225 Information

Technology Job
Interview Questions
The Questions IT Leaders Ask
Information technology professionals with the right skills are in high demand. In 2015, the
unemployment rate for IT professionals averaged 2%, far below the 5.8% national average. However,
the skills needed to be successful in IT are shifting rapidly and hiring managers report in surveys that one
of the biggest challenges facing IT departments today is a lack of skilled IT professional. Do you have
what it takes to be successful in today’s environment? Moreover, when you interview candidates, are
you asking the right questions to assess whether they can meet today’s IT challenges?

Below is a list of interview questions categorized by different IT job roles intended to reveal a
candidate’s strengths and most glaring weaknesses. Categories include:

 General IT
 IT Management
 Network/System Administration
 Help Desk
 Database Administration
 Programming/Software Development
 Information Security

The questions evaluate a broad range of candidate’s technical skills, understanding of IT terminology
and technology, as well as their ability to think analytically and solve problems.

General IT

1. What are two or three major trends affecting the IT industry and how do you see them
affecting the profession?
2. What are your favorite and least favorite technology products, and why?
3. Tell me about a time you were asked to perform a task or project you didn't understand.
4. Tell me about a time you were asked to do something you've never done before (new
technology, different type of project, new industry, etc.)
5. You’ve just been assigned to a project involving a new technology. How would you get
started?
6. Can you tell me about a recent project or process that you made better, faster, smarter,
or more efficient?
7. How do you keep your technology skills current?
8. What technology-related blogs, podcasts, tweets, or websites do you follow? Do you
share any information yourself online?
9. How do you make sure users create secure passwords that go beyond minimum
requirements of a system?
10. What is one of the latest Computer Processors (CPU)?
11. Define Hard-Disk Partition.
12. What are some of the ports available on a computer?
13. What components are needed to set up a Basic Home Network?
14. What is Active Directory?
15. What is an Active Directory schema?
16. What are the physical & logical components of ADS?
17. What is the default protocol used in directory services?
18. Which is the command used to remove active directory from a domain controller?
 19. What is the file that's responsible for keeping all Active Directory databases?
20. What are your technical certifications?
21. What do you do to maintain your technical certifications?
22. What technical websites do you follow?
23. Describe a time when you were able to improve upon the design that was originally
suggested.
24. Describe the most innovative change that you have initiated and what you did to
implement this change.
25. Tell me about the project you are proudest of and what your contribution was.
26. Give an example of when applied your technical knowledge in a practical way.
27. What is the biggest IT challenge you have faced and how did you handle it?
28. Describe to me the stages you go through to update your domain DNS records.
29. What are the restrictions on domain names?
30. How do you set up the VPN on a laptop for a new employee?
31. What does DHCP stand for and what is its purpose?
32. What does DNS stand for and what is it used for?
33. What is TCP/IP and what does it stand for?
34. What is a default gateway?
35. What is an IP Address?
36. What is the significance of the IP address 255.255.255.255?
37. What are the 3 major classes of an IP network?
38. What is a Class D IP address?
39. What is OSPF?
40. A user is complaining of delays when using the network. What would you do?

IT Management

41. When have you needed to choose between two or more important budgetary items
within the organization and how did you make the decision?
42. When have you had to oversee someone who was not performing to standard?
43. When have you had to negotiate something when you had one message and several
audiences? How did you customize your communication for each group?
44. You are working at a client site and the CIO of the client company has asked if she can
see you. The CIO wants to know how much it would cost to bring in five more people on
your team. She gives you very vague requirements of the job she is looking for you to
do. What would you do?
45. You have been asked to explore a new business solution. You have come across two
software products. One is an on-premises solution, the other is cloud-based. Assuming
they are functionally equivalent, why would you recommend one over the other?
46. What do you think is the difference between managing people vs. managing ideas?
47. Have you worked with software vendors? How do you handle vendor relations?
48. How important is it to work directly with your business users?
49. If hired, is there anything you would change about this IT team?
50. What companies do you see as the biggest competitors to this company?
51. What type of people do you like to work with?
52. Can you handle telling other people “No”?
53. When conflict arises on your team, how do you handle it?
 54. What do you do to ensure you provide accurate project estimates?
55. What elements are necessary for a successful team and why?
56. What is most important - quality or quantity?
57. You have a user call for support for the fifth time about the same issue. How would you
handle the call and what would you do differently?
58. How do you create a project plan?
59. How will you balance your family and home life with working a night shift?
60. Provide a specific situation from your work history when you failed as a project manager
and what did you do about it?
61. How would you handle insubordination or direct reports failing to meet expectations?
62. Name a time in your employment when something catastrophic and unexpected
happened and your response.
63. Tell me about a time when you had to fire an employee for poor performance.
64. Have you ever promoted an employee, only to find out they were not right for the new
position? What did you do?
65. How have you gotten someone, who does not work for you, to do something to advance
your project or initiative?

