Worst job candidate reaction?

At my current job, I do a lot of interview for my boss to screen out the non-technical applicants. It's not bad and I can usually gear the questions to their claimed skillset depending on what experience, certifications, etc they are boasting. I try not to make it too hard but get just enough to establish that they understand the basics and then some. I'm sure some of you have seen my other interview questions thread and can figure out that it doesn't take genius to answer the majority of questions I ask.

In the middle of last week, I'm handed a resume and asked to do a phone interview for a "mid-level Network Engineer." I took a look at the resume and the first thing the applicant listed what the following certifications: "MCP, MCSA, MCSE, MCTS, MCITP, CCNA, CCIP, CCNP, CCIE Written." The summary mentions that he's "proven IT Technician with 5 years of experience."
The experience is quite interesting (listed most recent to oldest. These are ALL the positions he put on there. Not exactly 5 years but whatever):
8 months as a network engineer
8 months in a help desk job
6 months in a NOC as a Tier 2 tech
1 year as a systems admin

For his only networking job, he's got tasks such as "configured STP" and "implemented LACP." Hmmmm...

I ask the recruiter when I could speak to him and I was told that he couldn't speak to me that day because he was "too busy in the CCIE lab to take calls." At this point, I'm starting to sniff out a dumper or just the mother of all paper certs. I decided to add some CCIE level questions to my list to ask him thanks to a certain forum member that helped me craft some harder but not too hard questions. I ended up forgetting to call him on Friday after his "CCIE Lab" and asked the recruiter to set up a time for a phone interview with me yesterday. I didn't hear from the recruiter for a couple hours and when I asked him what happened with the candidate interview, he quickly told me to forget about that guy and we dodged a bullet.

I ended up getting the whole story today and it was quite amusing. The recruiter ended up calling the guy to set up a technical phone interview with me and the guy LOST IT the second the words "technical interview" were spoken. The candidate literally went off on the recruiter, accused him of being horribly rude, stating that his resume spoke for itself, that he's NEVER been asked to prove himself or his integrity, cussing up a STORM and, at one point, physically threatening the recruiter. Wow is all I can say.

I've heard of people failing technical interviews, bragging about braindumps, and just straight walking out but I've never heard of someone reacting almost violently to someone requesting a technical interview. Wow! Good luck to him getting a network engineer job without a technical interview.

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Comments

Master Of Puppets

Interesting story. Funny but also kind of sad

Thanks for sharing. I remember the thread with your questions and they were spot on. No need to be a networking guru but you can tell whether someone knows his stuff. Taking into account they are fair, it would've been nice for him to at least try. I guess this proves that he was one of those ultimate dumpers(if there was need for any mroe proof)

gorebrush

And this, my friends is why dumping is bad mmm'kay?

game

Haha nice one but im sure he could get a network engineer role if he shows he is keen to learn im sure someone will take him as a junior network engineer thats how most net engineers start.

Master Of Puppets

Problem is with certs like that and 5 years of experience, people will probably expect you to be the teacher and not start learning from scratch

dave330i

Sometimes I find technical interviews difficult for few reasons.

First, I don't know the expertise of the interviewer. If I give them an answer way over their head, what happens? I usually try and give all possible answers, but I know I'll forget some and it'll probably be a low level answer.

Second, I don't know the level of question. If they ask low level admin questions, it can be a problem because I haven't done them in a long time.

Third, even if it's level appropriate questions, they could be about things I've done several months ago. I remember the general steps, but I could struggle on detail stuff.

I do prep before the interview minimize some of this, but there's only so much you can prep.

Chitownjedi

I personally look forward to decimating technical interviews!

FloOz

He must have failed his ccie lab for having reacted like that

NetworkVeteran

game wrote: »

Haha nice one but im sure he could get a network engineer role if he shows he is keen to learn im sure someone will take him as a junior network engineer thats how most net engineers start.

An employer would have to be asleep-at-the-wheel to hire someone like that. I'd hire someone with an honest CCNA and year of experience in a heartbeat over this. " Configured STP" - RSTP or MSTP is the norm in production networks these days. If all they worked on was switches, I'd expect at least a note about troubleshooting, load-sharing, redundancy, and performance. For someone with a CCNP/CCIP background, I'd expect to be see something more interesting like experience with IS-IS + BGP + MPLS topologies.

I have similar Cisco credentials to his and--while I have been offered jobs without technical interviews based on my reputations--from anyone else I'd fully expect a technical interview. Heck, I welcome them, as they allow me to gauge the employer's technical expertise (very important!), and to prove to them that I'm by far their best choice for the position.

