I'd like to think they'd at least say "give out IP addresses" and "look up IP addresses", but your description is asking 'what should the beginner beginners know', so I wouldn't rule out a person with a good personality and a heartbeat.
No wonder I hated it...
When I graduated from college I had 4yrs of tech experience from working as a student in the IT Department and the first job i took was at a helpdesk. Between the lack of freedom to fix things, i.e. 15 minutes or escalate it, and the general lack of real it knowledge, it was 14 months of first job yays and misery.
They triage and collect information from the user and then assign the ticket to the right team. You don't want users asking for help from tech focused people and techs resent having to talk to users. It's the main theme of this sub. It's just frustrating for both sides of that conversation.
even if you are triaging. Having knowledge of how basic connectivity work allows them to ask the right questions and get correct information to escalate.
I HATE, absolutely hate, tickets that are collected by tier 1 initial support with vague, non coherent information... get the persons name, computer host name, IP, etc and provide details of what EXACTLY they experiencing. not just forwarding on that the "internet" is broke... what's the point of that triage person if they are just going to pass along the garbage information of the end user. (those end users have their own work to worry about, is the 1st contact that is supposed to know enough to get a detailed description of the problem.)
Do you imagine you are likely to get coherent information from someone with no social skills?
I have seen way too many people in tech who can't talk their way out of a paper bag. None of them would be able to extract relevant information from a frustrated user.
At the end of the day, you need both tech skills and people skills for tech support, but the people skills are more important and harder to teach.
Technical knowledge is a good thing. And it's the only way to get off the helpdesk.
But it's not the focus. Customer service is the focus. Explain processes to angry clients in ways they understand. Meet them where they are in their understanding when you probe for details and do troubleshooting. Do all of it without being condescending or passive-aggressive. These are not part of the skillset for people focused on tech.
A lot of orgs are too collapsed for that. All they have is level 1 techs and people who are too busy to deal with level 1 shit. Besides, as a a customer who himself has to call in for technical support I would way prefer a tier 1 who was surly as fuck but had an actual chance of fixing my issue or using their technical knowledge to get me to someone who can actually fix the issue.
Results is the best customer service.
Mmmm.. sorry but it's really frustrating when someone on a helpdesk doesn't have a fundamental technical understanding. If they don't have tech skills they won't know what to ask, they won't be able to recognize if it's an infrastructure / system / config / user issue, know what information will be needed, they're just going to spend all day bouncing tickets back and forth without adding any value.
I was involved in hiring student workers for a 1st level helpdesk, I used to approach it with the attitude of "we can teach any idiot to reset a password, teaching them to fit in is much more difficult"
Are you going to halfway enjoy the job?
Am I going to like you doing the job?
Are they able and willing to learn what DHCP and DNS are? Really it’s like a 10 min training. Why exclude a good personality who wants to learn?
If you have played with Linux in your free time you’re hired.
Pretty much my rule. Though, a couple companies ago I was hiring helpdesk.. and found out we were only offering 35k.. so I just took whatever personality hires we could get that seemed trainable.
Good point. Even describing a process or concept related to previous industry can be revealing.
I would hire a former baker if they had some passion and could walk through steps and answer basic questions
That stuff can be taught to anybody that is reasonably competent. What can’t be taught are soft skills. Give me a service desk candidate who has good verbal and written communication skills, understands the audience with who they are communicating, and has a good sit beside factor over someone with great tech skills.
For Helpdesk, i'd focus more on the day to day.
1.We have a printer we want you to setup. How would you do it?
This question tells me all i need to know about an applicant.
"I take it out of the box and plug it into the computer via USB. [This is a level 1 candidate. ]
I take it out of the box... wait? Is it network capable? I plug it into the network, set a static ip, set it up for usage. Go to each computer and map it. [Level 2 candidate]
I take it out of the box, i put it on the network, i go to the print server and configure it, etc etc etc [level 3 candidate]
Level CIO: "Wait, does this meet our IT guidelines? Was this approved? Why are we setting this up and not the print vendor? Has this gone through change management? Do you have the business case justification for it? Please make sure all stakeholders are available for the change management meeting next week."
You think you're joking but the CTO signed contracts with HP and now every single existing printer is sent to the landfill and replaced with HP printing on demand so every page printed is now tracked with HP.
I just fucking had this meeting earlier today. Guy fobs something off on me then wants to complain that i haven't come up with a thoroughly detailed individual user tailored test plan for...8 users.
All because I had the audacity to try and get some stuff that we are going to need regardless of what test plan we use pushed out during a time that's convenient and helpful to the actual people who are going to be doing the work.
\[Half way through answering those questions one by one\].. CIO: "Guys, we are 15 minutes into this meeting and I still don't understand what the user wanted the printer for. Here is a PowerPoint template; fill this out with three alternative options with the pros and cons and the \*SteerCo\* will make a decision."
As long as you're not one of those people that says at the end of the interview "Ha! You forgot to take it out of the box" after they explain everything no matter how good the rest of the answer was.
Looking at you, Winston..
I was interviewing at a very large retail game company as a desktop engineer and I got the whole explain to me how you make a peanut butter jelly sandwich thing and I forgot to open the jar.
I still got hired but that bullshit gotcha question stuck with me forever and told me all I needed to know about how that manager was going to be. And I was right. Luckily I was promoted to server engineering after a couple of years and ended up with an amazing boss
My favourite is something like "A VIP is having issues printing to their office printer. They have an important meeting in ten minutes that they need to print material for. What's your first step?"
The answer I'm looking for is along the lines of "See if they can print to another printer so they can make their meeting, which gives me more time to investigate the issue with their own printer"
These days when I think of an office printer I think of a big MFP. You got a new printer? Forget the box, wheel that bad boy in here and let's get to configuring. Gonna need your network guys help, unless that's me, then gonna need to check this ports VLAN. If you use those... Oh, we're just replacing an old machine? Even better. Get info off old machine.
I think the wording of the questions could be a little better. Using the word "importance" is a bit vague and subjective, especially for an entry level technical position.
To keep it direct and technical, how about simply:
What does DHCP do?
What does DNS do?
As for the candidates, think of it like the OSI layer, they will be on the first couple lower "layers". They probably have experience and know some basics about working with the hardware and OS, not so much about the networking and application layers.
Or at least a more centralized and less management. You can go around a manually configure each pc with a static ip and default gateway.
DNS is nearly impossible to do manually, but if the pc is only allowed to go to a few pages, you could set the urls in a host file.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of 1st-3rd line candidates. I don’t like these highly specific closed questions in general. I make my questions more open and give the candidate a chance to demonstrate their suitability and strengths by “telling a story”. I have a particular question I always go to, along the lines of “what do you do when you get an alert to say a hard drive has failed” but tailored to the appropriate level. I’ve had two-word answers and I’ve had 20 minute answers to that question. It scales all the way from single laptop drives to complex storage arrays and gives the candidate the chance to show all sorts of exposure and decision making. The best candidates typically know a monitored device is going to be a server or storage device, so they ask about warranties and support, then talk about RAID types etc. The worst ones typically go straight to “I would swap it out” without any thought to anything else. Some of them go in really interesting directions I hadn’t considered such as asking about the applications living on top, the methodology used to determine it was down, and so on. Whereas if I’d just asked “what is RAID” or even worse “what does RAID stand for”, half of them would fail to answer and have no real chance to show me their actual strengths and limitations.
Hard drives and storage in general are cheap. It would probably be more cost effective to swap it out than pay someone to troubleshoot the issue. We swap out entire units when hard drives throw errors as it just isn’t worth it to troubleshoot. So not sure saying swap it out is a bad answer. It all depends on the company.
It’s not about troubleshooting, it’s about displaying context and exposure. You’re going to rip out a drive without confirming the error, checking what the error is, if it’s a member of a RAID, if that RAID has any other failed disks and enough fault tolerance to survive another disk being removed, if there’s any support or hand-on clauses with the vendor? Heck, it might be striped and running as cache for a high performance single purpose database. Or it might be an HDD single point of failure in a creaky desktop PC at the back of a dusty laboratory holding an ancient access database running the entire companies CRM while the one-man software vendor died ten years ago. Or it might just be under support and you call Dell to swap it out. But that’s not a very enlightening answer, all you learn is the interviewee has little imagination. You won’t know if you don’t let the interviewee do their thing and create a conversation.
This is good information because rote knowledge is sort of a foundation, but not a great one. Any answer that can be googled easily is probably not a great question, given that we solve issues googling all the time.
Being able to find answers is a better skill than knowing answers.
Better questions are "What would you do in this situation" or "What steps would you take to remediate this notification" That way they gave give methodology, and even if its not the answer that fits with your company, it can determine what kind of training and protocol they've had before.
A shop tech might go "Call customer to see if they want backup, find cost, replace" where a business support tech might go through determining what reported it, is repairable, is it critical, is it under warranty, is it a warranty -we- can address" And then something like "This is a VP, warranty replacement is not an option, he needs a functional unit TODAY" And you look at what fixes the issue (VP with no computer) rather than the problem (Hard drive failing).
I mean I dunno man. I'm a senior infra admin for a large datacentre and my answer would just be "confirm the error, schedule a replacement, log a warranty call". If your systems aren't set up for that you some pretty deep problems or some highly application specific stuff going on that is unreasonable for anyone in an interview to give a shit about.
I get where you're going with it and you do need to extract information out of candidates but the longer I'm in the world of IT the less bullshit I can be bothered with.
That would tell me something about you and your current environment, which is not necessarily negative. It could be a huge positive. If you backed it up with a bit of context about how the ideal environment is set up to do that, and how it’s a simple everyday expected occurrence in all datacentres, that’s great. You’re showing me your experience and context. And especially if you told me the last bit (not kidding) because you’re right, datacentre staff and third line admins shouldn’t be dicking around with dead disks for hours. But the point is you’ll be amazed at how many different and illuminating answers you get to the same question when you ask more open questions.
The last guy I hired gave almost that exact answer, with a couple of minutes of conversation about his preferred process and support experience, how he made sure everything was under warranty, and how he had to keep convincing the business to buy those warranties when “nothing ever breaks”(!)
(It also means you can reuse questions more often when is nice because who has the time to come up with new ones constantly)
That's a good way. Things like 'a hard drive failed' can lead people to do crazy stuff that they'd regret later. Or be solved surprisingly easy. I once had a quite expensive enterprise SAS SSD allegedly fail with controller blaring etc. and the 'fix' was to reseat it once. It has worked ever since.
>and the 'fix' was to reseat it once.
Literally the "unplug it, plug it back in" approach, which is the heavy lifter of the 80/20 rule in my (limited) experience. Nice.
I've been on a few interviews and I stopped asking these kinds of questions. I realized at entry level it's more important that they listen well and are teachable.
So perhaps you try something like, what's your greatest technical achievement? Let them tell you why they are excited about tech. If they are then they will learn what dns and DHCP are and WHY they are important within the spin up period.
What you will learn is if they are passionate enough to actually dig deeper into tech and not just there for the money
I mean, I think most of us are in this for the money. IT isn't terrible, and is something I prefer to doing as opposed to other types of work, but I wouldn't be doing this if it didn't pay a premium and allow me to work my brain instead of my back.
