Re: [SAGE] Tests for Systems Administrator interviews.

["John Stoffel" <stoffel@lucent.com>]

Gregg> We are considering the idea of testing prospective Systems
Gregg> Administrator candidates for future positions at our site. I
Gregg> would like to get some experiences that the group has had
Gregg> putting together and administering tests. Below are a few
Gregg> questions I have for those who have done testing or just have
Gregg> an opinion:

I've been mulling this question over for the past few days, and
obviously reading other peoples reponses to your question.  I'd have
to say that I think testing isn't a good way overall to determine a
person's abilities and how well they will fit your needs, and almost
more importantly, how well they fit your team's existing methodology.

We're just starting to think about hiring again here after quite a few
years of layoffs, though the jobs are all in the Chicago area.  (side
note:  Lucent is hiring SysAdmins in Naperville, and possibly NJ).

I dug through my old papers and I found my copy of "Selecting
Excellence", "Phase 2 - Interviewing and Selection Workbook" which is
what we used to hire everyone at my location after I joined Ascend
(now Lucent).

It's by a company called "Tri-Point" but I can't find them on the web
and www.tripoint.net doesn't answer any more.  They might be dead
now. 

The basic idea is to profile the position to be filled and come up
with various skills that the candidate would be expected to know.

Here's a summary of the five stages they listed for "Selecting
Excellence"

 1. Define the position profiles & selection criteria. (Experience,
    Behaviors, Professional Skills, Organizational Fit)

 2. Coordinate interview teams & focus questioning.

 3. Organize interview questions specific to a position, and use
    probing techniqueus to understand the depth of the candidate's
    experience. 

 4. Evaluate candidates based on 'assessment' AND 'evidence'.  Capture
    and document candidates evaluations in an easy to read format.

 5. Make accurate decisions from evaluation results.


In my experience, both as an interviewee, and interviewer (a tough
job!) and from working on the Sage Certification board a few years
ago, this methodology works quite well.  It's not perfect, but then
nothing is.  But it does boil down the process to a set of
undertandable and consistent steps that can be followed by everyone on
the interviewing team.  Managers included.  :]

Each interviewer is assigned a specific area to probe in depth.  They
then use the work sheet to mark down how the candidate did in terms of
knowledge, and how deeply the intervierer probed for that knowledge.
This is the two areas of Assessment and Evidence.  You asses how well
they are in a specific area, and how strong (or weak) the evidence is
for that assement. 

Then the team sits down as a group afterwards and goes through the
sheets and discusses each point and how the candidate rated for each.
This helped our people focus on learning about the candidates
technical skills, as well as how they worked in such areas as:

   Experience
   Beahaviors
   Professional Skills
   Cultural Fit

You might want to see if:

    Tri-Point, Inc.
    22 Ash Street, Suite 200
    Hopkington, MA 01748-1808
    508-435-2647
    www.tripoint.net

is still in existence if you're really serious about this stuff.
Excellent stuff.

They provided work sheets to build up the desired profile, along with
the worksheets to use to guide the interview, as well as to summarized
the interviewing team's results.  This really helps in the selection
process.

The key things they say is:

    "Candidate Assessment is Based on Information, Not Instinct"

which I think is a key thing.

John
   John Stoffel - Senior Unix Systems Administrator - Lucent Technologies
	 stoffel@lucent.com - http://www.lucent.com - 978-952-7548