Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Serious Hardware/Software Crap > Working in IT 3.0: xp_cmdshell

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

Presumably, there would be an initial question about Linux ("I see here you have some experience with Linux..." etc.) where he would properly and honestly summarize his experience levels with Linux, which would forego the more in-depth questions. If someone's rattling off complex Linux troubleshooting questions for a tier-1 support position, they're more in the wrong, imo.

The problem with "I see you have some experience with Linux..." isn't that they can't do complex troubleshooting. It's that they don't know how to do basic troubleshooting. I'm happy to interview candidates who are honest about their experience level with Linux, and I'm not trying to discourage people from being honest about it. I'm trying to get across what the idea of "working knowledge" may be, even for an entry level position.

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

I just think your definition of "working knowledge" varies from most people's. I'd say that I have a "working knowledge" of MS Office, but I'm not going to be able to throw together a complex Excel sheet with pivotcharts off the top off my head.

Using a command-line editor, understanding permissions, knowing how to read man pages, and where to find basic logs is basic working knowledge. I'm not expecting complex.

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

I mean, you could split the difference and have something like - "Basic Linux Experience (Installation, Configuration, Day-to-day Use)" - but for me, that's my interpretation of "working knowledge."

Really, nobody cares about installation. It's something you do once (or with automation as a non-entry level worker) and forget about it. Configuration is 99% of Linux, so I wouldn't put that ton either (it's basically configured out of the box except for whatever's running on it).

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

I didn't have any Linux on my resume, but during the group interview when asked by the neckbeard I casually talked about playing around with different distros on home pc's, and having a laptop running Mint. Nothing major, but it made for good conversation about how I have always been interested in it but haven't used it in any job atmosphere (always been windows environments). Well, I got the job and he pretty much took me as his padawan. I was sad to see him leave, but I now feel like I can put Linux on my resume

I guess it's better to underpromise and overdeliver rather than overpromising and failing.

edit: however, I probably wouldn't put Linux directly on my resume. I'm not trying to be a Linux admin, but I can use it. It's a canvas. I want to focus on the applications that I installed and configured on Linux, to Bob Morales's point.

I think this is a much better approach. Not the "wouldn't put Linux directly on your resume" part (do so if you have the skills), but talking about skills in which you have a low skill level but interest in during interviews.

Mostly, don't misrepresent, but I think the difference between "I've used Linux as a hobbyist" and "basic Linux skills" is larger than many people realize, and telling me you have "basic Linux skills" is going to make me ask a bunch of questions you'll bomb or assume you have knowledge you don't, then you'll feel like you took a test and I'll feel like you lied to me.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:25

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# ? Apr 27, 2024 21:45

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

To make sure we're on the same page, it seems that it's not so much the wording but a lot of people are misinterpreting what are basic linux skills.

evol262, what do you think of this practice test? LPIC 101 Pratice Exam

# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:39

in a well actually: Jan 26, 2011; dude, you gotta end it on the rhyme

evol262 posted:

Really, nobody cares about installation. It's something you do once (or with automation as a non-entry level worker) and forget about it. Configuration is 99% of Linux, so I wouldn't put that ton either (it's basically configured out of the box except for whatever's running on it).

A friend of mine with > 5 years of Linux/Solaris sysadmin experience and a resume that reflected it left Solaris installation off of his resume and a local MSP rejected him because of his lack of experience with installing Solaris.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 17:52

Docjowles: Apr 9, 2009

Tab8715 posted:

To make sure we're on the same page, it seems that it's not so much the wording but a lot of people are misinterpreting what are basic linux skills.

evol262, what do you think of this practice test? LPIC 101 Pratice Exam

I think I see why the Red Hat exams are given more weight in the industry. I really don't care if someone has every possible switch to every single utility memorized. Or what units the timeout argument in a lilo config uses. That's what man pages and Google are for.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:07

Japanese Dating Sim: Nov 12, 2003; hehe; Lipstick Apathy

evol262 posted:

Mostly, don't misrepresent, but I think the difference between "I've used Linux as a hobbyist" and "basic Linux skills" is larger than many people realize, and telling me you have "basic Linux skills" is going to make me ask a bunch of questions you'll bomb or assume you have knowledge you don't, then you'll feel like you took a test and I'll feel like you lied to me.