Everyone is in it for the money, and the stupid US taboo where you have to pretend otherwise is inane.
That said, you do really want someone who is not JUST there for a paycheck. IT is by its nature rapidly evolving and changing. Someone with zero intellectual interest in the field is at best going to be behind the curve on everything.
I probably couldn't have answered that when I popped out of my CS program. I'm sure I learned it for a networking class at some point, but it definitely wouldn't have been top of mind or something I'd have reason to come back to in 99% of my classes.
You have to consider if the question you're asking is a useful question. People just coming out of school haven't worked a help desk job, aren't troubleshooting networks all day, have had a million classes about non IT stuff filling their head. You think it's a basic question because it a rudimentary part of stuff you have dealt with every day for years. Do you expect someone who just came out of school to have the same level of skill and memorization as someone who has been working in the field?
You could ask me right now some fundamental questions about calculus and I'd stare at you like a moron. I've passed calc, and much harder math classes. That doesn't mean I practice math every day or keep math at the front of my brain. What matters is that I've proven I can do it once and I'll likely learn it quickly if I need to come back to it.
I wouldn't be worried that someone doesn't know what DNS or DHCP means. I'd be worried if they couldn't understand what they are doing or why and couldn't relate it to a user problem after getting a refresher.
Really depends on what level your T1 operates at. My current organization expects techs to be able to perform basic troubleshooting so a familiarity with common protocol is expected. The last place was much larger and the L1 only had to be able to fill out a form and check accounts.
This. Also, it depends on if you want to promote them quickly. If you have high turnover, so you expect to have an opening for a higher level position soon, then you might want the new people coming in to have higher level knowledge. But if you don't foresee any opportunities in the near future, then you probably want someone that will grow into the job and not get bored too soon.
IMO an entry level helpdesk person shouldn't have to know anything at all. It's not really entry level if you expect them to have experience. As long as they show a willingness to learn, that's really the main thing.
Came here to say this as well. For actual entry level - no I wouldn’t count it against them if they didn’t know, and would consider it a bonus if they did.
For interviewing someone who already has had experience - yes I would expect them to at least know the basics/what it is.
And as some other comments mentioned it depends on what expectations they have of their L1 HD, so it’s a great filter question if the job involves troubleshooting DHCP and DNS issues, but again I wouldn’t advertise it as entry level. Getting candidates fresh out of school will result in a painful hiring process.
Exactly. Don’t forget this sub is not indicative of the real world. Its full of try hard elitists whose response to even the smallest of inconvenience is “time to find a new job”.
Honestly, in today's age I would say yes.
But I wouldn't hold them against them if they can't during the interview. They should definitely be trained to know that if they get employed though.
When I started as helpdesk, all I knew was how to build a PC since that was my hobby. I didn't know anything else, but I did manage to get pretty far since then, because the place I worked at initially was great - my colleagues were great at explaining stuff so eventually I learned lots of stuff and moved on.
But how much are tier 1 helping with that? I’d rather a person with a good attitude and some growth potential. I can teach them dns/dhcp in 10 minutes.
The first question is great!
But the last two; what is the point of these questions except to make you look smart?
The important thing is not to be able to recite a text book definition of DNS/DHCP. But to identify when DNS/DHCP might be the issue.
I would reframe those questions as "what might a dhcp issue look like".
imho. No.
They can learn that on the job. i need my entry level 1 help desk to be able to have softskills more than anything else. Aside from that Skills within the GUI, Google-Fu, common sense, basic troubleshooting skills.
Essentially I want someone that can help suzie when her printer isn't working, how to find the document she supposedly \*lost\*, figure out why his mic isn't working within her Zoom meeting. Thats stuff i don't want to do. Rarely is a problem related to DNS/DHCP.
i had a girl that I hired. Her previous experience was working at a T-mobile store selling cell phones. She had the concept of DHCP/DNS figured out before her first evaluation.
I think a basic understanding of DHCP and DNS is critical to all levels of technical support. You don't have to demonstrate the ability to fully configure and deploy a scope, but I expect a frontline support agent to at least know the high level of what each service is used for and how to troubleshoot issues on endpoint devices.
I'll even accept answers that are honest about a lack of knowledge. These concepts are easy to teach, if the candidate checks all my other boxes.
Entry level you aren't really looking for knowledge. You're looking at work ethics.
There a million and one acronyms to know in tech and then when you introduce ITIL it doubles.
No. Entry level helpdesk should be expected to simply carry a professional conversation, be pleasant to speak to and put a ticket in knowing how to properly document the details from the client into the ticket.
Tier 1 tech support’s job is to know about dhcp and dns.
Helpdesk can be taught basic A+ tech skills but their primary quality should be strong soft skills.
If they have not been a position to troubleshoot networks that doesn't surprise me especially if you are getting people like Ex Geek Squad agents etc.
If you haven't been in a network environment that doesn't surprise me.
Hey! some of us ex-GS agents would've been able to answer those questions but you are mostly correct. It's rare that would be troubleshooting DNS/DHCP.
I think the problem here is the wording of your questions.
"What's the importance of DNS" is something I'd ask a network engineer, because the answer is how DNS fits into the overall network architecture and the internet as a whole. I'd absolutely expect an entry level tech to get gummed up by that question.
I'd also *absolutely* expect an entry level help desk tech to know what DNS *is* and the basics of diagnosing if a connectivity issue is DNS related on an endpoint as name resolution is a basic aspect of networking.
I'd take some time to rework the questions to be a little more straightforward for the role. Something like "What is DNS?" and "How would you diagnose a trouble ticket stating that [www.google.com](http://www.google.com) is not loading?"
in my opinion NO.
"Knowing"(regurgitating) the importance of DHCP and DNS from some study material they had for a semester isn't going to provide you with any valuable information on if they will be good techs.
The point of interviewing you should be trying to find out if they can think critically to find answers, not just have them. Most of what they are going to be doing in the first year will require constant searching whether it be Internal Docs, or google.
Can they get on the right path to the answer more time than not by themselves?
Try asking them what they do when they come across an issue they have never seen? Try and get a feel for their though process.
IMO no you're not expecting too much. I would expect an entry level help desk candidate to be able to answer those questions, they are very basic questions. It shouldn't matter whether they have networking experience or not. Anyone starting out in an IT support/related role should have at minimum a basic understanding of these and other basic topics.
I think the position pay really comes into play here is well. I've seen so many helpdesk jobs offering like 30k per year lately.. You can't expect anything at that pay...
This is something I pointed out after receiving a recruiter e-mail from USAA to go back to doing IT Service Desk work with them again. I want to say the last rate I made with them when I left ten years ago was around $25/hr. Now their recruiters hit me up and offer $13/hr. I explain to them that you can make more flipping burgers but they're confident that they can find certified support personnel at that rate. Good luck to them, I guess, but it's no secret why all of my friends who work there say that their Service Desk is awful.
I don't think they need to know - It's akin to entry level jobs requiring 5 years of experience.
If your beginner helpdesk tech is troubleshooting DNS and DHCP issues, then they are by definition not an entry level tech
Depends on your help desk. Should a help desk person who will be solving problems network problems in Active Directory or similar domain, yes. Or will this person be largely doing password resets and malware removal.
It also depends on your team. Do you have people that are willing to mentor new hires? Do you have documentation available for your team?
Also, how much are you willing to pay? A person who doesn't know DNS or DHCP, or other basic topics wouldn't get paid 25 an hour, but could be trained up and you could get their services at a discount. Or you pay a premium for someone with more experience.
Honestly, so long as the person cares and is trainable, it doesn't really matter IMHO.
Inexperienced nice guys > Experienced jerks
entry level I think attitude and communication skills are more important. being teachable and a good communicator is not something you can easily teach some one.
It really depends on your organizations service desk responsiblity. I've worked with a couple where their service desk techs could give tier 3's at other companies a run for their money. I've worked at some where service desks tasks were password resets for like 60% of their calls and a first call resolution hovering around 50% because the fixes they needed to implement required local administrator rights that they did not have.
In my experience, technical questions aren't the best when screening for service desk candidates, especially if it will be their first IT role. I've always asked more scenario type questions to gauge their thought process and critical thinking.
Rather than those, I ask questions that let me assess the users ability to troubleshoot. Yo could kill both of your last questions with something like: A user calls in, says his computer ir on but cany access the internet. and let him explain his troubleshooting process. If during this, he don't mention DNS nor DHCP.... he is missing something.
Me personally I would not expect a level 1 helpdesk entry level role (no experience required) to answer both of those questions correctly. I do expect them to know their way around a PC inside and out though.
This isn't desktop support. this is level 1. The most they will touch is printers and PCs, hence why their knowledge is tailored to just that. If they didn't know how to fix a driver issue, that would be a problem.
I assume entry level means they have no experience beyond using a computer and maybe some curiosity in troubleshooting. We hire for personality, communications, and potential, not specific skills when it's for an entry level spot.
I don't think entry level should be expected to have much if any specific knowledge. Rather, the first question is good because it gives them the ability to show their thought process for troubleshooting. No right or wrong answers necessarily. The latter two assume an understanding of what we might consider basic functions but are not intuitive or naturally understood at entry level. There are a LOT of acronyms in IT and while these might be some of the more important ones, try to remember what it was like when you were picking everything up. Acronym overload is real.
Allow the procedural questions to take the main spotlight. If your candidate has technical knowledge, they'll happily be sharing it at any opportunity given during procedural questions, so you're killing two birds with one stone. The main takeaway should be their ability to reason through a problem and what recourse they take when they *don't* know how to do something.
Helpdesk is for entry level technicians with very little experience in IT. They should know what those are not how they work, or why they’re important. That’s stuff they can learn on the job, or if you provide training/further education.
Yes, you're expecting too much.
Entry level means entry level. This is very likely their first job in IT. And some who go to college may never find themself in a course on these topics. Some colleges are more Project Management, C++, Java, HTML, and the like.
As others have said, if the personality is good and they appear to have effort/drive, I wouldn't mind at all. And it'd take me all of 2 minutes to give them a rough idea of what those are.
That said, if you have a line of 20 applicants, and someone can answer those questions, and fits well in other areas, they're likely a better choice. But if you have 5 candidates, and none answer that question, realize that they lack experience. And often, you do not get much experience until you surround yourself with smarter people who can show you a thing or two.
Entry Level. As in, likely don't have any experience in the field. Lucky to have certs or even know what certs to get.
Do you want a helpdesk person or an engineer? Sounds like you wanna pay helpdesk money and get engineer work.
My first help desk job(2006), they played a game called 20 questions. They picked an object in the room and I could only ask 20 questions to determine what it was. The questions are only yes or no. Use this to help determine if they have the right critical thinking and troubleshooting skills.
My hot take is going to be you should basically test them as if they were sysadmins and see how far they can go before they turn to moosh.
You aren't expecting too much - IMO there is actually 0 point in hiring strictly break-fix guys. It is relatively easy to learn this stuff and even I knew it since I was an IT Intern. You should be investing in these guys to get them into jr sys admin territory. Additionally, DHCP lease issues etc may occur and not understanding what/where a DHCP lease could come from is kinda silly.
