Job interview for Tier 1 NOC

singh8281

I have an interview tomorrow for a Tier 1 NOC position and I am having severe interview jitters. I would prepare nicely days in advance for interview and try to memorize answers which I know is a bad idea, I guess that’s why I am going totally blank on an interview table.

I would love to have a piece of advice from folks who’ve been in my shoe in terms of what do they look for in a candidate and what kind of questions have more weightage than the other. How do I go about if I don’t have customer service experience but proactive and passionate about networking.

I do have about 7 months of field experience installing routers, switches and VoIP phones but not much exposure on the support side.

Aldur

I can understand your situation, I went through the exact same thing with qwest and applying for a teir 3 support position, thankfully I have been offered the job. The entire process took about 3 months and was extremely nerve racking.

My advice would be to know the stuff you currently have experience with very well, that will be your selling point. The job that I am looking at now I will be working with Cisco and Juniper equip. and I honestly know very little about Cisco devices. I made this known to the interviewer but I also let him know that I was willing to learn. I then was tested extensively on my Juniper knowledge which was my selling point.

Your lack of customer service experience might hurt you but just keep in mind that if you get asked a question of what would you do in this situation that the customer's concerns are always priority and you'll do what ever it takes, within reason to meet the customer's needs/concerns.

In my interviews there was alot of questions about routing protocols, some very indepth, some very basic and it was the more basic questions that threw me off. One basic question that I missed that I seriously kicked my self for afterwards was "what happens at layer 4" I named of protocols and went into detail about those protocols but the interviewer said, "yes that's all true, but communication happens in segements is what I was looking for", I didn't expect the interviewer to be looking for such a basic answer. I guess the moral of the story would be to understand the question before answering.

The next peice of advice I would give is to not sell yourself on something you don't know very well. I spoke with a friend that I know at this job and he conducted a few interviews for the position I was looking at, to bad he couldn't do my interview . But he said that many potential canidates would say they know something very well and come to find out they knew very little about it and many times they would be certified in that area. This equated to an automatic disqualification for the job.

Other then that I would say not to stress, but I know that's not going to happen . Just try to relax before the interview and make sure you ask lots of questions durning the interview.

Hope this helps.

singh8281

Aldur wrote:

I can understand your situation, I went through the exact same thing with qwest and applying for a teir 3 support position, thankfully I have been offered the job. The entire process took about 3 months and was extremely nerve racking.

My advice would be to know the stuff you currently have experience with very well, that will be your selling point. The job that I am looking at now I will be working with Cisco and Juniper equip. and I honestly know very little about Cisco devices. I made this known to the interviewer but I also let him know that I was willing to learn. I then was tested extensively on my Juniper knowledge which was my selling point.

Your lack of customer service experience might hurt you but just keep in mind that if you get asked a question of what would you do in this situation that the customer's concerns are always priority and you'll do what ever it takes, within reason to meet the customer's needs/concerns.

In my interviews there was alot of questions about routing protocols, some very indepth, some very basic and it was the more basic questions that threw me off. One basic question that I missed that I seriously kicked my self for afterwards was "what happens at layer 4" I named of protocols and went into detail about those protocols but the interviewer said, "yes that's all true, but communication happens in segements is what I was looking for", I didn't expect the interviewer to be looking for such a basic answer. I guess the moral of the story would be to understand the question before answering.

The next peice of advice I would give is to not sell yourself on something you don't know very well. I spoke with a friend that I know at this job and he conducted a few interviews for the position I was looking at, to bad he couldn't do my interview . But he said that many potential canidates would say they know something very well and come to find out they knew very little about it and many times they would be certified in that area. This equated to an automatic disqualification for the job.

Other then that I would say not to stress, but I know that's not going to happen . Just try to relax before the interview and make sure you ask lots of questions durning the interview.

Hope this helps.

Thanks Aldur, Great piece of advice. I know they will corner me with scenario based question based on customer support and I have to come up with something that might not be directly related to my previous work but it will more of a common sense answer.

The part where you mentioned about never to oversell yourself is very true. The recruiter for this position has told me that they’ve disqualified folks with “know it all attitude” or those who didn’t have desire to learn.

No matter how hard I try not to stress out, it will still overwhelm me.

Aldur

singh8281 wrote:

No matter how hard I try not to stress out, it will still overwhelm me.

I know this all too well, the night before the an interview I end up laying wide awake in bed running through stuff in my head, its even worse when they say they will contact in you about a week or so to tell you if you got the job.

I do have to say that an upcoming job interview is great study modivation!