job screening question

Fri Jul 6 03:04:05 UTC 2012

Diogo Montagner <diogo.montagner at gmail.com> writes:

> For screening questions (for 1st level filtering), IMO, the questions
> has to be straight to the point, for example:
>
> 1) What is the LSA number for an external route in OSPF?
>
> This can have two answer: 5 or 7. So, I will accept if the candidate
> answer 5, 7 or 5 and 7. Later on (the next level of the interview), a
> techinical interviewer will chech if the candidate understand the
> differences of LSA 5 and 7.

Frankly, this feels a bit like asking what the 9th byte in an IP
header is used for (it's TTL, but who's, uh, counting?) -- "That's why
God gave us packet analyzers" should be counted as an acceptable
answer.  If not, you'll find yourself skipping over plenty of
extremely well qualified candidates in favor of those who have crammed
recently for some sort of exam in hopes of compensating for their
short CV.

-r