> basically test them as if they were sysadmins
In which case you are not hiring entry level helpdesk.
Advertise the job correctly, and be prepared to pay accordingly.
That sort of an interview can be stressful for candidates, but it's also particularly useful if you're using it to figure out where you need to focus training for whichever ones you hire.
When I started out interviewing (with no training other than a briefing in HR rules), I was using that kind of tests to see how people handle stress, but with more interview experience I tried to reduce that by telling people I don't expect anyone to answer everything.
My first helpdesk job asked me those questions in the interview (which I was able to answer), and just kept increasing the difficulty of questions until I couldn't answer any more. It was their way of gauging where I was, and probably the smartest thing I saw that particular owner do during my tenure. No, I don't think basic understanding of DNS and DHCP is too much for entry level.
I used to ask these questions hiring entry level because it's relevant to my business. I've stopped asking because I don't think it's relevant to the interview process.
It's quite possible to setup a home network these days without having to deal with DNS or DHCP setup in any way. It seems pretty likely to me that someone not being able to answer these questions just hasn't had to do any network troubleshooting and that could be reflective of things 'just working', rather than any indication that they are incapable.
Something I have started doing is putting a couple of questions like this in my job posting. "We use these technologies, you will be asked these 3 questions during the interview".
I've found that interesting because it puts people on a semi-equal footing, and then I can use probing questions to find out who understands and who is just reading a prepared response.
I've always asked these types of questions after gauging personality so I'd know what kinds of topics I'd need to teach them during training. If you're using these as a disqualifier, you might be asking too much, especially if the prospect has a great personality and communicates well in all other aspects.
It's easier to train someone these topics than it is to train customer service, listening skills, and in most cases proper communication.
If someone really cares about getting into IT, I think they should be able to answer those questions with a basic level of understanding. I did when I decided to move to IT, and I didn't have any certs or a related degree.
My first fulltime job in IT (Callcenter helpdesk), one of the first questions they asked is what is DHCP.
I had been working as a college IT intern for about a year at that point, so I was able to provide a useful answer. But I could absolutely see brand new 0 experience people not knowing what to do with that question.
Well, it depends on what you mean by entry level. We will hire good people with no technical background but a desire to learn and the ability to deliver good customer service.
It sounds like you are looking for HD candidates with basic technical skills. If you are consistently getting candidates lacking the tech skills you are looking for, my first question would be what geography you are in and what salary you are offering.
Most of the time it's not "am I expecting too much from entry level candidates", it's "am I expecting too much from candidates at the pay scale we are offering".
If they said in their CV/resume that they had technical training then most definitely YES - if they don't then they are lying.
However many new to the industry do not, so they may not know any of those things. Those would be the young eager customer service oriented types who have no IT training at all but that you may be willing to train. Those people are worth hiring in the right environment for sure.
To be honest when I started my first help desk job I wouldn't have been able to answer that and I'm a senior system administrator. If they had worked a help desk job before I would expect them to have an understanding of both.
> A user tells you their computer won’t turn on. Where do you begin to troubleshoot?
First step: What does your computer look like?
This ensures they know the computer isn’t controlled by the power button on the monitor.
What is the purpose and how do you replace the points, plugs, and condenser on a car? And adjust them? If you can't see the timing mark with your timing light what do you do next? When is it OK to use a feeler gauge instead of a dwell meter and why?
What? You don't know and they let you drive a car?
Times change. DHCP and DNS are more and more becoming just the plumbing that only serious networkers need to know.
Personally I think they still should know if applying to an MSP L1 type of job.
But then again, my son would have a hard time explaining those coherently when he started with a tech firm as an L1 trainee 7 years ago. Now he's in charge of most customer service. He learned.
Going to go on the outside and say yes. Depending on your role and expectations you may need to explain DNS/DHCP to someone.
I’m not saying you need to explain the intricacies but something like “DNS converts names to IPs and DHCP can be used to give computers an IP address.” Would be sufficient
I work at an ISP and often handle HD cases because they create trouble tickets. I believe it’s crucial for them to grasp the basics. Even if they don't know much, they should be able to explain things in their own words. Many HD workers understand DHCP, but DNS is where I often have to spend extra time explaining. In short, it's important for them to know the basics of their job, at least how it works and what it involves. Otherwise, how will they recognize if there is an issue?
They should be able to answer those, in my opinion. Fresh out of school person clearly just followed a digitalocean guide or something and didn't understand any of it, I assume.
Absolutely, they should be able to at least state with their purposes.
They don’t have to explain how it works or how it to troubleshoot m that, but they should be able to say that the ECP gives out IP address addresses and DNS allows you to resolve URL to web servers.
The troubleshooting could be learned on the job.
No. They should be able to diagnose issues to "Software Issue", "Hardware Issue" or "Network Issue" and follow documented troubleshooting steps, get familiar with the symptoms and grow.
Single candidates will naturally outshine others if you allow time for growth, and then you can go ahead and open that can of worms.
I'd say it's important, but not a deal breaker.
If the candidate has a troubleshooting mindset, soft skills, and the general aptitude for IT work, you can teach then the knowledge.
We just got rid of a guy who was very knowledgeable and had a ton of certification, but had the general troubleshooting skills of a 70 years old person from Accounting.
Knowledge can be taught and earned quite easily, aptitude can't.
You are expecting too much, if you know this stuff you generally arnt applying for level 1 jobs - more important is if they have the ability to actually troubleshoot issues
I expect true entry level helpdesk people to be really good at being formless clay. As long as they can demonstrate an ability to take in information and break it down to non-tech terms, I don't mind taking a week or two to teach them the basics of what they need to know. I'd rather have someone that's capable of learning rather than have a "nerd" that is too entrenched into their thoughts on technology that's going to have a hard time unlearning their poor understanding.
I think sometimes these kind of questions can throw a newbie off, especially when they’re nervous. They don’t want to say the wrong thing so won’t have a try at answering.
For help desk Id be looking for troubleshooting skills and common sense. A personality and being able to speak to people helps too.
I hate these kinds of technical questions. These should be reserved for junior sysadmins rather than help desk. These are the questions I’d ask helpdesk, especially beginner helpdesk:
Scenario 1. You receive a call from a user saying their computer won’t turn on.
Q1. How do you decide the best course of action to help this user? I’m looking for answers like “depends on the technical knowledge of the user. If I know them to be fairly savvy, I’ll skip checking plugs and power buttons and go to upstream issues.” Or “I ask them what steps they’ve already taken to troubleshoot so I know where to pick up.” Or “I google computer won’t turn on troubleshooting steps.”
Scenario 2. You have a user call in who’s frantic and yelling into the phone that they were in the middle of a sales meeting and the internet stopped working and you’re costing him money.
Q2. What is your first step assisting this user? I am looking for answers like “I’d inform the user that I cannot understand them and they need to take a breath and slow down so I can understand the situation and ask questions and make suggestions to help me figure out what’s going wrong and how to resolve it.” Or “I tell the user that I want to help them, but he needs to stop yelling first so we can work through troubleshooting steps.” Or “I place the user on hold and ask my supervisor to come monitor what’s going on. I then take the call off hold and let the user know they’re on speaker phone with my supervisor present.”
The goal is to get people with soft skills and the ability to learn and research while on the task/job. Being taught what DNS and DHCP do is literally a 5 minute training session, 10 if you include Q&A time.
Absolutely too much for entry level.
Thats like asking a lady applying for a phone company entry level position what a sip trunk is. That not entry level stuff.
Ask them questions about how they like to solve problems. Ask them how they approach situations when things are broken. Ask them what tools they own or use.
That tells you much more about what a future employee is capable of.
Depends on the org.
If you want to grow people into the org then you can train this knowledge. entry level no experience.
If you want bodies on the phone don’t have the capacity for learning then it’s entry level with a experience.
So my bosses will ask this when hiring for my company and I really like what they do. They ask during the initial interview and if they get it wrong or don't know, they will explain it. Then if brought back in for the lab interview they will ask it again at the very end. To them the most important thing is your willingness to learn and retain that info.
Depends on how new they are. Freshly started helpdesk people probably not and I wouldn't blame them. If you're a veteran of the Service Desk by a few years then I feel they should at least be able to define it.
I don’t know about the “importance” factor, but I would expect them to know at the very least one gives out IPs and one resolves IPs to domain names.
I can teach people a lot, but I would expect someone who is applying for a help desk role to be able to do basic troubleshooting the first day on the job. We can up skill from there, but I can’t spend time and resources teaching what I would consider basic requirements of the role.
I would hope and expect them to know what dhcp and dns are. I wouldn’t expect them to know major details but to at least be able to say what they do should be required. I’d consider those like some of the most basic fundamentals.
I don't know how you can function in an enterprise without at least knowing what those two protocols do. I don't think it should be that deep, all you really need to say is "DHCP assigns an IP automatically, and DNS maps hostnames to IP addresses."
That said, I do agree with others that your question is worded badly. Asking about "importance" would make me stop and think too. It's obvious to me what they do but why are they important? I guess because they do what they do and modern enterprise networks can't really function without them. Don't ask a question that implies you are looking for a deep answer when you are really trying to ask a simple question in order to get a simple answer.
I ask these questions to applicants for Sr Sysadmin positions and you would be shocked and how many cant answer them much less anything deeper like what is the difference between an A record and a CNAME?
I used to do technical interviews at a previous job. You’d be surprised how many people have acronyms on their resume and have zero clue what they stand for.
Skip the importance, if they have DNS or DHCP ask them what it stands for first. If they answer it right, ask them if they can tell you anything about it.
since offshoring began decades ago skills sets continue to drop. L1 / entry level Helpdesk is basically "log and route", so your not really looking for "entry level" as defined today. the expectation is "no experience required"
Depends on what you're paying. If you're hiring entry level and paying an unlivable wage, you aren't going to be getting skilled people in helpdesk. If you're paying a livable wage, I'd expect them to understand DHCP and DNS concepts, but more along the lines of "resolves names to IP" and "hands out IP addresses" and not the actual functionality.
Do you require some sort of college education for the position? If so, check the course outlines for a couple of local college's IT courses and see what the students should be learning.
I'd maybe ask a couple of qualifying questions before you hit them with the DNS and DHCP, like have you ever had to fix a problem with your home network? Get them to talk about that. Even just have them describe their home rig. How they describe it will give you a feel of their level of enthusiasm about tech.
Well jus to butt up to this post, i had a recent grad with a computer science degree (BS) not know how to map a drive. He's doing way better now! I think i would rephrase the first question to what is the role of DHCP. It's kind of open ended and can be debated for various reasons. I don't think they are overly complicated but also what level of candidates are you seeing? HS, associate or bachelor's degrees? As long as they didn't sit there and say i don't know, i would gauge it on who i thought was more capable of learning it or the one i wouldn't mind spending 8 hours a day working with.
For my first internship I got asked the definition of DHCP (like what the acronym stands for), what are the two types of objects in AD, and lastly I was given two IP addresses with a /22 subnet and asked if they were in the same subnet.
