In the past I have interviewed SysAdmins with questions starting from basics like "Describe some simple backup strategies you've used." Hopefully, they begin with tar or cpio and move on from there. The direction they take is usually indicative of their level of procificiency.
Then questions relating to system performance and network performance. Something like what sorts of bottlenecks affect system performance and how would you begin searching for those problems? What I would be looking for is a clear understanding of troubleshooting techniques rather than an "I use vmstat, top, tcpdump, MRTG and NTOP" type of answer though the latter would be a bonus. Often a question or two about heterogenous systems is good - in which ways can one intergrate Unix with Windows in one network. I am NOT looking to hear "SAMBA and X-Servers" rather some understanding of why one would do this. Sharing files, sharing printers, as FTP download sites, running DBs for client front ends, etc.
Lastly I try the "do you play well with others?" type of questions which are a bit trickier. Like the original post, real world scenarios are often good here and I generally ask questions like a database hosted on a system which is running slowly and the DBA insists that it is the Unix box which is at the core of the problem. How would you solve the problem? Diplomacy and tack are important answers here rather than raw skills.
My favorite, however, and one I save for very last is "Do you have Linux running at home?" I have had answers ranging from "Yes" to "No, Linux is not really stble enough for my personal work." to "No. But I have an old SPARC running SunOS4.x. Does that count?"
I would suggest that one can find out if the candidate is really SysAdmin material in under ten minutes but sometimes one should spend some extra time even if the candidate is not right either to learn something new or for a good anecdote. I once had a candidate for a UNIX sysadmin job who could not tell me which file stored the hostname on a Solaris machine. That interview did not last much longer than that.
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In the past I have interviewed SysAdmins with questions starting from basics like "Describe some simple backup strategies you've used." Hopefully, they begin with tar or cpio and move on from there. The direction they take is usually indicative of their level of procificiency. Then questions relating to system performance and network performance. Something like what sorts of bottlenecks affect system performance and how would you begin searching for those problems? What I would be looking for is a clear understanding of troubleshooting techniques rather than an "I use vmstat, top, tcpdump, MRTG and NTOP" type of answer though the latter would be a bonus. Often a question or two about heterogenous systems is good - in which ways can one intergrate Unix with Windows in one network. I am NOT looking to hear "SAMBA and X-Servers" rather some understanding of why one would do this. Sharing files, sharing printers, as FTP download sites, running DBs for client front ends, etc. Lastly I try the "do you play well with others?" type of questions which are a bit trickier. Like the original post, real world scenarios are often good here and I generally ask questions like a database hosted on a system which is running slowly and the DBA insists that it is the Unix box which is at the core of the problem. How would you solve the problem? Diplomacy and tack are important answers here rather than raw skills. My favorite, however, and one I save for very last is "Do you have Linux running at home?" I have had answers ranging from "Yes" to "No, Linux is not really stble enough for my personal work." to "No. But I have an old SPARC running SunOS4.x. Does that count?" I would suggest that one can find out if the candidate is really SysAdmin material in under ten minutes but sometimes one should spend some extra time even if the candidate is not right either to learn something new or for a good anecdote. I once had a candidate for a UNIX sysadmin job who could not tell me which file stored the hostname on a Solaris machine. That interview did not last much longer than that.