Interview Questions

Prepare for the Interview

The interview is the time to make an impression and most candidates do this by preparing their answers to potential questions. My tip is to turn it around by playing offense.

When it comes to the point in the interview with the hiring manager where you are asked if you have any questions, have a few of these questions ready. 

 

What would be my typical day and who would I be working most closely with?

This question is multi purposed.

1. The question is designed to have the interviewer visualize you in the position as part of the team.
2.  It gives you a good glimpse into what your work day would be and allows you to judge if this position is what you are looking for.

Who are the 'stars' on the team that I would learn the most from and what would be the best traits to pick up?

1. This question is also designed to have the interviewer visualize you as part of the team.
2. Demonstrates that you are committed to learning and self improvement by learning from the team's best people.
3. Gain  

What are some of the current challenges the team is facing that I may be able to help resolve?

1. How the interviewer responds will give you a good indication if they are seriously considering you or not. If the interviewer gives you a few items that you can contribute on, its a good sign.

Continual development is critical for people in IT and something that is important to me. How do you feel I could best improve?

1. Even if you do not get the position, you gain some valuable information that can help you prepare for the next interview.
2. The question emphasises your commitment to your career. If you are not learning, you are falling behind the curve.
3. This questions landed me one of my early IT positions. The director interviewing me at the time was noticeable surprised and he gave me one of the most important pieces of advice I have received. He thought for a minute and then told me;

 "Keep your mouth shut and your ears open"
 

Sound advice in such a concise response.

• As IT, we have access to very confidential information and there is no room for someone who leaks info.
• Listen to not only what is being said but also between the lines, you can deduce what people are challenged or concerned with most. Resolve a problem before the users ask IT for help and suddenly you are perceived as being innovative and a true asset.
• Listen to what you IT colleagues have to say. There are many ways to approach a project or problem and bright ideas can come from anyone. Collaboration also is what makes the strongest teams.

The director may have been trying to tell me I simply talk too much, but I like my interpretation better. To this day, we do remain friends.

A day in the life of: Helpdesk Support

The Helpdesk

Group Role:
The helpdesk is THE face of IT. Users look to the helpdesk for answers to their problems as well as to help improve their productivity by installing new software or getting a new computer/laptop. As a helpdesk technician, you need to appear as always having the right answer and be completely trustworthy. After all, a user who hands over their laptop with all of their critical and confidential data needs to be confident you wont lose their files or look at the contents.

• Hardware support:
• Desktops and laptops from multiple vendors such as HP, Dell, IBM, and Apple. Replace failed components and issue new systems. 
• Printers, scanners and sometimes basic mobile device support depending on the environment. Typically hardware support is minimal triage before calling a 3rd party for more advanced support (IE setup a new printer on the network, change toner and rollers but not take the thing apart)
• Software support:
• Microsoft Windows or Mac OS: Install, troubleshoot, patch, upgrade
• Microsoft Office, Adobe, print devices: install, troubleshoot, patch, upgrade
• Install and Other 3rd party software the user may require
• Troubleshoot errors the user may see
• Internet Explorer alerts or pages not loading
• No network available (wired/wireless)
• Unexpected crashes of an application or OS
• Account support
• Account creation and removal
• May be the responsibility of the helpdesk or as organizations get larger, there is more segregation of duties. The task may be assigned to the security team or even be delegated to HR and created when someone is on boarded or off boarded.
• Password resets, Unlock accounts
• Add/Remove groups to Active Directory or update memberships to a group
• Sometimes this is delegated to the Helpdesk or managed by the Wintel (server) team.
• Computer accounts in Active Directory
• New PCs are joined to the domain when issued to a user
• Old PCs are removed from the domain when decommissioned.

