Went through an awesome interview today!

Dont you love it when you've been through an interview when the conversations are intelligent and engaging?! Well I had an amazing one today, it was quite unnerving to start with - I'll be honest about it. My interviewers were the following

- One current VCDX
- 2 aspiring VCDX's, both having been accepted to defend but unable to make it past the defence the first time.
- Their manager, a gun Windows guy

When I first saw them, I was like.. Damn, this is going to tough as.. I recognised them and so did they. They ensured I was comfortable, offered me a glass of water, which I accepted. They talked about the weather and sports for 5 or so minutes to ensure I was at ease. I was gradually eased into the interview, really. I was asked a "tell us about yourself" type question and from then on it became technical. They were impressed with my certs too, asked me about my lab. I took a detailed Visio diagram of my current and past lab setup and showed it to them, with a stroke of luck I had taken 5 copies of each diagram and was able to give them one each.

From there, it went on to open-ended questions. One was - what's VMware HA and how is it different from stateful things like MSCS. 2nd question was about resource pools and their use as folders. Then I was asked about how I would go about troubleshooting performance problems. Next up was a long discussion about how they would design a new environment they were looking for someone to build. I talked at length about cluster/host/storage/VM/security design, blew their socks off really - they appreciated the detailed and comprehensive response. Then came up questions about SRM design, how they wanted to go from SRM 3.something to 5.5. I was able to talk SRM too having done a DR test at my work - told them about separating applications into their own datastores, the need for replication and folders. Finally, we talked about NUMA nodes/boundaries and how vCPU's and pCPU's work and how over-allocation had a detrimental impact. Lastly, I was asked about Storage DRS and auto-tiering.

Loved the format of the interview. It was more discussion-oriented than them asking a set of questions. I reckon this is a great way to judge a candidate's depth and breadth of knowledge. You dont want to ask a candidate trivia questions, you know things like - what's the max number of VM's supported per 5.5 host. Chances are the candidate wont know. Such things are easily looked up, this is what the config maximum's documents are for, right?

I thanked them for their time and the opportunity to meet with a group of highly skilled people. I made sure I wasnt kissing a.. too, you never want to come across as doing that. Now the wait to hear the decision..!! And thanks for reading!

EDIT: I used the whiteboard too to further articulate my ideas and show I was not afraid to stand up and speak.

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Comments

tprice5

Awesome. Sounds like you killed it. Can't wait to hear what the offer comes in at.

kj0

Great Work bud. Sounds like you're ready to do your VCDX

Stay safe, Looks like you guys are having some wild weather. (Definitely a talking point)

tomtom1

Manny,

Great man! I'm so happy for you, I sure hope you can nail this position to help your career further. Was it by any chance at Nutanix?

cyberguypr

Best of luck. Don't forget that once you get the gig 10% of your pay comes back to me for all the positive vibes I'm sending your way

coffeeluvr

Sounds like you nailed it!!! Your phone will be ringing soon with an offer!!! Best of luck!!

jibbajabba

Had a similar experience recently which was absolutely fantastic, only for the company to go silent on me .. Hope you got more luck - well done

cgrimaldo

I hope you get good news soon!

coreyb80

Love to hear stories such as these as they are very inspiring.

FloOz

Goodjob!!!

Essendon

Cheers guys! No this wasnt at Nutanix, though I wish it had been! They have hired some amazing talent lately, I reckon every VCDX in Australia either works @ Nutanix or Pernix. I should hear back from the interviewers today though I wont be totally bummed because I have 2 other interviews lined up.

@cyberguypr - beers on me mate if/when I come to Chicago. There are about 15-20 folks on TE I'd like to have a beer or two with actually, that'll be an awful lot of beers though!

kj0

Essendon wrote: »

Cheers guys! No this wasnt at Nutanix, though I wish it had been! They have hired some amazing talent lately, I reckon every VCDX in Australia either works @ Nutanix or Pernix.

..or VMware.

IF you look up the Brisbane folk in the VCDX Directory. there about 3 or 4 that work at VMware.