Thanks for posting this response, really, it's informative for me. I was ready to write a longer post about how I understood where you were coming from, but suffice it to say that I'll defer to your judgment in this case (as far as your being in a more senior in experience and knowing Linux way better than me).

# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:20

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Tab8715 posted:

To make sure we're on the same page, it seems that it's not so much the wording but a lot of people are misinterpreting what are basic linux skills.

evol262, what do you think of this practice test? LPIC 101 Pratice Exam

It looks like something Robert Half would give candidates, and some of it is awfully finicky, but it's still what I meant by being able to pass an LPI sample test.

Bad.

code:

 Which of the following URLs is a BEST first internet site to go to for information about how to perform an unfamiliar Linux task?

    A. [url]http://www.linuxman.com/[/url]

    B. [url]http://www.linuxhowto.net/[/url]

    C. [url]http://www.linuxtoday.com/[/url]

    D. [url]http://www.linuxdoc.org/[/url]

Good.

code:

 Which of the following commands can be used to assure that a file 'myfile' exists?

    A. cp myfile /dev/null

    B. touch myfile

    C. create myfile

    D. mkfile myfile

There are a lot of distro-specific questions, useless questions (lilo, grepping through C), package-specific questions (where does foobar get installed), but it's still a reasonable point for "basic knowledge".

Japanese Dating Sim posted:

Thanks for posting this response, really, it's informative for me. I was ready to write a longer post about how I understood where you were coming from, but suffice it to say that I'll defer to your judgment in this case (as far as your being in a more senior in experience and knowing Linux way better than me).

I'd also say not to do this because I know Linux better. That's a good reason to argue with me. I haven't been in an entry-level position in 10 years, and I can assume almost every candidate who comes to me has a basic level of knowledge, which is probably why I'm more annoyed at the "copy+paste crap from Google to shotgun debug problems" people. Expectations from people who hire entry-level positions or have recently been in them may be a better starting point. I know there are a lot of Rackspacers and people from other shops where Linux isn't their primary focus, but a nice skill to have, and my judgement of the skills they want people to have could be totally off base.

evol262 fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:21

Griffon: May 14, 2003

evol262 posted:

useless questions (lilo, grepping through C)

What kind of monster greps C code? If I was asked this in an interview, I'd just up and leave. These are great 1992 Linux admin questions

# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:38

Bloodborne: Sep 24, 2008

The Dreamer posted:

Thanks for all the advice guys. One last question. For a resume targeted at entry level IT is it a good idea to list customer service experience under professional experience? It seems like something that would be important for Help Desk and Tier 1 support type jobs.

Yes you should. It's highly important for Help Desk.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:50

The Dreamer: Oct 15, 2013; Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

Alright so yes to customer service experience for help desk jobs. Maybe to linux depending on the job requirements.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 18:51

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

evol262 posted:

Linux is odd here. There's a tendency for shade-tree admins who've never done anything more than follow howtos on the Ubuntu forums to say they have a "working knowledge" of Linux, and I've interviewed so many of them that I'm simply skeptical. There's an assumption that Linux is so obscure that knowing anything at all about it puts you above the competition. That used to be true.

Using Linux at home for basic stuff is neither experience nor training.

It's common to encounter people with "Linux" on their resume who cannot use an editor on the command line, do not understand how permissions work, are at a complete loss for what logs to look at for basic troubleshooting, etc.

If you can't pass an LPI sample test, it has no business being there. If you can, go ahead and put it on.

Yes, you're selling yourself and all that, but you should believe that you may get asked about it. If you have to question whether you should be putting it on your resume, how well will questions go?

What you're giving is advice that makes your life easier as a hiring manager, not advice that makes someone else's life easier as a candidate. These two goals will often be in conflict, and that's not a mark against the candidate.

When you're a more senior candidate, someone at the level of you or myself, your experience and proven ability to execute is the key differentiator between you and other candidates. But when you're entry-level, the differentiating factor is your demonstrated ability to learn. In many industries, academic credentials serve as a proxy for this ability: where you went, what you majored in, what your GPA was. In IT, where the majority of valuable hands-on skills are not taught in college programs, it's really helpful for people to be able to list things they learned independently.

