job screening question

Fri Jul 6 06:40:17 UTC 2012

Ok, so I read over Williams OP...

I have 25 years IT experience... I've applied for a few jobs in my 
time...  I thought to myself "I'll have a crack with a few comments!!!"...

....then I read down the next 30 posts and decided that perhaps I didn't 
really know enough about networking to really comment...  ...and perhaps 
I needed a bit more grey hair and eat more RFCs for breakfast...

...then I read down the next 30 posts and realised that I really didn't 
know enough about computing to comment....  ...and perhaps my problem 
wasn't lack of grey hair, but just to much hair...

...Talk about a bunch of intimidating uber geeks! :)

I suspect that when I read down the next 30 posts I'll just back away 
from the computer slowly knowing that I'm just not smart enough to use 
this device.

But seriously guys, great thread with tons of really interesting stuff 
and a bunch of history.

D

On 6/07/2012 5:02 a.m., William Herrin wrote:
> Hi folks,
>
> I gave my HR folks a screening question to ask candidates for an IP
> expert position. I've gotten some "unexpected" answers, so I want to
> do a sanity check and make sure I'm not asking something unreasonable.
> And by "unexpected" I don't mean naively incorrect answers, I mean
> oh-my-God-how-did-you-get-that-cisco-certification answers.
>
> The question was:
>
> You implement a firewall on which you block all ICMP packets. What
> part of the TCP protocol (not IP in general, TCP specifically)
> malfunctions as a result?
>
>
> My questions for you are:
>
> 1. As an expert who follows NANOG, do you know the answer? Or is this
> question too hard?
>
> 2. Is the question too vague? Is there a clearer way to word it?
>
> 3. Is there a better screening question I could pass to HR to ask and
> check the candidate's response against the supplied answer?
>
> Thanks,
> Bill Herrin
>
>

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