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TheFace posted:I'm with you on this. I like drilling into concepts that will actually be a part of their job and not just random technical questions about certain commands that honestly if they don't know they can google in a short amount of time. To be perfectly honest, the folks who are great at trivia don't have a great track record with me.
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Dec 14, 2018 22:46
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Defenestrategy posted:I don't think anyone whose been doing IT super long would find them grueling, but I was... impressed... at how many subjects got covered. Linux commandline, Windows troubleshooting, Troubleshooting hardware/software/networks, how does the internet work?, How does [this appliance] work? How do you find [this info] in Linux? Windows? Whats your favorite routing protocol? What speeds do Cat5e reach? on and on and on. What is the job? Why would you need to know the max speed of Cat5e and Linux command line stuff? Why would you need to know the max speed of Cat5e off the top of your head in any situation?!
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Dec 14, 2018 22:49
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Inspector_666 posted:What is the job? Why would you need to know the max speed of Cat5e and Linux command line stuff? The job would have been a mixture of fix what needs fixing and build what needs building for a medium sized company under direction of the IT manager as well as assisting in setting up lab networks for software developers to test their software on. edit: What annoys me is a lot of the specs and command line stuff is stuff I learned at one point, but forgot because I don't have to actively use that knowledge and when I need it I just look it up with the man page or internet, so for a lot of them I just blanked on. Defenestrategy fucked around with this message at 22:55 on Dec 14, 2018 |
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Dec 14, 2018 22:53
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Being able to do basic things with netstat, filter out a column with awk, iterate over a text file or whatever linux commands they're asking questions about isn't trivia. That's are you actually comfortable and have used linux before or did you just write linux on your resume.
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Dec 14, 2018 23:03
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Hello I would like to present to you today’s lesson of what not to do Do not imply you have access to the c-suites email accounts. This is a very fast way to make the c-suite angry and make me especially angry that anyone would indicate that I would grant them this level of access to accounts without running it by anyone. The kicker is to definitely not do this if you aren’t even in IT
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Dec 14, 2018 23:50
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Do you work with Sickening?
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Dec 15, 2018 00:06
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Methanar posted:Being able to do basic things with netstat, filter out a column with awk, iterate over a text file or whatever linux commands they're asking questions about isn't trivia. That's are you actually comfortable and have used linux before or did you just write linux on your resume. Yes, but if it's something you don't mess with often, and can Google in 10 seconds, who cares? General troubleshooting steps, basic computing/networking concepts, yes, but being able to memorize trivia is not as important as it was before the Internet. It can be handy, mind you, since it always seems like half my job is remembering what I did *last* time this happened, but not crucial, especially if you document and take notes.
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Dec 15, 2018 00:32
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I’m okay with IT Trivia questions because I’m sure interviewers want to know what you have experience actually doing. But you can’t just ask those questions.
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Dec 15, 2018 00:39
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To put some rigor and definition into your next hiring process, read Who? by Geoff Smart and Randy Street. It’s a really good book about why gimmicky and trivia interview questions (why is a manhole cover round? FizzBuzz?) are bad and why you should avoid them. Specific AOK questions are you seeing if they can hit the bullseye you have arbitrarily set up. Sure you might have your reasons, but in the end they are arbitrary. I would rather ask a battery of questions to see if a candidate is reachable, adaptable and flexible. Everything else will then come with on the job training.
