What not to do in a telephone interview

[spidey07]

Especially technical interviews. If we ask you technical questions we expect an answer pretty quick to make sure you have a basic understanding of things, specifically stuff you listed on your resume. Anybody that works in the field would know this stuff off the top of their head, IF you weren't completely bullshitting on your resume. That long pause you keep giving just means you're googling the answer and it's extremely apparent you are doing so. We can even hear the keyboard.

 

[DingDingDao]

Awesome. Yeah we can tell pretty quickly in interviews if the resume is full of shit. That and we can also tell if you cut and pasted the topics you covered in your lab course. One day of cell culture lab class does not make you proficient in cell culture.

 

[Jeeebus]

joke's on you. I'm actually rubbing one out while you're waiting for an answer.

 

[spidey07]

joke's on you. I'm actually rubbing one out while you're waiting for an answer.

Really? Since I'm on the job and getting paid for my time just what the hell does that make me?

I feel so...dirty.

 

[Regs]

Just give up. The only smart ones now are the terrorist sleeper cell agents.

 

[mb]

joke's on you. I'm actually rubbing one out while you're waiting for an answer.

bwahahahahahaha

 

[Brovane]

The fun with interviews. Haven't had to do those in a while. I remember several years ago we interviewed a guy that looked great on paper. He was from New York and was a Yankees fan and my boss was a Yankees fan and he was all excited. I could tell fairly quickly the guy didn't know networks. I asked him to explain to me how VTP works and he gave me a explanation about redundant hard disks, basically he explained how RAID works. Things went downhill from there. My boss was so disappointed.

 

[airdata]

I had a phone interview yesterday.... Did alot better than the last phone interview I had. At some point they asked me if I was comfortable w\ 50-60 hour work weeks and I honestly wasn't sure if they were being serious. Especially when they said all positions were salaried.

 

[JulesMaximus]

So, basically you're saying, get a quieter keyboard?

 

[gophins72]

The fun with interviews. Haven't had to do those in a while. I remember several years ago we interviewed a guy that looked great on paper. He was from New York and was a Yankees fan and my boss was a Yankees fan and he was all excited. I could tell fairly quickly the guy didn't know networks. I asked him to explain to me how VTP works and he gave me a explanation about redundant hard disks, basically he explained how RAID works. Things went downhill from there. My boss was so disappointed.

wow, he knew nethier VTP nor how to google

 

[Kadarin]

The fun with interviews. Haven't had to do those in a while. I remember several years ago we interviewed a guy that looked great on paper. He was from New York and was a Yankees fan and my boss was a Yankees fan and he was all excited. I could tell fairly quickly the guy didn't know networks. I asked him to explain to me how VTP works and he gave me a explanation about redundant hard disks, basically he explained how RAID works. Things went downhill from there. My boss was so disappointed.

Hehe... We had one where we asked a guy how ARP works, and he said something about the host querying the dns server for the MAC of the destination host. Another one where a guy supposedly designed and implemented a "next generation caching architecture", but didn't know how a cache-control header worked.

 

[pontifex]

interesting, i've been told to think about answers before replying so it doesn't seem like your just following a script or giving canned answers.

guess it depends on the questions though.

 

[spidey07]

So, basically you're saying, get a quieter keyboard?

You can tell by the pause. We've even called people out on it - "You're googling the answer, aren't you?" That's the point of the questions, they are deeply technical but would be known like the back of your hand if you were remotely qualified for the level of person we're looking for. We can't put you in front of clients and have you not knowing your shit.

 

[Brovane]

Really? Since I'm on the job and getting paid for my time just what the hell does that make me?

I feel so...dirty.

I had a incident several years ago that made me feel kind of weird. I was training a new Network Admin. He was coming over from desktop. Usually when this happens for the first couple of on-call rotations they will pair the person with a experienced Admin which was myself in this instance.

