I am currently working towards my Bachelors in Networking Technology, with my goals set on becoming a Network Admin one day. I have a favor to ask of you if you might be able to spare a few minutes. In one of my classes, I am needing to interview someone in the Networking Field that I have interest in. It is a list of 10 questions that I will provide below. If you have any time at all, I would really appreciate your insight and advice to these questions. I just don't know anyone around here that I can interview. I'll have to hand this in, in a couple of weeks, so no pressure. I really appreciate your time and if you are unable to I understand as well. Thanks a lot. Whoever is able to help me out, you can just reply here

Thanks,
Josh

Interview questions:



1. What is your title?


2. What are your responsibilities?


3. What kinds of skills do you need to perform your job?


4. Describe what you do during a typical day.


5. What other jobs have you held that might have helped prepare you for this position?


6. Do you have people who work for you, and what do they do?


7. What is one of the most challenging things about the work you do?


8. What time management tips could you suggest?



9. How do you balance your family, job, work, and leisure time?



10. What advice can you offer to a student preparing for a career in network administration? (ie. Areas to master, recommended certifications, etc)

Moved: This thread is more suitable in General and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

Couple of things. I have removed your contact info - it is both poor security and very rude to take information away from the boards without even offering to share the fruits of that info. All responses will be kept to this thread.

ok, let's see... slightly cooking my answers, but hopefully will be good enough...

1. Network Architect

2. Most simply - Design, build and run of head office and data centre LAN's and WAN's. Also relationship management with third parties and vendors.

3. Good understanding of TCP/IP and general IT architectures. Appreciation of how network is used by others (e.g. application developers and end users), not just the network itself.

4. Never had a typical day yet...

5. Out of university I came up through semi-technical helpdesk roles over the course of a few years. The work in itself did not help, but was able to hit the ground running knowing how the more visible side of IT worked, i.e. email services, intranet etc...

6. No, unless a managerial element is just for the sake of it due to lack of remit then you'd really look to have a more non-technical manager than technical all the way down. Whilst not having anyone to actually use as a footstool, structured support desks beneath me are able to face off most of the simpler routine work.

7. Getting the message across to non-technical management. I present ideas which help provide a better infrastructure for other higher level services, they see a big bill and nothing to show for it. Being a one-man band is a double edge sword a lot of the time.

8. My time management is largely poor. Depending on how you think you often do need a lot of self control to not cherry pick the fun stuff that you want to do rather than responding to business requirements and issues which can be annoying boring and petty. Whilst often frustrating, a good ticketing system helps keep yourself in line.

9. Most of my time I have happily done 37 hour weeks due tot eh style of work. Right now I am doing 60 - 70 hour weeks away from home. Gotta do what you gotta do really. It helps to care about things in order to get a good result, but still trying to keep things at a bit of a distance and not being too anal helps. I used to insist of certain switch port numbers being reserved for certain functions and ip addresses the same, but now largely any port will do, which makes things calmer in my head at least.

10. Don't worship certification. It's good to get a job, especially if your future boss is a non-technical muppet, and also good if in an IT company selling services, but if not, just actually *KNOW* things. I've met CCNP guys who don't even know what SSH is, which is ludicrous. Also don't be too narrow. Understand concepts (tcp/ip, routing, firewalls), not products (cisco, extreme, juniper) and then you should be able to generically apply principles and logic to any product you've never seen before. Similarily, understand ALL of IT. with the right mindset it's easy to still know how a SAN or AD forest holds together despite it not actually mattering. It's a hell of a lot better to be able to talk the same language with the other tech guys.

Hi Chris.

Thanks a bunch for your help! Your answers are eyeopening and offer real world advice. Thanks for taking the time to respond and I apologize for posting in the wrong thread. I'm sure I'll be bouncing back here often, as I am a new linux user as well.

Thanks again!

Josh

Hi Chris.

Thanks for your reply and the real world answers. That info will be great and I appreciate it. Sorry for posting in the wrong thread initially. I'm a brand new linux user and I'm enjoying the new endeavor. I'm sure I'll be back often to seach the boards. Thanks again!

Josh

Why did you post the same type of response twice, almost 30 minutes apart?

Because it wasn't showing the first time for some reason, even after I refreshed. I noticed this after I posted the 2nd time but didn't see away to delete it.

Yeah that happened to me the other day. But when you realise you have posted more than once just ask the mods to delete one of the posts...am i right XavierP?

That's it exactly - the report button can be used to request one of us to fix an error