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.
Re:background, breadth (Score:1, Funny)
When I read the post title, the nick blended with it in my head and I read "background, pizza breath". Thought you were going to recommend checking their geek quotient by smelling their breath...
Well (Score:1)
Well, not really, I guess I'd look for:
- Experience in Unix (You'll need it if your serious about networking)
- Experience in seting up the stuff you need and use, may they be BGP, IP, TCP or higher level stuff like network services
- Knowledge of available hardware from the major manufacteurs and what he whould use to solve particular problems (make up some situations)
- Availability to be paged at any hour (night or day) since stuff always fails at 4 am on a Saturday
- Personality/Friendlyness ???
Of course if you already have network guys around ask them to inverview candidates and let them choose.
One fat question... (Score:1)
But seriously, I think scenario based questions are great, like this doesn't work, what are the steps you would take to trouble-shoot it. Or given this budget, and bandwidth requirements, etc..what would you set up in this situation. And it depends on the nature of the job what areas to focus on. It also helps you find out if this person is going to b.s. you or not. I'd rather have someone say, well I'm not sure, than jump in the deep end with no way to swim out. Hope that helps...
What's the best way to learn old networking stuff? (Score:2)
Obviously I'm going to buy a couple of old token ring cards to play with but are there any good sites for background information, etc? I don't expect to become a networking guru but learning more about not so common network equipment would be interesting...
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]
interview questions (Score:2)
At least, that's what I've come out of interviews thinking.
depends on job (Score:1)
Some good questions are: difference between OSPF & EIGRP
What ports to block at the border inbound and ourbound
What's an AS?
What's a looking glass?
Maximum number of load-balancing paths in OSPF
Explain STP
Explain routing between VLANs
THis is stuff I can explain off the top of my head and I've been concentrating on host stuff for a few months now, so any decent candidate should get em.
test (Score:1)