2009/7/23 Andre Courchesne <[email protected]> > Hi, > > I have been asked to prepare a written and pratical test for a guy that > will be working as a part time asterisk install technician and support guy. > > For the pratical test I got a few ideas, but for the written exam, I'm not > sure. Anyone has ideas on questions ? Could be asterisk specific and/or Voip > and/or general telephony. > > Hi Andre,
I think there's some merit to a written test in addition to the practical. It would take forever to test some kinds of knowledge through practical testing. I've hired a few helpdesk and 1st line support people in the past. One technique that I found helpful during interviews was to give some practical examples of problems and ask how the candidate would approach it. For my helpdesk people, I might pose a question like: "A user is reporting that 'the internet is broken' and they can't print. What are the first three things you would ask or look at? List two likely causes of such a problem." I want to see them looking for local PC issues like loose cables. If they tell me that they're going to place a service call on the printer and open a ticket with our ISP, we have issues. I didn't give them 15 symptoms and say "diagnose this" because it's hard to do sometimes without laying hands on things. What I wanted to know was whether they were going to head down a reasonable path that would likely lead to a solution. I often took the questions right out of common helpesk tickets. In your case maybe it's things like users reporting choppy audio, or phones that aren't booting properly. Consider asking several questions ranging from basic to advanced/weird. Sometimes somebody would show impressive insight on a weird question that I really didn't expect them to be able to answer. I hope this helps. Have a great weekend. Dave
