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Questions for Entry Level PC Techs?
Rick Zeman asks: "For the first time ever, I have to interview and hire (I'm not management, so an exception is being made) what we call a 'PC Technician', which is an entry-level IT person. While actual computer knowledge and how we do things can be taught, how to think, and the aptitude for troubleshooting can't be. In the readers' experiences, what are the best (legal in the US!) questions to ask an entry-level candidate to really evaluate them? They don't have the resumes, the skills, or the experience yet, so I think they have to be judged on other factors that are harder to qualify."
I'm not sure what is entailed by 'technician', but I'm assuming that they will need *at least* some troubleshooting skills. Even non technical ones. I remember when I got a job doing tech support and the preliminary interviewer asked me a question: "I'm thinking of a product in a grocery store, find out what it is in less than 15 questions."
They didn't care that I had any IT background; they could provide me the training to fix issues, but I needed first to have the skills to find out what they were. I would suggest following a similar pattern. You've got people with little experience, skills, and knowledge concerning the subject matter, but the basics of logical deduction will get you the most value as an employer.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
give him a big box of junk parts, see how many working computers he can get in a couple hours. At least two you would think. Award bonus points for testing the power supplies before attaching them to the mobo and devices, just leave a meter laying around see if he grabs it. Watch for stuff like putting on the grounding strap first, etc.. Throw in some ringers in the box of course, and a mobo with bad (bulging or burst) caps, see if he spots it. Stuff like that there. That and just talking to him about computers should weed out the posers. Ask him to brag on the machines he's built, see if he knows off the top of his head all the parts, etc, then do the hands on test after you get your field narrowed down a little. You didn't mention what environment he might be working in, but if windows, then see if he can troubleshoot normal consumer click on anything FUBARS. In fact, you can have fun with that, just stick a working non firewalled vanilla install of ths or that windows installation on the net for an hour and go find the dodgiest links you can find and click on everything. Install a ton of screensavers and whatnot. Give the final test on that machine, see how clean he can get it, and what tools he asks for for troubleshooting. That should be enough to go through the selectees. Even if they can't get everything, you'll see if they can proceed in a logical manner.
I spent the last year in Paris working at a school as an entry level technician and often had to solve problems that I didn't know anything about. The skill to doing this is being a fast learner and also to know how to go about solving a new problem.
I suggest you give them a problem which they probably don't know how to solve and ask them to talk through their process. This could involve some quick research on google or using common sense, etc etc. Its feasible that someone with very little tech experience could do this job as long as they have a quick brain and good common sense.
The next most important thing is social skills and the ability to get on with their users. I know how common it is to have to deal with people who know nothing about computers. You could play the role of a retarded user, or even better, get someone else involved who really is a novice and get your interviewee to train them to do something. You observe their social skills and how they interact with the novice.
1) Ask them hard question, get them to talk through their process of trying to solve it
2) Give them a task of training a novice to do something, or act as a novice yourself. Ask very novicey questions to see if you can frustrate them. Patience is a virtue needed for IT tech jobs.
3) Get them to talk through a spyware infestation, a virus infestation. Make up some hypotheticals to ask them. Example: Someone calls you up and say's their internet is broken, what do you ask them first? Go through the scenario step by step and see what they do.
It's fairly easy to see quite quickly who are the people who are sharp thinkers with good inter-personal skills. It's also fairly easy to pick those people up who know what they're talking about. Ask them to recommend a virus scanner, if they say Norton, kick them out of our office immediately! They should know about programs like AVG, Avast, Stinger.
I've been in a similar situation, i've hired several apprentices for my company.
In case you're unfamiliar how an apprenticeship works:
It's part of one of the possible education roads in switzerland. At age 16, you start an apprenticeship in a company, which usually is 2-4 years (depending on the amount of skill of the job required). An apprenticeship requires attendance at a public school for one or two days a week. The pay is usually very weak, from 450 - 1000 CHF / Month. At the end of the apprenticeship, there's a standardized test.
Since people start at age 16, they have no qualification whatsoever (except that they finished public school), and as an additional drawback, you can't fire apprentices unless they SERIOUSLY fuck up (stealing from the company or something like that, or fucking up in school several times in a row).
The only thing i've paid much attention to is interest. Interest in IT can vary, e.G.:
An avid gamer, maxing out the performance of his video card, by working with lots of settings? Creating custom ini files for you game?
A young Linux zealot, telling my windows is a bad thing.
Writing programs?
Young, interested people are raw diamonds. They don't understand professional IT yet, and they have a lot to learn. While it is my job to help them to learn, the bunch of stuff is what they have to do alone. Just provide the infrastructure and support. It doesn't matter much what kind of skills they already have, since most of them don't help on their job - but most of my apprentices are more up to date on PC/Consumer hardware than iam.
Interest is all that matters. Someone who is willing to learn will be able to do everything you want him to, it just takes some time.
There's an important second skill, and that is social skills. You always have customers, be they internal (like in an enterprise) or external (in my case, SMB support).
An apprentice will have to learn how to deal with customers. In my case, i go to customers with them, let them stand aside (for about half a year). After that, they will have the skills to solve small problems on their own. The next step is to learn to deal with the customer. Delegate tasks, have them solve the problem on their own, report to the customer. And as a last step, send the on their own way.
This process takes about 3 years with an apprentice - you can shorten this ALOT if someone has at least a bit of previous experience.
And another tiny bit i've learned. Never solve a problem for your apprentice, if time is not critical. Give hints, push them in the right direction, let them figure out the solution on their own.
Never lie to them - while it is sometimes necessary to adjust the truth for a customer, never lie to your apprentices - there's nothing worse than learning the wrong things.