Just got off the phone with a hiring manager for Trust Commerce (www.trustcommerce.com).
Here are some of the technical questions that he asked me (along with a made up score I've given myself): --What do I think the role of a sys admin is? 8/10 First I rambled about system integration being different from system administration, then I said that as far as systems were concerned, it started in the planning stage when you start defining what a box does so you can install things necessary to do that well and turn off things it doesn't need to do. Then I rambled about monitoring the health of that system and if it became too overburdened, document dependencies and move services to another box. He cut me off, so I assume I was kind of on the right track. --Describe the boot process. 7/10 I said (something to the effect) machine POSTs, MBR boots, kernel loads, init/rc scripts start. I jumped around, and in retrospect, I should thought it through a bit more. --Difference between TCP and UDP 10/10 I said connection vs connectionless, and he jumped to the next question. That sucks b/c I know a lot of these ports cold. --Describe a TCP handshake 7/10 I briefly described a SYN, ACK, and FIN. He wanted to know what an open SYN connection was, and I said one that didn't have a FIN. In retrospect (haven't googled yet), it's not the FIN that it lacks, but rather the SYN/ACK return from the remote host. grrrrrrrrrrrrrrr....I should so totally know this one also b/c I've busted the balls of those I've interviewed with this type of question. --What calls init and rc? 5/10 I told him that I didn't know, as everything just magically worked or didn't work when I edited them. I felt stupid, b/c I knew that it was probably something insanely simple that he was wanting to hear. In retrospect, I should have said something about inittab. gawd, if feel stupid... --Difference between a left and inner join 1/10 (for knowing what a JOIN was) Because he was in a hurry, I flat out said that I didn't know, as I didn't do very much SQL, and when I did, I did so with a cheat sheet and/or pocket consultant guide next to me. If it where a multiple choice test, I could have probably eliminated one or two answers and had a fighting chance. All in all, this was humbling. I have busted lots and lots of balls over the past few months interviewing my potential coworkers that it's good to get a good ball busting in return! Later, Rog