Network/System Admin

66. What is the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 in the OSI model?
67. What is the difference between a hub, switch, and router?
68. What is a VLAN?
69. What is the difference between TCP and UDP?
70. How do you distinguish a DNS problem from a network problem?
71. What are a runt, giant, and collision?
72. What is a broadcast storm?
73. What is the purpose of VRRP?
74. What is a default route? How do you set a default route on an IOS Cisco router?
75. What is ARP/RARP?
76. Describe a TCP connection sequence.
77. What is a router metric?
78. What is MTU?
79. What other TCP setting can you modify besides MTU to shorten packets?
80. What is the subnet for a class C network?
81. Have you configured a NIS server/client before? If so, describe what you did.
82. Have your configured an NFS server?
83. What are RAID 1 and RAID 5?
84. What must be done to an AD forest before Exchange can be deployed?
85. What Exchange process is responsible for communication with AD?
86. What connector type would you use to connect to the Internet, and what are the two
methods of sending mail over that connector?
87. What are the standard port numbers for SMTP, POP3, IMAP4, RPC, LDAP and Global
Catalog?
88. What are the disadvantages of circular logging?
89. What is a global catalog server?
90. What is IPv6?
 91. What is multi-master replication?
92. The network appears to be down. What steps do you go through to troubleshoot?
93. What is the role of SNMP?
94. What is a Global Catalog?
95. Explain a "Two-Way Transitive" trust.

IT Help Desk

96. How important is customer service for you?

97. Do you really think that the company or organization needs a helpdesk?
98. How important are IT skills in help desk service and how you keep yourself updated with
those skills?
99. How do you deal with a frustrated customer?
100. What are the three abilities of an ideal help desk person?
101. Why are you interested in a help desk assistant job?
102. Imagine there is a customer who does not understand your language. How would you
help him/her?
103. What is your worst experience so far as a help desk assistant?
104. Are you flexible with working on the weekend?
105. How would you respond to a customer when you do not know the answer?
106. How would you rate your problem solving skills?
107. What is the best thing you like about your job?
108. How do you face the criticism?
109. How good are you at solving problems on the phone?
110. Are you a team player?
111. How do you deal with a customer on the phone who refuses to calm down?
112. Tell me one thing that you don’t like about your job?
113. How do you organize your work schedule?
114. In a situation where a caller does not understand what you are explaining, what would
you do?
115. Please tell me some of the tasks that you performed at your previous company?
116. If the customer is not satisfied with your service, do you analyze your mistake or move
on to another customer?
117. What is the difference between helpdesk and service desk?
118. What experience do you have as a help desk associate?
119. What are some new help desk techniques you think would improve the service?
120. What is a recent skill you have learned that can be helpful for a help desk position?

Database Administration

121. What is a Database?

122. What are the main advantages of using a database over an Excel spreadsheet?
123. What is a database query?
124. What is SQL?
125. What does ‘SELECT’ query do?
 126. What does the primary key of a database table represent? What about its secondary
key?
127. What is a Database Management System?
128. What is the difference between a, operational database, relational database, and
object-oriented database?
129. Why do most database types (such as relational vs operational) not talk to each other?
130. What does a ‘join’ query do?
131. What is a foreign key of a database table?
132. What is a SQL Injection?
133. What is input sterilization?
134. What is a ‘Flat File’?
135. How do I migrate a database built in MySQL to Microsoft SQL Server?
136. What is the difference between ‘=’ and ‘LIKE’?
137. What does the ‘INSERT’ query do?
138. What does the ‘DROP’ query do?
139. What does the ‘UPDATE’ query do?
140. How do database servers benefit from extra memory, and how do 64-bit operating
systems help in this regard?
141. Why is it a bad idea to run a test on a production database?
142. When would you use an offline backup method versus an online backup?
143. What is replication?
144. Is data in databases encrypted by default?
145. Explain the differences between a ‘TINYINT’, an ‘INT’ and a ‘BIGINT’?
146. When would you use ‘char’ versus ‘varchar’?
147. Why shouldn’t you use ‘SELECT * ..’ in a large database?
148. How would you get the number of results from a query?
149. What does a Database Schema represent?
150. What are Nested Queries?
151. What is Open Database Connectivity (ODBC)?
152. What is Optimal Flexible Architecture (OFA) in Oracle systems?
153. What is Normalization?
154. What is Dynamic Management Views (DMV) in Microsoft SQL Server?
155. What is Hadoop?

