wow - best interview question ever

martell1000 · February 2014

had an interview today - question was:

you got an internet connection at home, website didnt show up - what do you do?

i was throwing in EVERYTHING you might wanna check (ip on computer, local network address, dns, cable, switch etc)

and finaly he just smiled and said "you forgot someting" and i was like "!?!?!?!?" and he "check anoter website"

bam

that guy got me - and i dont deserve the job

dpsmooth15 · February 2014

you are right you dont, Mcdonalds is hiring ! ha ha just playing.

martell1000 · February 2014

haha i failed big time!

dpsmooth15 · February 2014

I know the feeling..I hate those questions when its like 10 different answers and they are looking for 1 of those 10.

martell1000 · February 2014

i really dont know if he was looking for it or if he was pulling a joke - rest of the interview was real good but i was like "good one" when i realised what just happened

dpsmooth15 · February 2014

If it was a recruiter… who knows what will happen. 5 out of 6 of the recruiters I have talked to… I never heard from them again all of a sudden them replying to a email is like milking a cow.

in my head I am like, you found my resume, talked to me for 30minutes, gave you my ssn to verify my clearance (get a American Express Blue Cash/Discover IT) and wasted my time for what? they are hard to predict. In all honesty, I dont suggest it.. but I have had better luck going through the actual site, than recruiters. Not found of putting my resume in a database with 500 others..and dont. I only apply for jobs that have came out in the last 24-48hours MAX.

RouteMyPacket · February 2014

He was basically checking your thought process. Lack of experience would drive someone to immediately dig into other areas besides simply checking another site but all in all you would have found it so I wouldn't sweat it.

How many times over the years have you had a user say "Bla bla bla doesn't work"..you go check and try it for them and it works "I swear it didn't work before you showed up, must have been your presence. haha"

SweenMachine · February 2014

REMOVED unnecessary quote

@RouteMyPacket
I agree with this..

OP, don't feel bad.. I used to respond similar.. but after 10 years of IT hdelp desk and troubleshooting experience, if you would have asked me that question now, the very first thing I would have said to the question was 'I would have the end user go to Google.com or MSN.com" or something like that.. it isn't a deal breaker. I did the techincal interviews in my last role, and I would ask similar questions... your drilling down show the tech skill, him mentioning they "one thing you missed" was just to help you in the future..

scott

martell1000 · February 2014

it was an IT guy and it was a face to face interview. funny thing is: if this happens in real life first thing i DO is check another site ... i guess everyone does...

but in this situation i was like "omg omg internet connection fail layer 1,2,3, standard gateway dns cable connection switch ..."
he also asked me things about any of the things i mentioned "how do you find out the standard gateway, how could you check if its really the dns" etc

anway this will not happen to me second time ...

eLs · February 2014

Had a similar question but it was more involved how my thought process was and the answer was ISP peering issue if the website does not show up at all on your connection but it does on your friends home connection confirming the site is up.

Kept saying no forget that thats not the problem for every reasonable answer I came up to lol.

PurpleIT · February 2014

I had an interview where they guy flat-out told me that I was over-thinking it. I relaxed, pulled back a little and did just fine after that... I was even offered the job.

dotcom85 · February 2014

its like your boss called you early morning and shouts "I CAN'T LOG IN MY EMAIL SEEMS LIKE MY PASSWORD IS NOT WORKING AND THE INTERNET IS WORKING FINE", but you realized immediately the caps lock is on

,

kohr-ah · February 2014

I just figure you would maybe enjoy this.

I was working one day and a friend Was subbing in doing sys admin work work for a fortune 500 company. He calls me in a panic the entire place the Internet was down and people were getting peeved.

That is the day Google.com went down for half the US. I asked him what you did basically.
Ping something outside . Is it up?
Is email working?
Is yahoo working?
Then Google is down?

"how do you know!? "
"Saw it on Slashdot on the train ride in"

martell1000 · February 2014

thanks for the cheer up guys. one thing i learned from that interview is that you shouldnt feel too confident when confronted with '"easy" questions. i was preparing stuff like multi area ospf or lacp for this interview, since it is a really big company and i got some years of IT experience under my belt ...

AwesomeGarrett · February 2014

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

How many times over the years have you had a user say "Bla bla bla doesn't work"..you go check and try it for them and it works "I swear it didn't work before you showed up, must have been your presence. haha"

LOL, yeah because we just ooze bits at the finger tips.

Don't worry martell1000, your not the first and wont be the last to fall for that question.

TheProf · February 2014

Its ok, sometimes we get nervous and come up with all kinds of answers, but live and learn I guess

moreland11 · February 2014

I understand its a "This guy is geared up for geek session, lets throw a face palm at him" question but I normally test the site on my phone first.

MagnumOpus · March 2014

Woow. Thanks for the heads up.

--chris-- · March 2014

RouteMyPacket wrote: »

He was basically checking your thought process. Lack of experience would drive someone to immediately dig into other areas besides simply checking another site but all in all you would have found it so I wouldn't sweat it.

How many times over the years have you had a user say "Bla bla bla doesn't work"..you go check and try it for them and it works "I swear it didn't work before you showed up, must have been your presence. haha"

Having just finished my first month in desktop support, I can honestly say 20% of my tickets have this occur. Its ok, my resolve time is amazing because of these

@OP, don't feel bad. We are technical people, we always start trouble shooting from a slightly higher technical place than most other users! If it was me I would be checking my physical connection, then my multi-purpose device, then another site simply because that's the order in which my problems are most likely to occur.

jthunderbird · March 2014

Another problem I have had in interviews before is the person interviewing you will often throw real world issues that THEY have in the interview to see if you fit that particular position. That sucks because often times, their weird problem is just that... weird and uncommon.

I interviewed for a Network Engineer position one time and the guy asked what I would do to track down a rouge dhcp server handing out private IPs... I first explained why that should never happen with proper network security principles in place then appeased him by explaining how I would try and track down the rouge router (find a machine assigned an IP, check default gateway, arp request for MAC, track down port for MAC)

He said "nope, you need to run wireshark and find where the device is that way"

TF?!?! Didnt know I could use wireshark on your crummy unsecure network?!?!

thenjduke · March 2014

jthunderbird wrote: »

Another problem I have had in interviews before is the person interviewing you will often throw real world issues that THEY have in the interview to see if you fit that particular position. That sucks because often times, their weird problem is just that... weird and uncommon.

I interviewed for a Network Engineer position one time and the guy asked what I would do to track down a rouge dhcp server handing out private IPs... I first explained why that should never happen with proper network security principles in place then appeased him by explaining how I would try and track down the rouge router (find a machine assigned an IP, check default gateway, arp request for MAC, track down port for MAC)

He said "nope, you need to run wireshark and find where the device is that way"

TF?!?! Didnt know I could use wireshark on your crummy unsecure network?!?!

Question is why don't they have security invoked on the network in the first place and would not have to worry about rogue DHCP server. This is one of the first things they teach you in Networking 101 lol.

the_Grinch · March 2014

It is questions like that when I decided that I was ready to move on to tougher roles. That's a question when fielded by a first level tech would get the answer he was thinking of.

wow - best interview question ever

Comments