In case I forgot to mention it again, I'm currently in Colorado looking for work. I have been for about a month now, with fairly limited success. Today I interviewed with two jobs at extremely different companies.
The first interview was for an IT Consulting firm. It was pretty comfortable. There weren't too many questions, mostly just the interviewer explaining what the company was about, what kind of work they would expect of me, etc. The interviewer said he liked my personality and attitude and told me he'd call me for another interview.
The second interview was for a Tier 1 help desk position at a pretty large software company. This one wasn't so comfortable. They asked several technical questions, most of which I had good answers for. As the interview went on and the questions got more complex, I started realizing that I wasn't quite understanding most of the questions they were asking me. Now, I don't mean that I didn't know the terms or anything like that. I mean the questions started getting...confusing. Like, "What protocol do you need to use to connect a computer to a network?" Now, apparently the answer to this question is "TCP/IP." But It took a lot of coaching for me to get to that answer since...well, I don't have to *use* any protocol to connect to anything.
Now, this is mostly due to my not having any real formal education in the IT world. I've learned everything I know by doing it, and I've gotten pretty good at figuring things out by fiddling around a little and exercising my Google-fu. I've been a shop tech and a consultant for years now. I know how do work with home users and with small business owners as well as their computers. Basically, my big discovery today was that I'm probably not going to be happy in a Help Desk job like I was hoping for when I moved here (More stable work, better pay, better benefits that what I've had thus far in my career). Today, I discovered that I really love what I've been doing and I want to continue doing it, regardless of the annoying things involved in working with small businesses. So yeah. I'm really hoping I get the job with the first company.
Posted by MightyCow (Member # 9253) on :
That does seem confusing. To connect a computer to a network, you plug in the CAT5 and double click "Connection Wizard."
While it's important to know your stuff, I don't think in my 10+ years as a webmaster and network admin I had to utter the phrase TCP/IP more than twice.
I'd question whether the person interviewing you actually knew what the potential job was about, or if they were just reading questions. Of course, your job might have been reading scripted responses anyway, so maybe that WAS a good question Posted by twinky (Member # 693) on :
I think the question was phrased poorly. You don't use TCP/IP to connect a computer to a network, the computer uses TCP/IP to connect to the network.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
I ran into this a lot after my first office manager job that ran into accounting, and then I went out applying for accounting jobs with human resources people who were interviewing me from some kind of kit of accounting questions.
Posted by Dead_Horse (Member # 3027) on :
i hear this is a good place to work at least until you find what you really want. Work at home, flexible schedule, paid training. My sister knows people who love working for them.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:While it's important to know your stuff, I don't think in my 10+ years as a webmaster and network admin I had to utter the phrase TCP/IP more than twice.
If you didn't have to troubleshoot the IP stack on your Windows machines over ten years of working as a network admin, either you wound up reinstalling Windows a lot without really knowing why or you just got used to not having your Win98 boxes connect to the network. Posted by Primal Curve (Member # 3587) on :
When I worked tech support for an ISP, the phrase "TCP/IP" came out of my mouth probably two or three times every call.
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