Interesting Interview Questions (and answers)

[deanwebb]

Q: How do you handle rejection?

Security person's A: I love it. It means the firewall is working.


Then there's the one about "what is one of your biggest weaknesses?" HINT: don't answer that apocalyptically. Answer it honestly, but optimistically. Of all your skills and traits, half of them are stronger than the other half. Pick one that you're not so strong in and discuss honestly why it's not a strength and what you do to improve or accommodate.

For example, I'm weak on OSPF, BGP, stuff like that. I'd need to work with a R&S guy for anything in that area. I focus mostly on security, so I'm not strong in other areas.

For my personal traits, I do need to organize better. I can also take control in brainstorming sessions, and I need to always check myself and let other people have a chance at expressing their ideas.

[that1guy15]

...

[Otanx]

Bah, that1guy15 beat me to my favorite. On guy I worked with was named Bryan. We interviewed a guy named Brian. So the first question of the interview was Bryan asking Brian why he spelled his name wrong. I don't remember the exact answer, but it was something like I didn't name myself, and apparently my parents can't spell.
A company in town asks people interviewing for Sys Admin jobs if they could be any Windows command what command would they be and why? The best part is most people get flustered, and can't name a Windows command.
Zappos HQ is here in town, and they are known for weird interviews, and interview questions. I have not interviewed with them, but one a friend of mine got was "If it became company policy would you be willing to get a tattoo of a Spice Girl, and if so which one?" and "Do you own a shake weight, and would you be willing to bring it to work?"

-Otanx

[Nerm]

Best interview question I have ever personally gotten.

Interviewer: "Do you like beer?"
Me: "I like the casual good stuff, but not a fan of cheap/light beer." (thinking in my head that is an odd question and could be a trick so answered honestly)
Interviewer: "Good, we have an office beer club."

[SimonV]

http://www.27bslash6.com/interviews.html

[NetworkGroover]

"Do you own a shake weight, and would you be willing to bring it to work?"

Only if I get to sit in a corner and do one of those shake weight pranks I've seen on YouTube...

[NetworkGroover]

Then there's the one about "what is one of your biggest weaknesses?"

I like that question because I have an interesting response.  Usually you get asked what a strength of yours is, and I say, "Communication".  Then I get asked a weakness, and I say, "Communication".  When asked what I mean, I respond that I'm an excellent communicator, but I tend to overdo it.  I CC the world on just about everything that I think may be informative/helpful, and I tend to write short stories instead of a simple email - even to the point that just recently I started including a #TLDR line at the top before I go into one of my rants.... 

[icecream-guy]

10 oddball real-world tech job interview questions
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2287842/infrastructure-management/136468-10-oddball-real-world-tech-job-interview-questions.html

11 more oddball real-world tech job interview questions
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2287283/infrastructure-management/137687-11-more-oddball-real-world-tech-job-interview-questions.html

Top 11 oddball real-world tech job interview questions
http://www.networkworld.com/article/2897282/careers/top-11-oddball-real-world-tech-job-interview-questions.html

[Fred]

One of my favorites is to ask the candidate to diagram a network they've worked on or would like to work on. This can often turn into the entire interview, because every line, circle, square, or other notation can turn into a question. ("Why did you do it like that?", "Would you do it like that again in the future?", "What does that do?", "What if you had to add a public web server into your design?", "Can you explain to me how a client communicates with that web server?")

I want somebody who can communicate their ideas and understands the technology. I realize everybody has their strengths and weaknesses, but failure at these two are dealbreakers for me.

[deanwebb]

Here's a question that shouldn't stump people, but it does...

"From a security perspective, what is the benefit of not having a default route outbound to the Internet?"

[dlots]

It means you can't get out to the internet, there for are much much much more secure.

Honestly I am not really sure on that one.  You should have an ACL on your internet interface blocking all the non-internet space (so if you get a packet sourced from a 10. it gets blocked and you don't have odd traffic replying back into your network, and even if you did your stateful firewall should be blocking that if it's TCP.

Never mind I just figured it out, stops you from broadcasting your "internal" traffic out to the internet if the packets are sent to a subnet that doesn't exist.

Am I missing anything on that one?

[deanwebb]

Also prevents botnet clients from phoning home to their master. If the malware isn't specifically set to use our proxy server, it's not going to be able to interact much with the world at large. But your answer is good. At least you thought of "can't get out to the Internet." We've had lots of guys wonder what the implications of no default route would be, and come up with nothing.

I mean, that's not even a security question, even though I started it as one. If there's no default route, then anything without a specifically defined route ain't getting traffic. It's that simple. People should not be stumped by it if they know their routing from shinola.

[icecream-guy]

point the default route to the WAN, so it's someone else's headache to monitor internet traffic

[Reggle]

Never mind I just figured it out, stops you from broadcasting your "internal" traffic out to the internet if the packets are sent to a subnet that doesn't exist.

I've covered that in my blog with null routing RFC 1918 ranges.

[Otanx]

Never mind I just figured it out, stops you from broadcasting your "internal" traffic out to the internet if the packets are sent to a subnet that doesn't exist.

I've covered that in my blog with null routing RFC 1918 ranges.

One other benefit from null routing the space is if you turn on uRPF anyone trying to spoof RFC1918 space as a source address will get dropped as well. There is actually a lot you can do with securing your network with just routing. A cool thing to do is instead of null routing is to set the next hop to a directly connected server. Then setup the server to alert on any inbound packet on that interface, and use tcpdump to capture every packet. Any packet that hits this is bad in some way (you need to use another interface to manage the host of course). Misconfigured NAT on your network will show up here, or if you use something like the Spamhaus BGP feeds it could be an infected host trying to reach a C&C server. If you do this server trick to catch outbound it does break uRPF unless you put it in strict mode which may cause other issues. I have found misconfigurations on networks using this trick a few times.

-Otanx