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Question of the Day: What's the most interesting small town you've visited in South Africa?
Interview questions
- Thread starter DrJohnZoidberg
- Start date
crackersa
Honorary Master
Am I wrong to say that vdsl is not the same as dsl? Due to different equipment required? It is it all lumped into the same category?
Iamnotageek
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If you asked me these questions for a Lvl 1 entry level IT position I'd walk out.
You people always want the applicant to ****ing know everything from A - Z in the IT field for a ****ing noob position like Tier 1 IT Support.
Let me guess, salary is less than R15k p/m but the poor oke must answer these bull**** questions.
What the sweet f.ck does Question 7 & 9 even have to do with a Tier 1 position?
Tell you what, add Question 11.... Detailed explanation of how one does a colonoscopy.
Because that has as much ****ing relavance to all the other bull**** questions.
I quit. I'm not working for you, EVER!
You people always want the applicant to ****ing know everything from A - Z in the IT field for a ****ing noob position like Tier 1 IT Support.
Let me guess, salary is less than R15k p/m but the poor oke must answer these bull**** questions.
What the sweet f.ck does Question 7 & 9 even have to do with a Tier 1 position?
Tell you what, add Question 11.... Detailed explanation of how one does a colonoscopy.
Because that has as much ****ing relavance to all the other bull**** questions.
I quit. I'm not working for you, EVER!
crackersa
Honorary Master
Oh this going to be good since OP said why the questions were being asked
/grabs popcorn
DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
Cool, would make my decision easier then if somebody walks out.
As I mentioned they don't have to answer all the questions correctly, but if I find somebody that knows this stuff their chances of getting hired will be much higher. If somebody cannot answer any of them they will not get the job.
DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
VDSL is a variant of DSL. There are many variants of DSL, such as ADSL, SDSL, RASDL, etc. Each of the variants, and each of versions of those variants, have their own bandwidth limits.
SauRoNZA
Honorary Master
I think ultimately that's the kind of response that Zoidberg wants.
For someone to question whether VDSL and DSL are considered the same and the difference in speed between them.
Iamnotageek
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I'm only kidding OP.
Love you babycakes.
Love you babycakes.
DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
HavocXphere
Honorary Master
Then why not just ask that?
This whole idea strikes me as barely a step above the usual Silicon value trick question stuff..
If OP wants to know if the person is up to speed on tech then have a chat about tech stuff. That gives both participants a chance to guide the conversation into whatever direction presents itself as opportune.
DrJohnZoidberg
Honorary Master
There will be a chat, I'm just not very good with humans. This will be easier for me.
Napalm2880
Expert Member
Having a test puts the applicant under pressure. It's not so much about getting all the questions right, it's also about seeing how they react when they don't know the answers.
123Eish
Senior Member
I think the questions are reasonable, I knew 8/10 of the questions. Rather ask the questions, then you can see who is a cut above the rest. A person who has an interest in IT will do a much better job at a support job than somebody who doesn't have a care about the IT industry.
CataclysmZA
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I need to interview some folks this week for a level 1 IT support tech job, nothing super advanced but I would like the person to have an interest in all things tech. I would like to gauge their knowledge of random tech things just to get a feel for how connected they are to what's going on now in the tech industry.
Bonus if they're reading this thread
Do you think these 10 questions are reasonable to determine this?
1. Name one undersea cable local ISPs use for international connectivity.
2. What is the fastest consumer DSL connection Telkom offers?
3. Which provides faster graphics performance? Nvidia GTX 980ti or Intel Iris Pro 6200?
4. What are Sea Sonic most well known for manufacturing?
5. If I talk about ZFS what am I referring to?
6. Which display panel technology generally provides better colour accuracy, a TN panel or an IPS panel?
7. Does the new 4th generation Apple TV support a native 4K resolution?
8. What is the name for the latest available Android version?
9. What does FaceTime do?
10. Which company is developing the HoloLens?
Think this is reasonable?
I don't expect them to know all of them but I'd be inclined to hire somebody that got more of the answers correct.
I was asked a similar question for a job once:
Q: "Are you familiar with AMD CPUs?"
Me: "Yes"
Q: "So you know they run hotter than Intel chips?"
Me: "Uh, well, not really?" (this is pre-Bulldozer days)
Q: "We don't sell AMD chips because of the heating and pin issues, and sometimes the coolers break the chips."
I later figured out that this moron was referring to Thunderbird chips.
I'd ask these questions, personally:
- Is RAID a good backup solution today and if not, why? (All the talk online about RAID being a dead technology means that if they're interested in tech, they'll have picked up that more people are looking into software RAID instead)
- Can you run Windows applications on Linux? (Bonus points if they say yes, and bring up virtualisation or WINE, which is where the industry is headed)
- Do you know who Edward Snowden is?