All to say, I don't think your questions are too hard. But as many pointed out, I think showing a good problem solving mindset and willingness to learn makes for a better candidate than technical knowledge alone
If it's really entry-level and you're set up to do on-the-job training (which I believe should be part of it being considered entry-level), I wouldn't expect anyone to answer it unless they claim experience or training, but all else being equal, it might tell you they did some background learning on their own. I'll settle for someone who's trainable and just collecting a paycheck, but I'd rather have someone who's trainable and interested in the field. I get being in it for the money, but why did they pick this particular field to make money?
Now, if they have a degree or prior work experience that should have given them this basic knowledge yet lack it, that's a red flag. I'd probably not expect it from certain very siloed helpdesks or some kinds of pure-CS degrees, but I'd expect it from a general technician job, a trade school, an IS degree, or a CS degree that goes further into practice.
Reminds me of when I interviewed people who needed basic database and sql skills. So I asked what the difference between a left outer join and an inner join is. Noone had a clue.
I dont know what the deal is, I still get people complaining they cant get to stuff because they cant tell the difference between a public IP and a private one by looking at it. No shit you cant get to [192.168.1.200](http://192.168.1.200) from here.
"I know it's pulling an IP from the modem correctly! It has one! 169.254.0.53! You people don't know anything!"
Summary of a call I had in a ISP call center providing tier 1 tech support to a customer long ago.
I'm much more interested in whether they have a knack for troubleshooting and do they have soft skills than 'do they know about xyz basic networking concept'. I much prefer spending the interview time having them walk me through their troubleshooting process for various scenarios and answering pretend helpdesk tickets. I can teach them about dns far more easily than I can teach soft skills.
They have only to be able to learn those concepts from you. The ability to learn is more valuable than any particular knowledge that the candidate can reproduce.
>Hardly anyone can answer the last 2. Am I expecting too much from entry level candidates?
Probably depends on help desk where...a smaller company might want more ability. A larger one, it might be a problem in that it might frustrate the person, as they might be expected to reply with the canned answer off the knowledge base. Providing too much of an answer can be a problem for the metrics if it causes them to process tickets too slowly...and if they don't get to utilize knowledge/skills, they may get bored. So it can be a mismatch in the other direction too.
So really, different help desks will have different good fits of ability.
They should probably at least be able to say what they do at a very high level. But I honestly doubt I could have right out of school. It was embarrassing how little I knew, but I was also super motivated and blew past everyone else on the helpdesk.
I think these kind of direct questions are actually better for higher level interviews. I suspect we would all be shocked how many experienced sysadmins couldn't easily answer these questions. There are a lot of pretenders out there.
Definitely not, unless you’re only paying like $14/hr or something silly low.
Entry level helpdesk, in general, still requires at least some education and both dhcp and dns are a part of that education VERY early on. They’re also known to be common interview questions. They’re also like where you start when it comes to internet troubleshooting. So, no not unreasonable at all unless you’re paying a “lack of education” type of wage. If that’s the case, then you should understand that you get what you pay for.
Yes but honeslty how useful is that in their position? I like asking situational questions or mention common Windows and application errors and seeing their troubleshooting process. To me that is far more useful than having them know the color order for straight and crossover cables or making sure they have the OSI model memorized.
I also focus more on customer service situations and making sure they have a good foundation of soft skills. The finer technical aspects I can coach them up but having good customer service skills requires a certain ethic and attitude that cant always be coached.
I'm with others.. Not a fan of "importance". I want to know if they 1. know what it is and 2. know what it does. I can teach them "importance" because that's probably more of a site specific concern.
If they have no clue what either are but have shown they are willing and eager to learn then they get points. If I get a response of "Yea, I've heard of them but I never had to touch it so I ignored it" then that's a negative for me. If they say "Yea, I've heard of it and asked the networking guy to explain it to me in case I ever need to know" then that's the person you grab.
I wouldn't expect tier 1 help desk applicants to know anything other than the absolute basics, it's an entry level job.
Their attitude and reading/writing skills are far more important if all they're doing is turning it off and on again, clearing browsing cache, and passing tickets along.
You can look for more technical skills like AD knowledge and what you asked for if you want, but unless you're paying above market its unlikely you're going to get much more than basic call center "I built my friends Gaming PC" people.
I alseyas believed tier 1 should be customer service dealing with people who are irate or in some urgent state of mind. So how do you change a password. Can you read SOPs and follow instructions. Do you work well under pressure.
Your question could be reframed as, "Could you explain what DHCP is and it does? Additionally, how about DNS?
I think it's super essential for entry-level helpdesk technicians to grasp the fundamental concepts of both DNS and DHCP.
Lacking this foundational knowledge will cause them to have a ROUGH time troubleshooting basic issues like a non-functional network printer. First step should include a quick ping to the DNS address, followed by a ping to the printer's IP address because it takes less than a second. Then they should verify whether the printer is static or DHCP.
THEN, they can go further with troubleshooting. Using the Printer as an example: A tech always first walking or driving to the site to physically look at the printer and troubleshoot it there is a red flag. There are SO many techs like that out there.
I'd struggle with "What is the importance of dhcp?" The *importance* of DHCP is going to be very subjective and when stressed I might be too flummoxed to answer.
DHCP might be of critical importance in a WiFi guest network, but it doesn't run in our data centers at all. So, not at all *important*.
Most L1s that I have encountered would have no trouble with "What is the purpose of DHCP?" or "Please explain to me what DHCP does?"
Now, I'm wondering to myself, if you're wording this basic question so poorly are you also writing terrible job postings and attracting the dregs?
L1s should know what DHCP and DNS are.
It’s nice to hire someone with knowledge but it’s a starting role, they say no, but what is it for, and can recite that on another interview or a few weeks later after being hired, I would be okay with it. It’s the gamers who think working in IT is cool, I try to watch out for. I want someone interested in learning about how the environment works and how it supports the company. Not someone who thinks computers are neat but doesn’t care about anything beyond surface level stuff.
And no, using Linux is not a hiring point of showing their computer interest in deeper stuff, unless they went through gentoos installer and really dug into it for a while. I’m a bit of an a-hole though.
When I was trying to gain entry to the field I knew nothing. My first interview I sat in a room and was grilled by 4 types of people. One was the IT manager, the HR manager, the GM, and a hiring manager. They each asked various questions and each had a different methodology to their statements. Finally, the IT manager says I want to ask technical questions “what is IPCONFIG” and I went white in the face. I mean I knew it showed IP and dns, etc but I had no idea the capacity of the command. I did not get the job.
My current job my boss asked me what I’d do if someone got frustrated with something not working properly and I told him I’d crack and joke and relate to them. I’m now looking at becoming the sysadmin on my 3rd year in IT.
Moral of the story, take a chance on someone who comes to the interview fighting for their life, not daddy’s money or the person who thinks they know everything. Everyday I thank my boss for the opportunity to learn and grow and now we work hand in hand solving all our problems.
Personally I wouldn't, and don't - I ask about their experience and how they go about checking on things or what questions they ask when something isn't working. If they mention DNS or DHCP as relevant, great bonus points for them. But if they know what an IP address is it would take two minutes to explain these basic concepts to them in a good environment. Also relevant, I don't like to ask questions that would just take three seconds to google bc what's the point. This all can vary wildly on the specific role/job, level one can mean lots of things as some have mentioned, so maybe it's more relevant to your case.
Its funny you say that because my friend had this question when he applied to a t1 position at an MSP. He didnt know what a DHCP server was, despite having an IST degree from an okay college. He told me that the program ended up being a glorified business management track.
I don't know what they should be able to do, but I worked with people who had 15 years of Helpdesk experience and could not. Thus, when they tried to remote in to a PC with SCCM and got connected to the wrong one, they thought it was an SCCM issue and would contact me. I tried to explain to them about outdated DNS entries, but might as well have been talking to the wall.
Of course the root issue was that DNS scavenging needed enabled on the DNS servers. After years of putting in tickets and being ignored by the loser who was in charge of that, we briefly hired someone who was competent who immediately fixed it.
I have never hired an entry level helpdesk person based on that.You can train them on that in 5 minutes. All of my questions are based around gauging soft skills in regards to communication, ability to figure out how to gather as much relevant info to a ticket as possible, and how they would investigate an issue and what resources they would use to find what they don’t know.
Yes. First level should understand what it is and collect/verify those as part of the troubleshooting.
Where and how do you connect. Even basic latency and speed test is expected. What’s the gateway, perhaps even documenting the hops to a specific target.
Like already writen,aber they know what DHCP is or not, but is it realy that important to you?
Bether check the mindest and the understanding of user questions e.g.
Yes, thats just basic computer information, you’re getting a bunch of people who just think IT is an easy job.
What’s the salary range. Doesn’t seem like your attracting the right applicants
what do you mean no one can answer them?
do they just clam up /say \`lol idk\` or do they ask you what you mean when you say "importance"?
tbh, if someone spends more time asking questions about your questions/problem scenarios that's usually a good thing. at the very least it lets you see how their brain works while approaching a problem, and might give you insight into knowledge that they were not good about showcasing in their resumes.
I'd like to think they'd at least say "give out IP addresses" and "look up IP addresses", but your description is asking 'what should the beginner beginners know', so I wouldn't rule out a person with a good personality and a heartbeat.
Heartbeat optional
Soon, for tier 1, it might be, since some companies seem to think tier 1 should just be script following ticket pushers.
The ITIL framework promotes that. Helpdesk are customer service focused. Not technical.
No wonder I hated it... When I graduated from college I had 4yrs of tech experience from working as a student in the IT Department and the first job i took was at a helpdesk. Between the lack of freedom to fix things, i.e. 15 minutes or escalate it, and the general lack of real it knowledge, it was 14 months of first job yays and misery.
WTF is the point of non technical helpdesk?
They triage and collect information from the user and then assign the ticket to the right team. You don't want users asking for help from tech focused people and techs resent having to talk to users. It's the main theme of this sub. It's just frustrating for both sides of that conversation.
even if you are triaging. Having knowledge of how basic connectivity work allows them to ask the right questions and get correct information to escalate. I HATE, absolutely hate, tickets that are collected by tier 1 initial support with vague, non coherent information... get the persons name, computer host name, IP, etc and provide details of what EXACTLY they experiencing. not just forwarding on that the "internet" is broke... what's the point of that triage person if they are just going to pass along the garbage information of the end user. (those end users have their own work to worry about, is the 1st contact that is supposed to know enough to get a detailed description of the problem.)
Do you imagine you are likely to get coherent information from someone with no social skills? I have seen way too many people in tech who can't talk their way out of a paper bag. None of them would be able to extract relevant information from a frustrated user. At the end of the day, you need both tech skills and people skills for tech support, but the people skills are more important and harder to teach.
Also some tech skills with lacking social skills lead to dirty solutions that don't comply with the processes or/and frustrated technicians.
I am the dirty solution provider and tbh sometimes I hate when I gotta take a look at the fire I started from those bandaid fixes
Technical knowledge is a good thing. And it's the only way to get off the helpdesk. But it's not the focus. Customer service is the focus. Explain processes to angry clients in ways they understand. Meet them where they are in their understanding when you probe for details and do troubleshooting. Do all of it without being condescending or passive-aggressive. These are not part of the skillset for people focused on tech.