There is a delicate balancing act at play: if you've got a full plate of interviews, you want to whittle your resume down to the things that most accurately represent your qualifications. If you're truly entry-level, though, you might as well put yourself out there and convince people to take a chance developing your interests, as long as you label your expertise honestly and don't pitch yourself as an expert in something you've done as a hobby.

It's unfortunate that you've wasted a bunch of time with people who have janky claims on their resume, but you can weed these out in 3 minutes with a phone screen. Please don't hold it as a grudge against everyone who's got a real interest in learning these things and learning them even better in a professional setting.

Anecdotally:

I've never had a job I've remotely met qualifications for. My first job with a Windows-based web hosting company came out of an internship that I landed because I ran Windows Server 2000 at home and knew how to administer IIS and Active Directory. From there, I landed a job running over 600 Linux servers despite not having any real professional experience with Linux, because I was able to accurately explain the differences between NFS and CIFS and could walk him through some fairly complicated Apache configurations. My next job was handling automation for a 3-datacenter, global web application infrastructure with 2 billion pageviews/month despite having no experience with anything of that scale because I could talk competently about CDNs, caching, and app architectures that I'd never worked with in a professional setting. Following that, I managed a team of nine engineers despite having no actual management experience, because I'd done my homework independently on management of IT environments and personnel. Now I'm handling web operations in a job where I had no prior experience whatsoever with cloud anything, developing user analytics despite having no background in analytics or data science or streaming data processing.

If you can speak confidently about something, put it on your resume (but if it's not professional experience, list it as such). It will be a point against you with hiring managers who will toss your resume in the bin if you're not an expert in everything you claim experience with, but do you really want to work under someone who enjoys setting up other people to fail in the first place?

Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:36

Dark Helmut: Jul 24, 2004; All growns up

evol262 posted:

Mostly, don't misrepresent, but I think the difference between "I've used Linux as a hobbyist" and "basic Linux skills" is larger than many people realize, and telling me you have "basic Linux skills" is going to make me ask a bunch of questions you'll bomb or assume you have knowledge you don't, then you'll feel like you took a test and I'll feel like you lied to me.

This is accurate.

I interviewed a guy today with 1.5 years of QA experience, mostly in manual testing. He's trying hard to find his next role, and his resume reads "2 years" and "manual and automation using QTP".

He's used QTP before, but on his resume he is selling himself as more of an expert in it so I told him to dial it back. Any interviewer worth anything is going to pick that right apart and DQ him, whereas if he is totally honest and doesn't BS it, he instead becomes a candidate worthy of consideration because he isn't BSing.

Just be able to speak to the bullets on your resume, people.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:43

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Dark Helmut posted:

This is accurate.

I interviewed a guy today with 1.5 years of QA experience, mostly in manual testing. He's trying hard to find his next role, and his resume reads "2 years" and "manual and automation using QTP".

He's used QTP before, but on his resume he is selling himself as more of an expert in it so I told him to dial it back. Any interviewer worth anything is going to pick that right apart and DQ him, whereas if he is totally honest and doesn't BS it, he instead becomes a candidate worthy of consideration because he isn't BSing.

Just be able to speak to the bullets on your resume, people.

What would you want to see on a resume instead?

# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:51

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

Dark Helmut posted:

This is accurate.

I interviewed a guy today with 1.5 years of QA experience, mostly in manual testing. He's trying hard to find his next role, and his resume reads "2 years" and "manual and automation using QTP".

He's used QTP before, but on his resume he is selling himself as more of an expert in it so I told him to dial it back. Any interviewer worth anything is going to pick that right apart and DQ him, whereas if he is totally honest and doesn't BS it, he instead becomes a candidate worthy of consideration because he isn't BSing.

Just be able to speak to the bullets on your resume, people.

I used to interview this way, and maybe it's just the effect of 12 years of IT experience in developing my cynicism, but put someone in a room with an interviewer and every word out of their mouth is basically bullshit. Everything a person says in an interview dresses up their accomplishments and downplays their failures. At best, their responses will make their successes look like an individual triumph, while their failures look like the team failed to execute. And, in truth, success or failure very often hinges more about the team than any individual on it. The level of bullshit only increases with the actual competency of the candidate; this is the only way executive pay can be explained.

