A lead tech better be pretty darn technical with strong troubleshooting skills. It is tough to interview someone for the latter as asking questions like "this and this are occurring, what do you do or what is wrong" are usually not productive.
One thing to keep in mind is that just about anyone who has some experience with AD could likely ask a question someone else couldn't answer, there is no one that knows every single aspect of Active Directory and could answer any possible question cold. However, a general chat about what they have been doing with their knowledge and maybe where they picked it up can cause things to float up that give you a good understanding of what they know and what they can figure out. In general I would say it is tough to hire for a lead tech for an already existing team unless the team is aware of the person already and has some measure of respect for the person. Usually, in my experience, the "lead" tends to float to the top when the team is working together and it just naturally becomes obvious who the lead should be. To artificially force a lead can hurt the team and I have been in several circumstances where that has occurred. The lead may feel they need to show how smart they are or the team may feel they need to see if they can outwit the lead; either thing occurring and the team isn't a team but a competition. The best tech leads I have run into have all been people who DON'T want to run a team, they just want to solve technical problems and lead by solving problems well. joe -- O'Reilly Active Directory Third Edition - http://www.joeware.net/win/ad3e.htm -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Matheesha Weerasinghe Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2006 12:11 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [ActiveDir] OT: Interview Techniques All I am currently in the process of interviewing job candidates who if successful will become my boss ;-) Basically the manager who will be his boss has asked me to do the technical side of the interview and check if the candidates are OK. I've had the "pleasure" of interviewing 2 so far and they were pretty weak technically. I am not sure if I have been spoilt by the creme-de-la-creme here but I did check them a little thoroughly especially with the candidate who was bold enough to mention under key skills "very strong knowledge of windows 2000/2003 Active Directory". Now I am definitely no expert, but if someone is bold enough to claim that, he better not buckle up under pressure and reply that the questions I am asking are only worthy knowledge to those working at Microsoft. And this is the reply I got when I asked him what the FSMO roles did. Actually, I got a little miffed as the guys had the audacity to demand pretty much twice the pay I am getting and were paper MCSE's. The feedback we received from the candidates afterwards said the interview style was ..... aggressive. So, my question to you guys is, if you interviewing someone for a Windows tech-lead position (with focus on AD), how technical would you want him to be? This is a guy who would be steering the design of an infrastructure to support tens of thousands of users. Cheers Mudha {Newbie AD Guru wannabe ;0) } __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx List info : http://www.activedir.org/List.aspx List FAQ : http://www.activedir.org/ListFAQ.aspx List archive: http://www.activedir.org/ml/threads.aspx
