Comradephate posted:Also pay special attention to their response to "Okay, I think that's all I have. Do you have any questions for me?" Because there is absolutely a wrong answer to that question, and that wrong answer is "No." I realized I'd reached a turning point in my career when I stopped asking questions of the interviewer just because I was supposed to and started asking them because I was genuinely interested in hearing about how they did X and what their policy was regarding Y.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:15
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psydude posted:I realized I'd reached a turning point in my career when I stopped asking questions of the interviewer just because I was supposed to and started asking them because I was genuinely interested in hearing about how they did X and what their policy was regarding Y. Agreed. It's pretty awesome when you are able to turn the corner from "holy poo poo I need a job, any job" to "I know what I want and am happy to say 'no' to the wrong opportunity". Having questions prepared for the interviewer that you actually deeply care about the answers to is a good sign that you're there.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:20
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I have a hard time coming up with questions for initial phone screen type things. When we're discussing technical stuff I can come up with my own, but for the general overview type stuff I usually end up that doofus going "uhhh, no" to that question.Comradephate posted:Don't ask super hacky poo poo like "What's your biggest weakness?!" because A: that is a solved question that every interviewee knows the "right" answer to, and B: it's loving stupid and will, at best, disqualify bad candidates, but it won't tell you anything about good candidates. What is the "right" answer? I've only ever been asked it once and answered honestly that I can be self-reliant to the point where I just keep digging instead of asking for a rope. I mean, my biggest weakness is a total lack of self-discipline when it comes to food but that didn't seem relevant.
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Jul 3, 2014 06:23
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You're supposed to pick a weakness and then describe the steps you've taken to fix/mitigate it. So if you're bad at keeping things documented, you craft a narrative about how you've worked hard to improve your documentation process. People on this forum bitch about open-ended behavioral questions, but they're probably one of the better ways to determine a candidate's thought process. So asking a question about how an employee would deal with a belligerent customer is a good one. psydude fucked around with this message at 06:55 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 06:52
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Inspector_666 posted:I have a hard time coming up with questions for initial phone screen type things. When we're discussing technical stuff I can come up with my own, but for the general overview type stuff I usually end up that doofus going "uhhh, no" to that question. Another option besides what Psydude said is basically just pick a strength and cleverly disguise it as a weakness. "Sometimes I'm too much of a perfectionist" or "I ask too much of myself". are some popular choices. A non-joke but still copout answer is to pick a weakness that is totally irrelevant to the job. Something like "Well, I'm not very comfortable with public speaking." when interviewing for a DBA position. It's not a completely awful question, but most people know what they are supposed to say, so you're unlikely to learn anything of worth. psydude posted:I realized I'd reached a turning point in my career when I stopped asking questions of the interviewer just because I was supposed to and started asking them because I was genuinely interested in hearing about how they did X and what their policy was regarding Y. One that I like if I don't really have anything else I'm curious about is just to ask what the interviewer likes about his or her job, and if I feel like the conversation has gone well up to that point, follow that with asking what the interviewer does not like about his or her job.
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Jul 3, 2014 07:19
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Comradephate posted:Another option besides what Psydude said is basically just pick a strength and cleverly disguise it as a weakness. "Sometimes I'm too much of a perfectionist" or "I ask too much of myself". are some popular choices. On one hand, I feel like this poo poo isn't clever anymore and is only going to make you look like a bullshitter. On the other hand, maybe the people who think this question actually tells them something meaningful are looking for exactly this kind of bullshit as a response. Can't say as I'd like to work for anybody like that though. jim truds posted:Apparently I an doing interviews for candidates for a help desk position tomorrow. I am mostly looking for someone who can answer a phone, has a basic level of troubleshooting skills, and won't try to kill an end user because the stress got to him. Do goons have any interview questions they like asking? "You enter a web site URL into a web browser's address bar. Tell me, in as much detail as you can, everything that happens from when you press enter to when the web site is displayed." Don't do this.
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Jul 3, 2014 08:04
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Che Delilas posted:
At what point can I actually ask this during an interview or get asked this? I've asked before when I interviewed candidates for tier 2/3 tech support and only toward the tail end when I actually have time, but I usually don't get much of an answer. On the flip side, I kinda wanna be asked this question because it honestly seems like a fun question to answer in as much detail as I possibly can.
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Jul 3, 2014 08:16
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Casull posted:At what point can I actually ask this during an interview or get asked this? I've asked before when I interviewed candidates for tier 2/3 tech support and only toward the tail end when I actually have time, but I usually don't get much of an answer. On the flip side, I kinda wanna be asked this question because it honestly seems like a fun question to answer in as much detail as I possibly can. I've no idea myself, it's not my area. I was poking a little fun at the goon who suggested this question when this topic came up a couple months ago (I think it was for a Jr. Network Admin position or something).