The worst hire I ever approved was someone who was the most technically impressive candidate you could imagine about every single one of the many, many skills listed on their resume. He had a sociopathic approach to team dynamics and was concrete shoes on a team trying to stay above water. The best employee I voted against hiring had far less technical competency in development than was represented on his resume, and oversold himself tremendously, but was a huge team player who did what he was told and always delivered on time.

Exaggerating on your resume is a mark against the candidate, but it should be given equal weight with the other marks for and against the candidate. People are imperfect, and being great at playing games for the interviewer isn't worth jack poo poo when it comes time to actually execute as part of a larger organization.

Vulture Culture fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 19:57

Dark Helmut: Jul 24, 2004; All growns up

Tab8715 posted:

What would you want to see on a resume instead?

Off the top of my head, a few pointers I give every day:

In general, the truth - as common sense as that sounds.

Assume if it's not on the first page people won't read it.

Use a summary as opposed to an objective. ie "here is who i am and what I can do for you" vs "this is what I want"

For the love of god, use bullet points and not paragraph format. No one wants to read a story book.

Have a keyword repository by all means, and call it your "Skills" section. Just don't put anything on there you aren't comfortable speaking about.

Be sure to put your top and most marketable skills near the top of each job description. Por ejemplo, if you were the 1 IT guy in a 100 person firm and you're going for a sys admin job, don't put "troubleshot desktop issues" for the first bullet.

Anyway just a couple pointers. Make that first page scream "Interview me, bitch!"

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:00

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

SH/SC confuses me sometimes. Certs are worthless, degrees are worthless, you need to get a new job to get a promotion, but don't put anything on your resume you aren't an expert at.

How the hell are you supposed to move up in the world if you can only get jobs doing what you've already done?

Inspector_666 fucked around with this message at 20:03 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:01

Dark Helmut: Jul 24, 2004; All growns up

^^^ learn how to BS ^^^ Seriously though, networking is huge. To win a job doing something you've never done, you have to either have direct experience or convince someone to take a chance on you. Refs/networking can bridge that gap. Alternatively, get promoted within.

Misogynist posted:

I used to interview this way, and maybe it's just the effect of 12 years of IT experience in developing my cynicism, but put someone in a room with an interviewer and every word out of their mouth is basically bullshit. Everything a person says in an interview dresses up their accomplishments and downplays their failures. At best, their responses will make their successes look like an individual triumph, while their failures look like the team failed to execute. And, in truth, success or failure very often hinges more about the team than any individual on it. The level of bullshit only increases with the actual competency of the candidate; this is the only way executive pay can be explained.

The worst hire I ever approved was someone who was the most technically impressive candidate you could imagine about every single one of the many, many skills listed on their resume. He had a sociopathic approach to team dynamics and was concrete shoes on a team trying to stay above water. The best employee I voted against hiring had far less technical competency in development than was represented on his resume, and oversold himself tremendously, but was a huge team player who did what he was told and always delivered on time.

Exaggerating on your resume is a mark against the candidate, but it should be given equal weight with the other marks for and against the candidate. People are imperfect, and being great at playing games for the interviewer isn't worth jack poo poo when it comes time to actually execute as part of a larger organization.

I think you're absolutely right, there are a lot of paper tigers out there. References are a key part of vetting people out too. Both direct (given by the candidate) and indirect (I know someone he worked with). I pretty much insist on talking to recent supervisors and I steer clear of non-IT or noon-recent refs. This is where is really helps to be in a reasonably-sized market. There are about 3 degrees of separation in IT in my town, so I can almost always find someone who knows you, whereas you go to DC and it's a crap shoot.

Dark Helmut fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:03

Bob Morales: Aug 18, 2006; ~~Just wear the fucking mask, Bob~~

I don't care how many people I probably infected with COVID-19 while refusing to wear a mask, my comfort is far more important than the health and safety of everyone around me!

Whether it's a Linux server or a Cisco router, don't put it on your resume if you've worked with something 'once or twice'. If you are working with the things on a regular basis, okay.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:12

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Misogynist posted:

What you're giving is advice that makes your life easier as a hiring manager, not advice that makes someone else's life easier as a candidate. These two goals will often be in conflict, and that's not a mark against the candidate.

There is a delicate balancing act at play: if you've got a full plate of interviews, you want to whittle your resume down to the things that most accurately represent your qualifications. If you're truly entry-level, though, you might as well put yourself out there and convince people to take a chance developing your interests, as long as you label your expertise honestly and don't pitch yourself as an expert in something you've done as a hobby.

