Phone Interview

Had a phone interview yesterday with a consulting company for a Jr. Sys Admin that has been in business for 10 years now. Description of job:

# A+ is required.
# Relevant MCP certification is of strong benefit and Network+ is desirable.
# System Administrator experience or exposure with a Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory environment.
# Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (all versions) and an understanding of Microsoft Exchange.
# Experience and understanding of remote access and connectivity, such as RADIUS and VPN.
# Must have ticketing system experience, ITIL framework is a plus.
# Demonstrative ability to troubleshoot Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003.

Phone Interview went pretty well. He asked me about 6 questions. There was one that I goofed on: "Customer logs into the corporate network through a Cisco VPN and she cannot access mail, what's the problem?"

Other than that one, I did pretty well overall. Hopefully I did well enough get to sit down with them, and talk more for an in person interview. There's also Exchange server i will be working with to, if it comes to that. Wanted to get my MCSE done, before going for something like this, but I love the exposure to all the experience so I said why not. Well see. If not, there's others.

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Comments

networker050184

Good luck!

murdatapes

Well, they just called back. Face to face interview on Thursday. Said it will be 2 hours of going over the company and some tech questions. Any thing to brush up on? I have no Exchange experience, what do I say about when I have no experience but knowledgeable about a subject or no knowledge at all?

laidbackfreak

good luck with the f2f

dont sweat about the stuff you dont know, there not expecting you to know it all, concetrate on your strengths and focus on them. If you are asked about stuff currently outside your scope mention your obviously keen on learning new stuff and (if applicable) thats its on your current target lists of learning once you've knocked x, y, z out the way.
Dont bull as even if you manage to get in the right area it will go against you. That's not to say dont talk about areas thatyou dont know, you can mention that your aware of the concepts but not the details.

relax enjoy and learn from it

its all good.

networker050184

Just be honest about it. If you don't know tell them, but let them know you are interested and show you have the ability to learn new things quickly with other examples.

BradleyHU

damn son...2 hrs??? where you interviewing at? but yo, be yourself, but i'm sure that goes without saying. and like already stated, dont sweat the stuff you dont know, just bang out on the stuff you do know. a good fun personality, and the willingness to learn can actually be in your favor for the job sometimes. if employers feel like you'll mesh real well with the team, they might be willing to take a chance on you.

laidbackfreak

BradleyHU wrote: »

if employers feel like you'll mesh real well with the team, they might be willing to take a chance on you.

thats actually the best advice on here, they have already decided you have the skills (or at least the ability to learn them) now its a case of selling you to them so they believe your the best person to fit in with the current team\or plans

BigTex71

Be honest on the stuff you don't know, but let them know you have Google skillz for getting the information efficiently.

whatthehell

murdatapes wrote: »

Had a phone interview yesterday with a consulting company for a Jr. Sys Admin that has been in business for 10 years now. Description of job:

# A+ is required.
# Relevant MCP certification is of strong benefit and Network+ is desirable.
# System Administrator experience or exposure with a Windows 2000/2003 Active Directory environment.
# Working knowledge of Microsoft Office (all versions) and an understanding of Microsoft Exchange.
# Experience and understanding of remote access and connectivity, such as RADIUS and VPN.
# Must have ticketing system experience, ITIL framework is a plus.
# Demonstrative ability to troubleshoot Windows 2000, XP and Server 2003.

Phone Interview went pretty well. He asked me about 6 questions. There was one that I goofed on: "Customer logs into the corporate network through a Cisco VPN and she cannot access mail, what's the problem?"

Other than that one, I did pretty well overall. Hopefully I did well enough get to sit down with them, and talk more for an in person interview. There's also Exchange server i will be working with to, if it comes to that. Wanted to get my MCSE done, before going for something like this, but I love the exposure to all the experience so I said why not. Well see. If not, there's others.

So out of curiosity, what would anyone say the answer to that question would be? The "Customer logs into the corporate network through a Cisco VPN and she cannot access mail, what's the problem?"

Either way, best of luck bro and hope you get it!

networker050184

whatthehell wrote: »

So out of curiosity, what would anyone say the answer to that question would be? The "Customer logs into the corporate network through a Cisco VPN and she cannot access mail, what's the problem?"

Either way, best of luck bro and hope you get it!

They probably wanted to see some good troubleshooting logic with this question. I'd expect the candidate to ask a series of questions to try and gain more information on the issue as it could be so many things you can't really say one right off the bat as a definitive answer.

My $.02

Neeko

networker050184 wrote: »

They probably wanted to see some good troubleshooting logic with this question. I'd expect the candidate to ask a series of questions to try and gain more information on the issue as it could be so many things you can't really say one right off the bat as a definitive answer.

My $.02

That's true, there's a lot to assume. Client or Site to Site? What device is terminating the VPN? Is there a firewall?

But if they expected some answers, first thing I'd do is check the VPN is up, if not then check the customer has Internet connectivity, no point troubleshooting a VPN if the main connection is down or the user isn't even connected locally to a router. Then double check the VPN connection, and that local IP's are pingable from end to end. If it's up, look to access rules on the terminating device, if the TCP traffic in question is being allowed over VPN then test connectivity between the terminating device and the mail server, and then look at the mail server itself.

Judging by the job description they probably just wanted to see troubleshooting process in a server based context so my reply is a bit worhtless lol.

Forsaken_GA

Always check DNS

whatthehell

Thanks for all the good responses!

Agent6376

"Has it worked before or is this an initial setup?"