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Dec 15, 2018 00:52
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When I was last interviewed the first question I was asked after logging into a test VM was how could I find my own IP address after having SSH'd in. The expected answer was who, a real softball opener, but I flailed like an idiot and completely forgot that command existed. I instead answered netstat | grep 23. Then he followed up, not about to let me off the hook, looking to see that I knew the who command existed: how can I check who was all logged into a system at once. Again the answer was who that he wanted and I flailed like an idiot again and ended up answering something like for p in $(ps aux | grep bash | awk '{print $2}'); do cat /proc/$p/environ | strings | grep USER done My point is that I don't think its unreasonable or trivia to ask people to do a basic linux demo to demonstrate comfort and familiarity as an early bullshit detector. Fine, you forgot who existed. Thankfully who isn't magic and is just reading data available elsewhere, how else can you get information about what a system is doing. Have you ever needed to do something where you're working somewhere with a crappy busybox shell and you don't have a full suite of utils? I have. If you start parsing procfs as an alternative solution I'll be impressed. I should add that the point of such an exercise isn't necessarily to stump anyone or be a dick. With someone comfortable, confident and with a good personality it can turn into a free form demo where you get to show off, come up with oddball solutions, new weird questions on the fly in response to the current state of the conversation, and share stories about a time that you had to do something similar. Giving someone a terminal is the perfect social lubricant imo Methanar fucked around with this message at 01:37 on Dec 15, 2018 |
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Dec 15, 2018 01:20
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Methanar posted:I instead answered netstat | grep 23.
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Dec 15, 2018 05:02
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Vulture Culture posted:You logged in over Telnet? I run ssh over telnet
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Dec 15, 2018 05:19
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Vulture Culture posted:You logged in over Telnet? Maybe he’s like 60 years old. We don’t know. Don’t age shame.
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Dec 15, 2018 05:24
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Anyone have any advice any sort of experience or training outside of college? I've tried some classes but they're not very hands on and I feel like I haven't learned much at all from them. Any sort of program, class or internship where I could anything even slightly better than these classes. I go to the local community college and it just seems overall pretty low quality, but I'm not sure there's much else nearby that I can afford and get in to.
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Dec 15, 2018 07:38
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Awful CompSloth posted:Anyone have any advice any sort of experience or training outside of college? I've tried some classes but they're not very hands on and I feel like I haven't learned much at all from them. Any sort of program, class or internship where I could anything even slightly better than these classes. I go to the local community college and it just seems overall pretty low quality, but I'm not sure there's much else nearby that I can afford and get in to. Can you elaborate on what sort of experience or training you're looking for? Desktop support, networking, security, etc.? What don't you like about the classes that you're taking? What classes are you taking? Volunteering (at a school, at a nonprofit, etc.) can be a helpful way to get some experience. Unfortunately being able to afford to work for free is a pretty sharp class divide. There are non-matriculated certification classes, like for A+, Network+, CCNA, etc. They aren't all 5-day bootcamps or whatever, sometimes they're once or twice a week or whatever. They are, however, often expensive. Getting more detailed will depend on some more information on what exactly you're trying to accomplish.
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Dec 15, 2018 12:31
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Methanar posted:
Your hands must be tired
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Dec 15, 2018 15:50
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guppy posted:Can you elaborate on what sort of experience or training you're looking for? Desktop support, networking, security, etc.? What don't you like about the classes that you're taking? What classes are you taking? Sorry I was tired last night and didn't really think through what I wrote. I just started studying for my A+ about two days ago and I feel pretty good about so it far, just hope I can make it all the way through because I've never been a good student or good at studying. The IT classes at my college all seem to be mostly powerpoint lectures and homework that doesn't help me feel engaged with the content at all. I'm just finishing PC hardware and troubleshooting, and all it was the professor showing the powerpoint with him talking over it, with the homework being 10 questions from the end of each chapter in the textbook. Same thing for my Unix class, our homework was copying and pasting commands and taking screenshots of results the without necessarily understanding what they did that well, of course I didn't end up actually learning anything about Unix. I don't know if most colleges are like that, but I can't learn well like that at all. I'm hoping to get my A+ soon so I can get a job in helpdesk or desktop support, preferrably something more hands-on like with desktop support. I guess I'm wondering if there's anything in between getting the Comptia A+ and an entry level job, because to be honest I know I won't be very ready for a job just from watching professor messer. I want to do some kind of training that's almost like a real job like that, where you actually learn how to troubleshoot and work with computers and such. I don't know if that exists though, I'd probably be lucky to get something like that. I guess I should look into internships but I don't know if you need certain requirements as a student (my grades aren't the best), literally any suggestion for anything besides college for learning and getting experience in helpdesk/desktop/IT/Comptia A+ sort of poo poo would be welcome.
