Interview Questions - Managed Primary School

[phil1103]

Hi,

Im currently the only ICT Technician in my school, which is a large 4-form-entry primary with about 120/130 PCs. (School Website) We are managed by RM (annoying as that is) but even that means I'm too busy at the moment. SMT and governors have agreed to allow me to recurit a modern apprentice (4 days a week) from a local college. We have three candidates, and the interviews are next Wednesday.

However, I've been asked to form up some questions for the interview, and I'm stuck on what to ask them. They will be doing all the basic stuff that most starters do in school (Printers, Troubleshooting, projectors, Lesson assistance)

Any help would be much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Phil

[jamiesev]

Hi Phil,

Maybe simple questions like:

What is a Raid Array?
Discribe how DHCP works?

If you had a call from the assit head saying his printer doesn't work, a call from the office staff saying that can't login to their pc's and a teacher call to say her class full of kids cant get their computers to work, what order would you do the calls in and why?

If a computer wont logon to the network describe how you would trouble shoot the problem

And a killer question would be: if you were in a classroom and a child was being naughty but the teacher hasn't realised would you tell the studnet off yourself or inform the teacher and let them handle it?

No real relevance to IT but makes them feel awkward!

[elsiegee40]

Rather than technical detail (which is not what you are recruiting for), I think a few "How would you handle...?" type questions might be useful

Distinguishing between "teaching and learning" showstoppers and the HT having a strop cause he can't print. The ability to prioritise and be tactful are possibly most useful!

The other thing to do is to ensure that they will raise things to you before a minor problem becomes an issue.

They will be young and keen, but they're NOT running the network on their own and you need to be certain that they understand that the servers can't simply be rebooted without ensuring minimum disruption to the school! It's not like playing networks at college!

[phil1103]

thanks guys/gals, ive added some of these onto my list. not sure bout RAId and stuff, there only part time noobies!