Ep 34 – Technical Interviews

In this episode, Dan and Andy discuss the technical interview with special guest, Tim McConnaughy. Tim is a Technical Solutions Architect at Cisco who has a lot of experience on both sides of the technical interview table. The guys talk about their personal experiences with technical interviews, how to prepare for one, and how to stand out at your next technical interview.

Follow Tim on Twitter: @juangolbez
Checkout Tim’s blog, https://carpe-dmvpn.com/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/CarpeDMVPN

This episode has been sponsored by Meter. 

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Transcript

this is the art of network engineering podcast in this podcast we'll explore keys technologies and talented people we aim to bring new information to expand your skill sets and toolbox and share the stories of fellow network engineers welcome to the art of network engineering podcast my name is andy laptop i am one of your co-hosts tonight i am joined by dan the man richards hello dan howdy how you doing buddy i'm doing good yourself i'm okay i'm all right you're okay are you a little tired i'm a little tired yeah i'm a little tired um i'm bad i'm doing all right i'm studying for encore like i'm supposed to be i'm getting some exercise a couple days a week uh thank you everything i took a walk today the weather was very nice it's supposed to be in the 60s here midweek soon that's a big deal because it's been like 14 every day for like a month or two yeah i think it hit 72. i'm looking forward to some nice weather man that'll that'll improve my mood and tonight we are graced with tim mcconaughey how you doing tim hey how you doing guys i don't know if grace is the right word see how you feel about that now you were definitely saving grace for tonight yeah so uh we usually record these at least a week out and i have six full days to edit and turn these around and release them and for circumstances they were out of our control we are doing this about 36 hours before release and um last night i hopped on our discord it's all about the journey and for some ideas like hey guys we need some help here come on community and tim popped up and had a really good topic and offered his assistance so um thanks tim it it means a lot um we're i swear we're more organized than we're we're usually not begging for help the day before release so i've listened to that daddy aj is in here so cool tim thanks for uh thanks for listening and it's nice having you in the discord server too you always you always have some good uh you know you always have good input in there um so the topic that you suggested and something you have a lot of experience with is technical interviews and and that's been on our that's been on our radar for a while um mostly because personally i feel that i'm not good at technical interviews so i love to come on the show and say i'm terrible at things and people say oh no you're not everybody's like you know everybody has imposter syndrome so like for me technical interviews is that same thing the few that i've had i didn't feel went well for me and they offered me the dang jobs after i fell on my face so i guess i don't know where we want to start with technical interviews um i guess all i'll say is prior to being a network engineer you know it was just the regular interview to get to know you and it was all about just getting them to like you showing them that you're not you know a sociopath or a jerk and you know they need somebody they like you oh yeah he'll fit in here in the culture and then you're in well then i get my ccna i get a job in this field and now you have the first interview which is okay this person is good they'll fit in and then the technical interview where they can ask you anything within the realm of networking and as we all know it's just too wide and too you can't remember all of it and for me that's why it's so intimidating what are they going to ask me i want this job i need this job there's a million things they could ask me and every year there seems to be more and more technologies were rolling out that they could ask me about you know so i don't know that's kind of my feeling about technical interviews they give me the heebie-jeebies and how you know how do you prepare for that so i guess what's been your experience with technical interviews getting them giving them you know what what do you what do you got to say about that wonderful topic so for me um i i haven't been in a technical interview um i mean last interview i was in was about nine years ago so i haven't had much the job you have now right yeah exactly now i will say about a year or two ago uh we started hiring in internally in um or not internally but we were hiring for a network position two two network positions actually and um so i was giving a technical interview uh but i was also i was almost equally as nervous as as as you know going into a technical interview because i i don't like putting people in a in a stressful situation like that and i mean we had like there was this one guy uh he he applied and he came in his resume looked good and everything like that but he came in and he just absolutely had a meltdown like the guy the guy couldn't even he couldn't describe anything and and i felt horrible because i i was i i don't know i hated that interview because not because of him but because i i feel like i put him in that situation you know and i just i just wanted to be like dude calm down like let's see take a walk or something you know did it did it happen early on like was it a specific question that just fried him and then he panicked hey well so i'll say this i had a manager who he loved putting people in pressured situations just to kind of see how they were he also had a psych background so you know whatever that's worth uh the the the manager that is and and so we had like eight guys in that room when we were interviewing this man and so i could only imagine you know how stressful that is yeah and uh no i just i felt bad for the guy honestly i i just i hated that so was part of your managers kind of tactic to stress them out see how they are under pressure because that's what you're looking for in a person right but i feel like the environment that we're in is not a super high pressure environment so i don't know why you would even impose that on somebody right uh you know maybe if you worked in a position that was a really high pressured position that might be a good tactic but not where we work it's just it's just not like that like i mean we have pressures but it's never like just you know whatever you want to say the job i have now that reminds me of what happened to me and i know i've spoken about it ad nauseum but they gave me something that i couldn't have done that it was impossible they wanted me to build a network from scratch from access layer to distribution up to the internet you know redistributing between asses and stuff i couldn't do at the time it was my first engineering job i was sitting at a knock for two years with the ccna like here go on gns and build this network and if you can we'll get you a job and same thing then like i started the meltdown i was freaking out and i really needed that job because it was gonna double what i was making at the knock and we just bought a house we're having a kid you know it's like this was my shot you know somebody's giving me a real bona fide network build you know job and i think it was supposed to be a 45 minute interview i think i was there like three hours because oh wow i wouldn't give up like this one guy kept coming in and checking on me every 15 minutes how you doing and i'd just be like i can't i don't know how to set up a switch for like what you're asking me and you want me to do one queue and like it just it was just beyond where i was at the time i could answer the difference between tcp and udp or what's a topology table in ergrp like anything on the ccna exam asked me and i was good because i had just gotten the cert recently and i'm like well that's all you need for interviews but they were like here build a network in gns and do all this stuff and i almost i almost ran out the door that voice in your head told me dude you're in over your head you don't belong here you just gotta say thanks bye i gotta go and like run out the door and i didn't and at the end of all of it i went home i had lunch with my wife i'm basically apologizing to her like sorry you know i really needed that i blew it and and the recruiter calls me at lunch and it's like they loved you they they want you know when can you start i'm like wait what and i talked to my boss later and i'm like why i bombed that interview why did you offer me the job and he said well i wanted to see how you'd work under pressure where we we run into some high stress you know issues or you know outages whatever and i just want to see if you can think through a problem when you know when the screws are being turned on you it was unpleasant