Tricky Interview

Nafe92014

Hey all,

Yesterday I had a 45 minute interview for a T2 Support Tech role for a local ISP. They threw a bunch of scenario based questions at me, one in particular which was: "How would you build an mySQL database?" That was one that took me a while to answer because I haven't touched database stuff since the database course in college I attended finished. Aside from that scenario question, I decided to be upfront about my hearing impairment for once. Now, my hearing aides are very small, and I had to tilt my head to show them. They were very understanding and said that if I am hired, they are willing to help accommodate me when using the phone to interact with clients. Then they asked me what kind of networking knowledge I had, to which I told them average amount. Now here is where is got tricky.....

They asked me what I know about VLANs and a few other stuff that I haven't got to studying yet. At that point, I'm trying to think of an answer, to no avail. Other than that, everything else went good and they said that based on my experience and impressive resume and willing-to-learn-attitude, they may have a few other roles available for me. Guess I'll hear something next week hopefully.

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Comments

scaredoftests

Sometimes, it is best to say 'you don't know' instead of trying to come up with an answer that could be way off. I hope you hear back from them.

OctalDump

scaredoftests wrote: »

Sometimes, it is best to say 'you don't know' instead of trying to come up with an answer that could be way off. I hope you hear back from them.

Yeah, "I don't know" is an ok response. Or "I'm not sure, but I think it is....".

Nafe92014

Good tips, but sometimes it's unexpected as to what exactly they will ask. Really, I figured they would be asking more help desk questions rather than intermediate networking questions.

fmitawaps

How would I build a MySQL database? Find someone who knows about them and get them to do it. That's an honest answer!

TomkoTech

When I first got into IT I had no idea what the different RAID set ups were. I interviewed for an entry level help desk at a big law firm in Austin. Instead of stating I didn't know I said "I think Raid 0 is...." and they guy stopped me. Flat out told me "We aren't going to be offering you the job. However in the future if you don't know the answer, be sure your response is I don't know, but I will find out"

Since then I have never tried to answer a question I wasn't 100% sure about. I answer with I don't know, but here is what I would do to go about finding the solution. And I have never had an issue with job offers since.