Technical questions for net system admin..

TechJunky

This is my first time hiring a system administrator and I was curious if anyone here has any test questions that they would be willing to share to ask a potential candidate.

The owner dropped this on me really late between all my other projects... IE: today and we are interviewing someone tomorrow.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Netstudent

WHat does the job entail? WHat are the requirements? We could tell you to ask him if he's ever been to the moon, but if going to the moon shows that he does not meet the requirements of the job, then what good is it?

nel

you could ask him about scenarios in a "what would you do" kind of thing which are related to his job duties. i..e if he will be using exchange and he claims to know it, ask him what he would do to recover from a db crash.

This was just an easy example but i think you get the point im trying to make.

CoryS

Also if you dont have alot of technical questions I would recommend asking about his/her ability to handle high pressure situations, past experiences in these areas and try and determine their problem solving abilities... Knowing extremely technical things doesnt always mean they have a logical way of dealing with them once they break

In any case, hopefully you get someone good... Take care!

Ahriakin

When trying to gauge their experience don't ask a question that can be answered with yes or no, ask for examples of how they have used the technologies they claim to have experience with on their resume. If presenting scenarios try to be thought provoking, you want to see how they go about problem solving not just if they read the manual.

astorrs

Joel (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/GuerrillaInterviewing3.html) has some great stuff on this. It's targeted at software developers but the ideas carry through to any tech job. Follow the links to previous posts of his, he touches on just about the entire process of hiring someone.