Network administrator interview questions

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Loren Ross
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1 1 Skill assessment for potential employees Network administrator interview questions Name: Date: Question Answer Based upon the job description that you ve seen, please describe the skills and experience you have that make this position a good fit for you. Please describe the technical environment of your current (or most recent) position, including the number of users, number of IT staff, your job duties, your work schedule, etc. Please describe the greatest accomplishments of your professional career. Please describe the importance you place on customer service vs. technical skills. How do you keep your technical knowledge and skills current? Please describe your greatest technical challenge and how you overcame it. What does good customer service involve in this position? You are working alone when the following calls come in: The CEO can t access his . Your good friend can t print. A crabby user can t log in to the network. The Internet router goes down. Prioritize the calls and describe why you would service them in that order. Please describe the biggest mistake you ve made in your professional career and what you learned from it. If you were given 60 days, an unlimited budget, and full authority, what would you change about your current (or most recent) position and why?

2 2 Skill assessment for potential employees Question Answer Because of our small size, this position involves performing a wide variety of tasks, such as changing toner, clearing printer jams, maintaining equipment, providing assistance to users, etc., in addition to network administration. How do you feel about performing tasks that are not technically challenging? This position requires a punctual and reliable individual. Does this describe you? It s 4:50 P.M. and you re frantically trying to meet a 5 P.M. deadline to complete a task for your manager. You have an important commitment at 5:15. A user asks you to help him move a file cabinet, which is not part of your job description. What will you do and why? Who have you learned the most from in your life and why? Please describe how you determine if you re doing a good job.

3 3 Skill assessment for potential employees Network administrator questions Name: Date: 1. A user has left the company and you need to create a new user with the same rights and permissions. Please describe two ways to create the new user. 2. Users can send locally but cannot send to external recipients. Please describe how you would troubleshoot and resolve this problem. 3. A remote user in Kansas, who is not technical and is scared to death of computers, calls for help. The user logged in to your network via the Terminal Server. You determine that the solution to the user s problem requires an edit of a hidden, read-only file, deleting a system file in the winnt\system32 folder, and creating a simple batch file on the user s computer. Please describe the tools you would use to resolve this problem. 4. Describe some of the technical documentation you have created or maintained, if any. 5. A user complains that when she prints a document in any application, the printer prints garbage. What is the most likely cause of the problem?

4 4 Skill assessment for potential employees 6. You just installed a service pack on the file, , SQL, and print servers. You rebooted all the servers, and now the service pack installation is complete. Before you go home for the evening, what additional steps, if any, should you take? 7. Users are complaining of slow performance when they run server-based applications. The server has the following specifications: Compaq MHZ Pentium MB of RAM 18-GB EIDE Hard Drive 10/100 NIC Connected to a Cisco switch The performance monitor shows the following: Memory - Pages/Sec: 5 Physical Disk - % Disk Time: 20 percent Processor - % Processor Time: 90 percent What is the best way to improve the system s performance? (i.e., If the %Processor Time number stays over 75 percent for a consistent amount of time, then upgrade to a faster processor or add a second processor.) 8. Please write a short paragraph describing DHCP. 9. A user s roaming profile is not accessible. Describe how you would solve this problem.

5 5 Skill assessment for potential employees 10. A user entered his username and password on his computer, but he can t access a network application. What is most likely the problem? 11. You are working in a Citrix MetaFrame environment. There are two Citrix servers, which are properly configured for load balancing and both have Microsoft Word loaded. Some users can use Word, but some cannot. What is the most likely cause of this problem? 12. What is the very first thing you should do when upgrading to Windows 2000? 13. You are troubleshooting a difficult problem and have run out of ideas. The application displays an error code. Please list what resources you would use to resolve the issue. 14. Users are complaining of slow Web browsing and file download speeds. Describe how you would resolve this problem. 15. How do you check for network connectivity? 16. A user asks you for tips on how to avoid viruses. What advice would you give her?

6 6 Skill assessment for potential employees Network administrator experience inventory On a scale of one to five, with 1 being never used and 5 being expert, please rate your knowledge and experience in the following technologies. (Check the box that corresponds with your answer.) Technology Never Used Limited Experience Comfortable With Strong Knowledge Expert Knowledge Windows 2000 Professional Windows 2000 Server Windows NT 4 Windows 98/ME DOS Citrix MetaFrame Active Directory Microsoft SQL 2000 Microsoft SQL 7 Other SQL Microsoft Exchange Server 2000 Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 Web Page Design (HTML) Web Page Administration Network Security Router Configuration Database Report Writing Microsoft Word Microsoft Excel Microsoft Access Microsoft PowerPoint Microsoft Outlook PDAs (Palm, Blackberry, etc.) Wireless Networking Network Printing Document Scanning/Document Imaging Network Monitoring Tools PBX/Voice Mail Systems Valley Oak Systems Portal

Student 1 Printer Issues

Student 1 Printer Issues A customer complains that his inkjet printer (attached to a computer with a USB cable) is printing funny characters instead of what it should print. He has been using the printer