It's unfortunate that you've wasted a bunch of time with people who have janky claims on their resume, but you can weed these out in 3 minutes with a phone screen. Please don't hold it as a grudge against everyone who's got a real interest in learning these things and learning them even better in a professional setting.

I'm not necessarily trying to make my life easier as a hiring manager as much as I'm trying to convey what I see as an interviewer. Like Dark Helmut says, being honest goes a long way. I'm not gonna hold someone's experience (or lack of experience, or misrepresented experience) against other people. It's annoying as a candidate when you get interviewers who want their one specific pet answer to questions that have multiple possible causes and resolutions, and it's annoying to get someone who feels like they're putting you through a certification test. I've also experienced this from bad interviewers who ask specific details about technologies I used on a project in 2008 and haven't touched since. It's hard to split the difference. But this is less cut-and-dry.

I don't want to feel like I need to evaluate whether everything on your resume is accurate or not. It's insulting to both of us. Again, I don't want to feel like I'm testing you, and you don't want to feel like you're being interrogated.

Entry-level candidates (in my experience, all candidates, since most new shops have a ton of stuff you've never seen before and will never see again) are well-served by convincing people that you've got the aptitude to acquire new skills, and that's probably how most of us got our starts. I didn't have any relevant professional experience when I started, either. But I'd rather be surprised that a candidate knows something I didn't expect them to than that they didn't know something their resume says they do. Including "basic Linux skills".

I don't expect someone who has "basic Linux knowledge" to be writing systemtap probes or going through strace output (or even knowing that strace exists) or anything complex, but I do expect some level of competence which is generally higher than what you get from putting Debian on a NAS and installing Plex. It's fungible. And I agree that it should go on a resume somewhere, but the phrasing is difficult, because "basic skills" implies that you're adhering to some standard of competence that we can't even seem to agree on in this thread. "Used Linux" is better. But I prefer putting projects, accomplishments, or duties on for exactly this reason. By all means, put down that you run Gentoo on your VPS and I'll ask you about it. But don't put "basic Linux knowledge" if this is the extent of your experience with it.

Misogynist posted:

Anecdotally:

I've never had a job I've remotely met qualifications for. My first job with a Windows-based web hosting company came out of an internship that I landed because I ran Windows Server 2000 at home and knew how to administer IIS and Active Directory. From there, I landed a job running over 600 Linux servers despite not having any real professional experience with Linux, because I was able to accurately explain the differences between NFS and CIFS and could walk him through some fairly complicated Apache configurations. My next job was handling automation for a 3-datacenter, global web application infrastructure with 2 billion pageviews/month despite having no experience with anything of that scale because I could talk competently about CDNs, caching, and app architectures that I'd never worked with in a professional setting. Following that, I managed a team of nine engineers despite having no actual management experience, because I'd done my homework independently on management of IT environments and personnel. Now I'm handling web operations in a job where I had no prior experience whatsoever with cloud anything, developing user analytics despite having no background in analytics or data science or streaming data processing.

If you can speak confidently about something, put it on your resume (but if it's not professional experience, list it as such). It will be a point against you with hiring managers who will toss your resume in the bin if you're not an expert in everything you claim experience with, but do you really want to work under someone who enjoys setting up other people to fail in the first place?

I consider it generally good advice to tell people to apply for positions where they meet 40% of the qualifications, since that's better than many candidates, and it puts you in a position to develop a lot of skills. I've never had a job where I've met the qualifications either. I think I'd get bored awfully fast that way.

I think we're at a disconnect in the "speak confidently about something" bit. I don't toss resumes in the bin if you're not an expert in everything you claim experience with. And I realize that you may have written this pejoratively and not about me specifically, but I'll use me specifically as an example, because it's just my opinion I'm espousing.

There's no expectation of "expert knowledge" from a list of skills or a bullet point of technologies. If you have expert knowledge, it probably comes through in the duties or projects from your last jobs, and we can go from there. It's not generally important for me to feel it out, since we all know how annoying it can be to field questions that could be answered in 30 seconds on Google but that almost nobody memorizes simply because of that fact. Expert is a different thing.