Start of Day:

1. Arrive early.
• Coming in every day 15 minutes early shows your manager you are dependable and committed. It also helps you get the jump on any critical ticket that came in. Most executives come in early and leave late. Being the first one in translates into your becoming the go-to person for executives. This goes a long way.
2. Check the helpdesk ticket system for any open tickets that are critical.
• Pay close attention to not only the ticket request/problem but also to WHO put in the request. A medium request by your CFO warrants more than just a medium response.
• Many managers allow their support teams to self assign tickets. If so, don't cherry pick the easy tickets. Be sure to take on the more difficult tickets if you are capable and become more valuable to the team.
• If there are a number of tickets with the same issue, talk to the associated engineering team or application team if this is a broader issue occurring. [IE 20 people not able to login to Sharepoint]
3. Check with the NOC and other teams on any open issues such as outages or planned maintenance.
4. Phone support / Deskside Support
• Some helpdesk groups assign specific technicians for phone support and others to deskside support. Often its a combination of both. Depending on how your department is setup, at this point of the day begin manning the phones and responding to ticket requests.
5. Tickets
• Most small to medium groups utilize some helpdesk system while large enterprises its a must for managers and support teams.
• Follow your departments procedures on creating, assigning and updating tickets.
• Always enter detailed information when updating a ticket. When your manager reviews your work, he/she can fully understand how well you are doing and what is going on.

End of day

• IT positions never end on time so don't count on running out at exactly 5PM. Very often you may be in the middle of installing some software for a user or transferring their data to a new PC.
• Not watching the clock and staying late are good ways to get noticed by your manager and builds their confidence in you.  (Note: CIOs and business leaders users also notice)

Common tickets to expect to be assigned:

• Account is locked out
• Issue (load) a computer or laptop for a new hire
• Need software installed
• Computer wont boot or computer crashed 
• Cant access/send an email (Outlook)
• Not connected to the wireless network
• Office relocation - setup the user's PC in their new office or cube

Supplemental:
Deskside positions can lead to other opportunities such as Helpdesk manager, Server engineer, Network Engineer, Systems administrator, Active Directory Admin, and others.

Certifications often held by a support technician:

• MCSA - Microsoft Certified Solutions Associate
• CompTIA A+ 
• MOS - Microsoft Office Specialist
• Often considered a pluss as Outlook and Excel is used heavily by business users
• CCNA - Cisco Certified Network Associate
• not often required but provides a great technical skills foundation

 Qualities as a hiring manager that I look for:

1. Integrity
• I must be able to trust the candidate to a certain ethical and professional level. IT positions come with a lot of responsibility and access to sensitive information. This trust must be earned not only from the manager, but the end users that IT supports.
2. Diagnostics
• No matter how much experience someone has, if they cant instinctively troubleshoot than fixing an executives laptop while he/she is pressing you for answers and immediate resolution.. lets just say it just wont end well.
• Be aware of how to research issues and weed out the false or damaging resolution suggestions.
3. Commitment
• As an IT professional, problems will come up that you dont have the answer to...yet. There are those types of folks who hit the first obstacle and look to someone else to give them the answer. Others folks dont give up so easily and are committed to finding the solution. Note that there is a point where you should ask for help.Never asking for help is almost as bad as always asking for it.
• Commitment also includes staying ahead of the curve on technology. Businesses look to IT for answers. If the business users know more about a new gadget or IT solution coming out than you do, it is a good indication your skills and knowledge are behind the curve.
4. Interpersonal skills
• Members of the department or team must get along. Personality conflicts causes friction which leads to bigger problems.
• Having a group of people who always has each others back and are very collaborative leads to success for IT as a whole.
• A person who can effectively communicate via email, phone or in-person with IT and non-IT personell is a plus. For the helpdesk technicians, this is critical.

A day in the life of: NOC agent

NOC: Network Operations Center

Group Role:

• Monitor system health
• Monitor network connections
• Monitor batch job completion, job scheduling (rerun, pause, execute)
• Tier 1 responses often documented in a 'run book'
• Escalation of priority alerts to the appropriate support team

Note: A good place to get started in IT can be as a NOC agent

Start of day:

