Questions to ask when interviewing for IT Helpdesk?

Davepen

Davepen

Davepen

Associate
Joined
18 Feb 2009
Posts
1,880
Location
Midlands
Helloooo

Im going to be sitting in and playing bad cop to my managers good cop on a few interviews to try and find another helpdesk employee. We do mostly 1st and 2nd line support and was after the help of OCUK to supply me with a few good questions that I can ask potential candidates to see if their general support/PC knowledge is upto the task!

Any ideas?
 
Davepen said:
Helloooo

Im going to be sitting in and playing bad cop to my managers good cop on a few interviews to try and find another helpdesk employee. We do mostly 1st and 2nd line support and was after the help of OCUK to supply me with a few good questions that I can ask potential candidates to see if their general support/PC knowledge is upto the task!

Any ideas?
Click to expand...

do you know how to fix and restore windows boot up, via command line or automatic.
(that question will cut down your candidate list by over half.)
Do you know how to edit profiles?
do you know what a mount drive is?
usmt from command line?
performance optimizing troubleshooting tools?
rdp?
do you know how to reactive a missing or offline disk?
do you know about dynamic volumes, and disk diagnosing tools?
do you know how to add a pc to the domain?
what are templete user accounts, and how would you use them.

If a monitor is not showing a picture what are the steps you would go thru.
If a user cant log on to the domain but can log on locally what are the steps you would go thru before accessing the AD.
 
Last edited:
What is the command used in Windows NT and later environments to abandon a timed shut down.

Answer is:-

shutdown.exe –a
 
We support about 2500 users, all in company, all using thin clients/desktops/laptops on citrix and locally, lots of different programs are used throughout the company, but we would not expect the candidate to have knowledge of any of them, more want to test for general support/troubleshooting skills rather than intimate technical knowledge.
 
Davepen said:
We support about 2500 users, all in company, all using thin clients/desktops/laptops on citrix and locally, lots of different programs are used throughout the company, but we would not expect the candidate to have knowledge of any of them, more want to test for general support/troubleshooting skills rather than intimate technical knowledge.
Click to expand...

Are you looking for someone that can walk straight into this role and be fairly self sufficient, or do you want someone with minimal experience that you would train up? Any requirments in particular? Any qualifications required?
 
amigafan2003 said:
What is the command used in Windows NT and later environments to abandon a timed shut down.

Answer is:-

shutdown.exe –a
Click to expand...

Any monkey with half a brain can google that in 10 seconds, proves nothing.

First line wise ask them how they'd handle a user who's convinced he/she is correct and wants things fixed immediately whilst being rather rude to the helpdesk.

Ask them if they know how to reset AD account passwords, understand basic AD OU usage and group policies. Even knowing what these are is handle for front line staff even if they won't be allowed to change them.

How they handle customers is almost as important as their knowledge, as a person good at customer service can always be trained up on the technical aspects that they need to know for the job, it just happens that a lot of helpdesk staff never recieve any training once in post.
 
Davepen said:
We support about 2500 users, all in company, all using thin clients/desktops/laptops on citrix and locally, lots of different programs are used throughout the company, but we would not expect the candidate to have knowledge of any of them, more want to test for general support/troubleshooting skills rather than intimate technical knowledge.
Click to expand...

Give them a scenario and get them to talk through the process they'd go through to resolve.
 
Kami said:
Any monkey with half a brain can google that in 10 seconds, proves nothing.

First line wise ask them how they'd handle a user who's convinced he/she is correct and wants things fixed immediately whilst being rather rude to the helpdesk.

Ask them if they know how to reset AD account passwords, understand basic AD OU usage and group policies. Even knowing what these are is handle for front line staff even if they won't be allowed to change them.

How they handle customers is almost as important as their knowledge, as a person good at customer service can always be trained up on the technical aspects that they need to know for the job, it just happens that a lot of helpdesk staff never recieve any training once in post.
Click to expand...

you can google anything, if you know what you need, so you need to ask questions to find out if they know the subject area.
 
Basher said:
Give them a scenario and get them to talk through the process they'd go through to resolve.
Click to expand...

That's a good start but remember that communication skills are very important here. A roleplay where they have to ask decent questions to even understand the problem is very useful.
 
I'd think for first line support it would be more about customer service and patience above all else. 1st line IT Query resolution is pretty standard and it just requires someone with generally acceptable PC knowledge (and I'd imagine the details of user/domain management etc would be given in training as they can vary from organisation to organisation). Harder queries are then forwarded on to 2nd/3rd line.

I'd focus my questioning more around situations where they've had to give good customer service to an uptight or angry customer. I occasionaly do first line support for some of the systems we support (although technically i'm all lines of support), and they're normally already pretty mad by the time they've called us up :D
 
In the interview for my first IT job I was given a PC that wouldn't go on the internet and was told to find out why.. About 5 seconds later I had reenabled the network port and it was working!
 
I think it may be better to give more open ended questions rather than "how do you do XYZ?", as the former will show they have problem solving skills and a logical thought process rather than a question with one correct answer.

For example explain a problem that a user may have and ask the candidate to explain their plan of action to track down the source of the problem and what they'd do to resolve it.
 
"Heres a broken computer, I am the user, you are 10 miles away, on the phone, how do I fix it?"
*(Have broken PC)*

See what he does..
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom