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How Do You Interview A Network Engineer?

Posted by Cliff on from the third-in-a-series dept.

vrmlguy asks: "Back in July, we learned how to interview programers, and in August we learned how to interview sysadmins. Obviously, we still need to hire some network engineers, but what questions should we ask? The previous articles had a couple of generic gems which I intend to put to good use, but the only position-specific question that I can come up with is "Please explain the differences between RIP and OSPF." Any other ideas for a guy whose idea of using a sniffer is to fire up tcpdump?"

2 of 15 comments (clear)

  1. background, breadth by green+pizza · · Score: 3, Informative

    Has the person worked with enough types of networking gear to understand the history, future, and direction so that he can make informed decisions as new products become available? Having only worked with ethernet is a bad sign.

    Has he worked with powerful software tools, both commercial and opensource? (HP Openview, CA Unicenter, etc).

    What is his experience with router equipment? Experience with at least one other large scale platform other than Cisco is a huge plus.

  2. Ask them to draw pictures, ask some dumb questions by indaba · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm a network engineer and I live with a whiteboard marker in my hand.

    So , ask them to draw you some pictures. Like:

    OSI model

    Operation of at least 2 IGP's , ie OSPF, RIP, EIGRP

    Route redistribution

    Spanning tree

    Multicasting

    Split horizon

    etc .. you get the idea

    Ask a few dumb questions :

    what's ARP ?

    difference between a router and a switchname me a layer 4 IP protocol

    what does NAT do ?

    who's Jon Postel ?

    who's Vint Cerf ?

    what's the IETF ?

    whats an RFC ?

    etc .. you get the idea

    Finally, if you have the time, give them 2 routers and switch
    Get him/her to configure :

    PPP, and CHAP

    RIP, or OSPF or EIGRP

    IPX

    a simple access-list

    basic router authentication

    etc .. you get the idea

    Also, certifications DO help you weed out the rubbish.

    Darren Kruse CCNP CCDP
    WAN/LAN Networking Consultant
    Email : darren_kruse@hotmail.com
    www.geocities.com/darren_kruse

    ps, I'm alway's looking for work :-)
    here at eBay !