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Dec 16, 2018 03:18
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Awful CompSloth posted:Sorry I was tired last night and didn't really think through what I wrote. I just started studying for my A+ about two days ago and I feel pretty good about so it far, just hope I can make it all the way through because I've never been a good student or good at studying. Help Desk readiness is basically good customer service, the ability to follow procedures, good communication skills, and a vague "good with computers" aptitude. Not to belittle it - most everyone gets started there and you can quickly differentiate yourself from the chaff if you're good, but there isn't really a ton of stuff to practice beyond what you're doing. But in terms of training, look into homelabbing. There's a lot of resources that can walk you through it, including a thread here. Mess with virtualization, make a domain, make some GPOs, etc.
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Dec 16, 2018 03:49
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If you’ve ever worked on phones before that alone should be enough to put somebody into a help desk job I think. Especially if it’s like application support where most useful knowledge will come from the team and experience working on the product
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Dec 16, 2018 03:53
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Awful CompSloth posted:I don't know if that exists though, I'd probably be lucky to get something like that. I guess I should look into internships but I don't know if you need certain requirements as a student (my grades aren't the best), literally any suggestion for anything besides college for learning and getting experience in helpdesk/desktop/IT/Comptia A+ sort of poo poo would be welcome. Yes, you should look into internships. Ask your college advisor about any opportunities they're aware of, and also your professors, friends, classmates, family... always be networking. If you're at a traditional brick and mortar school see if there are helpdesk jobs available at the library or in computer labs or something on campus. It can't hurt to ask. The worst that happens is they say no. We just went through this. If you see an interesting position, don't filter yourself out of the opportunity because you think you aren't good enough; let them decide if you're what they need. Docjowles fucked around with this message at 03:58 on Dec 16, 2018 |
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Dec 16, 2018 03:54
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The most valuable skills for helpdesk are these: 1) Know how to ignore what the user says the issue is 2) Know how to not panic just because the user is panicking 3) Be able to talk to people and get them to explain their issues 4) Know how to phrase an issue in a Google search so you get useful results 5) Be able to isolate an issue to Application/OS/Hardware quickly
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Dec 16, 2018 04:02
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So the difference be green help desk support and desktop support is usually that help desk is over the phone and you're either talking them through it or remotely fixing it on their pc, and with desktop support you're manually fixing or upgrading physical computers right? I've seen people say they're sort of the same thing with different titles though. I'd definitely like to something more like what desktop support seems to be, but I don't know if a company would want me to start as a help desk jockey when I first start, what have you guys experienced with this stuff.
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Dec 16, 2018 04:13
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Awful CompSloth posted:Sorry I was tired last night and didn't really think through what I wrote. I just started studying for my A+ about two days ago and I feel pretty good about so it far, just hope I can make it all the way through because I've never been a good student or good at studying. 1) be professional. 2) be friendly. 3) have a genuine desire to help people who are contacting you with problems. 4) have some level of technical aptitude. We can teach people how to do stuff, but if you don't have the aptitude things will never "click" so to speak. Awful CompSloth posted:So the difference be green help desk support and desktop support is usually that help desk is over the phone and you're either talking them through it or remotely fixing it on their pc, and with desktop support you're manually fixing or upgrading physical computers right? I've seen people say they're sort of the same thing with different titles though. I'd definitely like to something more like what desktop support seems to be, but I don't know if a company would want me to start as a help desk jockey when I first start, what have you guys experienced with this stuff. It is common for these roles to be blended. It is in our organization. We have level 1 and 2 helpdesk, both do incoming tickets over the phone, deskside, and remote support.
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Dec 16, 2018 04:19
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We had a guy come to our company with the same sort of 'security' degree from ITT Tech and it seems the only thing he learned was how to use a few buzzwords and how to pretend he knew what you were talking about.
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Dec 16, 2018 04:22
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Peachfart posted:We had a guy come to our company with the same sort of 'security' degree from ITT Tech and it seems the only thing he learned was how to use a few buzzwords and how to pretend he knew what you were talking about. ITT Tech oh my God, I'd love to hear more horror stories about that place.