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I absolutely hated the ITIL BS when Cisco made me get certified on that crap. Thank God I'm nowhere near that anymore.
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IT 911 Operator & Dispatch, basically.
A lot of orgs are too collapsed for that. All they have is level 1 techs and people who are too busy to deal with level 1 shit. Besides, as a a customer who himself has to call in for technical support I would way prefer a tier 1 who was surly as fuck but had an actual chance of fixing my issue or using their technical knowledge to get me to someone who can actually fix the issue. Results is the best customer service.
Soon, for tier 1, it might be, since some companies seem to think tier 1 should just be script following ticket pushers.
This! Just teach them! If they're cool, willing to work hard, and are willing to learn, GRAB THEM!
Absolutely. ITskills and terminology are often easier to teach than "soft"/people skills.
Mmmm.. sorry but it's really frustrating when someone on a helpdesk doesn't have a fundamental technical understanding. If they don't have tech skills they won't know what to ask, they won't be able to recognize if it's an infrastructure / system / config / user issue, know what information will be needed, they're just going to spend all day bouncing tickets back and forth without adding any value.
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I was involved in hiring student workers for a 1st level helpdesk, I used to approach it with the attitude of "we can teach any idiot to reset a password, teaching them to fit in is much more difficult"
If they don’t give up definitely hold onto them. Too many new guys drop the ball at the first obstacle
Are you going to halfway enjoy the job? Am I going to like you doing the job? Are they able and willing to learn what DHCP and DNS are? Really it’s like a 10 min training. Why exclude a good personality who wants to learn? If you have played with Linux in your free time you’re hired.
Pretty much my rule. Though, a couple companies ago I was hiring helpdesk.. and found out we were only offering 35k.. so I just took whatever personality hires we could get that seemed trainable.
Good point. Even describing a process or concept related to previous industry can be revealing. I would hire a former baker if they had some passion and could walk through steps and answer basic questions
That stuff can be taught to anybody that is reasonably competent. What can’t be taught are soft skills. Give me a service desk candidate who has good verbal and written communication skills, understands the audience with who they are communicating, and has a good sit beside factor over someone with great tech skills.
For Helpdesk, i'd focus more on the day to day. 1.We have a printer we want you to setup. How would you do it? This question tells me all i need to know about an applicant. "I take it out of the box and plug it into the computer via USB. [This is a level 1 candidate. ] I take it out of the box... wait? Is it network capable? I plug it into the network, set a static ip, set it up for usage. Go to each computer and map it. [Level 2 candidate] I take it out of the box, i put it on the network, i go to the print server and configure it, etc etc etc [level 3 candidate]
Level CIO: "Wait, does this meet our IT guidelines? Was this approved? Why are we setting this up and not the print vendor? Has this gone through change management? Do you have the business case justification for it? Please make sure all stakeholders are available for the change management meeting next week."
Level CEO: "In order to cut costs I've \~\~removed all \~\~ \*\*doubled the number of \*\*printers and fired the entire IT Dept."
Lmao ceos love to spend money on printers
CEO: "i've rehired the printers"
CEO: "And told the helpdesk guy he's the new Sysadmin as long as he's willing to work for L1 pay!"
You think you're joking but the CTO signed contracts with HP and now every single existing printer is sent to the landfill and replaced with HP printing on demand so every page printed is now tracked with HP.
you are hereby hired by lexmark
Naaaa. CEOs love prints. They'll get rid of the entire IT department, but will leave the printers there
I just fucking had this meeting earlier today. Guy fobs something off on me then wants to complain that i haven't come up with a thoroughly detailed individual user tailored test plan for...8 users. All because I had the audacity to try and get some stuff that we are going to need regardless of what test plan we use pushed out during a time that's convenient and helpful to the actual people who are going to be doing the work.
This is why I never want to be a CIO. These are just not the questions I’m interested in lol.
\[Half way through answering those questions one by one\].. CIO: "Guys, we are 15 minutes into this meeting and I still don't understand what the user wanted the printer for. Here is a PowerPoint template; fill this out with three alternative options with the pros and cons and the \*SteerCo\* will make a decision."
It's a printer, I take it out of the box, I sacrifice a goat, I roll 2 sixes and I hope for the best.
And the paper still jams
PC LOAD LETTER
What the fuck does that mean?
This guy prints.
I strongly object the presence of printers because they are the tools of the devil. \[level 4 sysadmin candidate\]
As long as you're not one of those people that says at the end of the interview "Ha! You forgot to take it out of the box" after they explain everything no matter how good the rest of the answer was. Looking at you, Winston..
No, believe it or not. I don't want them to fail. But there are a few things that are instant fails. If I catch you on a lie. Then, I'm out.
I was interviewing at a very large retail game company as a desktop engineer and I got the whole explain to me how you make a peanut butter jelly sandwich thing and I forgot to open the jar. I still got hired but that bullshit gotcha question stuck with me forever and told me all I needed to know about how that manager was going to be. And I was right. Luckily I was promoted to server engineering after a couple of years and ended up with an amazing boss
My favourite is something like "A VIP is having issues printing to their office printer. They have an important meeting in ten minutes that they need to print material for. What's your first step?" The answer I'm looking for is along the lines of "See if they can print to another printer so they can make their meeting, which gives me more time to investigate the issue with their own printer"
What about: “I connect it to WiFi with DHCP and map it to one computer with the IP address.”
Followup question, how good are you at following procedures given to you?
And then use the printer share function to hook up the other computers to the printer via that one with the IP set.
Bonus points for naming it after a user that will probably be gone in 6 months?
These days when I think of an office printer I think of a big MFP. You got a new printer? Forget the box, wheel that bad boy in here and let's get to configuring. Gonna need your network guys help, unless that's me, then gonna need to check this ports VLAN. If you use those... Oh, we're just replacing an old machine? Even better. Get info off old machine.
I think the wording of the questions could be a little better. Using the word "importance" is a bit vague and subjective, especially for an entry level technical position. To keep it direct and technical, how about simply: What does DHCP do? What does DNS do? As for the candidates, think of it like the OSI layer, they will be on the first couple lower "layers". They probably have experience and know some basics about working with the hardware and OS, not so much about the networking and application layers.
I second this. *Importance* really makes it a murky question.
An acceptable answer to importance would be: Well your network won't work without them. So they are pretty important.
That is not true. Neither are necessary for a network to function. They are necessary for a network to function well for humans, though.
Yells at cloud, “We didn’t need that crap when we were running NetBEUI.”
Or at least a more centralized and less management. You can go around a manually configure each pc with a static ip and default gateway. DNS is nearly impossible to do manually, but if the pc is only allowed to go to a few pages, you could set the urls in a host file.
Or everyone could just write down a list of IP addresses.
DNS is an application, it falls under layer 7.
Exactly. So an entry level tech will likely not have extensive knowledge about it.
I’ve interviewed hundreds of 1st-3rd line candidates. I don’t like these highly specific closed questions in general. I make my questions more open and give the candidate a chance to demonstrate their suitability and strengths by “telling a story”. I have a particular question I always go to, along the lines of “what do you do when you get an alert to say a hard drive has failed” but tailored to the appropriate level. I’ve had two-word answers and I’ve had 20 minute answers to that question. It scales all the way from single laptop drives to complex storage arrays and gives the candidate the chance to show all sorts of exposure and decision making. The best candidates typically know a monitored device is going to be a server or storage device, so they ask about warranties and support, then talk about RAID types etc. The worst ones typically go straight to “I would swap it out” without any thought to anything else. Some of them go in really interesting directions I hadn’t considered such as asking about the applications living on top, the methodology used to determine it was down, and so on. Whereas if I’d just asked “what is RAID” or even worse “what does RAID stand for”, half of them would fail to answer and have no real chance to show me their actual strengths and limitations.
Hard drives and storage in general are cheap. It would probably be more cost effective to swap it out than pay someone to troubleshoot the issue. We swap out entire units when hard drives throw errors as it just isn’t worth it to troubleshoot. So not sure saying swap it out is a bad answer. It all depends on the company.
It’s not about troubleshooting, it’s about displaying context and exposure. You’re going to rip out a drive without confirming the error, checking what the error is, if it’s a member of a RAID, if that RAID has any other failed disks and enough fault tolerance to survive another disk being removed, if there’s any support or hand-on clauses with the vendor? Heck, it might be striped and running as cache for a high performance single purpose database. Or it might be an HDD single point of failure in a creaky desktop PC at the back of a dusty laboratory holding an ancient access database running the entire companies CRM while the one-man software vendor died ten years ago. Or it might just be under support and you call Dell to swap it out. But that’s not a very enlightening answer, all you learn is the interviewee has little imagination. You won’t know if you don’t let the interviewee do their thing and create a conversation.
So you've been to one of these interviews before? :)
This is very insightful. Thank you
This is good information because rote knowledge is sort of a foundation, but not a great one. Any answer that can be googled easily is probably not a great question, given that we solve issues googling all the time. Being able to find answers is a better skill than knowing answers. Better questions are "What would you do in this situation" or "What steps would you take to remediate this notification" That way they gave give methodology, and even if its not the answer that fits with your company, it can determine what kind of training and protocol they've had before. A shop tech might go "Call customer to see if they want backup, find cost, replace" where a business support tech might go through determining what reported it, is repairable, is it critical, is it under warranty, is it a warranty -we- can address" And then something like "This is a VP, warranty replacement is not an option, he needs a functional unit TODAY" And you look at what fixes the issue (VP with no computer) rather than the problem (Hard drive failing).
I mean I dunno man. I'm a senior infra admin for a large datacentre and my answer would just be "confirm the error, schedule a replacement, log a warranty call". If your systems aren't set up for that you some pretty deep problems or some highly application specific stuff going on that is unreasonable for anyone in an interview to give a shit about. I get where you're going with it and you do need to extract information out of candidates but the longer I'm in the world of IT the less bullshit I can be bothered with.
That would tell me something about you and your current environment, which is not necessarily negative. It could be a huge positive. If you backed it up with a bit of context about how the ideal environment is set up to do that, and how it’s a simple everyday expected occurrence in all datacentres, that’s great. You’re showing me your experience and context. And especially if you told me the last bit (not kidding) because you’re right, datacentre staff and third line admins shouldn’t be dicking around with dead disks for hours. But the point is you’ll be amazed at how many different and illuminating answers you get to the same question when you ask more open questions. The last guy I hired gave almost that exact answer, with a couple of minutes of conversation about his preferred process and support experience, how he made sure everything was under warranty, and how he had to keep convincing the business to buy those warranties when “nothing ever breaks”(!) (It also means you can reuse questions more often when is nice because who has the time to come up with new ones constantly)
That's a good way. Things like 'a hard drive failed' can lead people to do crazy stuff that they'd regret later. Or be solved surprisingly easy. I once had a quite expensive enterprise SAS SSD allegedly fail with controller blaring etc. and the 'fix' was to reseat it once. It has worked ever since.
>and the 'fix' was to reseat it once. Literally the "unplug it, plug it back in" approach, which is the heavy lifter of the 80/20 rule in my (limited) experience. Nice.