NetworkVeteran

dave330i wrote: »

First, I don't know the expertise of the interviewer. If I give them an answer way over their head, what happens?

I had an interviewer who didn't have a routing & switching background ask me "What happens when I ping Google." 30 minutes later, they may not have understood everything I said, but they got enough to have a general idea what happened behind the scenes, they could see I was an expert at the subject, and they could see I was passionate about it. Often, complex networking ideas can be compared simply to real-world approximations such as post offices, Fedex, or highways.

For an expert, perhaps it's just as important, what you can convey to everyone else.

jibbajabba

The worst technical I had myself was when their senior IT guy gave me 2 pages of braindumps of each topic they hired for - Microsoft, VMware, Citrix and Cisco ...

I got up and left and explained that I don't like working with braindumps, even just for the sake of an interview.

Then they told the recruiter that I failed all tests with 0% and suggested not to work with me any more - needless to say - that was an interesting experience.

But I agree - how does someone nowadays think he can go through interviews without any technical questions.

I really suck at them myself (same reason dave mentioned). In a lot of hiring processes I had to go through at 2 or more.

Rosco2382

Iris, can you link to the thread you were mentioning about the questions you ask?

badrottie

It is simple: do not claim to have a skill unless you can demonstrate aptitude. Unfortunately, there are far too many paper tigers out there holding certifications that can be readily braindumped.

The lack of professionalism shown by the candidate is really surprising. Better to have them eliminated at this point than later.

Iristheangel

I usually like to base my questions on the minimum that a candidate needs to know for the job but when someone has MULTIPLE professional level certifications plus claiming CCIE-level knowledge with 8 months of actual networking experience, they're either a 1337 prodigy or they're full of it. If he claimed to have CCNA-level knowledge or even just one NP, I would have just asked him the regular questions but something stunk on his resume so I had a feeling it was going to go badly from the start. Oh well, never got to actually talk to the guy. Would have definitely been interesting!

TheProf

Wow that's interesting... Glad both you and the recruiter dodged that bullet!

I've interviewed quite a few candidates myself over the last couple of years and the most interesting one was, where this individual listed all the top VMware certs like VCAP-DCA/DCD + VCDX (WIP) and that this candidate was a senior infrastructure engineer, etc... When I started asking technical vSphere questions around infrastructure, this individual could not answer... I understand that some people might get nervous and have a hard time answering questions, but when I asked what version of vSphere this individual works with, the reply was "VMware workstation", even though I specifically asked about vSphere. I did not spend more than 5 minutes with the candidate.

JoJoCal19

dave330i wrote: »

Second, I don't know the level of question. If they ask low level admin questions, it can be a problem because I haven't done them in a long time.

Third, even if it's level appropriate questions, they could be about things I've done several months ago. I remember the general steps, but I could struggle on detail stuff.

I do prep before the interview minimize some of this, but there's only so much you can prep.

This was an issue for me at the last job I interviewed for. When they asked me a bunch of questions pertaining to my current role I specifically explained every detail and told them that my job was fairly high level and that we don't do a lot of low level stuff. Anyways when it came to the technical questions they were asking really low level stuff that I hadn't done in like 7 years and stuff you would only know if you were actively doing it or studying it. I think I ended up getting like 70% of the questions right.

And I agree also that for some things if I haven't worked with it or done it in several months or more I can tell you general things but not the details. But I do prep for interviews and make sure to not misrepresent my experience or skills, but sometimes you still can't avoid issues in technical interviews.

sigsoldier

Yeah too bad the story didn't end with an interview. I'm sure that would have been an experience!

Sounds like you guys are missing out on a lvl 99 STP master.

dave330i

TheProf wrote: »

I've interviewed quite a few candidates myself over the last couple of years and the most interesting one was, where this individual listed all the top VMware certs like VCAP-DCA/DCD + VCDX (WIP) and that this candidate was a senior infrastructure engineer, etc.

Now that VMware list all the VCDX on their site, a fake VCDX should be easy enough to check.

TheProf

dave330i wrote: »

Now that VMware list all the VCDX on their site, a fake VCDX should be easy enough to check.

Exactly, we can definitely verify that quickly, in this case however the individual said its a WIP, the certification wasn't attained yet.

cyberguypr

Surreal. This story reminds me of the guy who took a Cisco job and had someone else remoting into his machine to do the actual work.

