What are some good interview questions

M

millhouse

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 19, 2004
Messages
173
Technical questions related to windows systems engineering (NOT AD)? I'm trying to come up with some good ones for this afternoon. I already quite a few but I have been using these forever and am trying to get some new stuff.

Make em as hard or as easy as you like!


Thanks! ;) :D
 
Although not testing technical skills per se - a typical engineer question...any engineer is
Why are man hole covers round?

There is a litany of answers all of which are usually correct....mulitple answers shows creativity and ingenuity, two things key in any engineer.
 
- What do you feel the top (3) most important things that (position) does?
- Tell me about a time that something didn't go as planned (or broke). How did you handle it?
- What are (3) of the most important things an IT department provides to a company (or customer)
- What things do you feel a company (or customer) expects from you?
- How much wood could a wood chuck chuck if a wood chuck could chuck wood?
 
Difference between RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0, and which is most appropriate for what type of enviroment (OS, database, file server, etc).

Boot.ini settings (/PAE, /3GB, etc)

performance monitoring, etc, and how to tell if you need to upgrade and what parts to upgrade (disk bottlenecks, low on RAM, etc)

These are all pretty easy...
 
Asking tech type questions are ok, but I'd really focus more on the personality type questions. Any trained monkey can recite the RAID levels and if they don't know, they can learn/be taught.

Some suggestions:

What do you do when you can't solve a problem?
Tell me about a specific project that used [blank] skills - where said skill is either on the resume or required for the job
What is you troubleshooting process when faced with an issue you've never seen before?
How do you juggle your workload.

All will give you an idea about how the person "works" more so than what he/she knows.

 
I always ask about the corporate prostitute plan.

No prostititutes, no worky.
 
*Bingo!*

Someone with a solid head on their shoulders, and the ability to use it..."think"...even if they have ZERO IT skills....can quickly become more valueable, more of an asset, compared with the guy who just passed some cert tests and "appears" smart...only because they spent a few weeks at braindump sites memorizing answers to questions (but in reality...can't apply them)

Party2go9820 said:
Asking tech type questions are ok, but I'd really focus more on the personality type questions. Any trained monkey can recite the RAID levels and if they don't know, they can learn/be taught.

Some suggestions:

What do you do when you can't solve a problem?
Tell me about a specific project that used [blank] skills - where said skill is either on the resume or required for the job
What is you troubleshooting process when faced with an issue you've never seen before?
How do you juggle your workload.

All will give you an idea about how the person "works" more so than what he/she knows.

Click to expand...
 
What's your favorite search engine?

During the summer of ‘02 I was in the last mile of hiring for a helpdesk position and was left with three very strong candidates. The final question I asked was the aforementioned, two of them responded Yahoo. I picked the guy that said Google. He turned out great and eventually moved on to become a network admin for a museum.
 
rottendumpling said:
What's your favorite search engine?

During the summer of ‘02 I was in the last mile of hiring for a helpdesk position and was left with three very strong candidates. The final question I asked was the aforementioned, two of them responded Yahoo. I picked the guy that said Google. He turned out great and eventually moved on to become a network admin for a museum.
Click to expand...

Heh, that's what I oughta do when I review my guys... and fire the one who says Yahoo. j/k. :)

I've yet to have the need to interview anyone, but I might soon -- we're so understaffed it's insane, and my boss and I both agree that another guy may be necessary to meet our SLAs. When I was the one being interviewed, only a few technical questions were asked, mostly to make sure I wasn't a washout I suppose... Most of the questions were high-level in nature, dealing with my personality and methodology with handling people in a managerial sense.
 
Party2go9820 said:
Asking tech type questions are ok, but I'd really focus more on the personality type questions. Any trained monkey can recite the RAID levels and if they don't know, they can learn/be taught.

Some suggestions:

What do you do when you can't solve a problem?
Tell me about a specific project that used [blank] skills - where said skill is either on the resume or required for the job
What is you troubleshooting process when faced with an issue you've never seen before?
How do you juggle your workload.

All will give you an idea about how the person "works" more so than what he/she knows.
Click to expand...

I've ran into these the most. Not many hiring managers care as much about your hardcore technical skills as your ability to perform job duties. if knowing technical skills is part of your job duty, you will be trained for it. If you can't speak clearly and get to the point to an upper manager or CIO, you are not going be good at the job.

Technical skills are easier to acquire than social/behavioral/thinking skills.
 
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