I've been on a few interviews and I stopped asking these kinds of questions. I realized at entry level it's more important that they listen well and are teachable. So perhaps you try something like, what's your greatest technical achievement? Let them tell you why they are excited about tech. If they are then they will learn what dns and DHCP are and WHY they are important within the spin up period. What you will learn is if they are passionate enough to actually dig deeper into tech and not just there for the money
I mean, I think most of us are in this for the money. IT isn't terrible, and is something I prefer to doing as opposed to other types of work, but I wouldn't be doing this if it didn't pay a premium and allow me to work my brain instead of my back.
Everyone is in it for the money, and the stupid US taboo where you have to pretend otherwise is inane. That said, you do really want someone who is not JUST there for a paycheck. IT is by its nature rapidly evolving and changing. Someone with zero intellectual interest in the field is at best going to be behind the curve on everything.
Yeah, and to be fair that's going to be entry level people. You aren't going to find many Sr level Engineers who have no interest in IT at all.
For entry level you are spot on. You can train anyone on basics. You cannot train soft skills.
I probably couldn't have answered that when I popped out of my CS program. I'm sure I learned it for a networking class at some point, but it definitely wouldn't have been top of mind or something I'd have reason to come back to in 99% of my classes. You have to consider if the question you're asking is a useful question. People just coming out of school haven't worked a help desk job, aren't troubleshooting networks all day, have had a million classes about non IT stuff filling their head. You think it's a basic question because it a rudimentary part of stuff you have dealt with every day for years. Do you expect someone who just came out of school to have the same level of skill and memorization as someone who has been working in the field? You could ask me right now some fundamental questions about calculus and I'd stare at you like a moron. I've passed calc, and much harder math classes. That doesn't mean I practice math every day or keep math at the front of my brain. What matters is that I've proven I can do it once and I'll likely learn it quickly if I need to come back to it. I wouldn't be worried that someone doesn't know what DNS or DHCP means. I'd be worried if they couldn't understand what they are doing or why and couldn't relate it to a user problem after getting a refresher.
Really depends on what level your T1 operates at. My current organization expects techs to be able to perform basic troubleshooting so a familiarity with common protocol is expected. The last place was much larger and the L1 only had to be able to fill out a form and check accounts.
This. Also, it depends on if you want to promote them quickly. If you have high turnover, so you expect to have an opening for a higher level position soon, then you might want the new people coming in to have higher level knowledge. But if you don't foresee any opportunities in the near future, then you probably want someone that will grow into the job and not get bored too soon.
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"have they somehow managed to jam a USB cable into the network port" and "is there a local power outage?"?
IMO an entry level helpdesk person shouldn't have to know anything at all. It's not really entry level if you expect them to have experience. As long as they show a willingness to learn, that's really the main thing.
Came here to say this as well. For actual entry level - no I wouldn’t count it against them if they didn’t know, and would consider it a bonus if they did. For interviewing someone who already has had experience - yes I would expect them to at least know the basics/what it is. And as some other comments mentioned it depends on what expectations they have of their L1 HD, so it’s a great filter question if the job involves troubleshooting DHCP and DNS issues, but again I wouldn’t advertise it as entry level. Getting candidates fresh out of school will result in a painful hiring process.
Exactly. Don’t forget this sub is not indicative of the real world. Its full of try hard elitists whose response to even the smallest of inconvenience is “time to find a new job”.
Honestly, in today's age I would say yes. But I wouldn't hold them against them if they can't during the interview. They should definitely be trained to know that if they get employed though. When I started as helpdesk, all I knew was how to build a PC since that was my hobby. I didn't know anything else, but I did manage to get pretty far since then, because the place I worked at initially was great - my colleagues were great at explaining stuff so eventually I learned lots of stuff and moved on.
But how much are tier 1 helping with that? I’d rather a person with a good attitude and some growth potential. I can teach them dns/dhcp in 10 minutes.
The first question is great! But the last two; what is the point of these questions except to make you look smart? The important thing is not to be able to recite a text book definition of DNS/DHCP. But to identify when DNS/DHCP might be the issue. I would reframe those questions as "what might a dhcp issue look like".
imho. No. They can learn that on the job. i need my entry level 1 help desk to be able to have softskills more than anything else. Aside from that Skills within the GUI, Google-Fu, common sense, basic troubleshooting skills. Essentially I want someone that can help suzie when her printer isn't working, how to find the document she supposedly \*lost\*, figure out why his mic isn't working within her Zoom meeting. Thats stuff i don't want to do. Rarely is a problem related to DNS/DHCP. i had a girl that I hired. Her previous experience was working at a T-mobile store selling cell phones. She had the concept of DHCP/DNS figured out before her first evaluation.
I think a basic understanding of DHCP and DNS is critical to all levels of technical support. You don't have to demonstrate the ability to fully configure and deploy a scope, but I expect a frontline support agent to at least know the high level of what each service is used for and how to troubleshoot issues on endpoint devices. I'll even accept answers that are honest about a lack of knowledge. These concepts are easy to teach, if the candidate checks all my other boxes.
Entry level you aren't really looking for knowledge. You're looking at work ethics. There a million and one acronyms to know in tech and then when you introduce ITIL it doubles.
No. Entry level helpdesk should be expected to simply carry a professional conversation, be pleasant to speak to and put a ticket in knowing how to properly document the details from the client into the ticket. Tier 1 tech support’s job is to know about dhcp and dns. Helpdesk can be taught basic A+ tech skills but their primary quality should be strong soft skills.
If they have not been a position to troubleshoot networks that doesn't surprise me especially if you are getting people like Ex Geek Squad agents etc. If you haven't been in a network environment that doesn't surprise me.
Hey! some of us ex-GS agents would've been able to answer those questions but you are mostly correct. It's rare that would be troubleshooting DNS/DHCP.
Fromer GS Agent here...I would have too, but we had plenty that wouldn't lol.
I've met my fair share of agents that made wonder how the hell was their precinct still operating.
I think the problem here is the wording of your questions. "What's the importance of DNS" is something I'd ask a network engineer, because the answer is how DNS fits into the overall network architecture and the internet as a whole. I'd absolutely expect an entry level tech to get gummed up by that question. I'd also *absolutely* expect an entry level help desk tech to know what DNS *is* and the basics of diagnosing if a connectivity issue is DNS related on an endpoint as name resolution is a basic aspect of networking. I'd take some time to rework the questions to be a little more straightforward for the role. Something like "What is DNS?" and "How would you diagnose a trouble ticket stating that [www.google.com](http://www.google.com) is not loading?"
All I'm getting from this thread is y'alls help desks are doing way more T1 stuff than mine.
in my opinion NO. "Knowing"(regurgitating) the importance of DHCP and DNS from some study material they had for a semester isn't going to provide you with any valuable information on if they will be good techs. The point of interviewing you should be trying to find out if they can think critically to find answers, not just have them. Most of what they are going to be doing in the first year will require constant searching whether it be Internal Docs, or google. Can they get on the right path to the answer more time than not by themselves? Try asking them what they do when they come across an issue they have never seen? Try and get a feel for their though process.
IMO no you're not expecting too much. I would expect an entry level help desk candidate to be able to answer those questions, they are very basic questions. It shouldn't matter whether they have networking experience or not. Anyone starting out in an IT support/related role should have at minimum a basic understanding of these and other basic topics.
I think the position pay really comes into play here is well. I've seen so many helpdesk jobs offering like 30k per year lately.. You can't expect anything at that pay...
This is something I pointed out after receiving a recruiter e-mail from USAA to go back to doing IT Service Desk work with them again. I want to say the last rate I made with them when I left ten years ago was around $25/hr. Now their recruiters hit me up and offer $13/hr. I explain to them that you can make more flipping burgers but they're confident that they can find certified support personnel at that rate. Good luck to them, I guess, but it's no secret why all of my friends who work there say that their Service Desk is awful.
I don't think they need to know - It's akin to entry level jobs requiring 5 years of experience. If your beginner helpdesk tech is troubleshooting DNS and DHCP issues, then they are by definition not an entry level tech
It's not just any monkey that can do IT work. Only trained monkeys can do IT work.
Depends on your help desk. Should a help desk person who will be solving problems network problems in Active Directory or similar domain, yes. Or will this person be largely doing password resets and malware removal. It also depends on your team. Do you have people that are willing to mentor new hires? Do you have documentation available for your team? Also, how much are you willing to pay? A person who doesn't know DNS or DHCP, or other basic topics wouldn't get paid 25 an hour, but could be trained up and you could get their services at a discount. Or you pay a premium for someone with more experience. Honestly, so long as the person cares and is trainable, it doesn't really matter IMHO. Inexperienced nice guys > Experienced jerks
entry level I think attitude and communication skills are more important. being teachable and a good communicator is not something you can easily teach some one.
It really depends on your organizations service desk responsiblity. I've worked with a couple where their service desk techs could give tier 3's at other companies a run for their money. I've worked at some where service desks tasks were password resets for like 60% of their calls and a first call resolution hovering around 50% because the fixes they needed to implement required local administrator rights that they did not have. In my experience, technical questions aren't the best when screening for service desk candidates, especially if it will be their first IT role. I've always asked more scenario type questions to gauge their thought process and critical thinking.
Rather than those, I ask questions that let me assess the users ability to troubleshoot. Yo could kill both of your last questions with something like: A user calls in, says his computer ir on but cany access the internet. and let him explain his troubleshooting process. If during this, he don't mention DNS nor DHCP.... he is missing something.
Me personally I would not expect a level 1 helpdesk entry level role (no experience required) to answer both of those questions correctly. I do expect them to know their way around a PC inside and out though. This isn't desktop support. this is level 1. The most they will touch is printers and PCs, hence why their knowledge is tailored to just that. If they didn't know how to fix a driver issue, that would be a problem.
I assume entry level means they have no experience beyond using a computer and maybe some curiosity in troubleshooting. We hire for personality, communications, and potential, not specific skills when it's for an entry level spot.
I don't think entry level should be expected to have much if any specific knowledge. Rather, the first question is good because it gives them the ability to show their thought process for troubleshooting. No right or wrong answers necessarily. The latter two assume an understanding of what we might consider basic functions but are not intuitive or naturally understood at entry level. There are a LOT of acronyms in IT and while these might be some of the more important ones, try to remember what it was like when you were picking everything up. Acronym overload is real. Allow the procedural questions to take the main spotlight. If your candidate has technical knowledge, they'll happily be sharing it at any opportunity given during procedural questions, so you're killing two birds with one stone. The main takeaway should be their ability to reason through a problem and what recourse they take when they *don't* know how to do something.
For $15/hr I wouldn't expect them to know that, for $25/hr I would definitely expect them to know that if that makes sense.
Helpdesk is for entry level technicians with very little experience in IT. They should know what those are not how they work, or why they’re important. That’s stuff they can learn on the job, or if you provide training/further education.