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Dec 16, 2018 04:26
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To me the most important attribute for an entry level IT gig -- call it helpdesk, call it desktop support, whatever -- is a troubleshooting mindset. It is also one that a truly bananas number of people get hired without having. When your problem is that something isn't working and you haven't seen it before, you need to think about the different things that could be causing it. You don't have to know the details but you need to be able to rule possible causes in or out at a basic level. If someone's network connection isn't working, you don't necessarily need to be a networking expert to diagnose it. Is everything turned on? Is the network cable firmly seated on both ends? Is there a switch in between the computer and the jack, is everything plugged in there? Great, that rules out the idiot tests. Try your laptop at the same location. It doesn't work? Okay, probably not the user computer then. That leaves the patch cable and the network drop. Try a different patch cable in the same drop. So on, so forth. I'm a network guy and I get an insane number of tickets escalated to me by people who should know better. Exercise basic troubleshooting -- change one factor (and only one factor!) at a time and see what results you get -- and you'll be above average. My list of desirable skills, which will look a lot like an amalgamation of some of these other lists: 1. Troubleshooting mindset 2. Willingness to learn, as opposed to thinking you know everything already 3. Basic hygiene. You'd be surprised how many people don't have this 4. Professional behavior 5. Basic competence with Windows and MS Office (or whatever OS or office suite your organization uses) 6. Ability to formulate a useful Google search. Again, you'd be shocked how many people don't have this
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Dec 16, 2018 04:40
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Man I barely know poo poo from poo poo and I’ve been in IT for over 15 years. But I can take a shower.
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Dec 16, 2018 04:44
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I recently made the move from application support to network administration and I gotta tell you I have no clue why they hired me. The other network admin was 45 minutes of my hour interview and he seemed to know what he was looking for, and asked probing questions on the fly just feeling out the way I think, no stupid trivia questions or asking me what x protocol is. I’m doing a lot of telephony too which I at least had experience with so I was able to answer those questions no problem. They ended up bringing me on even though I’d never touched a firewall, switch, or modem CLI. I left the interview shaking my head like drat I’m gonna have to take another support job but he liked me and so I got an offer. The director told me on my first day that they were just happy to get someone who knows Cisco phones but I honestly think that’s easier to pick up than learning everything networking. A month in and my bosses can throw tasks at me and I’m finishing those and my projects just fine. I’m extremely grateful because I love the work and I’m learning so much, but still I have to wonder how terrible the other candidates were on a 3 month old job posting where they chose me. I’m guessing it was just showing an aptitude for problem solving even with things outside of my comfort zone, and being a person who doesn’t drive everybody in the area absolutely insane
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Dec 16, 2018 04:50
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Awful CompSloth posted:Sorry I was tired last night and didn't really think through what I wrote. I just started studying for my A+ about two days ago and I feel pretty good about so it far, just hope I can make it all the way through because I've never been a good student or good at studying. That being said, I did the A+ by buying the Sybex book with a buddy and just studying our asses off for it, between that, Professor Messer, and other online resources. I took the 800-series exams, so take what I say with a grain of salt, but I am a terrible student, and found that by scheduling time with a friend who was also taking the exam it forced us both to be better, because while I wouldn't show up for just me, I would show up for him, and the same for him. I also had quite a bit of experience in small-shop IT, though, so that may have helped me a lot. We went through each chapter of the Sybex book together, took the practice tests at the end, and then discussed the questions--especially the ones we got wrong. Talking about it really helped me a fuckton.