and you know i probably should have known like i probably should have ran right because you know let's see how he we're bringing him into the fire let's see how he does but um but yeah that sounds familiar how about you tim what's your experience with uh technical interviews well um so uh well i mean obviously i have a lot that i've done myself uh over my career i'm sorry ted i'm i'm this is my second time hosting and i'm screwing up already can you just tell our listeners kind of who you are where you work where you're from like a quick oh you want to know who i am well just who who is this tim you know all right all right sorry fair um sorry sorry i i would i didn't pay attention either i launched right into it right because i already know myself it's my fault i'm the host i'm blowing it i'll take it on this i'm your backup and i've i've missed it too man i'm sorry it's fine uh so yeah tim mcconaughey i i work for cisco as an enterprise networks uh tsa which is technical solutions architect i work in our sys in our cisco cpoc which is our customer proof of concept labs um so i've been in the industry for over 10 years now um we think i hate doing the the spiel about like who you are and why are you special well let me let me let me just stop you there because your first sentence you're an architect for cisco uh yeah that's that's what they call me so i know it's all about perspective and where you are in life and career but architect for cisco i'm already intimidated you're the man and and i know i've been involved with you know some cpocs at work and and that's pretty intense right for people who don't know what a c puck is do you want to give them a quick rundown of yeah yeah of course of course so well cpoc specifically stands for customer proof of concept so the idea is that um for cisco this is a kind of a pre-sales type of engagement where an account team brings a customer in who wants to see some cisco solution or or multiple solutions kind of an action in in a way that is relevant to them you know like they're thinking about buying the product they're thinking about buying a solution they want to make sure it's a fit right so we build a lab for them uh that that meets whatever requirements that they they need and we run through a test plan just to show them like hey this solution will work for you and you know i i gotta say so sometimes it doesn't sometimes sometimes there's something that's unearthed by it that there's some you know something that happens or so the design has to change you know you know how it is right things are fluid everybody everything looks great on paper where where the rubber rates the road right um so that's kind of what i do for cisco um i've been doing it now for a few years uh before that i worked in our advanced services uh now it's customer experience i think is what they call it now so i was advanced services for a bunch of fortune 500 companies and and whatnot doing design work for them as well you know and then and then on you know i'll send you my resume after you take a look right but but what's cool about cisco uh among all the other things right is that cisco believes in giving people chances so what i mean by that is we have a program that and when i was with a.s i did this a lot uh they call it vtip which is a veteran talent incubation program so we take people out of active duty like who are just coming off of active duty and we'll train them up like to be we'll get them their cc you know we'll help them study get their ccna and give them a job basically did you go through that's awesome i didn't i didn't i've never been a i've never served okay um i got a buddy who's just you know in the process of trying to go through vtip oh so you're familiar okay just because yeah we he he had a home he had a home lab he wanted to give away you know collecting dust and we started talking and we gave it away and yeah he was he's in the v-tip you know process yeah it's an excellent yeah it's an excellent program really really excellent program um so as part of that program uh there's uh there's a mentorship so i've mentored some some people coming out of the service as well and and whatnot um but there's also an interview process is what i was getting to right there's there is an interview process usually what cisco would do uh is they bring everybody in they bring a cohort in and you know you kind of run through an interview process where you know some of its culture and it would rotate them through so you get like 30 minutes each so it was it was kind of an all-day affair you know with like lunch in the middle and then they'd rotate around all these all these interviews and i always did the technical interviews uh myself and it would be my me from a s and a person from tac and we would tag team these technical interviews so uh the point is i got to see and deliver a lot of technical interviews for people that are in you know honestly extremely varying stages of their technical journey that's what's going to ask you even if they're veterans coming into this program they might not have a networking background right you got it yeah you got it and that's okay like you got to start somewhere right like you know you got your we've all got our first uh technical job and for me at least my technical job was not it was like job number five or something for me right like i moved into technology uh i didn't start there so um the the point being is that yeah you have to meet these you kind of meet i guess the first point i wanted to make is that you kind of meet people where they are right like you know uh the people coming in through vtip obviously their resumes weren't necessarily technical in nature so you had to be able to be like okay well you know what drew you to this what you know so you again you kind of establish the ground floor of that where they are right where they are in their journey what their hopes are where they want to be you know and some of those technical people were very technical you know they got specialists in the military that you know when i when i used to work uh for the end on the nmci contract at uh norfolk naval base you know i was in a knock with navy people who were also you know network operations and server operators and whatnot so so like i said you get the gamut right so yeah i did that uh for a few years i don't do it anymore since moving over to cpoc it's kind of an astack thing um and of course you know we've all either given uh interviews to other people or we've taken them ourselves and what you were saying earlier dan i i identify very hard with this idea that uh you know everybody's nervous in a tactical interview right everybody's nervous but people sitting across the table from the guy in the firing squad you know what you know facing down the barring squad a lot of these people are nervous also right because there's an empathy thing to it we've all been through those interviews and and there's an expectation with technical interviews right it's not like a culture fit interview where you know talk about your dog talk about your kids and and just you know your passion for learning and all of this right there's this idea that and i think you you also nailed it earlier uh andy when you said you know like it kind of breaks into a cold sweat that you know they could ask you anything right it's this uh doomsday scenario if you will even though the truth is of course you know uh most people on the other side of the table want to see you if they don't want to see you succeed at the very least they don't want to have you just like completely melt into a puddle in front of them because yeah everybody it's awkward for everybody right right it doesn't feel good it's an awful feeling i just felt it in my body as you were talking like that whole morning i wake up i know i gotta go to it you know i'm on the train it's just this feeling of impending doom like i'm eventually gonna be sitting in that room getting grilled on things and you know i hope i don't blow it it's yeah it's it's uncomfortable for everyone you know what's interesting i never thought of how uncomfortable it was for the people conducting you know oh i was a nervous friend the interview yeah you got to come up i didn't yeah um no absolutely because and part of it is is what you said also earlier dan you don't want to be the person that sets this guy on fire right like just like absolutely triggers the meltdown and blows like that you want to you want to be perceived as fair i think of anything else if you're sitting across the table giving a technical interview well not just perceived i would say most people want to be fair right like so that's why you often look at the resume before the person comes in you know try to gauge their strengths what are they good at what can they like what can i ask them that's not going to be the complete waste of everybody's time right like that's right that's a big one you know what i mean yeah so in the way the way like i did some of my questions was like