Well I didnt land my dream Cisco job, but yesterday I got a call from a local company I submitted a resume to over a month ago. Interviewed with the HR lady, had her laughing and created a little rapport.
She liked me enough to schedule another interview with their Sr. Sys Admin. I just got off the phone interview with him, went pretty darn good, said he's going to talk with the HR lady and get an on site interview setup.
I don't really want this job as Systems Administrator is a step back from Network Engineer, but hey with $140 bucks left in my pocket and facing eviction and the possibility of having to get a McJob I'll take what I can get.
Phone interview questions were pretty easy.
Q: What kind of VPN's have you setup and what hardware?
A:IPSec with PIX/ASA/ Sonicwall, limited Netscreen experience but have done deployments before.
Q:What windows server operating systems have you worked with? A:Server2000/2003, CentOS 5.1, Redhat 5.1
Q:What desktop platforms are you familiar with?
A: XP/Vista/Win7
Q:What antivirus platforms have you worked with and how did you deploy to the clients?
A:Symantec Anti-Virus Enterprise Edition, push to clients listed in AD, manually install and join to server on 'problem computers'
Q:What backup software are you familiar with?
A: Veritas / Symantec Backup Exec, + Windows Backup
Q:What network monitoring tools have you used and why?
A: PRTG and various others, worked for a company did streaming events needed to monitor network performance.
Q: Whats your experience with Ghost.
A: Used ghost a lot as an additional form of backup for our servers, also used it many times for small server deployments.
Q: Have you ever did active directory migration before?
A: Yes had to do several of those migrating from Server 2000/2003, gotta prep the domain with the microsoft tool, yadda yadda.
Q: What switches are you familiar with and how have you implemented them?
A: Cisco Catalyst switches both L2/L3, very familiar with the CLI. Also worked with Force10 S-Series switches. bla bla
All in all I answered all the questions spot on, he expanded upon each one probing a little further since both him and HR lady admitted they were using a staffing agency to find potential employee and they all sucked balls.
Well looks like I will get getting another in person interview. Time to bedazzle another potential employer. Though once again, Sys Admin seems a step back to me from Network Engineer
![:\](https://community.infosecinstitute.com/resources/emoji/confused.png ":\")