There's a a few VCDX's tat have just started at Nutanix all over the world.

dave330i

Congrats. Did you happen to mention this nugget of goodness while talking about NUMA? VMware KB: vNUMA is disabled if VCPU hotplug is enabled

Essendon

Thanks Dave, no I didnt know about it! Very interesting! It's almost funny when you think you know a fair bit of this big black hole that is vSphere, something always shows up you never knew about. n00b forever..

@kj0 - yep, forgot to add VMware in there. Most DX's around the world work for them.

MrAgent

First off, Congrats!
Second, tell us who the company is. A big company?

Essendon

@MrAgent - havent got the job yet. I dont think I've indicated that anywhere in the thread

But yes, it's with a very large company, a very large bank in fact. 1000+ hosts, 7000+ VM's and god-knows how much storage..

UnixGuy

Congrats mate, sounds like an awesome opportunity

Is it full time or contract?

JeanM

Good luck man, great job in interview! Sounds like it went really well!

cmitchell_00

Sounds good I hope you get the opportunity. Keep us posted!

MrAgent

Essendon wrote: »

@MrAgent - havent got the job yet. I dont think I've indicated that anywhere in the thread But yes, it's with a very large company, a very large bank in fact. 1000+ hosts, 7000+ VM's and god-knows how much storage..

Get them to buy Fusion-io when you get hired

kj0

MrAgent wrote: »

Get them to buy Fusion-io when you get hired

Great sales pitch :P

Essendon

In case anyone is wondering whether I got it or not, I am still waiting! Damn this wait..

Deathmage

Essendon wrote: »

In case anyone is wondering whether I got it or not, I am still waiting! Damn this wait..

was just going to ask.... fingers crossed for you!

cyberguypr

The wait is killing me. Give me their number. I'll give'em a ring

Essendon

@cyberguypr – No need to give them a ring! I GOT IT!!

I got the verbal offer from the recruiter just before I met up with the awesome UnixGuy for a coffee this morning! The recruiter told me he had got the background check process started and a written offer would be sent after the check comes in. I told him firmly that I wasn’t turning my notice in till I had the offer in my email to which he agreed wholeheartedly. Some details:

- 6 month rolling contract upto a maximum of 18 months after which they either make me permanent or let me go.
- Very decent jump in pay which is kind of a given in contracts considering there’s no PTO/bennies
- The chance to work with and learn off some awesome folks (probably the biggest perk!)
- Some interesting projects (move them from vSphere 5 to 5.5, a new VDI implementation, migrate to new storage [unknown vendor], general performance improvements, upgrade SRM to 5.5, other bits and pieces)

Pretty much my dream job (for now, at least). I’ll be leaving a comfortable, decently paying permanent job that I could've stayed at forever. And stagnated! Big risk you may think, and I agree to some extent. But I needed something like this to push me to the next level. I had plateaued over the last 6-7 months and definitely needed a challenging gig. You gotta take a risk sometime, otherwise you’d never know how high you could've gone. "What if” never went to the arena!!

Cisco Inferno

congratulations! Another win for TE.

I also ooo'd when read what kind of people interviewed you.

Putney

Congrats, sounds amazing for you!

UnixGuy

Essendon wrote: »

I got the verbal offer from the recruiter just before I met up with the awesome UnixGuy for a coffee this morning! ...

Congrats mate! It was nice meeting you!

Go TE Australia!

Deathmage

So happy for you! Hopefully I get a positive outcome like you soon. I've become stagnant at my current job for 6 months but I was comfortable. But change is needed just scary since it's unknown.

I've applied to about 30 job and got 9 calls so far since posting over the past 24 hours.

Best of luck!

cyberguypr

Bravo my friend! Popping open a Lagunitas IPA in celebration

lsud00d

cyberguypr wrote: »

Popping open a Lagunitas IPA in celebration

I just had that for the first time earlier this month when I visited a friend in San Francisco...definitely a great IPA!

Also many congrats Essendon!!! It sounds like an amazing opportunity. Also the nice thing about these contracts is that even though there's a possibility it ends in 'x' timeframe, the huge increase in pay gives you a nice nest egg if there is time between employment.