it was kind of like what you were talking about you know i would ask a question and based off of whatever their answer was on that question i'd kind of see it like whatever level they're at and then you know there might be like let's say if they were more in the mid-range uh if that's a mid-range i don't know what that means but if they were somewhere in the middle there you know i i would drop off any of the higher you know complex oh yeah yeah you build your rails for sure yeah yeah exactly so um do you start simple and then work your way more complex because i've only interviewed one guy like a technical interview and what i tried to do was keep it as simple as possible but i also the job we were doing i wanted to make sure that he was at least familiar you know so it was it was a wan job so you know have you peered up with the bgpas you know and and how would you do that what's the minimum requirement to like get a bgp thing up and then you know after that it was like okay well you know can you tell me anything about a prefix sister route map like how do they work together what do they do and i try to keep it real simple you know but like you said earlier i mean you could be a total jerk and just nail them with like you know some once people start talking about like headers and like like come on man like really yeah no no i agree you want to talk about you know gonna make me describe every header in a frame like that's i don't know if i'd even want to work there maybe i'm just a dum-dum but so i think i've proven i am half the time but so how do you start it tim like do you start kind of simple do you have go-to like tell me tcp vs udp like i feel like there's a handful of ones everybody gives kind of right yeah right so so there's a few ways to do it um i would say generally what i like to do to try to see where people are is well okay actually i want to i want to touch very quickly on something you said which which is super important right now if you're giving a tactical interview you know obviously you don't want to set people on fire you want to be fair all these things are true right because it's awkward for everybody but you also walk into that that uh interview with a responsibility right this person could be your co-worker and this person could be sitting on your network you have a responsibility to the business to yourself to your teammates just to make sure that the person can at least do the job right so so yeah i wouldn't pick some you know tell me what the tlv is for this if it's not relevant to your job obviously that's just some stump the chump crap and you you'll get me with that stuff because i don't you know i'm not going to memorize that crap um and and i think stump the chump is probably the worst way to conduct an interview personally um and we've all we've all what's so funny is how prevalent it continues to be right because we all have a harsh we can all all of us are thinking right now of that of that interview that we did wait maybe not you understand because you only had the one interview right like you said but but uh you know whether it was something you talking about you know the stump the jump interviews are are really just a waste of everybody's time right because right it tells me nothing if you can memorize the administrative distance of ospf like that tells me nothing about what you know about networking and if the answer to that question doesn't help you do the job right because like i'm i'm studying for encore right now and right now you know i have flash cards for like the different multicast addresses for the different fhrp's i mean it's the dumbest most inane crap to have to memorize right because i've been doing the job for five or six years and i've never had to know the multicast address of hsrp one versus two versus glbp you know so yeah i guess if you're in an interview and somebody's asking that stuff like why you're never gonna use that is that ever gonna help you right so i've done that i've done actually when i was when i was when i was in an interview myself one time somebody came out with with some really stumped the chump crap and i'm trying to remember what it was like i you know how it is when you you want you want the job and so you're going to humor them and you're going to try to answer the questions but he the person said something so off the wall it was like the dude must have been on google for half the afternoon trying to to find something and i don't even remember what it was anymore it was so dumb something ridiculous i remember i was like is this i remember asking i thought i was like i'm just gonna candidly ask this question do you guys is this a problem for you guys do you guys run into this whole time yeah you caught him out on it right has this happened to you yeah and i did actually and and and uh it was a gambit right because i could he could have been pissed off and and that would be the end of the interview but actually he laughed he thought he was like yeah you know i was just looking up stuff but to find to see where you were right uh but anyway to get back to the original question like where do i start i don't always start in the same place because you can't right so look but one thing we definitely tried to do especially like the vtip stuff if the person was technical if it was fair game to be somewhat to ask some technical questions we would bust out a very simple diet well first we did like a role play we always did a role play of like you know mom calls and says her internet's out she needs to print print something and go to the ups store or something like that right or whatever i'm just using an example right um you know here's my home here's the home network you got to talk mom through how to figure out what's wrong like that was like a role play thing right and that also helped because you didn't have to be super technical you just had to kind of understand basically like basic networking so that was a good entry point for just you know and use it as opportunity to kind of feel it out a little bit and see you know where where the thought process it also you know we're also said be verbal be vocal about your thought process here don't you know poke at the paper like tell us why you're picking stuff yeah right kind of see how somebody thinks right because what what's that old adagic if you can explain it to whatever it is second grader if you know six year old but explain like you're five right but if you can explain how the internet works at home to your mom who's having a problem you at least have the you have to have a certain level of understanding of it to be able to break it down in simple terms for you know the average absolutely which really tells a lot i think about the person's understanding without hitting them with the stump the chump nonsense right exactly yeah right if you can teach it to somebody else or or one of the big things i like to do is i like to pay it forward and i like to teach and i like to teach a lot and people are like well like you spend a lot of time teaching people how to do this stuff why and i'm like dude i will not find a better way to verify what i know and to find the gaps in my own knowledge than trying to show somebody else how something works yeah and there's no there's no better way and we just validated that with uh peter brown the make it stick author that was his big thing was to there's a scientific you know term for it and you know psychology or learning or whatever but yeah if you can teach someone that you're you're solidifying your own knowledge or i i started doing that yeah yeah i started doing that a little bit with you know i'll try to explain something my wife and she just glazes over i'm like okay well you know that didn't go anywhere but like just even like youtube videos or even at work a co-worker just recommended to me he listened to that episode and he was like hey we have a tuesday standing call he and i and he was like yo if you want to like just you know teach me something for five or ten minutes on that call like that so it's yeah teaching is a huge you know benefit to try to solidify your own and then you're helping people like i've i've been on your youtube like it's good like there's you know there's there's good stuff on there i would much rather watch a youtube video with you teaching me something than reading cisco press or a white paper or an rfc you know because you you can you can condense it down into something that's a little more accessible you know than than the super nerds who are writing writing that stuff yeah i think you have to make it mate not to digress too far from what we're talking about right but i think if you're going to teach someone something you have to make it relatable to something that is real or that's tangible in some way to that person right something right now right exactly because an rfc exists in a vacuum right it actually has real world things going on like the ospf rfc will not steer you wrong when you're studying ospf right but