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Jul 3, 2014 08:21
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For the weakness question I give an honest answer: I'm bad with names. I can remember faces and usually a bunch of stuff about a person, but I just lose names, sometimes even with coworkers I blank out. It's very embarrassing but on the plus side, most people never even find out because I try and make a conscious effort to remember so I don't make a fool of myself.
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Jul 3, 2014 08:41
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Sepist posted:Missing equipment update: we have video of the asr being delivered and then the moving company leaves without removing it from the truck and they're denying leaving with it. They sent us a photocopy of the delivery signature and the signature looks like it was copy pasted out of another delivery. Nice. I must know, what happened to your ASR??
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Jul 3, 2014 10:07
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Dr. Arbitrary posted:For the weakness question I give an honest answer: I'm bad with names. I can remember faces and usually a bunch of stuff about a person, but I just lose names, sometimes even with coworkers I blank out. Hey that's a good one that doesn't really impact my actual job duties. I'm going to use that (it also happens to be true for me I just never thought to use it as an answer to that question).
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Jul 3, 2014 10:15
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Comradephate posted:Another option besides what Psydude said is basically just pick a strength and cleverly disguise it as a weakness. "Sometimes I'm too much of a perfectionist". Don't say this. Nobody likes an interviewee who thinks they're cute.
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Jul 3, 2014 13:34
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BurgerQuest posted:I must know, what happened to your ASR?? I don't know the itty gritty details, but there was some back and forth between us and the moving company and a day later it showed up on our delivery platform. I'm not sure if there are/were any legal followups since I'm just a consultant.
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Jul 3, 2014 14:03
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Comradephate posted:Another option besides what Psydude said is basically just pick a strength and cleverly disguise it as a weakness. "Sometimes I'm too much of a perfectionist" or "I ask too much of myself". are some popular choices. Please, please don't do this. Beyond the helpdesk level, any interviewer has heard this countless times and will be unimpressed with your lack of originality. I'd either make it a less-than-critical skill you want to learn more about or a soft skill (like remembering names) that isn't mission critical. quote:One that I like if I don't really have anything else I'm curious about is just to ask what the interviewer likes about his or her job, and if I feel like the conversation has gone well up to that point, follow that with asking what the interviewer does not like about his or her job. This, on the other hand, is one I would ask just about every time. I tell my candidates to engage in and ask questions around making it a two way, flowing conversation. It's a fact that most people hire people they could be friends with, so find common ground and run with it. The easiest start to that is "So tell me what you like about working for ABC company". And like someone above said, if things are going well even ask what could be improved. Beyond that, there is really a laundry list of "should ask" questions, so don't ever go in empty-handed. What Psydude said is a perfect way to describe it. If you come in and are engaged and ask questions not centered on "getting the job" and more centered around "let me learn as much about the environment to see if it's a good fit for me" you're going to have more success. The really good questions (on either side) typically start with "Tell me about..." Tell me about ...the makeup of the team ...what my day to day would look like ...upcoming major projects ...how you see me contributing to the team Also, always have an answer in your back pocket for the question "Tell me about a time when you dealt with a challenging customer/situation/unfamiliar technology and how you succeeded". Ok done with my ramblepost, happy to answer questions as interviewing is a daily thing for me.
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Jul 3, 2014 14:17
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Che Delilas posted:"You enter a web site URL into a web browser's address bar. Tell me, in as much detail as you can, everything that happens from when you press enter to when the web site is displayed." My favorite thing about questions like this one is that you get to identify the areas where a candidate is really technically deep that might not have come up in the interview otherwise. e: if anything is making me lean away from this question now, it's probably that it's so ubiquitous that anyone who's been on a few other recent tech interviews will have an answer ready. Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 15:00
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Here's something I found after sitting as an interviewer; the absolute worst answer you can give is "I don't know". Even if you don't have an answer for something, admit to it then work it out, take a guess, ask for clarification, just do something other than say "I don't know" and leave it at that. The first guy we interviewed gave that as an answer when we asked him if any hardware or software in IT interested him, and when pressed all he could muster was "maybe hardware". hihifellow fucked around with this message at 15:08 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 15:04
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edit: quote != edit
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Jul 3, 2014 15:05
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hihifellow posted:Here's something I found after sitting as an interviewer; the absolute worst answer you can give is "I don't know". Even if you don't have an answer for something, admit to it then work it out, take a guess, ask for clarification, just do something other than say "I don't know" and leave it at that. I disagree to a point. There are times when I've had to admit to not knowing something. But I'll always explain why (lack of exposure to specific technology for instance) and what I can do to rectify. "Do you know anything about Hyper-V?" "Unfortunately I haven't used the product yet. However I am experienced with VMWare blah blah" We may be agreeing I guess.
