What not to do in a telephone interview

[gophins72]

btw, is it bad form to take these calls while you're driving? i've dont that before. obviously, it's better to ask for another time when you'll be home or somewhere quiet. but since the OP is noticing things about whats going on the background of the caller...

 

[Leros]

I hate phone interviews. I have a 4 hour one coming up in a few days. I find them unnerving compared to face-to-face interviews.

 

[Leros]

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.

50-60 hour weeks are standard for a lot of engineering positions

 

[BlahBlahYouToo]

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.

pfffft... i have a silent keyboard and i know how to fill awkward pauses with lots of uhhhs.

 

[spidey07]

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

Right. But only certain platforms allow you to use that command which would show you have working knowledge of it instead of what google could tell you.

 

[alkemyst]

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.

It depends. Talking to the the technology you have listed is a bit different than some general HR person pulling out textbook questions.

For example, at the network engineer level asking about "what is spanning tree and how does it work?" is a fair question. Asking something like "what is the length of a BPDU and the bit map of it?" is bullshit.

Same with some places wanting real vs pseudocode for a complex task.

Anyway, any job worth a shit has a live technical interview is knowledge is that critical.