if you want to know how ospf works in the network you're not going to really probably you know consult the rfc my wife my wife play basketball so everything i try to like teach her relate to her i hope so there's always a basketball announcement but that's what she's like oh yeah okay that that makes sense oh yeah yeah all right so you you said that you do kind of have a starting point right you have some guard rails around where do we want to start here and do you start easy generally i know it depends on the role let's just say like a route switch you know yeah i mean it's just generally generally right so generally one thing so there's generally yes you start kind of low level you just kind of feel them out figure out where they're at like like dan said trying to figure out like where the upper limit is where it's a safe where you wouldn't be just like blowing them out of the water right um so usually but you also want to make sure they understand it right because the one thing that you run into a lot and it's you find it run it a lot at the beginner level especially and it's not always their fault but what you run into is you'll ask a question and you can immediately tell that you're talking to a recording because like they immediately they can they can read it right out of the book right they can tell you exactly the answer from the book but you can see that that the the spark's not there of like like they understand it in the context of the book they understand what they're saying but they don't understand it in a bigger picture right because they apply so you know yeah so what i like to do is i like to say okay well very simply here's a router here's a switch here's a computer and out there's the internet if i want to send if i want to if i want to ping google.com how far can you get me talking through the process like do a pocket do a packet walk just a basic pack of walk don't don't talk to me about headers and and port numbers and all that unless you're unless you're comfortable doing so but at least be able to see where you're at here yeah how do you get there right from the dhcp yeah it makes it applicable yeah yeah all of it right right and just you looking yeah that's what you're saying so so it's almost like uh give them enough rope to hang themselves kind of thing right well i mean you got to figure out where they're at right right right and that also pulls double duty in a few ways one uh of course obviously it's not a stump the child question right you're asking an applicable real world this you're gonna need to know this if you're if you get this job as a network engineer you're gonna need to know how networking works and and you're gonna need to know how a dns request works do you already know it and if you don't like how far can you get like where are you at where are you where are you at that i can help you and some people just like fall completely off the rails right but they could tell you anything you want to know out of the book but they completely lost um and so my i guess my point the point i'm making is that studying is good obviously we have to study the stuff we have to memorize the things that we have to memorize but but labbing i would say always be labbing right like always make use of the stuff that you're studying don't just read the book don't watch the video and not use it right you got to see it in action so we've talked about this before and i don't know how you handle this tim on either side of the table but if you don't know something so like that one something chump they hit you with you called them out on it and it was funny and you know but then there's a so like i'm thinking personally i was i was a cable guy who got my ccna and then was interviewing at the knock at the isp and it was a reach i was punching above my weight it was you know all i had was at ccna and i mean five years field experience so i knew a lot about you know physical layer at least and troubleshooting and customer service and all that stuff but you know i get in there and there are some heavy hitters and an isp network is pretty intense and it's multi-vendor which i wasn't comfortable with and they're running mpls and pgp and the layer 3 vpns and it was but i i guess what i'm getting at is when they asked you know some of the questions like they started out slow when i knew you know tcp first udp or what you know what whatever you know what layers uh but then they got into like okay well what can you tell me about bgp you know and and i didn't know anything about bgp because the ccna exam i took did not include bgp yeah it didn't used to be on there right so that was the one i had so i guess you got a couple options and i've heard people try to bs their way through and again that's terrible well exactly right but have you ever seen that like has somebody tried to like just start right so what i did personally was i just told them straight up like listen i i know what the acronym stands for and i know that it's the routing protocol the internet and i know it has something to do with autonomous systems but i think it's an exterior gateway protocol instead of the interior stuff that i knew on the cc so what i try to do i guess is when i don't know something i'll tell them what i do know and and at least it gets a conversation going and and what was nice in that interview is he he kind of started walking me through it there was another i think there was another question there with like route maps and and i started to panic i'm like oh like it's got something to do with filtering i think i'm just pulling back to my ccna you know studies and this guy was he started to walk me through it and what this guy did through this whole interview this guy kevin pratt he was the man and he actually for this episode he gave me he emailed me a document of all the interview because he's like you he's interviewed you know tons of people and i was like hey man like do you remember what you asked me at that interview and he's like oh yeah i got you know i asked everybody that stuff so he sent it to me and it's really useful but what i really appreciated was he he walked me through he it was management and and he you know he was the engineering heavy hitter and then i was just like the new guy and he was showing management that i could think through a problem which i really really i didn't know at the time what he was doing but you know i didn't exactly know what a rat map was but i told him a little what i did so then he started kind of teaching me a little bit like oh okay and you know and what do you think that would do and and by the end of that question five minutes in i was kind of able to half answer what a route map did and how you know i didn't know what a prefix was necessarily but he told me how it was related to an access list and so it was just i i don't know if i could put anything out in the universes if you're interviewing somebody and they don't know something and they're not full of crap they tell you like listen i don't know that i'll tell you what i do know but he kind of pulled me through it and it really really helped i don't think i would have gotten that job which propelled me to where i am now if he wasn't so kind and and so yeah selfless cause he could have just he doesn't know it oh i just let you you could have killed the guy yeah sorry i don't know what next question and he didn't do that and and i really you know i'll never forget that he there's some of those people you run into you know in your career and in your life and i feel like i get it yeah i feel like he had a so like for you if i i guess like you said if if somebody stumps you you'll you'll tell them you don't know it or you know what you just say to somebody you ask a question and i don't know it like what's the best way to handle it right so let me so so i've been obviously you know in in many interviews where that's happened uh i interviewed with tack a long time ago that before i got my my job with as cisco i interviewed with tac and cisco has this uh especially tag has this uh push you way past whatever semblance of what you know and just see what happens basically and um you know i was pretty clear when i when they had pushed me past the point where i couldn't even start answering the question anymore because i was like i don't even i don't even understand except as it relates to this to this particular solution i don't understand i don't know enough about this solution to give you a good answer um about it so i would say mostly be honest about what you do and don't know i think it seems obvious although on twitter i just saw this horrible take uh you know you know it is the somebody'll post it and then somebody you would you follow will like it or or respond to it or whatever and so you even this person you don't follow eventually you'll see it right come across your twitter feed or something and the guy was like uh the guy was like lie on the resume line the lie on the resume and lie in the interview they'll teach you when