1. Get a lot of coffee.
• The NOC runs 24x7 and staring at a screen waiting for an alert can be a challenge.
• Some NOCs run 12 hour shifts with agents working 3-4 days per week.
2. Status transition
• As each shift changes, status of open items need to be communicated to the agents coming in, such as:
• Current outages and actions taken so far in the run book
• Systems under maintenance and when to resume monitoring
• Open requests (ie  start job #2456 @ 2:15AM)
• Changes to on-call coverage
• Confirm the information being handed off is correct (check the status board for open alarms)
3. Monitor
• Most NOCs have several dashboards that show the current state of the environment.
• Alarms are usually very easy to recognize with big red indicators, warnings are yellow
• A mailbox is usually used as well for alert messages, batch job failure or success notices and requests for batch jobs to be run/held.
4. Alert!
• An alert comes up. Follow the response checklist which may look like this:
1. Confirm if the alert is a false positive
2. Enter a ticket to record the event and assign to the NOC
3. Perform any remediation steps documented for such an alert (if present)
4. If the alert doesn't clear, follow the escalation procedures
• P1 or Critical priority response is typically a voice hand-off to the on-call engineer who handles the system or application the alarm is for
• Medium to low priority alarms, such as a QA sytem being offline are typically an email notice to the support team and ticket being assigned to them
5. Update the ticket and reassign it to the appropriate support team/person.
5. Batch Request
• Users will request a batch job to run or be held very often. If one fails, re-running the job is the normal action taken.
• Multiple failures: submit a ticket to the support team for remediation.
6. Notices
• Often engineers will notify the NOC to ignore alarms for a system as maintenance will be performed. Depending on the monitoring software, typically a NOC agent will put the system into 'maintenance mode' which suppresses alerts during a specified time window.
• On-call coverage changes occur frequently. These changes to the default rotation should be noted and also communicated to the next shift.
7. End of shift
• Transition status of systems, maintenance windows and other details to the next shift.

End of Day.


Supplemental:
There is a lot of quiet time. NOC agents can best make use of this time towards training, independent study and certifications. A natural advancement is into one of the Infrastructure support teams.

Who are all these IT people??

Most folks outside of IT do not really know what IT does and how diverse it has become. Very often business users wont even know who you are, at least until something breaks and then everyone knows your name. As an IT Pro or soon to be Pro, there are many roles to choose from for your career.

Lets take a look at a typical IT department:

Executive
It all starts with the CIO who sets overall IT directives and budgets based upon input from the business units [I.E. Marketing, Finance, HR, and the other members of the executive team]. Often reporting directly to the CIO is a purchasing or financial agent who manages procurements and adherence to the budget.

Infrastructure
The groups that make up the infra teams provide the foundation of IT services by helping the business be more productive, keeping systems secure and available and enabling the mobile workforce.

• Network Service - Manage & maintains network switches, firewalls, routers and data circuits connecting all the office to each other and the Internet.
• Storage team - Manages & maintains large SAN and NAS storage devices which can range from a few hundred terabytes to petabytes.
• Unix/Linux team - Supports all Unix or Linux servers which other groups applications or services reside upon. [IE Apache(web) servers, SAP, Oracle, DNS, compute services]
• Wintel (Windows) team - Supports all Windows servers and typically most Microsoft back office services [IE Email, Active Directory, DHCP, Print & file services, etc]. This group typically also maintain virtual environments (public & private clouds)
• Helpdesk - Deskside and phone support for the end user's desktops, laptops, tablets, Macs and other devices as well as the software installed.
• Telco - Sometimes included as part of the networking group, the Telco group maintains voice circuits and the PBX (phone system).
• NOC - The Network Operations Center monitors systems and network connections health status as well as batch jobs(automated tasks, backups and data transers). Alerts are triaged by criticality and response actions include tier 1 remediation on up to escalations to on-call engineers or network carriers and vendors to report outages.

