I agree on who to hire, but I don't have the brain to come up with those questions to weed out the first set!
Josh Luthman Office: 937-552-2340 Direct: 937-552-2343 1100 Wayne St Suite 1337 Troy, OH 45373 On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 6:12 PM, Simon Westlake <si...@powercode.com> wrote: > I just dug for it, doesn't look like I kept it, sorry - it's probably > languishing in a file cabinet in Milwaukee. I wrote it for TWC when I > worked there since the HR interviews were generally things like 'Why do > you like sunshine?' and 'What is your favorite color of hair?' so they > kept hiring people who had 'good' resumes but zero actual knowledge. > > The funny thing there was that the kind of resumes I throw in the > garbage here (skills: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel, Adobe Acrobat, > Notepad, Calculator, Pacman, Windows Start Menu, JPEG, CPU, > Keyboard/Mouse, etc) got through most of the screening there because > they could check off 'Knows Microsoft Word, knows Pacman' and pass it on > as a stellar resume. The guys who wrote things like 'Built a flux > capacitor out of spare motherboards, constructed a satellite dish out of > cardboard to watch Iranian TV, write assembly in the bathroom' never > made it through because they didn't know Microsoft Word. > > So, I had to come up with something to screen out the first crowd and > make sure the second were what they said they were. The stuff I said > below was the gist of it, it was a mix of specific knowledge (e.g. what > is a subnet mask) and situation based stuff (I can't remember the harder > parts but the simpler stuff was things like 'Customer X has a router, we > are giving them a public IP of 1.2.3.4, he has a web server behind the > router that is set to 192.168.10.2. He can get to the server inside his > network if he opens 192.168.10.2 in a web browser but nobody going to > 1.2.3.4 can see the web page. Why?') > > If they made it through the first couple of pages, I had a harder sheet > that I honestly don't remember much of but it was probably a mix to see > where their skills lay (some routing protocol questions, probably some > protocol specific/packet capturing type stuff for the troubleshooting > scenarios, etc) along with some vendor specific stuff (how do you do X > in a Cisco since we were a 100% Cisco shop). If they didn't make it > through the first page, I just smiled, said thanks and everyone had an > easier day. > > It worked pretty well apart from the fact that already nervous people > would often have a meltdown if they flunked the first few questions. It > was also a good way to know what peoples weak spots were if you did end > up hiring them (e.g. they failed all the Cisco questions or they knew > nothing about OSPF) but it was mostly just to get a good baseline on > whether or not someone could do the job. > > Nowadays I end up hiring more based on aptitude, personality and desire > to learn than anything else, knowledge isn't everything. Granted, if you > are hiring a programmer, they need a certain level of knowledge but I'd > rather have someone who has 75% of the knowledge and 150% of the > attitude than vice versa. Hard thing to pick out a lot of the time > though. I'm just waiting for someone to invent a robot that can write > good code. When we hire for Powercode, I normally give people a couple > of functions to write (e.g. write a recursive function that reverses a > string and returns it) and see how they come to a conclusion and do some > design exercises with them (lately we've been doing one based around > building online card games.) Same kind of idea.. you might have a > Bachelors in Software Development but if you can't write a recursive > function to reverse a string, I don't really care. > > The TL;DR of this essay is that I hate hiring, it's a pain in the ass. > > On 2/28/2012 1:45 PM, Josh Luthman wrote: >> Ooo care to share??? >> >> Josh Luthman >> Office: 937-552-2340 >> Direct: 937-552-2343 >> 1100 Wayne St >> Suite 1337 >> Troy, OH 45373 >> >> >> >> On Tue, Feb 28, 2012 at 2:35 PM, Simon Westlake<si...@powercode.com> wrote: >>> Are you looking for networking stuff, wireless stuff or both? >>> >>> I wrote one a while back that was mostly things like 'What is a subnet mask' >>> or 'What's the difference between an IP address and a MAC address?' >>> >>> A lot of the time people would get them wrong (depending on skill level) but >>> you could generally pick out the people who had a clue/had some ability by >>> their thought process in trying to figure it out if they didn't know. >>> >>> >>> On 2/28/2012 9:46 AM, Andy Trimmell wrote: >>> >>> I found a decent website for online quizzes. Just looking to see what kind >>> of questions people would go with. >>> >>> >>> >>> From: wireless-boun...@wispa.org [mailto:wireless-boun...@wispa.org] On >>> Behalf Of Josh Luthman >>> Sent: Tuesday, February 28, 2012 9:24 AM >>> To: WISPA General List >>> Subject: Re: [WISPA] New employee quiz >>> >>> >>> >>> Jay maybe? >>> >>> Josh Luthman >>> Office: 937-552-2340 >>> Direct: 937-552-2343 >>> 1100 Wayne St >>> Suite 1337 >>> Troy, OH 45373 >>> >>> On Feb 28, 2012 9:15 AM, "Andy Trimmell"<atrimm...@precisionds.com> wrote: >>> >>> I know a few months back someone was very happy with their online quiz they >>> had for new employees to take before interviewing them. They got it from >>> another WISP and was looking for the same thing. Looking to hire someone >>> else and need some kind of quiz to weed out the useless people for the job. >>> >>> >>> >>> Anyone know? >>> >>> >>> >>> Andy Trimmell >>> >>> Network Administrator >>> >>> atrimm...@precisionds.com >>> >>> 317.831.3000 ext 211 >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wireless mailing list >>> Wireless@wispa.org >>> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless >>> >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wireless mailing list >>> Wireless@wispa.org >>> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless >>> >>> >>> -- >>> Simon Westlake >>> Powercode.com >>> (920) 351-1010 >>> >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Wireless mailing list >>> Wireless@wispa.org >>> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless >>> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wireless mailing list >> Wireless@wispa.org >> http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless > > -- > Simon Westlake > Powercode.com > (920) 351-1010 > > > _______________________________________________ > Wireless mailing list > Wireless@wispa.org > http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless _______________________________________________ Wireless mailing list Wireless@wispa.org http://lists.wispa.org/mailman/listinfo/wireless
