Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Michael Thomas <mike () mtcc com>]

On 7/14/20 11:19 AM, Peter Kristolaitis wrote:
> On 2020-07-14 1:55 p.m., Michael Thomas wrote:
> > But I try as much as possible to put candidates at ease because I 
> > know that not everybody reacts to interviews the same, which is sadly 
> > not the case far too often.
> >
> > Mike
> I often ask a question early in the interview to the effect of "Tell 
> me about a tech project you've worked on outside of your professional 
> work.  It doesn't have to be related at all to this role or any other 
> professional role you've worked on, just something cool involving tech 
> that you've done on your own time."
>
> I don't care if the answer is setting up a complicated home lab, or 
> programming Arduinos to make a robotic cat feeder, or 3D printing, or 
> whatever.   I ask this question for two reasons: first, there is a 
> correlation between being passionate about technology and being good 
> at working with it and learning it professionally;  and second, 
> talking about not-directly-related-to-the-resume stuff for a couple of 
> minutes often lets the "introvert geek" personality-types relax and 
> open up a lot.  I find this is particularly helpful when hiring for 
> junior and intermediate roles, but I will sometimes ask it of senior 
> candidates too.

Oh, I like that one too and ask it often. It's sort of depressing how 
often the answer is "i don't have time" or something to that effect.

I wrote a LIGO listener to monitor the cosmic kabooms as they were 
detected just for fun and to learn Django. You have to be constantly 
refreshing your skills and that habit is way more important than whether 
you can code up algorithm XYZ or tell me how TCP slow start works.

Mike