Interviewing woes

dave330i

Is it too much to ask that virtualization engineers know what HA, DRS, EVC, etc are and how they work? Basic stuff covered in VCP?

Essendon

Of course it is too much!! We asked a Microsoft engineer which protocol's used for domain authentication and he said SMTP. This was after he said he had worked in very large companies where they didnt have domains, just workgroups, but still utilized GPO's. We asked a few more questions to confirm he wasnt having a brain-fart or something, he wasnt.

Seriously though, didnt your phone interview weed them out? In our case, the guy was able to somehow deflect the questions that our recruiters threw at him.

tstrip007

You were a little hard on them. Might need to tone it down and give them some multiple choice like, what is vmotion? a.) a dance move b.) live migration c.) I dunno I dumped the exam

AwesomeGarrett

I gotta say that if the opportunity came up and the job I was going for was not that important I will circle C as the answer. LOL! You never know, it could be a fun conversation.

cyberguypr

Seriously, where are you guys finding these candidates?

Akaricloud

Those seem like very basic questions that any VCP should know in my opinion. I only have around a year experience working with VMware along with my VCP and could quite easily talk your ear off about how they work, setup and use cases.

I'd suggest you keep searching and not lower your standards.

Polynomial

cyberguypr wrote: »

Seriously, where are you guys finding these candidates?

This forum has taught me there's probably a lot of incompetent people out there in the IT industry based on the anecdotes I read of work situations.

sizeon

Essendon wrote: »

Of course it is too much!! We asked a Microsoft engineer which protocol's used for domain authentication and he said SMTP. This was after he said he had worked in very large companies where they didnt have domains, just workgroups, but still utilized GPO's. We asked a few more questions to confirm he wasnt having a brain-fart or something, he wasnt.

Seriously though, didnt your phone interview weed them out? In our case, the guy was able to somehow deflect the questions that our recruiters threw at him.

Is it Kerberos?

Essendon

@sizeon - yes

snadam

Yikes. Maybe they were nervous, and lost any and all virtualization knowledge at that very moment?

jvrlopez

Essendon wrote: »

We asked a Microsoft engineer which protocol's used for domain authentication and he said SMTP.

Email? Lord...

jmritenour

Well, you *can* use SMTP for replication, so that counts for something, I guess?

undomiel

cyberguypr wrote: »

Seriously, where are you guys finding these candidates?

They are all over the place and are all too easily hired by managers that disregard the input of any engineers that may have interviewed the guy. Or claims that the need is too dire so let's hire the guy without letting the engineers take a crack at him. I see it happen way too often.

dave330i

Akaricloud wrote: »

Those seem like very basic questions that any VCP should know in my opinion.

That's how I like to interview. I prefer to ask basic, fundamental questions and see how complex are their answers. If they give me correct but basic answers, then I would start deep diving into the fundamentals or ask harder questions.

403Forbidden

I have had a few jobs so far in IT, mostly behind the scenes tech bench work and some help desk. I was asked to sit in on an interview for a peer to see what the prospect actually knew vs what she said she knew. Surprisingly she knew quite a lot about every subject matter thrown at her. Despite having no experience in the work place and only her A+ as of a month ago she was readily able to troubleshoot and repair our 'interview' system we set up for her.

Sometimes people can surprise you, don't base everything about a person based on how many certs they have or how long they've been working in your field. That is however not to say give the kid working at mcdonalds an interview because he tinkers with his moms computer.

TechGuy215

Hmmm... this seems kinda sketchy. Admittedly when it comes to VMware I've only scratched the surface and have a lot to learn, but even I know what HA, DRS, EVC are. If this interviewee is claming VCP knowledge and can't answer those questions, then it is likely he dumped the exam. I seem to be seeing a lot of this going on lately. I think it's time for some of the vendors to step up and better protect their certifications for the intergrity of the people holding them (that actually earned them with knowledge) such as ISC2.

gkca

cyberguypr wrote: »

Seriously, where are you guys finding these candidates?

Well, sometimes the interviewers are not much better themselves - I've been interviewed recently and the technical guy was speaking with such an accent that I had to ask him to repeat each question tow to three times and probably still got half of them wrong as I was struggling to understand what is that he's asking me...