Programming/Development

156. How well do you know HTML, PHP, Python, Ruby, etc.?
157. How do you handle source control?
158. What browsers do not support CSS coding?
159. What experience do you have working with arrays in VN Script?
160. What are “Psuedo-classes”?
161. What is abstraction with regards to .NET?
162. What kind of experience do you have using Eclipse or Visual Studio?
163. What usually indicates that your virtual user script has dynamic data that is dependent
on you parameterized fields?
164. Are you using code from GitHub or contributing code to an open-source project in
GitHub? Do you answer questions on Stack Overflow?
 165. What are some practices you use to help prevent a developer on the team from
breaking the build? When the build does break, how do you help fix it?
166. Describe to me some bad code you’ve read or inherited lately.
167. What automated-build tools or processes have you used?
168. What development tools have you used?
169. What languages have you programmed in?
170. What source control tools have you used?
171. You have submitted a piece of code that has broken the client's website in production.
You have found this bug while you were testing, and nobody else knows about it. What
is your next move?
172. What do you think of documentation and what are some of its benefits?
173. What is your advice when a customer wants high performance, usability, and security?
174. How do you prioritize requirements? Do you know different techniques?
175. What do you care about most when reviewing somebody else’s code?
176. Can you name an example of a recursive solution that you created?
177. Do you know about the Traveling Salesman Problem?
178. Which tools are essential to you for testing the quality of your code?
179. What is important when updating a product that is in production and is being used?
180. Why do you think maintenance of a software product is the most expensive part of an
application’s lifecycle?

Information Security

181. What are the most common types of attacks that threaten enterprise data security?
182. What is the difference between a threat and a vulnerability?
183. Can you give me an example of common security vulnerabilities?
184. Are you familiar with any security management frameworks such as ISO/IEC 27002?
185. What is a security control?
186. What are the different types of security controls?
187. Can you describe the information lifecycle? How do you ensure information security at
each phase?
188. What is Information Security Governance?
189. What are your professional values? Why are professional ethics important in the
information security field?
190. Are open source projects more or less secure than proprietary ones?
191. Who’s more dangerous to an organization, insiders or outsiders?
192. Why is DNS monitoring important?
193. How would traceroute help you find out where a breakdown in communication is?
194. Why would you want to use SSH from a Windows PC?
195. How would you find out what a POST code means?
196. What is the difference between a black hat and a white hat?
197. What is the role of network boundaries in information security?
198. What does an intrusion detection system do? How does it do it?
199. What is a honeypot? What type of attack does it defend against?
200. What technologies and approaches are used to secure information and services
deployed on cloud computing infrastructure?
201. What information security challenges are faced in a cloud computing environment?
202. Can you give me an overview of IP multicast?
203. How many bits do you need for a subnet size?
204. What is packet filtering?
205. Can you explain the difference between a packet filtering firewall and an application
layer firewall?
206. What are the various ways to handle account brute forcing?
207. What is cross-site request forgery?
208. How does one defend against CSRF?
209. If you were a site administrator looking for incoming CSRF attacks, what would you look
for?
210. What are some effective ways to control data leakage?
211. Describe the 80/20 rules of networking.
212. What are web server vulnerabilities and name a few methods to prevent web server
attacks?
213. What are the most damaging types of malware?
214. What’s your preferred method of giving remote employees access to the company
network and are there any weaknesses associated with it?
215. List some tests that you would do to a network to identify security flaws.
216. What kind of websites and cloud services would you block?
217. What type of security flaws are there in VPN?
218. What is a DDoS attack?
219. What is business continuity management? How does it relate to security?
220. What is the primary reason most companies haven’t fixed their vulnerabilities?
221. What’s the goal of information security within an organization?
222. What’s the difference between a threat, vulnerability, and a risk?
223. If you could re-design TCP, what would you fix?
224. What is the one feature you would add to DNS to improve it the most?
225. What is likely to be the primary protocol used for the Internet of Things in 10 years?