Re: questions asked during network engineer interview

[Brandon Martin <lists.nanog () monmotha net>]

On 7/22/20 6:55 PM, Łukasz Bromirski wrote:
> And yes (to the main topic of this thread) - I have some certs.
> I understand people without certs tend to discard them as
> non-relevant or even toxic. Yes, I’ve met “paper” CCIEs,
> but also JNCIEs and I can see the point being made. I’ve
> met great minds (also on this list) without any networking
> certificates. I believe that until you see real person on the
> other side of table and not her/his cert(s), good chat and
> questions will remove all doubts. Everyone has to start
> somewhere and make those first errors, and being ‘expert’
> doesn’t mean you’re not making them anymore.

The CCIE and JNCIE (and perhaps other vendor equivalents) are some of 
the few vendor certs I've found often (though not always) meaningful. 
If the candidate takes it upon themselves to really understand the why 
of what's going on in the prep and testing for those certs, it can be a 
very meaningful track.  Of course if they just answer cram, it's 
bordering on useless, but (and not having either I can't say this with 
certainty) those particular tests seem to try to make such cramming at 
minimum impractical if not impossible.

Of course, there's also plenty of folks out there without them or any 
certs at all that are just as useful in practice.  Getting those 
particular certifications does, however, seem to be a useful path to 
learning things that are actually of use in the "real world".  I look at 
such certificates similar to how I'd look at a 2- or 4-year degree in a 
related IT field and just a somewhat different, and perhaps more 
approachable for the self-coached or differently-learning, path.

At minimum, I think it's a useful jumping off point in an interview for 
a candidate who has paper experience but not a lot of real-world 
experience:  "So, tell me about a particularly dicey interoperability 
scenario you encountered while going for your CCIE?  What steps did you 
take to troubleshoot and either solve or work around it?" or similar.
--
Brandon Martin