Network Manager interview task

[ianam]

Hi

 

Last minute clutching at straws here but the school I work in has advertised for a new Network Manager and I have been asked to provide suggestions for setting a written task for the interview candidates to complete in about half an hour.

 

Does anyone have any idea of the sort of thing that could be asked in such a task? It's a very long time since I went through any interview process!

 

As a bit of background, the post being advertised is for sole technical support in a Comprehensive School, covering the whole range of tasks from changing printer ink cartridges to server and network services and hardware management.

 

Any ideas welcome!

 

Ian

[korifugi]

Any I've gone to have had the task of "Create a basic short, medium and long term improvement plan for the network". That should easily fill half an hour.

 

There's also been a small number of proposed situations, asking what you would do in each (these touched on child protection, too).

[subway_lunch]

For me I would be looking at giving the applicant some technical tests. Such as set up a device collection in SCCM/create an deploy image with MDT, if you school uses those. Also if the job description requires it, get him to details the steps for setting up a dhcp scope with a certain amount of clients on it. That's just a couple to start with, there is a lot more I could come up with depending on your schools infrastructure.

[LTurner3692]

Also how would they deal with staff in different situations! how are they going to deal with people below them, can they provide an example of why they would deal with the situation in that way.

[mikkydoos]

There's also been a small number of proposed situations, asking what you would do in each (these touched on child protection, too).

 

That. And I had 'Write a disaster recovery plan' not too long ago.

 

 

 

Always had one or two on safeguarding.

[ianam]

Thanks for the suggestions pointing me in some viable directions! Have settled on three questions I think - a network upgrade one, a disaster recovery one and a slightly more technical one about internet/proxies - which candidates will have about 10 mins per question to provide a written answer. How they deal with staff will hopefully be raised in the interview itself.

[HarryMonkey]

I was given a picture of the insides of a server and asked to identify parts ... idrac, raid controllers etc etc. Also given a laptop with a spreadsheet with column of year numbers and a column of full names, asked to split off first and last names into two columns and then build an email address with yr-1st [email protected] (some of the full names contained 3 or four names so want just a simple split between two names). Then asked things like advantages + disadvantages of ssd. Given a dozen lines of code and asked to say what it was doing and what the answer would be,Identify some common acronyms and what they do ... DNS, RAID etc etc

[mavhc]

Part 2: your budget is now £5, how does this change your plan?

 

Any plan would require knowing the current status of the system though, "I'll replace everything you own with new stuff and waste money".

 

I'd prefer: During your first year how would you go about finding out the most efficient way of improving the school's technology, what would you measure, what would you monitor?

 

Gather data (zabbix, snmp v3, helpdesk, interviews, inventory, ongoing costs, phones etc), interpret data, recommend improvements.