Computer Whiz Needed For Job Application

[aRo]

you may be able to blag your way through some jobs but not in IT.

In IT you can easily be found out within hours and when, not if, you get found out people can be very nasty such is the real world.

Funnily enough, we have a guy working in our dept who said that he knew the technology we were using, only that he keeps asking about basic stuff and that his previous job was different and that he needs to refresh himself etc etc...

I've tried to help him but it can be very frustrating as you keep having to teach him very basic stuff all the time and never actually having time to do my own work.

Everyone now has an opinion of him and not favourable one and I think he knows which is a position i would never want to be in.

Just so you know.

Good luck anyway in your job hunt.

 

[english]

i think if he can google the answers now he can google the answers if he gets the job. irresponsible i know =)

 

[oneman]

judging by the questions, this is not a front line helpdesk job but most likely permie 2nd level support. Mixed windows / linux environment as well for more money.

For those who work in the industry, you know that its easier to keep a crap person on and train them then try and recruit. If you can get your foot in the door you are laughing and yes, google is your best friend.

 

[beady]

If I'm hijacking this I appologise, but I'm interested in getting out of my current work and going into IT. When you guys say you need to 'know your stuff', to what degree? For instance, the linux firewall question requires you to use iptables to default block everything, allow smtp and probably pop3/imap to/from the mail server, and allow 80 (and maybe 443) to the outside world, along with related/established allowed. I know you'd use iptables to set up the firewall (I've done it many times before), but if I was sat down and told to 'do it now', I'm not sure I could remember the syntax without a quick scan of the man page. Would the interviewer consider this reasonable, or would i be expected to be able to write a firewall script completely from memory? I'm just interested really. With 5+ years linux experience (building computational HPC clusters etc), I reckon I know linux, networking and security pretty well, but I still rely on references (be they man pages or google) to get things done.

As for the questions, I reckon the NTFS question is probably about the difference between switching inodes (unix term, dunno what they'd be called in windows) and actually copying data, and the network would have to be a 10.x.x.x, 172.16.x.x or 192.168.x.x. Not necessarily just class C, you want the reserved, non-routable addresses. See here.

I'd appreciate any comments.

Cheers

 

[oneman]

Depends on what you are looking at in IT, its a big field with literally hundreds of specialities.

 

[beady]

Well that's the thing, I really don't know. I consider myself a competent C/C++ programmer, with experience with fortran (debugging the most horrible 20 year old computational chemistry code you can imagine), python, perl and tcl, with a (very little) bit of java thrown in. I'm pretty good at shell scripting too.
I reckon I'd like to be on the networking/security side, since it's what I'm most interested in, but I really don't know if I'm qualified. While at uni, I lived with a couple of computer science guys, and I honestly think I knew more than them. But then I don't have the qualifications to show for it. My PhD is in computational chemistry (actually theoretical photophysics). Having said that, I've talked to loads of people doing IT/programming jobs who did nothing like it at uni.

Okay, lets narrow it down a bit, can anyone in networking or security give me some pointers about what I might be expected to know, general skills etc. As I said, I've really no idea what level to aim for, so any help is appreciated.

 

[oneman]

I would look at the CompTIA A+ and Network+ stuff. They are non-vendor specific and well recognised in the industry as entry level qualifications.

If you have some experiance you should be able to get threw the material in a couple of weeks.

Then of course there is MCSE but that is no walk in the park like it used to be.

 

[Killer_K]

lol...come on guys i was close....it was the reg editor....i believe it lets u do the same thing. ;-)

 

[english]

lol...come on guys i was close....it was the reg editor....i believe it lets u do the same thing. ;-)

quite right mate. you can make 'registry modifications' with msconfig

 

[karym6]

Well that's the thing, I really don't know. I consider myself a competent C/C++ programmer, with experience with fortran (debugging the most horrible 20 year old computational chemistry code you can imagine), python, perl and tcl, with a (very little) bit of java thrown in. I'm pretty good at shell scripting too.
I reckon I'd like to be on the networking/security side, since it's what I'm most interested in, but I really don't know if I'm qualified. While at uni, I lived with a couple of computer science guys, and I honestly think I knew more than them. But then I don't have the qualifications to show for it. My PhD is in computational chemistry (actually theoretical photophysics). Having said that, I've talked to loads of people doing IT/programming jobs who did nothing like it at uni.

Okay, lets narrow it down a bit, can anyone in networking or security give me some pointers about what I might be expected to know, general skills etc. As I said, I've really no idea what level to aim for, so any help is appreciated.

At my place (.net develeopment) one of our lead devs has a phd in some sort of chemistry. He took a six month course in Java before applying for a job with us.

So, as long as you have a degree, you should be fine.

If you want to get into support, then onemans response is a-ok for you. However, if you want to go into analysis or dev, you should be fine having a crack now (plus its much more money).

 

[Curly]

If I'm hijacking this I appologise, but I'm interested in getting out of my current work and going into IT.

Having read many of your previous posts beady, I'm surprised to learn that you don't work in IT !!!

I'm sure having a phd in a related field will help with the job application side, then at interview stage you'll convince them you know your stuff

As for people getting away with not knowing their stuff, I think that depends on the company in question and the level of competance of the managers above. There is a guy where I work, on £40K plus, who know the square root of fook all!!!!! He is sat in his office on his elboe as I type !!

Good luck anyway m8

Curly

 

[Baaheeduk]

At my place (.net develeopment) one of our lead devs has a phd in some sort of chemistry. He took a six month course in Java before applying for a job with us.

So, as long as you have a degree, you should be fine.

If you want to get into support, then onemans response is a-ok for you. However, if you want to go into analysis or dev, you should be fine having a crack now (plus its much more money).

So true. All degree means is that you have a good brain capacity to learn.

 

[karym6]

So true. All degree means is that you have a good brain capacity to learn.

yup, some computing degrees teach you the way to think about things as well. But probably most degrees give you this anyway.