So this is why it's hard to do phone screens today. What can you ask when all of the answers are out there already? Having all of these questions available to candidates makes finding someone with a clue more difficult. When you're doing the initial phone screen the candidate has probably been memorizing the answers to the basics, and you can't figure out if he/she's a superstar or not until he/she shows up for a face to face interview.
Here are some questions I like to use to help with this problem:
- So you're my System Administrator, and I notice that my box is "slow". How do you go about figuring out what is wrong and fixing it? (To be a complete pain in the ass I randomly choose something that is wrong with the box before I ask, then I might possibly change my mind based on answers from the candidate. i.e. add additional broken things to see if the candidate can "go deep".)
- I have cable that stretches from NY to LA. It's max throughput is 10Gbps. There are no devices in between. I'm trying to send a file across it from NY to LA. Why am I not getting 10Gbps?