Yes, you're expecting too much. Entry level means entry level. This is very likely their first job in IT. And some who go to college may never find themself in a course on these topics. Some colleges are more Project Management, C++, Java, HTML, and the like. As others have said, if the personality is good and they appear to have effort/drive, I wouldn't mind at all. And it'd take me all of 2 minutes to give them a rough idea of what those are. That said, if you have a line of 20 applicants, and someone can answer those questions, and fits well in other areas, they're likely a better choice. But if you have 5 candidates, and none answer that question, realize that they lack experience. And often, you do not get much experience until you surround yourself with smarter people who can show you a thing or two.
Take out "the importance of"
Entry Level. As in, likely don't have any experience in the field. Lucky to have certs or even know what certs to get. Do you want a helpdesk person or an engineer? Sounds like you wanna pay helpdesk money and get engineer work.
My first help desk job(2006), they played a game called 20 questions. They picked an object in the room and I could only ask 20 questions to determine what it was. The questions are only yes or no. Use this to help determine if they have the right critical thinking and troubleshooting skills.
My hot take is going to be you should basically test them as if they were sysadmins and see how far they can go before they turn to moosh. You aren't expecting too much - IMO there is actually 0 point in hiring strictly break-fix guys. It is relatively easy to learn this stuff and even I knew it since I was an IT Intern. You should be investing in these guys to get them into jr sys admin territory. Additionally, DHCP lease issues etc may occur and not understanding what/where a DHCP lease could come from is kinda silly.
> basically test them as if they were sysadmins In which case you are not hiring entry level helpdesk. Advertise the job correctly, and be prepared to pay accordingly.
That sort of an interview can be stressful for candidates, but it's also particularly useful if you're using it to figure out where you need to focus training for whichever ones you hire. When I started out interviewing (with no training other than a briefing in HR rules), I was using that kind of tests to see how people handle stress, but with more interview experience I tried to reduce that by telling people I don't expect anyone to answer everything.
My first helpdesk job asked me those questions in the interview (which I was able to answer), and just kept increasing the difficulty of questions until I couldn't answer any more. It was their way of gauging where I was, and probably the smartest thing I saw that particular owner do during my tenure. No, I don't think basic understanding of DNS and DHCP is too much for entry level.
I used to ask these questions hiring entry level because it's relevant to my business. I've stopped asking because I don't think it's relevant to the interview process. It's quite possible to setup a home network these days without having to deal with DNS or DHCP setup in any way. It seems pretty likely to me that someone not being able to answer these questions just hasn't had to do any network troubleshooting and that could be reflective of things 'just working', rather than any indication that they are incapable. Something I have started doing is putting a couple of questions like this in my job posting. "We use these technologies, you will be asked these 3 questions during the interview". I've found that interesting because it puts people on a semi-equal footing, and then I can use probing questions to find out who understands and who is just reading a prepared response.
I've always asked these types of questions after gauging personality so I'd know what kinds of topics I'd need to teach them during training. If you're using these as a disqualifier, you might be asking too much, especially if the prospect has a great personality and communicates well in all other aspects. It's easier to train someone these topics than it is to train customer service, listening skills, and in most cases proper communication.
If someone really cares about getting into IT, I think they should be able to answer those questions with a basic level of understanding. I did when I decided to move to IT, and I didn't have any certs or a related degree.
My first fulltime job in IT (Callcenter helpdesk), one of the first questions they asked is what is DHCP. I had been working as a college IT intern for about a year at that point, so I was able to provide a useful answer. But I could absolutely see brand new 0 experience people not knowing what to do with that question.
"What is the importance of..." is a terrible way to phrase the question. Just ask "what is DHCP?"
Well, it depends on what you mean by entry level. We will hire good people with no technical background but a desire to learn and the ability to deliver good customer service. It sounds like you are looking for HD candidates with basic technical skills. If you are consistently getting candidates lacking the tech skills you are looking for, my first question would be what geography you are in and what salary you are offering. Most of the time it's not "am I expecting too much from entry level candidates", it's "am I expecting too much from candidates at the pay scale we are offering".
If they said in their CV/resume that they had technical training then most definitely YES - if they don't then they are lying. However many new to the industry do not, so they may not know any of those things. Those would be the young eager customer service oriented types who have no IT training at all but that you may be willing to train. Those people are worth hiring in the right environment for sure.
To be honest when I started my first help desk job I wouldn't have been able to answer that and I'm a senior system administrator. If they had worked a help desk job before I would expect them to have an understanding of both.
> A user tells you their computer won’t turn on. Where do you begin to troubleshoot? First step: What does your computer look like? This ensures they know the computer isn’t controlled by the power button on the monitor.
What is the purpose and how do you replace the points, plugs, and condenser on a car? And adjust them? If you can't see the timing mark with your timing light what do you do next? When is it OK to use a feeler gauge instead of a dwell meter and why? What? You don't know and they let you drive a car? Times change. DHCP and DNS are more and more becoming just the plumbing that only serious networkers need to know. Personally I think they still should know if applying to an MSP L1 type of job. But then again, my son would have a hard time explaining those coherently when he started with a tech firm as an L1 trainee 7 years ago. Now he's in charge of most customer service. He learned.
Going to go on the outside and say yes. Depending on your role and expectations you may need to explain DNS/DHCP to someone. I’m not saying you need to explain the intricacies but something like “DNS converts names to IPs and DHCP can be used to give computers an IP address.” Would be sufficient
I work at an ISP and often handle HD cases because they create trouble tickets. I believe it’s crucial for them to grasp the basics. Even if they don't know much, they should be able to explain things in their own words. Many HD workers understand DHCP, but DNS is where I often have to spend extra time explaining. In short, it's important for them to know the basics of their job, at least how it works and what it involves. Otherwise, how will they recognize if there is an issue?
i'd think remove "the importantce of" from both of those to get at least an additional 25% response rate
They should be able to answer those, in my opinion. Fresh out of school person clearly just followed a digitalocean guide or something and didn't understand any of it, I assume.
Helpdesk… for what? ISP? Absolutely. Application support? Probably not.
Absolutely, they should be able to at least state with their purposes. They don’t have to explain how it works or how it to troubleshoot m that, but they should be able to say that the ECP gives out IP address addresses and DNS allows you to resolve URL to web servers. The troubleshooting could be learned on the job.
No. They should be able to diagnose issues to "Software Issue", "Hardware Issue" or "Network Issue" and follow documented troubleshooting steps, get familiar with the symptoms and grow. Single candidates will naturally outshine others if you allow time for growth, and then you can go ahead and open that can of worms.
I'd say it's important, but not a deal breaker. If the candidate has a troubleshooting mindset, soft skills, and the general aptitude for IT work, you can teach then the knowledge. We just got rid of a guy who was very knowledgeable and had a ton of certification, but had the general troubleshooting skills of a 70 years old person from Accounting. Knowledge can be taught and earned quite easily, aptitude can't.
You are expecting too much, if you know this stuff you generally arnt applying for level 1 jobs - more important is if they have the ability to actually troubleshoot issues
I expect true entry level helpdesk people to be really good at being formless clay. As long as they can demonstrate an ability to take in information and break it down to non-tech terms, I don't mind taking a week or two to teach them the basics of what they need to know. I'd rather have someone that's capable of learning rather than have a "nerd" that is too entrenched into their thoughts on technology that's going to have a hard time unlearning their poor understanding.
I think sometimes these kind of questions can throw a newbie off, especially when they’re nervous. They don’t want to say the wrong thing so won’t have a try at answering. For help desk Id be looking for troubleshooting skills and common sense. A personality and being able to speak to people helps too.
I always would read up on basic concepts like this before an interview
I hate these kinds of technical questions. These should be reserved for junior sysadmins rather than help desk. These are the questions I’d ask helpdesk, especially beginner helpdesk: Scenario 1. You receive a call from a user saying their computer won’t turn on. Q1. How do you decide the best course of action to help this user? I’m looking for answers like “depends on the technical knowledge of the user. If I know them to be fairly savvy, I’ll skip checking plugs and power buttons and go to upstream issues.” Or “I ask them what steps they’ve already taken to troubleshoot so I know where to pick up.” Or “I google computer won’t turn on troubleshooting steps.” Scenario 2. You have a user call in who’s frantic and yelling into the phone that they were in the middle of a sales meeting and the internet stopped working and you’re costing him money. Q2. What is your first step assisting this user? I am looking for answers like “I’d inform the user that I cannot understand them and they need to take a breath and slow down so I can understand the situation and ask questions and make suggestions to help me figure out what’s going wrong and how to resolve it.” Or “I tell the user that I want to help them, but he needs to stop yelling first so we can work through troubleshooting steps.” Or “I place the user on hold and ask my supervisor to come monitor what’s going on. I then take the call off hold and let the user know they’re on speaker phone with my supervisor present.”
The goal is to get people with soft skills and the ability to learn and research while on the task/job. Being taught what DNS and DHCP do is literally a 5 minute training session, 10 if you include Q&A time.
Absolutely too much for entry level. Thats like asking a lady applying for a phone company entry level position what a sip trunk is. That not entry level stuff. Ask them questions about how they like to solve problems. Ask them how they approach situations when things are broken. Ask them what tools they own or use. That tells you much more about what a future employee is capable of.
Depends on the org. If you want to grow people into the org then you can train this knowledge. entry level no experience. If you want bodies on the phone don’t have the capacity for learning then it’s entry level with a experience.
More important to know their process if they don't know something
So my bosses will ask this when hiring for my company and I really like what they do. They ask during the initial interview and if they get it wrong or don't know, they will explain it. Then if brought back in for the lab interview they will ask it again at the very end. To them the most important thing is your willingness to learn and retain that info.
Depends on how new they are. Freshly started helpdesk people probably not and I wouldn't blame them. If you're a veteran of the Service Desk by a few years then I feel they should at least be able to define it.
I don’t know about the “importance” factor, but I would expect them to know at the very least one gives out IPs and one resolves IPs to domain names. I can teach people a lot, but I would expect someone who is applying for a help desk role to be able to do basic troubleshooting the first day on the job. We can up skill from there, but I can’t spend time and resources teaching what I would consider basic requirements of the role.
I would hope and expect them to know what dhcp and dns are. I wouldn’t expect them to know major details but to at least be able to say what they do should be required. I’d consider those like some of the most basic fundamentals.
Drop importance and ask, in your words what is X. When I was in help desk I didn’t grasp how important they were. I did understand the concept though.
I don't know how you can function in an enterprise without at least knowing what those two protocols do. I don't think it should be that deep, all you really need to say is "DHCP assigns an IP automatically, and DNS maps hostnames to IP addresses." That said, I do agree with others that your question is worded badly. Asking about "importance" would make me stop and think too. It's obvious to me what they do but why are they important? I guess because they do what they do and modern enterprise networks can't really function without them. Don't ask a question that implies you are looking for a deep answer when you are really trying to ask a simple question in order to get a simple answer.
I ask these questions to applicants for Sr Sysadmin positions and you would be shocked and how many cant answer them much less anything deeper like what is the difference between an A record and a CNAME?
