IT BS thread

When cutover literally meant cut. And, look at the size of the IDF. My big ones maybe have 3 19" racks.

 

Hello IT people.

Have a question for you:

Let's say you're deciding between a handful of candidates for a job.

Have you ever hired the person with less experience? If yes, why?

Thank you

 

Good question. Yes, a few times when the situation permitted it.

In those cases, the less experienced candidate had more pertinent education (like cloud services) and they hadn’t been ruined by bad habits. I hate dealing with the “this is how we did it when I was at Fudgepackers” people. Dude, they didn’t renew your contract there for a reason.

Also, someone with experience but without certifications makes me question the depth of that experience. Certifications show effort. Certifications show retention of information. Education - why something works beyond just how to do it. Certs also carry a CPE burden to keep people in a state of continual education. Certs are their own task master. I got my CISSP in 2005 and have busted my ass to maintain it for 16 years.

Fuuuuuck. It’s been 16 years?

Anyway, someone with less experience (usually) has less ego. IT people are a proud bunch, and you sometimes have issues when a new stallion enters the stable. Pairing up a smart but inexperienced newb with a grizzled veteran helps both out (provided “Old Jerry” understands the situation). This all depends on the people, though. I’ve seen guys fresh out of school think they were God’s gift to IT, and 20-year veterans without a shred of ego despite their absolute genius.

Lastly, the reason to hire the less experienced candidate was money. I can hire a junior position for about $35K (total cost) less, and let them grow into a senior position by their effort. In that regard, I hired 3 juniors for the cost or two seniors. Only 2 of those juniors were worth keeping, so when the one-year period expired we let the weaker performer go and kept the two strong guys. They got a raise, it didn’t change my manpower budget, and the same amount of work was done by people who knew what they were doing and were renumerated accordingly.

That help?

 

I have done a ton of interviewing and hiring the past two years in my current role in DevOps/SRE. If a team is very small and under a lot of pressure, it may make more sense to hire more senior / experienced engineers. Once you get past a few engineers I believe it's good to have a mix of experience. Mentoring and growing engineers is one of the responsibilities and skills needed as a senior engineer. I would be reluctant to hire a senior+ engineer who didn't have experience mentoring and growing more junior engineers or who had a bad attitude about it. It's also rewarding to see less experienced employees grow.

If you're talking about hiring someone who is very green or new to the field, be careful, get the opinion of multiple people in the interview loop, and lean into behavioral interview questions when you can't ask deep technical questions. I work in software engineering and not IT, but in general I'm ambivalent to certifications. Experience is much more valuable than certifications in my eyes. If a candidate has a ton of certifications that's a red flag that should be dug into during an interview. I'd take a less experienced candidate who had a good attitude and proven work history over a more experienced candidate who has soft skill red flags. It's much easier to grow technical skills than personal soft skills (although this is possible too!). Short answer is, lean into past work experience, attitude, and critical thinking skills for less experienced candidates.

 

We do this on purpose. Hire out of school to teach them our method to the madness. An ISP with only 4 (now 5) network engineers needs everyone to be on the same page, not bring bad habits and know it all attitude. Depends on the company/situation of course.

 

Yes it does, a lot actually.

Thanks for your input.

 

I applied for a job and I'd imagine I'm the less experienced candidate out of the pool, I'm guessing, but getting different perspectives helps. Thank you.

 

1) What’s the job?
2) I hope your email on the application wasn’t bongwhisperer@gmail.com

 

MrBongwhisperer@gmail.com looked more professional to me.

 

I've only been in IT for 3 years, went back to school when the great recession happened because I wasn't happy with the job opportunities available to me.

It was tough getting my first job, but ended up in the help desk role, didn't mind doing it cause I know I needed experience.

Now I'm trying to take the next step to get out of helpdesk and into something beyond that (I can only tell someone to restart their computer so many times )

I kinda feel like there is only so much I'll learn being at the help desk and obviously higher pay is great too.

The job I applied for requested more experience than I have, but I figured, "what do I have to lose by not applying? " So I applied and got a call, surprisingly.

So the insight from OG IT peeps helps a lot, mainly because I'm hoping the person that I interview with will have the same insights as the replies here.

I regret not getting any certs, so I'm taking one now, while doing the help desk gig for experience.
Any other advice, input you have for my interview is much appreciated.

Thank you

 

What is the job title/role, and what experience did they list as wanting?

 

You miss every shot you don't take.

A lot depends on the people doing the hiring. I have my own approach and things that I look for -- if the resume didn't have what I wanted, I wouldn't be interviewing them. I focus on attitude and team fit -- do they fill a gap, either in personality or knowledge; will they work well with the team; and will they take ownership of managing their own career. A lot of candidates are more interested in what the company can do for them, which is a reasonable question, but if that seems to be all they are interested in (as opposed to getting experience and contributing), I will pass as they will be a PITA to manage. But, I've been on interview panels with other hiring managers and am amazed at how they only focus on technical competencies that have already been covered. It's ok to ask questions to validate what was on the resume, but I've seen some awful hires that have great skills but upset the balance of the team. Kinda goes back to what Cap said, lol.

 

Sys admin
6-8 years experience

 

You sound like my typical applicant. Our career ladder starts with help desk > end user support > system engineering. My team does the end user support and my minimum requirement is 2 years IT experience or some combination of education and experience. I always hire the best skilled, but skills are more than just tech chops. Interpersonal skills are critical in my group. I've got one tech that isn't the strongest technically, but his people skills are off the chart. His users LOVE him and are willing to over look that it takes him a bit longer. Another guy is a supper tech with the people skills of a porcupine and the source of many complaints. The people that combine people and tech skills are less common, but are my holy grail of hires.

I've been asked your question many times and there is no one answer. Lacking experience I will try to judge a candidates desire. Are they working on certs, what are their hobbies, are they helping friends and family with tech support? Good answers to those questions sound like, "I'm working on my A+ cert and should have it in the next couple weeks." "I build computers and set up a complicated network in my house." "My family calls me for everything tech." Also I can't over emphasize people skills either. Working on the help desk is a great place to develop people skills so I'm sure you've got that part nailed.

With all of that said, no manager has time to waste interviewing unqualified applicants. If you've got the interview they must think you have the qualifications. Your next task is to stand out from the competition. Whatever you lack in experience should be more than balanced with being the kind of person they want to spend 40 hours a week with.

Good luck!

 

The FBI might have gone ahead and fixed your Microsoft email server.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/fbi-might-gone-ahead-fixed-microsoft-email-server-rcna680

 

https://signal.org/blog/cellebrite-vulnerabilities/

 

Sending this to my son, who works level 1.