JDMurray

When you back a rat into a corner it can feel really trapped and try to fight its way out. So with humans too, it seems.

redworld

What's the purpose of listing MCP, MCTS, MCITP, MCSA, and MCSE generically on your resume? I don't list pre-req certs when I have the higher level one, e.g if you have a CCNP there's no use in listing CCNA. It's implied.

I can sort of understand if they're getting specific like MCSE 2003, MCSA 2012, MCITP: SA, MCTS: Lync 2010 etc but otherwise it just seems redundant.

Danielm7

I've seen a few members say they do it because recruiters might put CCNA in a search and not CCNP and they want to make sure they get found in the searches.

shodown

JoJoCal19 wrote: »

This was an issue for me at the last job I interviewed for. When they asked me a bunch of questions pertaining to my current role I specifically explained every detail and told them that my job was fairly high level and that we don't do a lot of low level stuff. Anyways when it came to the technical questions they were asking really low level stuff that I hadn't done in like 7 years and stuff you would only know if you were actively doing it or studying it. I think I ended up getting like 70% of the questions right.

And I agree also that for some things if I haven't worked with it or done it in several months or more I can tell you general things but not the details. But I do prep for interviews and make sure to not misrepresent my experience or skills, but sometimes you still can't avoid issues in technical interviews.

I've had something similar in the past. I have CCNP, and CCNP V. During the interview they started asking me questions about heavy switching and a few other off end topics that arent' listed in my resume. Keep in mind that this is for a Voice Job. I told them that my route/switch experience came down to OSPF/BGP/MPLS and very basic switching. I asked if they had any voice questions, they gave me a few basic questions and that was there extent of experience with VoIP so they had no way to gauge my real level. I ended up getting the job due to some back room deals, but I can see how that can be frustrating.

cyberguypr

Following Danielm7's comment and answering redworld's question (BTW, welcome aboard) the issue is that many times the HR drones get a list of requirement from the IT managers and that is what they use as a baseline. Sometimes they have no idea what the certs mean. If they are told to look for a CCNA they may skip your resume if you only put CCNP.

Rosco2382

I just read an article or maybe a post, I forget, had a long hard day, but people put in footers, in small font "key-words" commonly searched for if they pertain to their experience. I read it this morning so my memory is a little fuzzy.

dave330i

cyberguypr wrote: »

Following Danielm7's comment and answering redworld's question (BTW, welcome aboard) the issue is that many times the HR drones get a list of requirement from the IT managers and that is what they use as a baseline. Sometimes they have no idea what the certs mean. If they are told to look for a CCNA they may skip your resume if you only put CCNP.

I got rid of my pre-req certs on my resume. Don't want to be bothered by clueless recruiters.

Architect192

Technical interviews are a double edged sword. In the past year, I have passed the CCNP and MCSE 2012 certifications. For the past months, all I have done is work on packaging applications for a vmware view project. Get me in an interview and drill me on CCNP topics, I might fail. I did study hard, labbed hard and actually designed and deployed a relatively large network for the client I'm at right now but unless you're a specialist and work in that field day in and day out, it's hard to keep current on everything. To me, that's already months behind me and I'm focusing on something else at the moment. In the past year and a half, I must have designed and deployed (successfully) 10-12 new technologies that I wasn't that familiar with (or not at all) and I'm really proud of what I achieved. I am great at what I do but it doesn't mean I wouldn't suck in a technical interview.

pitviper

The sad thing is, he'll probably end up at a partner who needs to fill the requirement for a certain certification. I think "CCIE Written" on a resume is a red flag - you're not actually a CCIE so why open yourself up to the added scrutiny? If you legitimately studied for the written test then you should ace the NP questions no?

bigdogz

I have been in IT and networking for quite some time. I have been working for a MISP for 15 years and I have learned a great deal. As a favor, one of our fellow senior network engineers asked me to setup a lab for a new candidate. The interview consisted of going through the recruiter, a technical interview on the basics (the guy said he knew everything), and on the performing some BGP and EIGRP just basic stuff. We gave him the network in a sandbox and a PC and thumb drive to download everything he needed.
As a test I had some lower level guys test it out and they did it in under 90 minutes with no help. The higher level guys did it from 5 - 15 minutes.
He was a CCIE and after 4 hours the guy didn't do anything. I know about 20 CCIE's (I`m working on getting mine sometime soon...) and it really made me sick. This was just a case of someone not knowing how to apply the knowledge.