you get the job anyway and i was like like what industry it's not this one like clearly not about this industry because i mean i i mean right we actually yeah we react with horror because for one obviously we just can't even like i that's just in any industry in any job that's obviously terrible advice right well and you're setting expectations too right like you're gonna sit in that seat and yeah you're selling something you can't deliver yeah you're gonna have to sit in that seat surrounded by people who are expecting you to do something and you have no idea what you're doing and you may not be surrounded by people who want to or can't help you like and yeah it's like the um it's like the people that uh uh dump exams right the people that that dump exams i'm like well i mean okay let's say you do it let's say you dump this exam and you get i don't know let's say you get your ccie or something let me see you let's just say you get some amazing cert that's going to get you an awesome job does the job have a dump of their network for you because that's what you're going to need what do you what's your next step what's the play what's the next step of that of that uh process like what are you going to do you have to understand the technology right to a certain extent you can't just answer a question yeah you're going to feel some point and that's true for uh for interviews as well man for interviews as well so so if you're asking me what i do when i don't know the answer i'm i'm very up front about where i'm at i do probably something similar to what you did which is to say i don't know i i don't know this thing but here's what i do know about it um i'll usually say i know you know here's here's what i know here's what i know about that but also here's where here's the context of what i know about that like like i haven't studied this i haven't given i haven't worked with it you know but i've worked with this and a lot of times it'll be something that's similar like i haven't i haven't used sd-wan but i use the mvpn like there's you know and so i understand they're somewhat similar right but but but above all you know just be guard your credibility right it's like it's like my number one rule guard your credibility in all things um now being on the other side of the table uh you know you know when somebody doesn't know the answer right like like i personally value it far more when somebody will just be honest about what they know and don't know rather than tap dance right you know that's it's awkward as hell right like i mean let's be honest it's super awkward when people are tap dancing around it and acting like they have the answer and you know they're lost i did a technical interview and i had i think i had time to ask four questions and this candidate never answered any of the questions every question i asked they would go tap dance around their resume or their experience or now i got a sense of what they were doing like they didn't know and they weren't owning that they didn't know so then they were trying to pull from other experiences that they had at others but it's not a good look it wasn't yeah it wasn't and yeah so and that's and that's just why i wanted to to bring that to light you know what do you do when you don't know because to me when i'm going to that interview and i have that feeling in the pit of my stomach it's because i may not know some stuff so you know that that's where the rubber meets the road is like what do you do when you get stumped and yeah dude you know don't tap dance don't do nonsense it's worked out for me and like you're saying too just tell me tell me what you do right yeah make your peace with what you do and don't know before you ever walk into the interview except that they might ask you something you don't know and have a plan that doesn't involve well um uh and you know and tap dancing yeah because because what you want to do honestly is spend as little time as possible telling them that you don't know something and when you're tap dancing you're you're broadcasting everybody i know for a very long time i have no idea what i'm doing so so try a good way to put it out you know did i tell you about my dog when i was growing up yeah it's like wow this guy really doesn't know it i asked you something so get past that bro yeah yeah so get past it as quick as you can and if you find yourself blown up like you mentioned andy that you stuck that out that's great i think that's awesome i think it's a great story because when you you know like we've all been in well again except for dan who's got his first his only interview we've been in an interview where we got just blown out of the water we just knew we were punching too far above our pay grade we bit off we shouldn't be here either the recruiter screwed up and and sold us a bill of goods that we which never happens by the way um you know to get us in the room to try to get to sell us to the customer or whatever right we're just out of our league right so what so what i would what i would do there is if you just know that you're not getting this job like this you you you're just gonna it's gonna be painful right you know flip the script a little bit and say like i you know whatever whatever brought you there you know i i when i spoke to the recruiter i had a different uh view of what this position would be or you know when i applied for this job whatever however you got there right just be like i had i had a different understanding uh you know and i think that you know having spoken with you having understood the technical requirements and and going through some of this interview i feel like right now you know this particular opportunity might not be a good fit because this is this is after you've basically in the backyard you're like i'm not getting this job right and if i do get this job i'm going to quit in like a week be drowning um you know and be like you know i don't want to waste my time tap dancing i don't want to waste my time i don't waste your time but you know i am here and i don't want to fail to answer questions but i want to talk about what i know and i want to talk about what i'm good at i want to talk about what i have to offer maybe not for this opportunity you know but but maybe for you know i really would like to work here so i would love to to speak a little bit longer about you know what i know and what i can bring to the table and maybe you know when there's an opportunity that's a better fit you know we can we can talk again right so flip the script a little bit right don't don't don't slink away defeated you know because that believe me that actually does make a difference right like that that makes a difference and you can play up your strengths right like you know that's why i think certifications have so much value because you're basically showing people you can learn and you know if i've learned the ccna material and then i'm in an interview and they're banging me with ccmp stuff i may not know well i could tell you a little bit of what i know about what you're asking but i don't know to the depth of you are but i have proven through my certification through my answers through how i'm handling like i can learn and i may not i may not know all the lsa types of ospf but give me a week i'll come back next week and i'll whiteboard lsas for like you know what i mean like just yeah i think there's a way to handle it that that that i've uh i wanted a stand before i forget so dan you had you kind of knew somebody for this job right did did you have a technical interview like did they ask you anything technically or were they just like oh he's he's uncle johnny's kid you know let him let him through yeah that's basically what it is they asked me like what i was doing in school that kind of thing yeah but i will say like before i got this job i did have a technical interview with another company while i was still in school right and uh it was actually a good experience because they knew i was still studying you know i hadn't had my degree yet and i had no prior experience or anything like that but i went in there with i think there was three of the three of their engineers in there and i i went through a through a i went it was a two interview process so i went through the manager first and he was just kind of talking about the different products that they use and if i had any experience with that which of course my answer was no on all of it because you know i never i've the only lab equipment that i touched was what was at the school right and um and so but i was telling them about you know my experience and stuff and i think i think that interview was more of just is this guy a jerk or not i think that's what they were doing with that interview and i passed that one um and then i went on to the technical interview with the three engineers in there and you know i i told them where i was at basically like i kind of just came up front i think kind of like what tim was saying i i wasn't gonna get that job