I'm trying to nail down what basic knowledge is. The ability to speak confidently about something and the ability to speak competently about something are not always correlated, especially as an entry-level candidate who may feel uncomfortable saying "I don't know, but I think..." or "I don't know, but I can find the answer if I need to" or something similar. Some people never learn the difference. Both as a hiring manager and a candidate, I prefer to err on the side of pleasant surprises.

evol262 fucked around with this message at 20:19 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:17

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Dark Helmut posted:

Off the top of my head, a few pointers I give every day:

In general, the truth - as common sense as that sounds.

Assume if it's not on the first page people won't read it.

Use a summary as opposed to an objective. ie "here is who i am and what I can do for you" vs "this is what I want"

For the love of god, use bullet points and not paragraph format. No one wants to read a story book.

Have a keyword repository by all means, and call it your "Skills" section. Just don't put anything on there you aren't comfortable speaking about.

Be sure to put your top and most marketable skills near the top of each job description. Por ejemplo, if you were the 1 IT guy in a 100 person firm and you're going for a sys admin job, don't put "troubleshot desktop issues" for the first bullet.

Anyway just a couple pointers. Make that first page scream "Interview me, bitch!"

Ok, that bit is fine but how would you want to to express something I'm not an expert at but sort-of-know-a-bit? Example, I have a section where I list a bunch of keywords and one of them is batch scripting. I can make a simple several line script that'll backup files under an 1/2 hour with maybe a little googling - is that acceptable?

Gucci Loafers fucked around with this message at 20:20 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:17

Proud Christian Mom: Dec 20, 2006; READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

Inspector_666 posted:

SH/SC confuses me sometimes. Certs are worthless, degrees are worthless, you need to get a new job to get a promotion, but don't put anything on your resume you aren't an expert at.

How the hell are you supposed to move up in the world if you can only get jobs doing what you've already done?

People skills. Bullshit. The gift of gab. Whatever the gently caress you call it that makes people like you. Its the only thing that can actually differentiates you from the other 75 people with your exact skillset. Its what turns you from a resource into a person. Its what turns you from expendable to protected. Degrees, certs, experience; its all worthless when its all the same. Businesses may try their damndest to turn workers into easily replaced cogs, but ultimately it is people hiring people. Game them.

Edit: Anecdote time. Years ago I had a tremendously gifted guy on our staff who I said was paid less than he was worth, but more than he deserved. Why was this? Because he was loving insufferable. As time went on I could barely stand him, the rest of the staff didn't like him and he was pretty much banned from customer locations unless another tech was with him to speak with people. Ultimately this guy's inability to deal with people led to me letting him go. His gigantic pile of MS and Cisco certs didn't get him very far and his career eventually just collapsed. Finally, after some time doing non-IT jobs that made him actually interact with people, he got his poo poo together and is now CTO of a not so small company in California. The moral of this story is, never be that guy who's description ends with, "but nobody likes him."

Proud Christian Mom fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Oct 30, 2014

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:18

Inspector_666: Oct 7, 2003; _{benny with the good hair}

You all understand that "Be totally honest on your resume" and "Bullshit everybody in the hiring process" are not compatible with each other, right?

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:27

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Inspector_666 posted:

SH/SC confuses me sometimes. Certs are worthless, degrees are worthless, you need to get a new job to get a promotion, but don't put anything on your resume you aren't an expert at.

How the hell are you supposed to move up in the world if you can only get jobs doing what you've already done?

Heh, I'm confused too but this is incredibly good discussion. I'm honestly planning to re-read the thread, sleep on it and read it again tomorrow.

Life is confusing sometimes.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:28

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

Inspector_666 posted:

You all understand that "Be totally honest on your resume" and "Bullshit everybody in the hiring process" are not compatible with each other, right?

Being honest in your bullshit and bullshitting your honesty are not mutually exclusive you know

Tab8715 posted:

I'm honestly planning to re-read the thread

Wait are you bullshitting me

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:32

Proud Christian Mom: Dec 20, 2006; READING COMPREHENSION IS HARD

Inspector_666 posted:

You all understand that "Be totally honest on your resume" and "Bullshit everybody in the hiring process" are not compatible with each other, right?

