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UNIX Hints & Hacks |
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Chapter 10: System Administration: The Occupation |
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As you read this section, so are potential candidates whom you may be interviewing. This may or may not make a difference to you as an interviewer. It's just a warning. There are mainly two types of interviews that you can conduct: a phone interview and an in-person interview. There might be circumstances when you want to choose one over the other.
The best times to conduct phone interviews are when the candidate is a long distance away or out of state, when you only have a short amount time to spare, or the candidate's résumé didn't impress you but you are being pressured by management to talk to the person.
You should never hire a person without meeting him or her in person first. There are exceptions to everything and extenuating circumstances may lead you to hire someone without meeting him or her first. If this is the case, treat the phone interview as though the person were meeting with you. Ask detailed questions that deal with UNIX system administration. Try to get potential employees to accept a contract-to-hire position or have them start on a probationary period. This is so you can see whether they are a good fit for the department and the company and can live up to the performance you expected from them.
If you plan on possibly having a follow-up meeting that includes others speaking to the candidates, keep your questions brief and general. Don't use this time to ask anything that is already on their résumé. They will more than likely have their résumé with them to reference during the interview. You should use this time to describe the requirements for the position, find out whether the candidate could handle the position, gain insight to their level of expertise, and form an opinion on their personality and whether they would be a good fit within the department and group. Some typical questions in phone interviews are
Now that you know what we are looking for, how can you help us by working here?
What do you do at your current job? What is an average day like?
Do you carry a pager for work? Do you have a paging system set up? Are you on call? What are your on-call hours like?
Why do you want to leave?
How many users do you support directly?
What kind of qualities do you look for in a supervisor and co-workers?
What are you looking for in a new job, versus the one you are in now or the last position you held?
What is your favorite OS and why?
How do you handle stressful situations?
After about 15 minutes you should be able to decide whether you would want to bring the person in for a meeting to discuss their qualifications in more detail.
If you have asked a person to come in for an interview to discuss the position further, reveal any special information you would like the candidate to know. If your workplace is casual, let candidates know they will not be judged on their appearance if they are coming from their current job and are sneaking away for the interview. In most cases, they will be more relaxed and comfortable in the interview if they are dressed casually. If you only have one hour to spend for the interview and you will need every bit of that time, request they be punctual. If they have diplomas or certificates you want them to bring, request them at this time. If a system goes down in the middle of the interview, it is okay for them to leave. They should not be penalized for the interruption. If they are willing to leave an interview that is going well for a system they support, they are devoted to the support of the systems.
When you made the decision to bring a candidate into your workplace for an interview, there was something you liked about him or her. It may have been a previous phone interview or the résumé that sold you on the person. Don't believe everything you read in the résumé. People always look good on paper. That is why you will be talking to them in person.
There are different types of questions you can ask candidates in the interview. Not only some of the easier questions from section 10.7, "Being Interviewed," and general questions that would be asked in a phone interview, but you can ask questions that will verify the validity of the information on their résumé, favorite hard questions, and some case scenarios. No matter what question you ask, you should always know the answer to your own question. You may lose the candidate's respect and if you are not careful.
Résumé verification questions: Many of the candidates will put their résumé together and not look at it for a few months. They will not have access to it during the interview to glance at, but you will. Because many people exaggerate on their résumés, you can ask some questions about the résumé that will help you find out whether they are telling the truth about the knowledge they claim to have.
If the résumé lists security tools that you recognize, ask them if they have ever used one and what the purpose of the tool was.
If they list that they have replaced memory or other hardware in a system, ask them if they have had compatibility problems between one model and another. Can memory from Sun Sparc 20 work in a Sun Ultra E2?
If you recognize a licensed piece of software they have listed, ask them what licensing scheme was used: flexlm, netls, or something else? Does it support floating or node lock only licenses?
If they list that they handled cases and problems with a vendor like Sun Microsystems (800-USA-4SUN) or SGI (800-800-4SGI), they should have the phone numbers to the 800 technical support help desk and response centers memorized.
When they claim to be experts in TCP/IP, HTTP, NNTP, IRQ, ask them what the acronyms stand for.
Favorite hard questions: There are some really good questions that administrators like to ask candidates. However, the entire interview shouldn't consist of difficult questions. If it does, you will not get a good indication of the candidate's skill.
Explain subnetting?
What is your favorite shell? What is the difference between your shell and the bourne shell?
What are the seven layers of the OSI model or TCP/IP?
How does NFS know your UID?
Can you remotely mount an already remotely mounted filesystem? Have you ever had a need to do so?
Ask the candidates a question, that they can answer correctly and tell them that they are wrong. Take note of how they handle the situation.
How would you fix chmod when you inadvertently removed all the executable permissions with: chmod a-x chmod?
If you accidentally changed roots shell to /bin/false in the password file, how do you fix it?
Can you name ten commands in UNIX? Considering the large number of possible answers, they will stumble through it.
How do you rate yourself on a scale of one to ten on your UNIX knowledge? If they say over seven, ask them to explain how shared memory works, or ask how to configure sendmail 8.x?
Case scenario questions: Many case scenario questions have no right or wrong answers. The candidate should be informed of this. You just are curious about how they would handle certain situations should they arise. Responses will help indicate the type of person the candidate really is, such as whether they are under pressure, stressed, lying, or will be honest and exhibit the truth.
Your backups are almost finished. The fire alarm sounds. You don't know if it is real, a test, or an accident. Do you make a run for it, or wait for smoke or flames and attempt to save as many tapes as possible?
A user calls and says his system is down. After trying a few things, you determine you have to go to see the user physically and check on the system. Just as you leave another phone call from another user, equal in rank as the last, needs your help to figure out why he cannot log in. What do you do? You have one guy waiting for you minutes away, and another guy wanting you to help him now.
How do you deal with an extremely irate user on the phone or in person?
A user is sending out pornographic email through the company and one bounces to you. What do you with the email? The user happens to be your boss, what do you do with it?
Pretend that I just hired you, and on your first day I told you I am the only administrator here and I'm leaving the company in five days. What questions would you ask me?
You telnet to a box on the LAN. Your connection times out. List as many reasons for the failure as you can. Leave it an open-ended question so they can expand on various reasons.
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UNIX Hints & Hacks |
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Chapter 10: System Administration: The Occupation |
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