This type o question where the candidate can elaborate the answer should be asked by a techinal interviewer. 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. The point is that the candidate cannot deviate from the question, I.e., this question will not generate another question from the candidate to the interviewer asking for more details about the scenario in case. For example, you may ask: which IGP is more reliable under an IP DoS attack? The answer for this question can be very long or may require some sort of interaction between the candidate and the interviewer, which means it has to be asked by techinical people and not by non-techinical interviewers. Thanks On 7/6/12, William Herrin <bill@herrin.us> 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
-- William D. Herrin ................ herrin@dirtside.com bill@herrin.us 3005 Crane Dr. ...................... Web: <http://bill.herrin.us/> Falls Church, VA 22042-3004
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