I don't advocate lying on your resume but so long as non-technical people are the first hurdle to clear in the hiring process you've got to do whatever it takes to do that and if gross embellishment about your Linux skillset checks that final box then loving do it. I'm not saying tout your Windows Home Server experience as expert knowledge of Server 2012 if thats what you're applying for but, gently caress some of these requirements they come up with are retarded. If "Must be able to reload stamp license into Pitney Bowes Machine" is there just nod your loving head that you can do it and Google that poo poo later.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:33

evol262: Nov 30, 2010; #!/usr/bin/perl

Inspector_666 posted:

How the hell are you supposed to move up in the world if you can only get jobs doing what you've already done?

By getting jobs where you fit enough of the qualifications to get hired, but not of them enough that you're just rehashing your old job, basically. Never apply for a job you're 100% qualified for.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:38

Vulture Culture: Jul 14, 2003; I was never enjoying it. I only eat it for the nutrients.

evol262 posted:

By getting jobs where you fit enough of the qualifications to get hired, but not of them enough that you're just rehashing your old job, basically. Never apply for a job you're 100% qualified for.

Exception: unless you fancy yourself a turnaround artist and a glutton for punishment.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:44

Fiendish Dr. Wu: Nov 11, 2010; You done fucked up now!

evol262 posted:

By getting jobs where you fit enough of the qualifications to get hired, but not of them enough that you're just rehashing your old job, basically. Never apply for a job you're 100% qualified for.

So about 63-67% is what you're saying?

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:44

Gucci Loafers: May 20, 2006; Ask yourself, do you really want to talk to pair of really nice gaudy shoes?

Fiendish Dr. Wu posted:

Wait are you bullshitting me

Umm, no?

# ? Oct 30, 2014 20:50

Roargasm: Oct 21, 2010; Hate to sound sleazy
But tease me
I don't want it if it's that easy

Inspector_666 posted:

How the hell are you supposed to move up in the world if you can only get jobs doing what you've already done?

Internal promotions, obviously

# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:04

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

Fake it 'til you make it.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:12

YOLOsubmarine: Oct 19, 2004; When asked which Pokemon he evolved into, Kamara pauses.

"Motherfucking, what's that big dragon shit? That orange motherfucker. Charizard."

It's hard to give good interview advice because so much of it comes down to soft skills and personal style. Some people are simply good talkers, and they can get away with embellishing their resume because they've got the soft skills required to deflect whenever they get caught out on not knowing something they claimed to know. If you're one of those people then you can probably get away with providing a much more generous accounting of your skills than might rightly be deserved.

It also depends a lot on the interviewer and their style. Some interviews are very informal and they just want to get a sense of how you think. Maybe that hiring manager is less interested in specific skills than in finding the right personality fit for the rest of the team, or who is adaptable enough to learn new things quickly. Another hiring manager might want someone who can sit down and rattle off the exact commands required to perform a specific task because he needs someone who can sit down and get to work immediately on a well defined set of tasks or projects, with minimal ramp up.

There's not really a one-size fits all answer here. No matter how good you are at your job, sometimes you will just have a really bad interview. It happens, and it doesn't mean that you did anything wrong. Maybe that interviewer is just really bad at his job, or maybe you just weren't the right fit for that position. The only real rule I have is to never put anything on your resume if you aren't prepared to say SOMETHING about it if asked. It doesn't have to be brilliant, but have at least something moderately intelligent to say about everything on there. I

f you've got kickstart on your resume and you get asked about it and you have to say something like "oh, it was a long time ago, I don't remember any of that anymore, sorry" that is bad. If you get asked about it and you can describe, broadly, how it functions, but not the exact commands required to set it up, then that will be fine for most interviewers. Most people in IT understand that knowledge doesn't stay fresh without fairly constant use, so expecting someone to know the complex details of something that they admit they haven't worked with very recently is dumb. But if they learned it once that's a good sign that they can learn it again, so being able to give an answer that indicates previous knowledge is generally good enough. Just don't claim to be an expert on anything unless you're prepared to talk like one.

My resume has some stuff on it that I haven't worked with in a while, but before I go into an interview where that might be germane I do a little interview study just to make sure I'm at least passably knowledgeable about it. I will explain, when asked, that it's been a few years since I've had hands on time, and then dive into the best answer I can give. If I simply don't have anything useful to say then I will admit that, ask a few questions about the technology, and then try to find something that I do know about to relate it to.

