Interviewing for an architect position.

SteveO86

So the company I work for is looking for an architect, we've had quite a few people come in for the position. So far it's been pretty amusing, and I've even had one interviewee get a little snippy with me and my co-worker.

(I'm not applying for this position just doing the interview with our director..)

This position is suppose to be above me, a pure technical position no management. So do you think it's too much to ask that I expect this architect to be smarter then me? I mean he is suppose to be someone I can turn to instead of me banging my head against the desk till I figure something out..

I really feel like I'm asking pretty basic questions to..

1. What routing protocol do you run to a service provider.
2. Name me few BGP path attributes
3. Why do we break OSPF up into areas.
4. Give me a few OSPF area types.
5. What's the purpose of IKE Phase1 and 2

(Those are just few, and I'll go a big more in depth into those)

Basic stuff, the problem is I've had people come in that can barely answer 2 of those questions correctly. (and a few of them mentioned they passed their CCIE-Written)

But should I be expecting too much for an architect type position? I'd really like to think an architect should be able to run circles around me and teach me something.... (I'm expecting to have a deep broad knowledge of OSPF, BGP, IPSec, and routing in general.)

NOC-Ninja

SteveO86 wrote: »

So the company I work for is looking for an architect, we've had quite a few people come in for the position. So far it's been pretty amusing, and I've even had one interviewee get a little snippy with me and my co-worker.

(I'm not applying for this position just doing the interview with our director..)

This position is suppose to be above me, a pure technical position no management. So do you think it's too much to ask that I expect this architect to be smarter then me? I mean he is suppose to be someone I can turn to instead of me banging my head against the desk till I figure something out..

I really feel like I'm asking pretty basic questions to..

1. What routing protocol do you run to a service provider.
2. Name me few BGP path attributes
3. Why do we break OSPF up into areas.
4. Give me a few OSPF area types.
5. What's the purpose of IKE Phase1 and 2

(Those are just few, and I'll go a big more in depth into those)

Basic stuff, the problem is I've had people come in that can barely answer 2 of those questions correctly. (and a few of them mentioned they passed their CCIE-Written)

But should I be expecting too much for an architect type position? I'd really like to think an architect should be able to run circles around me and teach me something.... (I'm expecting to have a deep broad knowledge of OSPF, BGP, IPSec, and routing in general.)

You should ask an open ended question to size him up:
Example:
Explain to me how does OSPF works?
Explain to me how does BGP works?

NOC-Ninja

SteveO86 wrote: »

So the company I work for is looking for an architect, we've had quite a few people come in for the position. So far it's been pretty amusing, and I've even had one interviewee get a little snippy with me and my co-worker.

(I'm not applying for this position just doing the interview with our director..)

This position is suppose to be above me, a pure technical position no management. So do you think it's too much to ask that I expect this architect to be smarter then me? I mean he is suppose to be someone I can turn to instead of me banging my head against the desk till I figure something out..

I really feel like I'm asking pretty basic questions to..

1. What routing protocol do you run to a service provider.
2. Name me few BGP path attributes
3. Why do we break OSPF up into areas.
4. Give me a few OSPF area types.
5. What's the purpose of IKE Phase1 and 2

(Those are just few, and I'll go a big more in depth into those)

Basic stuff, the problem is I've had people come in that can barely answer 2 of those questions correctly. (and a few of them mentioned they passed their CCIE-Written)

But should I be expecting too much for an architect type position? I'd really like to think an architect should be able to run circles around me and teach me something.... (I'm expecting to have a deep broad knowledge of OSPF, BGP, IPSec, and routing in general.)

Break time from lab. Let me take a stab on this.

1. What routing protocol do you run to a service provider.
BGP
2. Name me few BGP path attributes
I remember:
weight
as path
local pre
MED

3. Why do we break OSPF up into areas.
To help lessen the load on the routers due to ospf calculation

4. Give me a few OSPF area types.
backbone
stub
totally stub
nssa

5. What's the purpose of IKE Phase1 and 2
I dont remember but I know its about key and authentication. I have to read it again.

Mrock4

I would expect a mid-level engineer with a CCNP to be able to answer all of those if they have any experience.

jamesp1983

A decent architect should be able to easily answer those questions with little effort. Ask him more in depth questions about technologies that your company considers important. I had a preliminary phone screen with a recruiter from a large ISP who asked me what the well-known mandatory BGP attributes were. That was within 3 minutes of talking to me. It was for a high level network engineer position. Make sure you really dig into him/her.

SteveO86

jamesp1983 wrote: »

A decent architect should be able to easily answer those questions with little effort. Ask him more in depth questions about technologies that your company considers important. I had a preliminary phone screen with a recruiter from a large ISP who asked me what the well-known mandatory BGP attributes were. That was within 3 minutes of talking to me. It was for a high level network engineer position. Make sure you really dig into him/her.

I got a whole page of questions and scenarios... Depending on how it's going I will go a bit more in-depth into those questions an about LSA Types, and go into further detail on BGP (How BGP performance can be improved, path manipulation)

I really expecting this person to get most of the questions correct, as well as to be impressed by this guy a bit.

--

I do confess I did start this thread to almost rant.. the fact I got people walking with CCIE-Written on their resume and they can't answer 2 of those questions kind of frustrates me..

SteveO86

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

Break time from lab. Let me take a stab on this.