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Jul 3, 2014 15:24
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DrAlexanderTobacco posted:I disagree to a point. There are times when I've had to admit to not knowing something. But I'll always explain why (lack of exposure to specific technology for instance) and what I can do to rectify. You are agreeing. The key is to say "Well I don't know offhand, but I would look it up via X, Y and Z" or something to that effect. Honestly, that attitude is usually directly applicable to IT work given the nature of troubleshooting in and of itself. Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 15:27 on Jul 3, 2014 |
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Jul 3, 2014 15:25
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hihifellow posted:Here's something I found after sitting as an interviewer; the absolute worst answer you can give is "I don't know". Even if you don't have an answer for something, admit to it then work it out, take a guess, ask for clarification, just do something other than say "I don't know" and leave it at that. Although I do agree with you part about someone attempting to guess and work it out, finding someone who will admit that they don't know has to be uncommon.
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Jul 3, 2014 15:25
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Re: Iraq / Afghanistan, I brought it up because I'm back here for the third time. I keep making these bad decisions and ending up in shitholes like Kandahar. You really don't want to do "entry level" stuff right now unless you've got a TS, ITT and the other company that handles helpdesk stuff (that I won't name) are starting people below 6 figures. Like, not that much more than I was making in Boulder. I'm ostensibly a satellite network engineer, which pays quite a bit better, but the pay's gone down substantially since last time. I'm doing the exact same thing for roughly 70% of what I was getting 18 months ago. It's still 2.5x my salary in the states, and a really nice chunk of tax free and benefits (8% matching, 10k education reimbursement, amazing health insurance with a $20 copay anywhere in the world), call it close enough to 200 to be 200. If you've got a clearance, sec+ (every govt or contractor IT job requires that or CISSP now), and net+, I can probably get you an interview with SOMEBODY, it might not be a great job. The above plus some real certs, CCNA, VCP, etc., and I could probably get you an interview for what I'm making or more. This poo poo's going away fast though, it's basically month to month at this point for a lot of companies. Handling the satellites that will most likely be on the ground until the bitter end gives this contract a bit of longevity, but even so nobody's entirely sure past contract end date later this year. We've been tasked to train quite a few military guys lately, so there's definitely speculation.
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Jul 3, 2014 15:35
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NippleFloss posted:Or you can live cheaper in the burbs and still rely on public transit to get around reliably in addition to driving. It's not the best city in the world, but like Raleigh or Minneapolis or San Antonio it's a place where you can find pretty good paying jobs and a high quality of life without having to deal with the exorbitant costs or commutes associated with NOVA or the bay or NYC. I think $1k or $1,2k for an efficiency or 1BR is ok for the average "3 years in the industry" IT worker. It's absurdly expensive for helpdesk at $45k/yr. Again, there's some opportunity cost with living near the ocean in a well-designed city with good public transport, but it's only cheap in comparison to relatively expensive metro areas (NoVA, NYC, SF, coastal LA, etc). It's expensive by comparison to Minneapolis, Raleigh, San Antonio, et al. That's the only point I was trying to make -- seeing someone say "$1k for a 1BR/efficiency; that's cheaper than I thought" where my first thought was "$1k for a 1BR/efficiency? In Portland? Why is it so much compared to similar metros?" Sickening posted:Although I do agree with you part about someone attempting to guess and work it out, finding someone who will admit that they don't know has to be uncommon. 
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Jul 3, 2014 15:54
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Inspector_666 posted:You are agreeing. The key is to say "Well I don't know offhand, but I would look it up via X, Y and Z" or something to that effect. This. Saying "I don't know Z, but I know X and Y, so I'd look up W and start from there" shows you have trouble shooting skills. Saying "I don't know" says you're level 1 helpdesk material.
