How Do You Interview A Sysadmin Candidate?

benedict writes: "The article No Shortage of Programmers? sparked a really interesting thread about how to interview programmers. Being a systems administrator, I am curious about the Slashdot community's collective wisdom on how to interview sysadmins. I have come up with a few questions of my own to prime the pump. 'What is tcpdump? What is it good for?' 'How about truss/ktrace/strace? What are they good for?' 'What's the largest number of machines you've maintained? What have you done to make it easier on yourself (e.g. what types of automation, file distribution, etc.)' 'Do you use source code control? What for?' I would also present a couple of 'hypothetical' situations from my own experience and ask how people would approach them. How about you: what kinds of questions would you ask, what situations would you describe, what kinds of answers would you look for?"

Comments

Not "what it does", ask "how to do"

[Syberghost]

Don't ask "what is tcpdump?".

Instead, ask "what would you use to view the contents of TCP packets on the network?"

We start with the basics "what would you use to list the contents of a directory?" and work up from there, to gauge the level of knowledge.

Also, technical folks conduct that part of the interview over the phone, and the person doesn't get a face-to-face with a manager about non-technical issues until AFTER we've made our recommendations.

SAGE have an excellent booklet on this

[ader]

Don't sort through 300 random Slashdot trolls. Join the System Administrators Guild and get their booklet on Hiring System Administrators. That should answer all your questions in one hit.

Ade_
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