Applications - The groups that make up the Application teams provide solutions which are directly used by the business. Such solutions may be an E-Commerce application, Reporting app, Supply Chain, ERP, CRM, Financials or HR solution. Applications are what help the business generate revenue or provide effective and timely information to business decision makers. Depending on what application platforms a company uses will determine what specialized groups are needed. Some examples are:

• Sharepoint - A key collaborative web portal which requires .NET developers and SQL DBAs. In smaller organizations, the Wintel team is often tasked with maintaining Sharepoint.
• SAP - The market leader in business solutions with very specialized and in-demand IT Pros. This solution often has multiple teams to support it [Oracle, Basis, Reports, B2B portals]
• Web Development - Once known as web masters, Web admins maintain internal and external web pages using IIS or Apache. This group will work very closely with Marketing, Sales, HR and Executives and has expanded greatly with maintaining social media.
• Application Development - Companies often develop their own applications or expand upon 3rd party or open source solutions. DBAs and programmers will round out this group.
• DBA - Database admins may be members of other applications groups or simply be their own small group. A DBA will typically specialize in one solution, most common are SQL or Oracle. Other examples are DB2 and Sybase.

Security, Program Office, Risk Management - This group is called many things but each with the same purpose; ensure the companies data is secure. In some organizations, this group may report to the CIO and others may elect to have the reporting structure outside of IT to avoid any conflict of interest. The skill sets remain the same for the group members.

• Audit team - performs internal audits to ensure everyone is adhering to corporate policies. Some companies may also need to be in compliance with Sarbane-Oxley(sox), HIPPA, PCI,  ISO####, SSAE16 and many others.
• Change Control - Tracks change requests/approvals and communicates these to the business and the other IT groups.
• Disaster Recovery - Maintains all documentation in regards to DR and conducts regular tests (normally at least once per year). Corporations have learned over the years that disasters do happen and if they are not prepared to recover within a certain timeframe, a disaster can be terminal for the business.
• Risk Management - Security team which analyzes corporate risk such as hacking threats, DLP (data loss/leakage prevention), and corporate IT policy. This group sometimes includes internal e-hack or penetration testers or uses 3rd party services to identify risks and plan counter-measure requirements. Risk Assessments, Business Impact Analysis (BIA) and Continuity of Business (CoB) each start with the Risk (security) team.

Salary info for in demand certifications

Certifications:
     If you hold a number of certifications and list them on your resume, it provides any potential employer a certainty that you have reached a standardized skill/knowledge level. They are a good watermark and are used as filter criteria by HR in scanning for possible candidates.

     Each certification comes with its own requirements which you will need to meet. Some certs take a lot of time to attain while others are quick. To determine what certifications will help you the most in your career, review job posting for your current job target as well as the next step or two in your career.

How much do certifications weight in being considered for a position?
    It depends on the employer. Some companies are required to have a minimum number of certified employees, such as Microsoft Gold Partners. Other companies use it only as a watermark on minimum skill level where more value is placed on what experience the candidate has. Either way, certifications can help you.

Top Certifications for 2013:

1. PMP - Project Management Professional - $105,750
2. CISSP - Certified Information Systems Security Professional - $103,299
3. MCSD - Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer - $97,849
4. MCDBA - Microsoft Certified Database Administrator - $95,950
5. CCDA® - Cisco Certified Design Associate - $94,799
6. MCAD - Microsoft Certified Application Developer - $93,349
7. VCP-DV: VMware Certified Professional Datacenter Virtualization - $92,400
8. CNE - Certified Novell Engineer - $91,350
9. ITIL v3 Foundation - $90,900
10. CCA - Citrix Certified Administrator - Citrix XenServer 6 - $90,850

 Thanks to Randy Muller and Global Knowledge for publishing the report. The full report and certifications 11-15 can be found on the Global Knowledge site.




Muller, Randy. 15 Top Paying Certifications for 2013. Rep. Global Knowledge, Jan. 2013. Web. 03 Mar. 2013.

Staying ahead of the curve

If you're not ahead of the curve then you are behind the curve

How to keep up with training with little or no cost?

Technology moves faster every day and many businesses have reduced or eliminated their training budgets yet as IT professionals, if we dont stay ahead we begin to loose our value.

Another way to look at it:
     If you stay ahead, you increase your value.

It's difficult reading technical books even for the most geeknerds (yes, I am one) but there are other options out there even if your employer wont flip the bill to send you for training. The effort you invest in your skills and knowledge will continue to pay dividends. You're value is in what you know and in how much the business can rely upon you.