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Jul 3, 2014 16:00
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I like when a candidate who says "I don't know" is able to relate the topic, conceptually, to something they do know. If I've asked a VMWare question maybe they aren't familiar enough to answer that, but they can make an analogy to how it works in Hyper-V, or KVM, or Xen, or some other virtualization platform they have worked with and take a stab at an answer based on that experience. They may not be exactly right, but it shows that they are thinking in terms of concepts instead of a specific vendor language, which is really important for being able to pick up new skills. It's also a good chance to move the conversation into an area where they are more comfortable so you can get a feel for how they think. Knowing how to think about technology and make connections is way more important than knowing a specific command or procedure. Another thing I like to see is curiosity about the answer. If I ask a question and they don't know the answer, after they've taken their best shot at answering it anyway, I like when they ask me what the answer is. It shows that they are interested and engaged in learning and improving their job skills. And, again, it may be a jumping off point to a fruitful discussion that gives you more insight into how they think. For instance, I once asked a junior storage candidate how NetApp snapshots worked. He admitted that he didn't know, made a guess based on another technology (which was wrong), and then asked me how they actually work. I got about halfway through my response and his face lit up and he said "that sounds a lot like ZFS!" He didn't have ZFS on his resume because he had just worked with it at home, but he was exactly right (right enough Sun and NetApp to sue each other). That lead to a more general discussion of pros and cons of different flavors of storage snapshots, and allowed me to ask him questions about ZFS that would translate to working with NetApp.
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Jul 3, 2014 16:56
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This is all really good advice, thanks guys! And in regards to "I don't know" I think it really comes down to if the answer is "I don't know..." or "I don't know but here is what I do know and here is what I'd do to learn more." The 2nd one can be a really good answer.
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Jul 3, 2014 17:12
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Really the only 'bad' interview questions I've been given are brain teasers or theory type ones. I had a guy ask me how many golf balls could fit in the room we were speaking in once. I understand WHY it was asked but it's still irritating pretending to give a poo poo.
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Jul 3, 2014 17:44
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GOOCHY posted:Don't say this. Nobody likes an interviewee who thinks they're cute. I've gotten offers with "I'm terrible at first person shooters, that's why I'm not a professional gamer. I'm interested in this job because I know I can succeed at it by leveraging my strengths, not my weaknesses".
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Jul 3, 2014 17:54
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Stanos posted:Really the only 'bad' interview questions I've been given are brain teasers or theory type ones. I had a guy ask me how many golf balls could fit in the room we were speaking in once. I understand WHY it was asked but it's still irritating pretending to give a poo poo. I think we discussed this one earlier in the thread. My answer was "Infinite, assuming I can pressurize the room and liquify the balls".
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Jul 3, 2014 17:55
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Stanos posted:Really the only 'bad' interview questions I've been given are brain teasers or theory type ones. I had a guy ask me how many golf balls could fit in the room we were speaking in once. I understand WHY it was asked but it's still irritating pretending to give a poo poo.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:23
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Stanos posted:Really the only 'bad' interview questions I've been given are brain teasers or theory type ones. I had a guy ask me how many golf balls could fit in the room we were speaking in once. I understand WHY it was asked but it's still irritating pretending to give a poo poo.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:26
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My boss just forwarded me the resumes for the people we're interviewing. This thread has made me so cautious of people with 15+ years of help desk experience. That and the 2 people we've hired with that sort of experience have bombed.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:31
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jim truds posted:My boss just forwarded me the resumes for the people we're interviewing. This thread has made me so cautious of people with 15+ years of help desk experience. That and the 2 people we've hired with that sort of experience have bombed. Eh, Some people just don't care because they don't. I know a guy who's been on helpdesk for over 5. He'd just rather take life easy and spend time with his kids.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:37
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Dark Helmut posted:Please, please don't do this. Beyond the helpdesk level, any interviewer has heard this countless times and will be unimpressed with your lack of originality. It was a joke. I guess in an interview I would say that my weakness is that I'm not very good at conveying jokes in text. On the topic of "I don't know": I spend a lot of time talking with a few of the people who do technical interviews at my current company, and one thing they all love to hear is "If I had to guess." because it means they're about to get a glimpse at how you think through a problem. Of course, it only works if your guess is coherent and at least somewhere near the mark. jim truds posted:My boss just forwarded me the resumes for the people we're interviewing. This thread has made me so cautious of people with 15+ years of help desk experience. That and the 2 people we've hired with that sort of experience have bombed. If they have 100% of the skills you want them to have to do helpdesk, they will probably be good candidates. I think it's totally fine for people to just be content and do their thing for 8 hours and then go the gently caress home. But understand that if they've been doing helpdesk for 15 years they definitely are not going to put time in to learning new poo poo, so on day 1 if they know less than 80-90% of what you need them to know, they're probably going to be kind of useless.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:38
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That's 100% true. A lot of it is the past hires we've made where my boss raved how these guys had all this experience and all these previous jobs when the truth was that they had so many desktop support jobs because they were lazy, could barely hack it, and kept being terminated or let go or stole from their workplace.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:39
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