because they were looking for like a level two engineer and here i am still in school and like you know just i i was pretty fresh into everything but when i turned it out i i almost did exactly what you just said tim and now that i'm thinking about it because i was just like hey this is what i'm learning in school this is how and i you know an ip subnet works and you know yada yada yada how a vlan works or trunking and that kind of stuff i was going over what i was learning and we actually had a good conversation they were actually teaching me a few little tricks in in that interview and uh and then of course like afterwards they were like yeah you know we're looking for yada yada but yeah it was a teacher of mine who who recommended me to go to this place right for this interview and uh and so i don't know it was a good experience though i it i was nervous as all get out but i i enjoyed it after the fact i appreciated their time and you know kind of grilling me a little bit and but so dad yeah so and this alternate universe where your company shuts down i know that nobody ever loses their job there and and that's that's awesome but let's you know something weird happens and you know the door shut and you gotta go interview does that make you like cringe is that like oh yeah yeah i'd be i'd be sweating i'd be like but you've built a lot of experience at this job and you're doing like a lot of cool stuff so it seems like you'd probably be a little more comfortable you know yeah this technical interview than you were you know back just in school right because that experience i think really gives some confidence and see my thing is like i would like in interview questions more along like what tim was talking about like here's a pc a switch and a router describe that path right you know i would like that kind of stuff because i'm really bad about being put on the spot about something super technical and like you were talking about headers and stuff like that it's like i'd be like oh yeah that frees up on that's memorizing crap anyway i mean exactly i i'd rather talk about you know a difficult situation i was in right you know or some something where i was scratching my head on it and i had to figure out like i'll give you example um the other day i was uh we we were migrating between firewalls and i had a duplicate ip error but i couldn't figure out where it was at and so basically what i did was i captured traffic i was looking at the mac address in the packet on the responding you know the responding packet and i finally went digging and i found where the duplicate ip address was and uh just so just explaining something like that and hopefully an interviewer would uh see that okay he understands that you know or you know that kind of thing like you know i i don't know it's a good example yeah so giving giving real world experiences that i've that i've ran into and how i overcome those those problems and stuff like that i that's kind of where i would keep my conversations at i guess not just answering questions like you know how many you know whatever is in this you know like yeah that that kind of stuff i just uh it's like hey dude there's google i can ask google and it'll tell you all right um another one i like to use and and a friend of mine gave me this idea and it's not i say that like it's it's gonna seem so obvious right but it's just something i hadn't really considered uh before was you know put the give the interviewee or whatever you give the person you're interviewing a chance to really shine and just just show them the best you can do be like dude whoever you are like teach me something that you know well three to five minutes if you're if you're an ospf guru pretend i know nothing about ospf how would you teach me like just give but like give them the chance to pick their own thing that they think they're really good at because then at least you'll know you'll know a like are they actually good at that thing obviously but but but that's really not the point it's more like okay well if this person thinks that this is a really big strength of theirs like what is like how well can they convey it or like what is you know like what are they gonna tell me about it or or whatever so so there's that's another one where you find uh and and i don't know if you have this experience andy or not but somebody can walk in with a very nice looking resume and just like it's absolutely beautiful right like you're like holy crap this guy's this person this this uh is just gonna blow you know blow me out of the water i'm i'm gonna cringe interviewing this person you know and then they get in and they can't describe the packet walk and you're just like holy crap man so my cc my resume when i got my ccna i just listed every protocol i swear to god well because what else like what else yeah i couldn't think of what else to do to you know so you get your cc day to get a job and i'm looking at all the jobs that require ccna and they basically were listing you know most if not all of the protocols that were in the ccna so like well how am i going to get in front of these people so yeah it was i'll have to find it it's it's awful that's awesome acronym soup everywhere like you know proficient in the following and then like a four paragraph pages oh dude we should do we should do another one and i say we but i meant you guys or whatever i'll i'd love to come back for it uh you should do one on resumes we haven't i don't think you guys have done oh boys yet my my resume is horrible you know that would be a really great idea brittany touched on a little bit brady mossop when she was on but yeah i think having a dedicated um resume would would really be a good episode i love that teach me something that you're good at because it also that's a good idea it also pulls out the communication skills you know like right we all have to deal with clients i mean unless you're lucky enough to be hiding in a data center like i am and i have to deal with clients which is awesome but yeah you know you usually have to pay your dues you know client-facing for a while and yeah if you know nobody wants the smart guy who's who's just a jerk or the smart girl who just yeah he's really hard yeah you got to be able to communicate with you can't piss off the clients you know while you're where you're trying to help them so i i really i hadn't heard that before that's a really good one just just teach me something because then it puts them at ease and now they're in their comfort zone and they you know because you're saying it's something they know that's yeah that's yes dustin uh dustin suggested that one to me dustin schuman he's a fellow tsa at cisco and i was like wow it's so obvious i can't believe i never really thought about that but it's perfect right it gives everybody it's all the high notes of what you want to touch on an interview anyway really so it's that's a good one so this is probably going to sound ridiculous but again just a guy coming up like myself trying to to get jobs i mean i used to even leverage the fact that i built a home lab now i know that that's not necessary right like so has that ever come up for you like they would i remember in that interview that i bombed trying to highlight the fact that you know i have built you know an enterprise grade cisco you know network at home and i you know and i've i have i've done ether channels and i know spanning tree and i you know i i'm redistributing bgpdrp and because i especially early on i just wanted to highlight that i've applied some of this knowledge that i was tested on and got a certification on like does that come up at all for you in interviews or has it where somebody goes like hey i got a home lab and that you know i think it's important does that carry weight i do right and the reason i say that is um a couple reasons one is is obviously if you have the the if you have the ambition to build and this happened you know nowadays it's not as big a lift right but if you have the ambition to at least put together a home lab and put that effort in and build it and and and design it and everything yeah and the other thing is that you know a lot of people are changing industries you know there are people that are changing industries who don't have the work experience but but they want to be able to show what they know and what they've been working on and and so what i tell a lot of people and uh i do besides the discord i do uh i also uh besides the a ao i and so besides there where i try to to give some ideas but i mean you you you see it there as well and and in router gods where i i do uh i'm an admin there's a lot of people who you know of varying ages and varying experiences who are switching industries or just getting started and they're like how do i get a job you know chicken and egg right like a classic chicken egg problem i don't have the work experience how do we get the job right and i feel like home labs you know they're not they're not enterprise experience but they but