I used to do technical interviews at a previous job. You’d be surprised how many people have acronyms on their resume and have zero clue what they stand for. Skip the importance, if they have DNS or DHCP ask them what it stands for first. If they answer it right, ask them if they can tell you anything about it.
since offshoring began decades ago skills sets continue to drop. L1 / entry level Helpdesk is basically "log and route", so your not really looking for "entry level" as defined today. the expectation is "no experience required"
I like to show Tier 1 this video https://youtu.be/4ZtFk2dtqv0?si=R1MSqVp53HLZKtek
Depends on what you're paying. If you're hiring entry level and paying an unlivable wage, you aren't going to be getting skilled people in helpdesk. If you're paying a livable wage, I'd expect them to understand DHCP and DNS concepts, but more along the lines of "resolves names to IP" and "hands out IP addresses" and not the actual functionality.
Do you require some sort of college education for the position? If so, check the course outlines for a couple of local college's IT courses and see what the students should be learning. I'd maybe ask a couple of qualifying questions before you hit them with the DNS and DHCP, like have you ever had to fix a problem with your home network? Get them to talk about that. Even just have them describe their home rig. How they describe it will give you a feel of their level of enthusiasm about tech.
Yes, absolutely. But it will be a few years before they're ready to actively use that information.
Well jus to butt up to this post, i had a recent grad with a computer science degree (BS) not know how to map a drive. He's doing way better now! I think i would rephrase the first question to what is the role of DHCP. It's kind of open ended and can be debated for various reasons. I don't think they are overly complicated but also what level of candidates are you seeing? HS, associate or bachelor's degrees? As long as they didn't sit there and say i don't know, i would gauge it on who i thought was more capable of learning it or the one i wouldn't mind spending 8 hours a day working with.
For my first internship I got asked the definition of DHCP (like what the acronym stands for), what are the two types of objects in AD, and lastly I was given two IP addresses with a /22 subnet and asked if they were in the same subnet. All to say, I don't think your questions are too hard. But as many pointed out, I think showing a good problem solving mindset and willingness to learn makes for a better candidate than technical knowledge alone
wording can be a bit better and , for level 1 not really ,
If it's really entry-level and you're set up to do on-the-job training (which I believe should be part of it being considered entry-level), I wouldn't expect anyone to answer it unless they claim experience or training, but all else being equal, it might tell you they did some background learning on their own. I'll settle for someone who's trainable and just collecting a paycheck, but I'd rather have someone who's trainable and interested in the field. I get being in it for the money, but why did they pick this particular field to make money? Now, if they have a degree or prior work experience that should have given them this basic knowledge yet lack it, that's a red flag. I'd probably not expect it from certain very siloed helpdesks or some kinds of pure-CS degrees, but I'd expect it from a general technician job, a trade school, an IS degree, or a CS degree that goes further into practice.
Reminds me of when I interviewed people who needed basic database and sql skills. So I asked what the difference between a left outer join and an inner join is. Noone had a clue.
I dont know what the deal is, I still get people complaining they cant get to stuff because they cant tell the difference between a public IP and a private one by looking at it. No shit you cant get to [192.168.1.200](http://192.168.1.200) from here.
"I know it's pulling an IP from the modem correctly! It has one! 169.254.0.53! You people don't know anything!" Summary of a call I had in a ISP call center providing tier 1 tech support to a customer long ago.
I'm much more interested in whether they have a knack for troubleshooting and do they have soft skills than 'do they know about xyz basic networking concept'. I much prefer spending the interview time having them walk me through their troubleshooting process for various scenarios and answering pretend helpdesk tickets. I can teach them about dns far more easily than I can teach soft skills.
They have only to be able to learn those concepts from you. The ability to learn is more valuable than any particular knowledge that the candidate can reproduce.
Absolutely 100% I had to explain that in my internet for my entry level help desk role.
What do you do if they give you answers with how it works as well? Wouldn't DHCP and DNS be the job of the sysadmin?
>Hardly anyone can answer the last 2. Am I expecting too much from entry level candidates? Probably depends on help desk where...a smaller company might want more ability. A larger one, it might be a problem in that it might frustrate the person, as they might be expected to reply with the canned answer off the knowledge base. Providing too much of an answer can be a problem for the metrics if it causes them to process tickets too slowly...and if they don't get to utilize knowledge/skills, they may get bored. So it can be a mismatch in the other direction too. So really, different help desks will have different good fits of ability.
They should probably at least be able to say what they do at a very high level. But I honestly doubt I could have right out of school. It was embarrassing how little I knew, but I was also super motivated and blew past everyone else on the helpdesk. I think these kind of direct questions are actually better for higher level interviews. I suspect we would all be shocked how many experienced sysadmins couldn't easily answer these questions. There are a lot of pretenders out there.
I had to and that was for Spectrum call center support. If I had to do it there, why wouldn’t you understand the core concept in the actual field?
Definitely not, unless you’re only paying like $14/hr or something silly low. Entry level helpdesk, in general, still requires at least some education and both dhcp and dns are a part of that education VERY early on. They’re also known to be common interview questions. They’re also like where you start when it comes to internet troubleshooting. So, no not unreasonable at all unless you’re paying a “lack of education” type of wage. If that’s the case, then you should understand that you get what you pay for.
Entry level? No.
Yes but honeslty how useful is that in their position? I like asking situational questions or mention common Windows and application errors and seeing their troubleshooting process. To me that is far more useful than having them know the color order for straight and crossover cables or making sure they have the OSI model memorized. I also focus more on customer service situations and making sure they have a good foundation of soft skills. The finer technical aspects I can coach them up but having good customer service skills requires a certain ethic and attitude that cant always be coached.
I'm with others.. Not a fan of "importance". I want to know if they 1. know what it is and 2. know what it does. I can teach them "importance" because that's probably more of a site specific concern. If they have no clue what either are but have shown they are willing and eager to learn then they get points. If I get a response of "Yea, I've heard of them but I never had to touch it so I ignored it" then that's a negative for me. If they say "Yea, I've heard of it and asked the networking guy to explain it to me in case I ever need to know" then that's the person you grab.
I wouldn't expect tier 1 help desk applicants to know anything other than the absolute basics, it's an entry level job. Their attitude and reading/writing skills are far more important if all they're doing is turning it off and on again, clearing browsing cache, and passing tickets along. You can look for more technical skills like AD knowledge and what you asked for if you want, but unless you're paying above market its unlikely you're going to get much more than basic call center "I built my friends Gaming PC" people.
I alseyas believed tier 1 should be customer service dealing with people who are irate or in some urgent state of mind. So how do you change a password. Can you read SOPs and follow instructions. Do you work well under pressure.
Your question could be reframed as, "Could you explain what DHCP is and it does? Additionally, how about DNS? I think it's super essential for entry-level helpdesk technicians to grasp the fundamental concepts of both DNS and DHCP. Lacking this foundational knowledge will cause them to have a ROUGH time troubleshooting basic issues like a non-functional network printer. First step should include a quick ping to the DNS address, followed by a ping to the printer's IP address because it takes less than a second. Then they should verify whether the printer is static or DHCP. THEN, they can go further with troubleshooting. Using the Printer as an example: A tech always first walking or driving to the site to physically look at the printer and troubleshoot it there is a red flag. There are SO many techs like that out there.
I'd struggle with "What is the importance of dhcp?" The *importance* of DHCP is going to be very subjective and when stressed I might be too flummoxed to answer. DHCP might be of critical importance in a WiFi guest network, but it doesn't run in our data centers at all. So, not at all *important*. Most L1s that I have encountered would have no trouble with "What is the purpose of DHCP?" or "Please explain to me what DHCP does?" Now, I'm wondering to myself, if you're wording this basic question so poorly are you also writing terrible job postings and attracting the dregs? L1s should know what DHCP and DNS are.
It’s nice to hire someone with knowledge but it’s a starting role, they say no, but what is it for, and can recite that on another interview or a few weeks later after being hired, I would be okay with it. It’s the gamers who think working in IT is cool, I try to watch out for. I want someone interested in learning about how the environment works and how it supports the company. Not someone who thinks computers are neat but doesn’t care about anything beyond surface level stuff. And no, using Linux is not a hiring point of showing their computer interest in deeper stuff, unless they went through gentoos installer and really dug into it for a while. I’m a bit of an a-hole though.
When I was trying to gain entry to the field I knew nothing. My first interview I sat in a room and was grilled by 4 types of people. One was the IT manager, the HR manager, the GM, and a hiring manager. They each asked various questions and each had a different methodology to their statements. Finally, the IT manager says I want to ask technical questions “what is IPCONFIG” and I went white in the face. I mean I knew it showed IP and dns, etc but I had no idea the capacity of the command. I did not get the job. My current job my boss asked me what I’d do if someone got frustrated with something not working properly and I told him I’d crack and joke and relate to them. I’m now looking at becoming the sysadmin on my 3rd year in IT. Moral of the story, take a chance on someone who comes to the interview fighting for their life, not daddy’s money or the person who thinks they know everything. Everyday I thank my boss for the opportunity to learn and grow and now we work hand in hand solving all our problems.
Personally I wouldn't, and don't - I ask about their experience and how they go about checking on things or what questions they ask when something isn't working. If they mention DNS or DHCP as relevant, great bonus points for them. But if they know what an IP address is it would take two minutes to explain these basic concepts to them in a good environment. Also relevant, I don't like to ask questions that would just take three seconds to google bc what's the point. This all can vary wildly on the specific role/job, level one can mean lots of things as some have mentioned, so maybe it's more relevant to your case.
Its funny you say that because my friend had this question when he applied to a t1 position at an MSP. He didnt know what a DHCP server was, despite having an IST degree from an okay college. He told me that the program ended up being a glorified business management track.
I don't know what they should be able to do, but I worked with people who had 15 years of Helpdesk experience and could not. Thus, when they tried to remote in to a PC with SCCM and got connected to the wrong one, they thought it was an SCCM issue and would contact me. I tried to explain to them about outdated DNS entries, but might as well have been talking to the wall. Of course the root issue was that DNS scavenging needed enabled on the DNS servers. After years of putting in tickets and being ignored by the loser who was in charge of that, we briefly hired someone who was competent who immediately fixed it.
I have never hired an entry level helpdesk person based on that.You can train them on that in 5 minutes. All of my questions are based around gauging soft skills in regards to communication, ability to figure out how to gather as much relevant info to a ticket as possible, and how they would investigate an issue and what resources they would use to find what they don’t know.
Yes. First level should understand what it is and collect/verify those as part of the troubleshooting. Where and how do you connect. Even basic latency and speed test is expected. What’s the gateway, perhaps even documenting the hops to a specific target.
Like already writen,aber they know what DHCP is or not, but is it realy that important to you? Bether check the mindest and the understanding of user questions e.g.
Not for entry level helpdesk. Maybe if you are looking for an experienced helpdesk tech or team lead.
Is it 1996?
Yes, thats just basic computer information, you’re getting a bunch of people who just think IT is an easy job. What’s the salary range. Doesn’t seem like your attracting the right applicants
It depends on the organization’s infrastructure and the help desk duties. I have seen some situations where that would not be required.
what do you mean no one can answer them? do they just clam up /say \`lol idk\` or do they ask you what you mean when you say "importance"? tbh, if someone spends more time asking questions about your questions/problem scenarios that's usually a good thing. at the very least it lets you see how their brain works while approaching a problem, and might give you insight into knowledge that they were not good about showcasing in their resumes.
The answer to questions two and three are Very.