Also, put me in the camp with people who have never taken a job they were fully qualified for. The only way you'll develop is by challenging yourself. Don't outright lie to get a job, but do your research before the interview, and explain that you're not an expert on thing but know a lot about similar thing or other related thing and that you would really like the chance to grow professionally by becoming an expert on thing. A lot of companies (good ones, anyway) are looking for potential and drive, not rote knowledge.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:14

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

NippleFloss posted:

Some people are simply good talkers, and they can get away with embellishing their resume because they've got the soft skills required to deflect whenever they get caught out on not knowing something they claimed to know.

All I could think of was this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ntPxdWAWq8

# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:17

skipdogg: Nov 29, 2004; Resident SRT-4 Expert

NippleFloss posted:

There's not really a one-size fits all answer here. No matter how good you are at your job, sometimes you will just have a really bad interview. It happens, and it doesn't mean that you did anything wrong. Maybe that interviewer is just really bad at his job, or maybe you just weren't the right fit for that position. The only real rule I have is to never put anything on your resume if you aren't prepared to say SOMETHING about it if asked. It doesn't have to be brilliant, but have at least something moderately intelligent to say about everything on there. I

f you've got kickstart on your resume and you get asked about it and you have to say something like "oh, it was a long time ago, I don't remember any of that anymore, sorry" that is bad. If you get asked about it and you can describe, broadly, how it functions, but not the exact commands required to set it up, then that will be fine for most interviewers. Most people in IT understand that knowledge doesn't stay fresh without fairly constant use, so expecting someone to know the complex details of something that they admit they haven't worked with very recently is dumb. But if they learned it once that's a good sign that they can learn it again, so being able to give an answer that indicates previous knowledge is generally good enough. Just don't claim to be an expert on anything unless you're prepared to talk like one.

We do team interviews at my job, and I want to share an anecdotal story about a situation like this. I don't do canned questions, or behavioral questions. I ask people questions about stuff on their resume. We were filling a Sr. Sys Admin position about a year ago and interviewing folks for it. 2 candidates. A and B. During the interview process I'm going over A's resume and it says 'Scripting experience'. I'm interested in scripting and use a lot of them to make my life easier. I ask candidate A "So I see here it says you have scripting experience, tell me about a script you wrote, what it did, and how it saved you time or made your life easier". I'm really looking for anything but a bullshit answer. He could have written a 2 line script that copied a log file somewhere on a daily basis, or pretty much anything and I would have been cool with it. A just mutters a little and says "well I haven't really done much scripting". I immediately disqualified A as a potential hire for bullshitting me.

B's resume did not mention scripting, but I asked him about it anyway. "B, have you ever done any scripting? Bash, Perl, Powershell, whatever?" B says "Not really, I've done a little bash scripting in the past I really just google the script and then adapt it to what I need it to do".

B got the job, and has done well for us.

TL;DR, if it's on your resume be prepared to answer a question about it. If someone listed SCCM experience on their resume, I'm not going to ask them to create a WQL query on a whiteboard, but I would expect them to know what a device collection and a boundary group was.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 21:58

Dr. Arbitrary: Mar 15, 2006; Bleak Gremlin

If you don't have any experience with a technology (Or maybe just the bare basics), but you're interested, make sure you ask about it in the interview.
"Do you guys use Puppet or any other configuration management tools? That's something I want to learn."
"Are databases a big part of the work here? I'm not exactly looking to become a database guru but I'd really be interested in learning more about the subject so I can support them better."
"How does your organization feel about scripting? I know how to cobble some stuff together in Powershell but I'd love to get better, would I get a chance to work with someone who's good at it?

These questions will be a good sign to a good employer, and they'll scare people that you don't want to work for anyways.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 22:07

Dark Helmut: Jul 24, 2004; All growns up

skipdogg posted:

Truth

yes.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 22:11

jaegerx: Sep 10, 2012; Maybe this post will get me on your ignore list!

The lovely recruiter that hung up on me called me today to schedule a face to face interview. I kinda laughed at him and said sure. I'm guessing the actual techs looked at my resume and said wtf to the guy.

Think I'll go just to rip on the recruiter. I didn't really want the job and especially don't want it now after talking to that dipshit.

# ? Oct 30, 2014 22:20