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Dec 16, 2018 08:34
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Tetramin posted:I recently made the move from application support to network administration and I gotta tell you I have no clue why they hired me. The other network admin was 45 minutes of my hour interview and he seemed to know what he was looking for, and asked probing questions on the fly just feeling out the way I think, no stupid trivia questions or asking me what x protocol is. I’m doing a lot of telephony too which I at least had experience with so I was able to answer those questions no problem. They ended up bringing me on even though I’d never touched a firewall, switch, or modem CLI. I left the interview shaking my head like drat I’m gonna have to take another support job but he liked me and so I got an offer. VoIP is a niche skill set and I suspect is hard to find good candidates for, and you probably know more about networking than you think if you've administered Cisco phones before. And if you're using CUCM, it's a mess of a product to administer -- it works fine, but you have to know about the six places you have to change stuff to make it work. For some reason after Cisco acquired that unit they never did any work to improve it. (The reason is probably that Cisco sucks at UI too.) Networking is also one of those specialties that a lot of people decide they want to work in, like cybersecurity, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that they got some really terrible applicants. If it makes you feel better, I have over a decade in IT and I've been in networking for a few years now and I still feel like an idiot sometimes when I think about how much I don't know.
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Dec 16, 2018 13:32
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I've had some otherwise great helpdesk people who couldn't troubleshoot their way out of a paper bag if you didn't provide them step-by-step directions. Super friendly and courteous, responsive, actually wash themselves, hitting 9/10 checkboxes, but they just couldn't solve any problem that they hadn't seen before if their life depended on it. The ability to actually think through a problem and figure out a solution is a vastly underrated skill. Closely related is being able to google up the solution to whatever problem is occurring.
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Dec 16, 2018 13:33
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Awful CompSloth posted:ITT Tech oh my God, I'd love to hear more horror stories about that place. Hi. I worked at the corporate office for 10 months and got the gently caress out about a year before they went under. The company culture was awful, and completely driven from the top. The CEO was a complete douchebag, to the point where he knocked up his secretary, dumped his wife, and moved in with the secretary. He was known for occasionally watching the external security cameras and writing someone up if they showed up more than a couple minutes late. I realized very quickly that I needed to get the gently caress out as soon as possible, becuse I wasn’t gonna go down with the ship. I got a ton of good experience tech wise, but their data center was a clusterfuck. This was the top of their cabinets in the colo: 
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Dec 16, 2018 15:45
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Is that OM1 fibre?
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Dec 16, 2018 16:50
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Pretty sure if I show that image to our fibre guy he'll have a stroke.
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Dec 17, 2018 01:58
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You can't post shock images without a trigger warning. Mods?
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Dec 17, 2018 03:18
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We replaced all our OM1 last year finally. We had that stuff going underground connecting various facilities and water got in the pipes and froze so we had to wait for everything to thaw.
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Dec 17, 2018 04:47
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One of the things I realised that your first line guy really needs is the ability to make sure he follows through on his ticket. It's fine if you are new and have no idea what you are doing, it will be mildly frustrating but most people understand the new guy is the new guy. Just make drat sure you log the ticket and get back to the customer/user/colleague in a timely fashion with an answer and it's all good. If you don't know how to do it and hope it just goes away or one of your colleagues magically takes over - you will get a reputation.
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Dec 17, 2018 13:29
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I wish some of our users were more accepting of someone new learning how to do their job. They love to scream that I know how to solve their problem more quickly than our helpdesk tech sometimes, to which I point out that I've been in this field for 5 years now and our helpdesk tech has been here less than a year. Also, I try to make it clear that by the time a ticket comes to my level, two tiers of people have tried to resolve it meaning I can skip everything they tried and try something else. Instead they like to tell me that our tech doesn't have the 'technical skills' to cut it. Somehow, the person who couldn't figure out their mouse was not plugged in doesn't seem like the person I trust to pass judgement on someone's technical skill 
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Dec 17, 2018 13:45
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Also: how do they propose on solving that problem? Good luck finding someone with all the skills to have lifted themselves above a support role who is happy to respond to end user tickets.
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Dec 17, 2018 15:01
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We have interns running the helpdesk system here at campus. I can understand people getting frustrated when things get misrouted but I also understand that these are students who are cutting their teeth in the IT field. Honestly the biggest thing that bothers me is how terse some of them communicate with customers, but that's something you have to learn via experience.
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Dec 17, 2018 15:05
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