So what can you with little or no cost?

• (Free) Attend User group meetings in your area.
• User groups are great ways to learn from peers in trends, what are some things that have worked out well or not so well.
• Meetings usually have sponsors that give away some pretty cool stuff as door prizes.

• (low cost) Purchase a Microsoft Technet subscription ($149 for standard)
• Eval and beta versions of MS software for 12 months (use, play, learn)
• Around 20 hours of e-learning
• 24/7 online chat assistance
• Refer to the full details on Microsoft's site

• (low cost) Industry publications
• Magazines (online or print) can help keep you in the loop of upcoming trends or solutions that can help the business units you support.
• Example: I love WindowIT Pro Magazine each month I find at least something useful

• (Free) Quick video training
•  Streaming videos help engineers get a quick start on new topics
• Some examples are included below

Microsoft System Center 2012



 

Installing VMware vCenter Server

 

 

Upgrading to Active Directory 2012

 

• Finally, sorry to say it but we wont get away from reading. The last item is purchasing a detailed book. Pick these when it becomes apparent that you will need to become the resident expert on a software package or technology. Install the software in a home lab using your technet subscription.

Once again, please never stop learning. At times it's a struggle but it is an investment into your own career. If you fall behind don't be surprised when you are left behind.


Good luck and God bless

No Experience?

How does anyone get that first job in IT when everyone wants someone with experience?

The first corporate IT job is the hardest to attain. Without any experience, there are limited number of employers looking to get someone broken in (trained). The positions that are available each person needs to judge for themselves on what they are capable of living on. In my situation, I had already been out of school for a decade before deciding to change careers and going back to zero experience. Zero experience on a career change results in a pay cut for most folks.

 

Here is a list of suggestions for getting started: 

1. Electronic stores -
   • My first break was a hardware technician or 'bench tech'. Big electronic stores usually have a staff of hardware technicians who repair PCs and laptops, perform upgrades, install software and remove viruses.
   • Dont under rate the experience you will gain here. To this day I attribute my diagnostic skills back to the time I spent as a bench tech. It is a foundation for all other skills that you will develop over your career.
   
   
2. Desktop/Laptop Vendors
   • Dell, IBM, and other vendors have technical folks who perform hardware replacements for systems under warranty. Similar to electronic stores in replacing hard drives, laptop screens, and motherboards although it does require travel to customer sites. This is good experience as it places you into a corporate setting and demonstrates flexibility. 
   
   
3. Start your own LLC and take small assignments from Craigslist or even new services like TaskRabbit.com
   • There are many opportunities to provide PC support for small businesses such as doctor or legal offices, automotive shops or onsite home support.
   • An LLC can be created in about 30 minutes and offers you some benefits. It also puts a line on your resume with experience so be sure to name the LLC with a professional name (IE Not "Tim's PC Fixit")
    
4. Short term contracts or 'Temps'
•  There are many consulting companies that need to fill positions very quickly. Sometimes these positions need to have someone onsite the next day to help with a project that may take a few days, weeks or months. In cases like these, the consulting firms may loosen their restrictions on experience in order to get the contract.
• After working a few temp positions, you will have gained a fair amount of experience in seeing multiple environments.
• Sometimes companies elect to hire the contractors that have proven themselves resulting in a permenant position for you.
• Note: there normally are restrictions in companies hiring the temporay agents from the consulting firm. The contract typically includes verbiage to cover how the company can make an offer which usually includes compensation to the consulting firm. Do not risk putting yourself in a position that violates the terms of the contract. When signing any contract, be sure to note what restrictions are in place    
5. Internship
• If you are in school, many colleges have internship arrangements with several area companies. This is a great way to gain experience as well as contacts to your personal network. Treat the internship seriously, not as a summer job in the mall.

For software developers:

1. Build up your portfolio with writing your own mobile apps. These can easiliy demonstrate your versatility as well as earn you some extra cash.
2. Create websites for folks who post on Criagslist and add the best samples to your portfolio.

I hope you found this helpful. Good luck