- Do you know what the Tor browser is?
- Have you ever used encryption before?
- Name all the Wi-Fi standards you can think of, and tell me which one you think is the best one for range. (correct answer is 802.11ac because of beamforming)
- Is Microsoft stealing people's data through Windows 10?
- What is Moore's law, and why will it come to an end eventually? (This exposes their knowledge of lithography processes and potentially thermodynamics laws)
- What is Bitcoin?
- If you delete a file on a SSD, is it gone forever? (The correct answer in the past was no. Today it's a 50-50 chance that you'll recover anything, and you can forget about it completely on a 3D VNAND drive)
I believe that instead of rating people on their knowledge of the industry, rate them on the quality of their answers. This gives you a better idea if they're passionate about any of this stuff or not. When I first started out as a tech, I didn't know what ZFS or IPS was.
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HavocXphere
Honorary Master
Fair enough.
Pretty sure most companies stopped doing stress interviews too along with the trick questions about manhole covers and M&Ms.
No offence intended but that's a bit of an amateurish move. Don't place reliance on recollection questions for support staff. Those are very easily memorised by someone who is eager to be trained. You want malleable, trainable, intelligent, confident, personable people. Interview for those qualities rather than random schit that's just a test of memory. You'll find yourself shortlisting the wrong types of people if you're shortlisting based on what they currently know. As you said, they're junior staff, so it's expected that you'll provide some training. Recollection based questions don't even form part of that, really. Give them a sheet of 50 industry relevant facts to take home and have them test until they score 100% by the end of training. It doesn't even form a part of the actual training IMHO and experience. Even if they get 100% on day 2 of a 14 day training. Make them write it each day.Ye, good idea. Would make the decision easier too then if more than one person gets all of them right.
Yes, I'm the Zoidberg (drzoidberg33) from the Plex forums, you need some Plex help?
Identify the key traits that would be required for a candidate to be successful. Interview for those. Don't ask standard questions because you've heard them asked before. Ask questions for a specific purpose each and every time, else you're both wasting your time. If you don't have a proper job spec you might as well be flying blind. Give them something to take home and schedule a second interview with your shortlist. Then role play based on what they learnt. If you're an introvert and are not comfortable role playing, then bring in a more extrovert and/or confident colleague. It can be beneficial to make it a 3 phase process and ha e them roleplay with each other to see how they work in a team under pressure. You can weed out the bad sociopaths here and identify the good ones.
Intentionally leave out certain info on the take home document to ascertain whether they proactively researched or not. Ascertain whether they picked up what you expected them to, without constant supervision, monitoring, and handholding. And just be sure to fact-check their CV.
Also one important point. You'll be inclined to score the candidates and select the highest score candidate after going through the motions. This is another amateurish mistake that useless bloody placement agents often want to do and that's often taught by morons in management training. You may find that the best candidate did well but is lacking in one or two areas. That's where you can focus training and mould them into your corporate culture. Don't be so arrogant as to assume the scoring and weighting system you have in place is perfect. Use it as a guide only to weed out the bottom, but never to select your top. If your scoring system were perfect you'd be selling your formula to neurobiology centres. It's not. Accept that before you even walk in the room, so never place ultimate reliance on it. That's lazy, but an easy trap to fall into, especially for technically minded people performing their 1st few dozen interviews.
And importantly know the tone you want to adopt at different times. Don't just be single toned. Be friendly at first, then switch to serious and unhappy halfway through, then carefree towards the end. It's a nice progression to draw out the real deal emotions from people by watching their natural, acting defences, drop as they have to switch halfway and question themselves, then feel like you're showing buying signals of them at the end so relief pours over, often resulting in some serious honesty, as most people mistake it for trust. And remember they're human beings, often with a lot riding on your decisions, and they're nervous. Calm them down to ensure that you're interviewing them, and not their nerves.
That's some of my advice re: interviews. I could honestly write a short book on it. I keep most of my interviews for junior staff to under 30min if I'm conducting them. You shouldn't ever need more than that to have a very good idea, as long as you go in prepared and structured. If you find yourself doing a lot of the talking, consider the kid for a sales role as well, and ensure that you take back ownership of the meeting immediately...
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Unless their job primarily entails answering those exact questions each day, you'd be hiring for the wrong reasons. You might as well just throw a dart and hire the guy it lands on. Statistically, if you split 20 hires into groups of 10, and hired one set with darts and the other with a qualified CV group on your answer scoring system, you'd get the same results/performance split per group. Unless they primarily answer those questions each and every day and no training is offered...
Nerfherder
Honorary Master
I got the manhole question last year in an interview.
They had to keep throwing those trick questions at me until they found one that I hadn't heard of.