Certifications and IT jobs/Salaries

Author

Something Different

maxmax79

2004-02-05, 2:30 pm

On Monday I was browsing the online job ads, like I do everyday and found one for a Network Support Engineer and e-mailed my resume. Then today I received the following e-mail...

Thank you for your interest in the position of Network Support Engineer at
XXXXXXXXXX. Based on the information provided in your resume, you have
passed our initial screening process. Our next step is to find out a
little more about what you know. Attached to this e-mail is a quiz that we
ask you to take. When taking the quiz you can use all of the books and
websites that you would normally use. Please complete the quiz and e-mail
it back to us within the next three days.

I found this an interesting tactic to screen potential candidates. The quiz is 10 questions on various topics from seting up OU's in AD to determining if there is an active worm on the network.

DaDnDe

2004-02-07, 9:44 pm

so whats the questions???

I am currently looking to better my position in the world and i have taken pre-screen tests twice so far... but i was required to take the test in house without any reference material to use.

i guess that has become a popular screening method... well hope it works better than drug-screening did.

maxmax79

2004-02-09, 9:31 am

Here is the content of the quiz...

This quiz is meant to test your technical knowledge, troubleshooting skills, and communication skills. Most of the questions feature problems that we encounter everyday in a multitude of environments. Please answer the questions as you would communicate the information to a fellow technician. Be sure to use your own words. If you use information from a technical source, make sure you credit the source and put the information in quotes. If you don’t know or can’t find the answer, leave the question blank. Blatantly wrong answers and wild guesses will count against you.

1. When you setup Active Directory, what Organizational Units do you like to create to make management of the Active Directory Objects easier? There is not a single technical answer to this question, we are looking for a “Personal Best Practice” that you like to adhere to. Please explain your answer.

2. What are the passwords for Level 1 thru 4 of the Basic Web Hacking Challenge at http://www.hackthissite.org? If that site is down, use http://www.hulla-balloo.com/hack/level1/ to gain access. Please note which site you used.

3. A company believes that a workstation or multiple workstations on their network have a worm because everyone’s Internet access is slow compared to yesterday. The network has 500 Windows XP workstations. You have remote access to the network via terminal services to their Windows 2003 servers. What steps would you take to determine if it is in fact a worm? Assume that the firewall that is in place is one you are familiar with, and note that information in your response.

4. Please provide at least 5 lines of a Windows network login script that you have created. Please provide explanations for the lines provided.

5. A user connects remotely to a Citrix MetaFrame XP server with Feature Release 3. The user just purchased an HP 1150 Laserjet printer. The server doesn’t have this driver on it. What are 3 different ways you could get the printer to work, and which one would you choose, and why?

6. Your ISP assigns you the network 1.2.3.0/30. The ISP sets the router at 1.2.3.1. You setup a workstation at 1.2.3.5 with a default gateway of 1.2.3.1, but you can’t get to the Internet. What steps would you take to determine what the problem is?

7. A company has a network that has 2 Windows NT servers. One of the servers is a PDC, the other is the BDC. The company has purchased a new server and 3 licenses of Windows 2003. The company operates 24 hours per day, but can take portions of the network down for scheduled maintenance up to 4 hours at a time. Please list the steps you would go through to convert the NT Domain to 3 Windows 2003 servers running Active Directory in Native Mode.

8. A company has a network of 200 Windows XP workstations and 5 Windows 2003 servers. Active Directory is running in Native Mode and all of the workstations have been added to the domain. Due to all of the recent security vulnerabilities found in Windows XP, the network administrator would like to apply all of the critical MS updates to all of the workstations and force the workstations to automatically apply updates nightly. If possible, he would also like to have one of his servers download the patches and have the workstations pull from that server. How can this be accomplished without going to every desktop?

9. What ports are open at 24.123.160.250?

10. A company is running Domino 6.02 on a Windows 2000 server. They have purchased a new server pre-loaded with Windows 2003 server. They would like to move to the new server and also upgrade Domino to 6.51. Please list the steps you would go through to accomplish this.

DaDnDe

2004-02-09, 6:23 pm

wow very intense test.

a fair amount of research into the company would be necessary i think just to answer #1... and thats the easiest question...

Kasor

2004-02-10, 11:49 pm

WOW...................

Joe_fh

2004-02-12, 9:59 am

That's not a bad idea for testing applicants but that test is pretty intense.

DaDnDe

2004-02-12, 10:27 am

yes it is intense.

i just applied for a part-time retail counter sales for a computer store. although the primary duties would be customer service and sales floor help, it also would include bench work if the help up front isnt needed.

it required A+ with N+ desired and i had to take their test.

it wasnt too bad. primarily acronyms.

also asked a few basic questions...

explain the difference bet. a hub and switch.

what are two main methods of broadband transmissions

there was a few others that i dont remember...

but i think it did give a fairly decent indication of what a person might know about computers.

the test above is a totally different story. just for kicks i tried researching some of the questions and im still pretty much lost...

oh well... guess i'll stick with the part time jobs for now...

Luchnia

2004-02-13, 5:21 pm

I have been tested twice in the last month during interviews. I really don't care for it. I can handle it, but it just seems that in the everyday environment that interviews do not fit the realm of testing. Sometimes interview testing catches you off-guard and you may know the subject well, but fail to recall it at the time of the question. A question I would ask is how much are they paying and what are they looking for? If they pay enough and I know what I am applying for then I should be able to handle the questions.

There are six of these questions that I would do poorly on without thinking some and possibly researching the subject. So that alone, would be a failed interview if they based the interview on the test-40%. Not all people are great test takers, but they can do a good job at what they do. I do fairly well on test. I often score well above the global averages. I know several sytem engineers that know their stuff, but have a difficult time test taking and they can toss me under the table and are three times the better techs.