it's something right like it and and in the same way that uh uh somebody getting into software development would be like go check out my github and see the applications right i've written right you know that's just as valid you know in the in the lack of of of actual work experience and certainly if you if you're like well it's that or i show you that i read the book and got the cert like i would like i would definitely prefer to see what you've done it's an add-on right you've done something you've taken initiative you said ambition that's a big one i mean you can't you can almost it's almost palpable sometimes when you're talking to somebody who wants it who's after it is hustling every day for it and it because you know they're going to come in and sit in that seat that you're hiring them for and just bust their butt and get in there yeah yeah what do you think while we're going down that path so like a home lab would be helpful we've talked about this before but i'm curious what you think like huh here he comes well no like so well because a lot of our audience i think from based on the survey that aj did they're they're up and comers you know we're not we don't have a thousand ccies in like our discord it's it's people who are coming up or trying to get that first gig or trying to pivot you know careers and all that stuff so i always want to keep them in mind and so yeah you're in that technical interview you get your ccna in technical interview one way to stand out is having a home lab like so for you for a guy who's done a lot of technical interviews do you think like content creation helps at all meaning like hey i have a blog that i've written like technical stuff for hey i have a youtube channel where i teach stuff because to me that yeah it's i'm trying to build i don't want to say build the brand because it's so like yeah the marketing yeah it's it's awful right but you're trying to build a type of momentum for yourself to get to overcome that chicken or egg scenario like hey i not only have the ccna but let me show you how ambitious i am and how passionate i am about this i write about it i teach about it i have videos about it i you know i have a home lab i have this youtube channel like that that can't hurt right no it does not hurt in any way and here's the thing if you if you have 10 years in the industry or whatever you know right obviously that's what you're going to lean on right if you have a certification that's what you're going to lean on if you have your ccna but no work experience obviously you can't lean on 10 years of experience you don't have it um so how are you going to convince someone that you know and are capable of executing that's those are all perfect examples of that first of all showing the passion is such a big deal like you guys i mean you guys you guys know right i don't preach with the choir on that when you guys get it but a lot of people don't get it right so so showing the passion and having the drive content creation is part of that and if you want people to see what you know and and kind of believe you that you can execute yeah i absolutely believe that there's value and it's free and it's free right like well sort of well every everybody has a smartphone probably or most people do that you can record anything you want on there you can create a free youtube channel you can create a free wordpress blog like i mean it's it's really just time you're not having like anybody can spin up a blog or youtube channel create content and it's absolutely free it just costs you time right yeah it's like the equivalent of a github for and actually i'm using the get i'm using github more now that i'm doing like software like we're all going into network automation right i find that even my github uh is is valuable right so it's all it's all useful man i have i have a github does that count didn't you just join us didn't you just join us on 100 days of code i know you might not get started yet but define define join okay well no i mean i bought the course and i i went through um what's her name angela angelico i forgot angela you yeah she's amazing i went through her first whole module i printed out the 100-day calendar thing oh i didn't go that far well you know i just no i get it i'm trying to i'm like you andy i gotta have something physical there no i get it right i am so i am such the poster child for i can't stand coding like really i'm having like right i'm having like a midlife crisis over coding back in my day in c plus plus college and however i dropped out of college because i didn't want to code yeah i just can't i can't stand it and now my job of my career depends on it so yes i to answer your question more directly i i did join 100 days of code and the discord i bought that class um what i have been doing recently i've been studying for my ccmp for so long it's embarrassing so what i've committed to lately is i'm going to study every day 5 to 6 30 in the morning for encore i got to try to knock this out i scheduled the exam for may and i'm really hoping to just yeah because what i'll do is i'll study python i'll study ansible i'll study encore i'll study junos because i got a bunch bunch of juniper stuff at work now like yeah and i'll never ever take the encore because i'm swimming in six lanes instead of one so so yeah that that's that's my current excuse of why i'm not why i'm not coding but well i need to jump in there with you i put a i put it in my i just stopped dude i updated my blog for the first time in 10 months i went over there and i was like you showed a blog post and it was like hey you haven't last post 10 months ago i'm like oh crap i probably should like update this once in a while but the point i was making and i was about 100 days of code thing because i because i feel like uh you know it's oh i love that what i what i struggle what i yeah you know the rounds right i love it um thanks but um i guess the thank you i appreciate that um it just knocked me off my i'm sorry my train of thought was completely derailed but uh the point i was making was that you got to be able to do it when you can put the time into it right like it's a waste of time to to say oh i'm doing this and then not put any time into it and and it's okay if you don't do it you got it your priorities are your priorities right that was like the whole point i was making it you don't have to do this right now right you have to do this when it makes sense for you to do it yeah uh which is why i bought a dozen udemy classes and haven't i do that i mean how many of us have just a library oh wow this 300 course is 10 bucks and it's linux and everybody's telling me i need linux i better buy it three years later i'm like shit i still don't know linux they're still sitting there waiting for you to be closer i get an email because i bought a uh it was a what was it it was like a nexus course or something like that on you to me and i i still haven't freaking watched it and i get an email every once in a while like hey the instructor has updated this and i'm not beating up on you to me i i got introduced to you to me through the um the chris bryant bulldog course for ccna and i love his stuff and he was he goes deep he's granular he's in the cli constantly and you know they have a lot of great courses but as dan would say god dang it man just for for me to get in here and spend some time it's time is the is the currency we all lack because the way nobody has trouble buying the 300 uh 300 hour course for 10 bucks that's the that's the easy part right if only you'll find the 300 hours i could get it in through osmosis you know yes you were talking earlier and it made me think of something so do you think did the question um i don't even know what you would consider me i got five years experience basically um building networks a network engineer yeah like i've been and well right so i've been a network engineer for seven years the first two were a knock break fix and then the past five had been billed uh client and data center so i guess i'm wondering did the questions did the technical interviews get harder as your career progresses do people expect more of you the questions i was asked getting into the knock weren't you know they they were harder in my job now because it was build and i'm just wondering as i progress in my career and start interviewing i mean i can only assume that every interview from now on is going to include python ansible some kind of automation right like that's probably a new wrinkle i'm guessing like do you think that the questions get harder as your career progresses or are we all just talking ccna ccmp you know flash cards for the rest of your career because that would be great if that's that's a good question that's a very good question and i can only speak to my own experience of course right which is which is obvious um what so so my very first job was at a knock also it was i was working on the nmci um i remember very very well i just got my ccna so i was in the same i