How Do You Interview A Network Engineer? 15
vrmlguy asks: "Back in July, we learned how to interview programers, and in August we learned how to interview sysadmins. Obviously, we still need to hire some network engineers, but what questions should we ask? The previous articles had a couple of generic gems which I intend to put to good use, but the only position-specific question that I can come up with is "Please explain the differences between RIP and OSPF." Any other ideas for a guy whose idea of using a sniffer is to fire up tcpdump?"
background, breadth (Score:3, Informative)
Has he worked with powerful software tools, both commercial and opensource? (HP Openview, CA Unicenter, etc).
What is his experience with router equipment? Experience with at least one other large scale platform other than Cisco is a huge plus.
Ask them to draw pictures, ask some dumb questions (Score:3, Informative)
I'm a network engineer and I live with a whiteboard marker in my hand.
So , ask them to draw you some pictures. Like:
OSI model
Operation of at least 2 IGP's , ie OSPF, RIP, EIGRP
Route redistribution
Spanning tree
Multicasting
Split horizon
etc .. you get the idea
Ask a few dumb questions :
what's ARP ?
difference between a router and a switchname me a layer 4 IP protocol
what does NAT do ?
who's Jon Postel ?
who's Vint Cerf ?
what's the IETF ?
whats an RFC ?
etc .. you get the idea
Finally, if you have the time, give them 2 routers and switch :
Get him/her to configure
PPP, and CHAP
RIP, or OSPF or EIGRP
IPX
a simple access-list
basic router authentication
etc .. you get the idea
Also, certifications [geocities.com] DO help you weed out the rubbish.
Darren Kruse CCNP CCDP
WAN/LAN Networking Consultant
Email : darren_kruse@hotmail.com [mailto]
www.geocities.com/darren_kruse [geocities.com]
ps, I'm alway's looking for work :-)
here at eBay ! [ebay.com]