BGraves

^gkca - I too have felt the pain of interviewers asking redonk questions or being difficult to even understand what they were asking.
In fact, once I was told "It came down to you and another guy, and so now we are going to ask you both 30 random questions and whoever gets the most right gets the job". Not surprisingly, they went with the guy that was local whereas I was looking to relocate.

Although that's off topic, on topic of your original post...you are right, you have a cert like VCP and had to go to a class to get it, you should know what these acronyms stand for. Even I've got them down for the most part and haven't even had the class/cert!

cyberguypr

undomiel wrote: »

They are all over the place and are all too easily hired by managers that disregard the input of any engineers that may have interviewed the guy. Or claims that the need is too dire so let's hire the guy without letting the engineers take a crack at him. I see it happen way too often.

I do not understand how this happens. At my previous job the manager had a bad habit of not getting the engineers' input before hiring someone. He would interview people and hire them based on God knows what criteria. The story always repeated itself, 3/6/9 months down the road it was evident the person lacked either basic knowledge, common sense, or a fatal combination of both and had to be terminated. The same manager one time balked at a candidate's request to meet the team of people he would be working with. Incomprehensible.

Akaricloud

dave330i wrote: »

That's how I like to interview. I prefer to ask basic, fundamental questions and see how complex are their answers. If they give me correct but basic answers, then I would start deep diving into the fundamentals or ask harder questions.

Yep, start basic and continue getting deeper until you find the limit of their knowledge. When they can't even answer the basic questions though, then it's time to move on.

It's sad to see such a great opportunity and nobody to take it. I've been keeping my eye out for positions like this locally over the past couple years and literally have found zero.

dave330i

Akaricloud wrote: »

It's sad to see such a great opportunity and nobody to take it. I've been keeping my eye out for positions like this locally over the past couple years and literally have found zero.

Post your resume on LinkedIn and Dice. Recruiters will contact you.

Akaricloud

dave330i wrote: »

Post your resume on LinkedIn and Dice. Recruiters will contact you.

I likely could have stepped up my game a bit when searching which would have helped. Oh well, I've moved on to bigger and better things!

Now I'm just watching to keep a gauge on various sub-markets within IT and look at what is all on the rise.

Best of luck with your interviewing!

devils_haircut

Essendon wrote: »

...asked a Microsoft engineer which protocol's used for domain authentication and he said SMTP.

Sometimes I think I'll never know enough to be a good system admin, and then I read things like this and realize that I'm a freakin' genius, lol.

BGraves

devils_haircut wrote: »

Sometimes I think I'll never know enough to be a good system admin, and then I read things like this and realize that I'm a freakin' genius, lol.

To be fair, he may have been confused. After all, in Active Directory Sites & Services, you can use IP or SMTP as an Inter-Site Transport. (Not that I would, mind you) Some people do not interview well! (Which of course makes it all the better for those of us that do!)

Verities

dave330i wrote: »

Is it too much to ask that virtualization engineers know what HA, DRS, EVC, etc are and how they work? Basic stuff covered in VCP?

Before I interviewed for my current VMware Sysadmin position, I had no idea what any of those were. However, before the interview I went to a book store and bought vSphere for Dummies, read that thing back to back 2 times then explained what they were in the interview when I was asked about them. I can't imagine someone interviewing for an virtualization engineering position not knowing what HA, DRS, and EVC are. I think your questions are simple, fair, and concise.

I'm now on the interviewing panel for new candidates (we usually have about 3-5 people interview 1 candidate all over the phone) and we like to ask have you worked with vMotion, have you worked with Storage vMotion, what type of experience do you have with backend storage. If they haven't worked with those items, we have them tell us about them. If they're wrong or far off, we kind of lead them in the right direction to see if they know it (the nerves can affect your mind for some reason ) and explain we work with this stuff every day, so it's kind of expected...along with the requirements being on the job posting (lol). We've seen a lot of VCP certified candidates with little to no experience with VMware, which usually makes us pass on them. We like to hire those who have some experience, understand how virtualization/how to handle VMware ESXi, and want to further their knowledge in virtualization. It's like with anything in IT, when you hear "insert here" is the next big thing and that's where you can make lots of money, get ready for the wave of "certified" professionals that can't answer basic questions about the products they're certified in.

-hype

devils_haircut wrote: »

Sometimes I think I'll never know enough to be a good system admin, and then I read things like this and realize that I'm a freakin' genius, lol.

Exactly, lol.