Esther Schindler wrote: > http://itexpertvoice.com/home/7-job-interview-questions-to-ask-a-network-administrator-candidate/ > > Lisa and I would sure love your feedback.
Normally I'd reply off-list, but not this time . . . > In just seven questions you can narrow down the candidates for that network > administrator job to those with true talent and passion. "True talent?" In one question? Yes, one -- about TCP handshake (which, as Matt Simmons has already pointed out, gives the wrong answer); none of the other questions probe the candidate's technical knowledge. To think you can determine "true talent" in one question is either extreme hubris or negligence. In fact, it's the idea that there exists a single (small) set of questions that can adequately determine whether a candidate is qualified for a position as ill-defined and wide-ranging as "network administrator" that bothers me so much about this article. Interviewing is a bit of an art, and at a minimum requires tailoring the interview to the position and to the candidate. I simply do not believe it's possible to ask the same seven questions of every candidate for every position and get an accurate assessment of a candidate's suitability. "Tinkerer Check: What is Your Home Network Like?" Despite later saying claiming to not discount candidates who aren't netadmins in their own homes, this question clearly does exactly that. There are plenty of good candidates out there who leave their job at the office, run the most simple and basic network at home, and who put their "enthusiasm and curiosity" into non-technical things outside of work. Finally, "Ethics Check." Given that USENIX and LOPSA have at most fewer than 10,000 members between them, expecting most candidates to be members of one of those organizations is unrealistic Heck, even expecting them to have heard of USENIX or LOPSA is pushing it. By even the most generous estimates, LOPSA and the portion of USENIX members who are sysadmins/netadmins make up at most 5% of the people working in the field. Even if that number is 10%, do you really want to exclude 90% of candidates just because they haven't heard of two fairly small organizations? Also, I believe that both the ACM and the Computer Society of the IEEE have some sort of ethics code or standards of conduct, and together they have considerably more members than USENIX and LOPSA. Why aren't they on the list of "qualifying organizations?" Adam _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
