Interview CCIE R&S candidates

[truongdinh]

I need to interview CCIE R&S for a opening position in the company. I am told to do this because I am the most qualified R&S person in the company which is not true. I am a security person.

Nevertheless, I interviewed three CCIEs people so far and I asked them three questions:

Question #1: Give the candidate an output of tcpdump and ask him to explain the output

Question #2: How does eBGP with MD5 authentication work across the firewall? What must be taken into account for this to work?

Question #3: In eBGP multi-hop configuration, your BGP configuration looks correct and both BGP routers can ping each other and that tcp port 179 is allowed. The BGP configuration looks correct but BGP does not come up. What could be the problem?

None of the CCIE R&S folks I interviewed so far was able to answer these questions correctly. Is that normal?

What would be the typical questions to ask CCIE R&S in an interview?

Thanks in advance

[paul.matthews]

TWENTY questions? Wow!

Asking that many questions in an interview means you are either having VERY long interviews, or you are having very short answers, which problably puts them at "what does it mean if you see a type 7 LSA" which only tells you if they know what a type seven LSA is. Someone could get lucky and happen to have the answers to the questions you pick, and not a lot else. Equally you could miss out on a hot candidate who just happens to not know the answers to your questions.

Fewer open questions that lead to a discussion will tell you so much more.

[Mohamed Sobair]

Hi Truong,

a Cisco Certifed doesnt require to have knowledge about Juniper , Checkpoint ...etc, as he could have no experience in all , like wise, I wont assume that Juniper Certified or Checkpoint certified has to be aware of Cisco. but they MUST be aware of technology.

You are interviewing CCIE, means a Cisco's expert with Cisco's major. I do agree that as a CCIE in R/S candidate should have basic knowledge in Security and MPLS besides the layer-2 technologies. that's why Cisco has made an enhancment to thier Certification always. However, I dont agree with your concept of a phase 2 interview that included a lab Scenario. That's the Job of Cisco , they have already examined a candidate twice to ensure he have a kind of hands on.

If a candidate is knowledgeable enough and have sufficient tecknology concept, then its fair enough from my point of view as he already been examined practically and I am not too much concern about how fast is he?

The interview shall provide you with a mind presence of acandidate as well as personality besides his technical knowledge.

HTH

Mohamed

[truongdinh]

Thank you everyone for your comments.

When we advertise for the new position, we explicitly state that we are looking for a CCIE candidate

with solid R&S experience but also knows other technologies from other vendors as well. I am amazed

by stuffs people puting on resume regardinng other technologies besides Cisco. Candidates claimed to work

on Juniper for almost five years and can put on a very good interview until we start pinning him or her down

on specific stuffs

Phase I of the interview is 2 hours long. During that time, the other two CCIEs who recently

left the company but willing to participate in the phase I interview. I rely on them for

R&S and Voice knowledge. I also know R&S quite well because I am preparing for the Juniper JNCIP lab as well

but my expertise is in CCIE Security, Palo Alto, Checkpoint, Juniper and F5. I am going to take everyone

advise here and start asking open quesitons during phase I of the interview.

After the phase I interview and we invite the candidate back for phase II lab interview, I usually give

the candidate two weeks in preparing for the lab interview portion. During that time, I gave them access

to all the equipments such as F5 BigIP, Checkpoint firewall, Cisco routers/switches/Firewalls and Palo Alto

devices in the lab environment so that they can get familiar with the products. The goal here is see how

quickly they can learn technologies from other vendors. The phase II lab interview is quite similar to

Cisco CCIE lab. I also provide candidates a blue-print of what I am looking for during the lab portion.

I am also the "proctor" during the phase II lab interview. I am going to change the lab scenario so that it

will be concentrated on emerging technologies rather than my specific production environment.

