Got an interview, now I have questions

--chris--

I applied for a Desktop support job around 2:00 pm eastern today. Around 2:30 pm eastern I received a phone call from someone at Apex Staffing in VA.

I received a quick technical interview that was all A+ material with a little bit of N+ and one from what I would expect on a MCTS exam (rebuilding roaming profiles). He said I did well and that he is setting up my soft interview tomorrow with a Dell service coordinator, a member of the IT team at the company that I applied to and the rep from Apex. He explained to me today that the interview will be almost 100% non-technical with questions like "explain a time you failed to deliver on a promise" and "tell me about a time you handled an irate customer" etc etc etc...

He said they will have a decision within 24 hours so by Friday I should know if I have a new job! I am VERY excited for many reasons (the employer has great glass door reviews, the pay is 20% better than my last IT job, company laptop, cell phone reimbursement).

My questions:

a. Anyone work for/through Apex before? I have never worked in this situation, any advice?
b. He said I would be contracted to Dell then Dell would contract me to the employer. Anyone been a Dell employee like this before?
c. Any advice for the interview tomorrow? I consider my soft skill set to be better than my technical skill set at this point, so I am not worried but if its possible to prepare for this I would like to do it.


Closing thoughts:

ITIL got me the interview (again), he said they use that in the HQ of Apex and they really like it. He liked my business degree, he said that was a +1 at this point. He said the 2 months of work I did as an IT intern covered pretty much everything I would do here and that was ultimately what made him call me.

My resume was posted here a week ago, I was asking for some advice. Thanks to all those that helped refine it.


edit: While its fresh in my head and since others like me have asked before, this is what I was asked in the technical interview:

What is safe mode? Whats it used for?
What does TCP/IP stand for?
List a few reasons why a user would be unable to log on to the local network
What does DHCP stand for and what does it do?
What is a .PST file?
How do you rebuild a roaming user profile (mentioned this above, still need to look it up)?
A user is printing a job to the nearest TCP/IP printer. It is a memo, but the printer is printing on mailer labels. How do you fix this? (I asked if there was more than one paper tray, he said yes).
You have a Vista PC and want to upgrade to Win 7 pro. Would you:
a. upgrade the ram from 1 to 2 GB?
b. create an extra partition?
c. Install SP2?
d. disable UAC?
The answer was (a and/or c)

That was all of them. I got the upgrade question wrong, meh...I was almost right.

--chris--

Soft interview is now done. As I was hanging up from that call I got another call from a hiring manager at a hospital for a helpdesk job I put in for. We did some technical and some soft questions, he really liked what I put out there and invited me in for a on site interview Monday!

I went months without a call back, not in a matter of a week I have three call backs and two final round interviews. Must be the new year/new budget?

The first interviewer called me back about 30 minutes after the interview and told me I did very well. I said thanks, I appreciate the feedback. He made sure to " no really, that went very well"! Feels good! I have to thank TE and its members again! Its all the threads on here that helped me prepare for the interviews!

Now for questions during the interview (this was for a Dell field service tech position that is being contracted to a Hospital):

Explain a situation where you had an irate customer. How did you handle them? How did you resolve the problem?
How have you failed to deliver on a promise before (all IT related please)?
What type of supervisor do you work best under? Why?
How have you gotten this far into your IT career?
Explain a little about yourself in regards to your IT experience.
Explain a situation where there was a problem with software/hardware that effected a user. How did you explain the problem to them and how did you resolve it?

Then there were some yes/no questions (ever convicted of a felony, work for dell, do any drugs, etc...).

--chris--

I thought I would update this for anyone that might find it later or who read it before and might find themselves in a similiar spot.

My experience with Apex has been superb since day one. My rep returns emails and calls within 5-10 minutes everytime, gets me answers and hooks me up with internal Apex people that provide answers he cant.

Like I said above, I was contracted to Dell for helpdesk/refresh work. However that was misleading...in a good way. I am doing refresh work, but not directly related to the XP expiration. The environment I work in has about 4000 desktops/laptops that all have different lease dates. The department I work in handles "refreshing" these systems with new systems. It was called a "long term" refresh project because its open ended, never ending. Its been going on for 11 years I was told.

The part that I didn't know about is that I will also be doing tier 2 support! What a surprise! We are the second tier of support after the helpdesk call center. We handle everything from third party computer hardware that needs a "best guess" at repair before getting moved onto the third party support to troubleshooting basic network problems (today was a DNS issue) to organizing/forwarding change requests to the appropriate departments.

I think the real topping on the cake is how the department I work in is viewed by the organization. We are the people that 95% of the workers see when they need IT support, so as my boss put it we are the faces to this places IT/IS department. Our CIO has a strong push towards customer service, people skills over technical skills (although I was assured technical skills are very much required) and making sure IT is always viewed in a positive light. This has made interacting with users a very good experience. We are generally hailed as the victors, coming to save the day...instead of the people who practice dark magic that may get things working again.

One final thing: I was under the impression that Desktop Engineer was another term for desktop support/etc...at this place the Desktop Engineers are VBscript/Powershell guru's that create and modify the desktop experience through the scripts they make. The stuff they can do with VB is amazing!

kohr-ah

Sounds like you found a good deal and are quite happy with it

Glad to see that. Keep at it! (I've seen powershell do some fun amazing stuff)

devils_haircut

Weird...it sounds like you work where I work. I mean, EXACTLY where I work. But I don't know anyone named Chris.

--chris--

@devils haircut: if your in Michigan it's possible