did the same thing you did right i got my ccna and then i went to get my first job with no work experience um i remember i sat down in the the chair and the lady who was interviewing me was like i'm gonna ask you ten questions if if you fail any of these questions the interview's over wow and i was thinking like oh crap man i'm i'm boned right was this for that they were all like was this the nazis yeah okay they're not it was very knock position um and she asked me but they were all softball questions okay so like honestly if you would fail at these questions you probably should not have continued with this spell spell ospf yeah yeah like what is what does ospf stand for i think it was one of the questions right so it was like so super helpful and from there it went never super technical it was ccna level i would say it never they scraped the top basically they pushed me just they went as far as they thought just again they wanted to find the ceiling what was the ceiling so it's once you started asking questions about bgp i was like i'm gonna stop you here i haven't because i i mean i got my ccna in 2010 right so i got the it was the uh what do they call it now the not the composite that's the new one but whatever the original one was that swallow one test that's the one i took that's the one i took um yeah so it didn't have bgp on it right so uh yeah so i just said like i'm gonna stop you there i understand the very basics of bgp but i i really can't go much further than that and so she was like all right and that was that was it like that was that was the interview you know and then my next technical interview uh was from my next company they actually flew me out i and that was as a network engineer and you know they were asking me even that one didn't get super technical i would say i would say that was more it was more technical but it focused more on my work experience and what i've noticed throughout my career as i've gone from tech you know technical interview to technical interview is that the questions themselves focus more on solutions on uh crap like tlvs and headers and ports and and crap like that right like it's it's not as low level right now we're talking about solutions like not not not what is ospf because it's a dumb question asks ccie now you're asking you know given this network design you know tell me why i would use bgpu or eigrp over ospf or which one you would use and why like it becomes more solutions focused not necessarily harder like i don't know if i would say that was a harder question design questions more than yeah as it should be yeah yeah well i'm just using that as an example right like it's not not as much with the with the crappy questions about what's ospf and what are the do you know like much and also of course because you have now a body of experience we can refer to that as well for this one like here's a problem how would you solve it and i guess at the season yeah very much more yeah you're that's what you're more architectural level yeah yeah i would say you you mentioned this a couple times you said find their ceiling and i really like that that's kind of cool and i don't know like you know if that's something that i mean i don't know if that's a goal in technical interviews i guess you want to try to find like what the people's you know skill set is but as you were talking i'm wondering like should the point of a technical interview be you know find their ceiling and how much they know or should it be i have a specific job requirement i have to fill what are they because that's how i ran my technical interview that i did is i know the job i know what they need to know and if you know bgp and rap maps we can probably show you the rest so i i i didn't try to find their ceiling it's just it's kind of interesting as you said that like i guess every technical interview is different but i would imagine i mean really at the core of a technical interview is it just i have a job requirement i need to find someone that fits it and do they know this list of stuff they need to know for this or is it kind of it seems like it's more holistic than that right like there's a lot there's kind of a lot that goes into a technical interview it's not just can you do this job it's you know yeah no i think that's a good that's a great i think it's a name a really really insightful question because it's one that probably doesn't get asked a lot honestly yeah um so so it's like a so like i said earlier when you are across the table you have your first responsibility if you will is to is to your company to your team to make sure that the person that you're hiring can actually execute right job so i would say that you should not end a technical interview if you have questions about whether or not this person can perform the job the job function i would say that's that's integral that's that's a core piece of it you have to make sure that the person is going to be able to execute the job um now now part of that also involves you know when uh finding some ceiling uh when i say find your ceiling i'm not just like throw shit at the wall yeah yeah wait can i i'm trying to remember yeah i can curse on here i said shit already um okay so yeah you know we're not gonna just throw shit at the wall until and see what sticks until nothing sticks anymore right like that's that's dumb yeah but find your ceiling is more like a targeted thing like okay i need to know somebody i gotta have somebody that knows bgp and route maps how far how much do you know about rap map like how far can i go with route maps with this person and more importantly do you do you know where i would use a route map or why i would use a route map like that's the kind of ceiling i'm feeling for because how much time i've given your requirements right because how much time am i going to have to spend once you're on staff teaching you all like to me selfishly you know if you at least know it and where to apply it i'm not running a ccna class when you get hired you know what i mean because you're talking about so like in some of the interviews i i did um that's basically i took a checklist of what are we actually doing you know like what technologies are we working on and what do we have what kind of designs do we have at our place and just kind of ask them questions on like what's your experience with this tell me a little bit more about you know if they said oh yeah i did that and i was using you know vpn for this yada yada yada okay let's go a little bit further into that you know like why are you doing that you know that that kind of thing and and i i don't think i'm a good i'm not a good person to conduct an interview but uh that's the only way i thought to do that was you know let them let them bring it up like give them a topic let them kind of bring up their experiences with that and then dive in a little bit further on their experiences um i had a casual that seems fine okay uh but my big thing is i just don't want to make them uncomfortable because i know how i feel in the interview seat and uh i i don't want i don't wish that on anybody so well dad when i'm looking for a job and you guys are hiring i'm going to interview with you dan is so concerned with keeping me comfortable and you know let's just have a cup of coffee and talk about you know whatever like boating and fishing and give me the job that's that's my kind of technical interview dan if i think it's going wrong i'm gonna start crying and offer me the job well tim we're coming up on the hour man i just want to really thank you for coming on again you you saved our bake and i really appreciate it i know you have a life and a family and you you know this was like very last minute so thank you so much for for stepping in and helping out um yeah where can people find you where do we see all things tim you got a blog youtube uh yeah it's all on carpe dmvpn uh some version of that there's a youtube channel called carpe dmvpn and uh my my blog is at is that carpe dash dmvpn.com i'll uh i'll i'm trying to think how you i forget you know it's not show notes but yeah we'll put it we'll put it in the notes yeah we'll have the stuff in the notes and i love that name carpe diem thanks it's very it's very creative especially for for a network nerd man good on you good it's very nice thanks all right well thanks for uh thanks for coming on i really appreciate it um subscribe everywhere do all the things say the things that aaron says at the end and see ya hey everyone this is aj if you like what you heard today then make sure you subscribe to our podcast and your favorite podcatcher smash that bell icon to get notified of all of our future episodes also follow us on twitter and instagram we are at art of net edge that's art of n-e-t-e-n-g you can also find us on the web at art of network engineering dot com where we post all of our show notes you can read blog articles from the co-hosts and guests and also a lot more news and info from the networking world thanks for listening you