Sometimes I wonder about these types of interview questions.

Peace.

DaDnDe

2004-02-13, 11:36 pm

yes i agree...

one recent test i took had about 50 acronyms to decode and i blanked out on PCMCIA....

i got the personal computer memory card part...

but the thing is that as soon as i walked out of the place i remembered all the answers i couldnt think of right then. but that is a written test.

in an interview, the situation is totally different. most people i know in IT dont know or work from memory. they are just practiced in where to find the solution to their problems.

i know this one guy who manages a SQL server for Wa St and he's very good at what he does. in fact he is good enough that he quit his full time state job to teach which is his true passion. he manages the server on contract. (he is one of 3 admins)

but he admits to knowing very little about SQL off the top of his head. but present him with a problem and he can find the page where the problem is addressed and the code necessary to fix the problem and usually be fixing the problem within an hour. (as opposed to still looking for the cause of the problem) he does this by not knowing an immense amount of query language or SQL, but by knowing the 3 volume SQL server reference like the back of his hand. now we are talking about 1500 pages total here.

but he can always immediately give an imformed response to most any question even if it is b.s.
his philosophy is that you never admit you dont know something and never give an estimate of how long it will take to fix something. his reason for this is that he believes that "its not what you know, but who you know and no matter how difficult the solution is, someone has done it before and the real trick to being successful in IT is knowing that person."

i took a networking class from him and it was one of the hardest classes i ever had because as he put it, you rarely will find a straight forward answer as most have several different solutions and each solution's plusses and minuses must be weighted against the companies wants and needs.

Luchnia

2004-02-14, 9:01 am

quote:
in an interview, the situation is totally different. most people i know in IT dont know or work from memory. they are just practiced in where to find the solution to their problems.

Isn't this the norm? I recently got off a contract in a call center as an intermediate analyst. This was not your normal call center. We took about 40,000 calls a month ranging from docking station issues, wireless problems, vpn issues, all the way up to mainframe emulator issues. You name it, we had it. A very intense environment. Often we would get calls from the techs asking us how to do things!

It was all about resources and how fast you could get them (at least for the most part). There had to be some technical saavy or you just could not make it. Having to support 20,000 desktops was tough! Being one of the Intermediate PC Analyst sometimes my head would just fry and no one knows it all, but I always remember to go back to the basic model of troubleshooting and this always saved me, or at least cooled my head down enough to use the few brain cells I have.

I would go back to the logical procession in my mind and:

1. Gather relevant data about the issue
2. Identify the problem
3. Isolate (narrow it down to the proper area)
4. Resolve - efficiently and effectively

We were always pressed for time. The key was to handle the caller, generate the ticket, detail notes, search the knowledge base, remote session if needed to repair or install apps, and effectively resolve the problem thus closing the ticket in about 5-8 minutes. You can not imagine some of the VPN issues we would have. People even trying to connect VPNs from breakfast shops!

I have seen as many as 180 calls in the que and we had about 50-60 techs working the ques. Servers would go down, routers fail, databases fail, etc. It was definitely not your "laid back" environment.

In typing all this, my point is the last part of the quoted paragraph along with: "where to find the solution to their problems....no matter how difficult the solution is, someone has done it before and the real trick to being successful in IT is knowing that person"

I would add, "knowing that person OR where to get the information quickly." This undoubtedly added to a reasonable technical saavy makes for the well-rounded decent technicians. I look at it this way quite often. Why cloud my head with things that I can get quickly from the various knowledge bases? This would always be my first resource. Find out if someone else has done it before. This is the first step to saving time in problem resolution.

Peace.

DaDnDe

2004-02-14, 12:25 pm

luchnia:

very well written post...

so the conclusion is that written tests for pre-employment screening isnt the answers for certain types of positions...

hmmm nice compromise i think...

curiousgeorge

2004-02-15, 4:26 am

maxmax,

Did you send back ur answers?

When I interviewed for my current job, I had a committee of nine people. They were asking me what programming languages I know and asked how much application development I've done.

As it turns out, there is NO programming or application development involved in my job. They have Systems Analysts who do that. I am a LAN administrator.

It's always funny when employers ask questions when it has nothing to do with the job you're interviewing for.

DaDnDe

2004-02-15, 5:18 am

kinda funny?

not really. you were interviewed by a panel of 9 people, well i would think that they all werent from personnel. so you most likely had department heads or supervisors from several different departments simply because they assumedly would be the most qualified in judging potential talent.

but being as it may, they probably will only ask technical questions that they know the answer to. so questions from about 8 of em probably wont pertain to what you are doing, or may only pertain in an indirect way.

curiousgeorge

2004-02-16, 3:39 am

Of course they were dept heads. No company ever has a committee of HR people.

What you pointed out is what makes it so funny. They had no clue what I was interviewing for. They only asked the technical questions they knew, whether it had anything to do with the job. hahaha

I haven't done programming since my FORTRAN and Cobol days 15 years ago.

I bet the job maxmax is interviewing for is just a simple AD administrator position. hahaha

DaDnDe

2004-02-16, 4:01 am

every dept manager that i have ever dealt with is exactly the same way.

they dont care about anything except their people. they feel that if you can do the work in their department, you can handle anything the company has to offer.

delusions of grandeur??

who knows??, but one thing i do know, it is a waste of time to convince any manager of anything different.

maxmax79

2004-02-16, 8:59 am

quote:
Originally posted by curiousgeorge
maxmax,

Did you send back ur answers?

Yeah, I sent my answers back, haven't heard anything else though. From what I could gather from reading the jod description, this job was just network support some of it being phone support.

curiousgeorge

2004-02-16, 12:12 pm

maxmax,

Good luck my friend!

I hope they pay top dollar. If they want somebody that can handle all of the items in that test, they better.

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