1. What routing protocol do you run to a service provider.
BGP
2. Name me few BGP path attributes
I remember:
weight
as path
local pre
MED

3. Why do we break OSPF up into areas.
To help lessen the load on the routers due to ospf calculation

4. Give me a few OSPF area types.
backbone
stub
totally stub
nssa

5. What's the purpose of IKE Phase1 and 2
I dont remember but I know its about key and authentication. I have to read it again.

I just throw in the IKE question to break up the routing. (That and we work with a lot of VPNs) - I'm looking for something broad like ISAKMP key exchange in Phase 1 and IPSec SA negotiation in phase 2..

For 3 I'm either looking for what you said or to cut down on OSPF LSA's, this question will usually spawn a few others.

NOC-Ninja

SteveO86 wrote: »

I just throw in the IKE question to break up the routing. (That and we work with a lot of VPNs) - I'm looking for something broad like ISAKMP key exchange in Phase 1 and IPSec SA negotiation in phase 2..

For 3 I'm either looking for what you said or to cut down on OSPF LSA's, this question will usually spawn a few others.

ohh those types 1 to 7. I was about to ask you before if you were talking about LSA's. Ill probably fail you interview.lol

SteveO86

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

ohh those types 1 to 7. I was about to ask you before if you were talking about LSA's. Ill probably fail you interview.lol

Nah, your answers would have been accepted, on top of the answers I'm also looking for an understanding of the technologies. I wouldn't go that in depth unless the interviewee was overly arrogant. (Which has happened). I do like your idea of the open ended questions.. I might have to implement that somehow.

Of course I'm not the only one that has to give the thumbs up, I just provide the technical side of the interview

NOC-Ninja

SteveO86 wrote: »

Nah, your answers would have been accepted, on top of the answers I'm also looking for an understanding of the technologies. I wouldn't go that in depth unless the interviewee was overly arrogant. (Which has happened). I do like your idea of the open ended questions.. I might have to implement that somehow.

Of course I'm not the only one that has to give the thumbs up, I just provide the technical side of the interview

lol Yeah. I recommend those open ended questions because I went through them. It changed me in a good way. After going through an open ended questions, I start asking myself if I really knew the technology and if I deserved my certs. I had to re read again and really understand it. Now, I always ask myself every time i read a subject, " explain to me how (stp,ospf,bgp,eigrp,etc) works?". From there, I can really tell which one is my weakness and I read again and wipe my weakness. Like most of us here, I do this because I love learning and I would personally be disappointed to myself if i missed 1 question, like your IKE. lol

Like other TE guys, I believe that they should know the technologies if they are applying for an architect position.

Why dont you apply for it?

Back to labbing.

reaper81

Using OSPF areas to lessen load on routers is not really a valid reason any longer. They can easily handle the load. I know service providers that run an entire network in area 0 (200+ routers). You can say what you want about the design but it works.

jamesp1983

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

lol Yeah. I recommend those open ended questions because I went through them. It changed me in a good way. After going through an open ended questions, I start asking myself if I really knew the technology and if I deserved my certs. I had to re read again and really understand it. Now, I always ask myself every time i read a subject, " explain to me how (stp,ospf,bgp,eigrp,etc) works?". From there, I can really tell which one is my weakness and I read again and wipe my weakness. Like most of us here, I do this because I love learning and I would personally be disappointed to myself if i missed 1 question, like your IKE. lol

I'm going to start doing this now. I gained an in-depth understand of the MS technologies this way. I was a teacher and knew I had to really understand the technologies in order to explain them in an easy to understand format to my students. I know I have seen people on here say to learn these technologies as if you are going to teach them and it really drives the subject matter home.

NOC-Ninja

reaper81 wrote: »

Using OSPF areas to lessen load on routers is not really a valid reason any longer. They can easily handle the load. I know service providers that run an entire network in area 0 (200+ routers). You can say what you want about the design but it works.

thats amazing! what do you think is the correct answer? thanks

reaper81

If I'm asking a question like this I'm not looking for a correct answer. I'm looking for a candidate to be able to explain the concepts of OSPF and reason to a somewhat valid answer even if he is not sure of the answer. The thought process and explanation is more important than the actual answer. However if I were to answer it I would discuss the benefits of summarization and adminstrative boundaries since we may do interarea filtering but not intra-area filtering. Also we have the option to run stub areas and NSSA areas etc.

SteveO86

Good points.

Nah, I'm not going to apply for it.. I rather take my career a smoothly then make sudden jumps.. Although when it comes down to it I'm already doing the job of the architect. The purpose of this position is to off-load some of the work from myself, as well as the other engineers.

Besides I know there is still more stuff I need to learn.

S3CUR3N3TW0RK

reaper81 wrote: »

Using OSPF areas to lessen load on routers is not really a valid reason any longer. They can easily handle the load. I know service providers that run an entire network in area 0 (200+ routers). You can say what you want about the design but it works.

To lessen the load on the routers wouldn't be that great of an answer, because as you mentioned most of the higher end routers can easily handle the load.

However, running the entire network in Area 0 wouldn't help your convergence times any, nor would it reduce the overhead created in terms of the bandwidth generated by the LSA's to the DR and BDR etc. Also as you already mentioned your not going to get the benefits of inter-area summarization, which in large networks greatly enhances the performance of the network in terms of routing decisions. It might work, but I wouldn't design it that way.