So around midnight he calls me because he got called for a issue that he didn't know how to resolve. I got online and was SSH into the router and had him remote viewing my terminal as I was showing him what was going on and how to fix it. All of a sudden he became distant and not to responsive, as I was asking him if he was getting this. He seemed kind of distracted. I eventually got off the phone with him. He told me the next day that his girlfriend was staying over at his house and she decided to distract him with her mouth (not going to go into more details) while he was on the phone. I understood why all of sudden he seemed to get distracted. The best thing is he was on the clock. :thumbsup:

 

[Vette73]

Just give up. The only smart ones now are the on 4chan/Anon and hacking your e-mail as they speak to you on the phone.

ftfy

:sneaky:

 

[spidey07]

wow, he knew nethier VTP nor how to google

If somebody asked me about VTP my answer would be - "Why would I still remember that, it's never used anymore and all my designs have it turned off depending on if the hardware/software platform allowed me to do so otherwise transparent with null domain."

 

[darkewaffle]

ftfy

:sneaky:

They wish.

 

[darkewaffle]

If somebody asked me about VTP my answer would be - "Why would I still remember that, it's never used anymore and all my designs have it turned off depending on if the hardware/software platform allowed me to do so otherwise transparent with null domain."

I am an expert on Very Tasty Pizza.

 

[jonks]

Hehe... We had one where we asked a guy how ARP works, and he said something about the host querying the dns server for the MAC of the destination host. Another one where a guy supposedly designed and implemented a "next generation caching architecture", but didn't know how a cache-control header worked.

lol.

wait, i have no idea what you are talking about.

Is that like creating a GUI interface using visual basic to track an IP address?

 

[gophins72]

If somebody asked me about VTP my answer would be - "Why would I still remember that, it's never used anymore and all my designs have it turned off depending on if the hardware/software platform allowed me to do so otherwise transparent with null domain."

"one sec, googling"

 

[spidey07]

"one sec, googling"

What current data center platform allows you to turn it off completely?

That is something google won't tell you.

 

[gorcorps]

I had a phone interview yesterday.... Did alot better than the last phone interview I had. At some point they asked me if I was comfortable w\ 50-60 hour work weeks and I honestly wasn't sure if they were being serious. Especially when they said all positions were salaried.

Why wouldn't they be serious? That's quite common in jobs that come with a any amount of responsibility. Most salaried jobs expect over 40 hours, which is why it's smart to have it salary... there's no overtime to be paid.

 

[JulesMaximus]

You can tell by the pause. We've even called people out on it - "You're googling the answer, aren't you?" That's the point of the questions, they are deeply technical but would be known like the back of your hand if you were remotely qualified for the level of person we're looking for. We can't put you in front of clients and have you not knowing your shit.

I was kidding. I've paused during telephone interviews but only because I'm thinking about how to relate my experience to the question asked. I generally don't get asked basic accounting questions during interviews, it is more of specific job skills and how I've handled various projects and such.

 

[gophins72]

if i google for "turn off VTP completely" i get no exact matches, but it shows a bunch of cisco stuff, and the command:

vtp mode off

if i google for that, i get:
If you enter the vtp mode off command, it sets the device to off. If you enter the no vtp mode off command, it resets the device to the VTP server mode.

of course i dont know anything about this stuff, so shrug

 

[darkswordsman17]

interesting, i've been told to think about answers before replying so it doesn't seem like your just following a script or giving canned answers.

guess it depends on the questions though.

Yeah, it'd depend, but I think it'd probably be obvious that someone was just making crap up or was giving a good answer.

Really though, fudging on resumes isn't new, and I'd say it'd depend on how vital to the position it is as to the response. I mean, if someone says they program but can't name a programming language when you're talking to them that'd be pretty bad. If its something minor, I'd gauge the person's response when questioned. For instance, at an IT position, I listed limited experience with Apple products, and they asked how extensive and I was upfront about it. I think that's fine and they didn't have a problem with it.

Based on some of the threads here, it sounds like some people are fudging a lot. Some of that might be the resume "assistance" which seems to often be just someone telling them what buzzwords to use to fudge their resume. Sad thing is, it seems like there's a lot of places where that's enough to get them the job.