A little bit about the job position. We're looking for a CCIE who is an excellent R&S person but also knows

other technologies from other vendors and can learn things very quickly. Furthermore, that person must be

able to work well under extremely stressful situation. Here is the salary consideration:

- Expertise in R&S and excellent skills in Security, base salary is 180k with 20% bonus

- Good with Opensource and commercial Network Management System - +10k additional

- Good with MySQL, Oracle and Microsoft SQL + 10K additional

- Good with Programing such as Expect and Perl - +10K additional

- Good with Microsoft, Solaris and Linux Operating Systems - +10K additional

The position has ten days of sick leave, three weeks of vacation and 4 personal holidays in addition to the regular

10 days holidays. 401k is 100% matching up to 6% of the salary. 10K of additional education assistance if one

decides to go back to college for a Master degree. Two weeks of technology training of your choice in either

R&S, security or Voice of your vendor's choice.

I've been working here for almost six years and I am getting a 20% bonus every year including this year so this

is a very good place to work. The new CCIE hire will train me on new emerging technologies of Cisco and whatever he

knows and I will train him on Security and whatever I know. What I mean about crossing training each other is that

this person will be my "backup" and I will be his "backup" if something happened to one of us. This person will

be my peer and report directly to VP of Operations.

Just a couple of follows up questions:

- Is it possible to find such a candidate with all the requirements listed above?

- 220k salary with 20% bonus is competitive salary for such a position in the Philadelphia, PA region?

My career will surfer if this thing goes south, I still think that

the lab interview is a good thing. I've run into candidates who look really good on paper and that they do really well

during the Phase I of the interview. When it comes to the lab portion, they look completely lost.

What do you think? Many thanks.

[Joseph W. Doherty]

"Is it possible to find such a candidate with all the requirements listed above? "

Perhaps, but likely not easy. I assume your recruiting beyond the Phila region?

Even so, such wide ranging "good" expertise tends to be rare. Many prefer to specialize, and this is encouraged by employers. (There's a reason there are different CCIE certs.)

"220k salary with 20% bonus is competitive salary for such a position in the Philadelphia, PA region?

Since I'm located in the Phila. area, I think it is for this market; generous even. If someone is coming from a higher priced market, you need to make clear the level of salary in this area vs. their area. For example, someone from NYC wouldn't normally consider such a salary as generous.

Even little things, such as whether you're based in the city itself with its wage tax, vs. outside the city, impacts the value of the actual salary offered.

From what you've been describing, it might help you if look for those with the "right" contracting experience. The type of contracting where you need to work with what the client has, but deliver results. Such experience might meet a couple of your attributes, such as learning quickly, dealing with stress, etc.

The approach you've described, is almost your only mini CCIE certification, i.e. knowledge test and lab. If this was all there was to selecting a good candidate, then a CCIE cert. alone should be sufficient, but we know it's not. In my prior post I touched on "chemistry", but what you seem to want is someone who can deliver results beyond just R&S. Besides all your testing, ask your candidates to describe some interesting isssues they had to resolve. This can provide great insight into the candidate's thinking and solution solving abilities.

If possible, for serious candiates, speak with prior employer(s). For the level of expertise you're seeking, hopefully a prior employer will be very complimentary, i.e. something positive beyond just a "yes they worked here between these dates". This is difficult to do with current employers, but should be possible, if not too far back, with prior employers. Again, for this level of expertise, employers should remember them.

[avillalva]

In my experience the top IT personel are the deep thinkers. The best IT solutions can often be abstract; as a crude example one might suggest a change in process instead of infrastructure. And so I wonder how your twenty technical questions will expose this ability/or lack thereof. How you will know whether the candidate has the ability to identify the real issue behind the problem.

Cisco have done the hard work with regards to the candidates technical abilities. But the real test of their understanding is in the application of the technology...not the configuration.

HTH,

Andres

[chinkevi_2]

gee.. with this base salary, you would attract lots of oversea candidates if your company open for oversea hire. i would put my hand up too.

[rtaulton]

I don't know, I would think most CCIE's could answer those questions and be able to work in a lab.  In truth it depends on what and where the candidate is currently engaged as to the other technologies.  Some are in a pure Cisco shop.

If you have not filled the position reply this and maybe we can talk.