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Core IT Interview Questions?

Posted by Cliff on from the the-coder-inquisition dept.

Aengus asks: "We have a round of job interviews coming up and the people we will be interviewing will be of different backgrounds, so we are looking for a core set of general questions that you could apply to any IT/CS candidate that would display that they knew what they were talking about. ie questions that are not language or job specific. So far all we have come up with 'What algorithm is your favourite or most commonly used?'....." What questions have you been asked on interviews you have participated in?

2 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. There is no such thing .... by nbvb · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The question you just asked above is programmer-specific.

    I know Slashdot is very programmer-oriented, but we do need to remember that there _are_ other disciplines within IT/IS/CS/EE/whatever.

    I'm a sysadmin by trade --- I don't have an algorithm I use most often. If you asked me what my favorite was, I'd probably get into transactional two-phase locking protocols, just 'cuz I think they're neat. But I'm not a DBA, so what does it matter?

    You need to tailor the interview to the specific position that's open. You also should have real, honest-to-goodness technical people conduct the interview --- ideally, people from the team on which the position resides.

    It really makes a difference. I hate interviews with HR pukes. Give me a good technical interview anyway. The interview for my current job took 3 1/2 hours. It was a roundtable discussion with 3 members of the team I'm now a member of. Fantastic way to conduct an interview. Basically, we just shot the breeze discussing various sysadmin things from volume management to SunOS 4.1.whatever to stupid eeprom tricks... and of course, it all proves that I know what the heck I'm talking about. You can't talk that talk without walking the walk!

    All of this is just my personal opinion of course, but I think anything that says "generic interview" anything is useless!

    --DM

  2. THE question ... by ninewands · · Score: 3, Insightful

    "Where do you go for information when somebody drops something in your lap that you know NOTHING about?"

    I answered "The man pages and O'Reilly Press" and got the job I have now (Unix admin at a major university) the interview panel shook their heads and said "Good answer" ... had I seen the question coming, I would have added http://www.linuxdoc.org ... the HOWTOs and FAQs are invaluable resources for problems like sendmail configuration, setting up an anonymous ftp server without compromising security, etc, etc, etc ...

    --
    utter rubbish