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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
Good one. One for managers: "Push over this bucket of water. WITHOUT delegating it to anyone!"
slightly off topic but i always found that "windows key" + "break" was the fastest way to find out the version of windows its only two button presses
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.
First I ask them to name the parts of a PC (I'll ask specifically about the power button next time :-). I wanted to hear things like hard drive, CD-ROM, CPU, RAM, video card, etc. If they can't name the parts, it shows insufficient interest in the field. If they they get this pretty well, I ask them to name a few different types of CPU, RAM and Video cards. Once again, good answers show interest and enthusiasm.
:-) Once again, you can tell by how they answer these questions what their level of enthusiasm is for the work. I don't look for all the right answers as much as I look for them showing they've taken the time to learn some stuff on their own with the tools they've had on hand.
Then I move onto buses. Most newbies will look at you funny because they don't know the term "bus", but that doesn't mean they don't know what a bus is good for. If I have to, I'll give them a simple explanation like, "They're the systems that let you expand the PC by allowing different parts talk to each other. For example, the IDE bus will let your hard drive talk to the rest of the computer." A bright guy will usually catch on and mention the AGP or PCI-E buses because he probably expanded his video card. They'll usually get the PCI and SATA buses too, and might refer to the IDE/ATA as PATA if they're especially young. For some reason, a lot of guys miss the USB, even though "Bus" is right there in the acronym. I think it's because they're thinking of buses as being inside the case only. For this reason, if they get USB I usually give them extra points for "thinking outside the box" (couldn't resist
I then go on to networking. I have them draw a simple network on the white board consisting of a server, a workstation a network printer and any other equipment they think is necessary to get them all to work together. They should show network cables going to a switch or hub. Wireless is also an acceptable answer. This shows me several things. Do they understand that there's a piece of centralized networking equipment involved? Can they take direction to do a simple task? Can they effectively communicate data to another team members? I've had coworkers who questioned this interview technique because they think the question is too simple. It doesn't seem possible that anyone could get this wrong. They were amazed to see so many candidates that couldn't handle this request, even going so far as to make wild networks with ring topologies or multiple routers. I had one guy draw a line from the workstation to a small box. When I asked him about it, he said "it plugs into the wall." I actually gave him credit for this (it was a tough call) because he said that that was his only exposure to networking instead of making something up. It's also increadible the number of candidates that blow this one just from giving pushback about getting up out of their chair to "work."
As far as technical aptitude is concerned, understanding their PC and simple networking shows that they care about computer equipment. Actual brilliance with technical stuff is difficult to gauge, so knowing they've taken the time to learn their way around the stuff they already have at home is sometimes all you can get. I've found these people tend to pick up on new concepts rather easily.
Communicating effectively both to and from other team members usually makes for a good employee that will learn rapidly because they know how to make the most of their relationships with people that know more than them. It also tends to show that they're more likely to get along with the staff in general.
TW