Hallmarks of Competence

Interviewing Systems Personnel

Premise: Experience in a job does not imply competence. For every position, common challenges arise which provide opportunities for growth and mastery. The questions below reveal whether the field's basic challenges had been met or just muddled through.

Utility: The questions are litmus tests; you don't need to know the technical answers to be able to use them in an interview. The flavor of the answer ought to be sufficiently revealing.

Directors, Vice-Presidents and Information Officers

Q. Have you read The Mythical Man-Month?
A. This book is fundamental; it contains hard won lessons information systems management. The book is unique and widely recognized as a basic text. Many heads of large information systems organizations never attempted to study and learn from the experience of others. Those who do not study history are doomed to blindly follow the suggestions of consultants.

Q. As rule of thumb, what percentage of project time should be spent on administration?
A. An answer too high indicates that the team leader spends their time "playing manager" and consuming everyones time with meetings, project plans, and status reports. An answer too low indicates inexperience with real world, multi-departmental tasks.

Q. How many MIPs are typical for mainframes, client-servers, and PCs. What is the relative cost per MIP or per megabyte of DASD?
A. These statistics are the bread and butter of those who have had to squeeze the maximum benefit out of limited capital budgets. Ignorance of these costs indicates that the person completely avoids simple, compelling quantitative analysis when making key strategic decisions.

Webmasters

Q. What is a DTD?
A. It is possible to make web pages without ever looking at or knowing about Document Type Definitions just as it is possible to perform surgery without knowing anatomy. Professionals have to know about DTDs in order to make sure that their sites can be read by many different browsers and search engines. This is a first step toward true expertise.

Q. What does it mean to be 'trapped in frames'?
A. Knowledge of webpage frames usually comes just after experimenting with basic page design. A common pitfall for beginners is to create frames which do not go away when the user moves to another page. Experienced page designers have learned how to avoid this pitfall.

PC Installation Techs

Q. How do you set a monitor refresh rate to the maximum?
A. Any layman who has ever installed his own video card can acquire this skill. Many PC techs never learn this skill and leave most of the equipment they install performing at a substandard level and waste the money spent on quality monitors.

Q. How do you change from 640x480 resolution to 800x600?
A. 640x480 is the default for Windows installation because it works well with old VGA monitors. Like the refresh rate question, those who don't routinely make this simple change waste expensive equipment. Unlike, the last question, this knowledge is absolutely basic yet frequently ignored.

Purchasing Agents

Q. What is the maximum amount of memory recognized by Windows 3.1?
A. 16 megabytes. This is important because ordering more memory accomplishes nothing. Give extra credit if the interviewee knows that another 8 megabytes can be used by disk caching utility.

Q. When is net certification essential and how much is it worth?
A.Forgive the poor soul who thinks net certification is worth millions because plenty of giant companies waste a third of their PC capital to pay for a one time test.

Database Administrators

Q. What are the three laws of data normalization?
A. This is the most fundamental part of database theory. Not having heard of the laws is a sure sign that the candidate has never cracked a book in an attempt to improve themselves professionally.

Q. Indexing takes a long time, why bother?
A. Most real world database tasks slurp the power out of any computer. Indexing is one of the few optimizations available in many environments. Real experts have all spent time balancing the trade-off between information retrieval time and time spent organizing information.

C Programmers

Q. What does the assert() macro do and why is it used?
A. This is one of the several dozen elements of the C library. Not knowing means that the language was never completely mastered. This macro is a fundamental tool for programmers who strive to develop error-free software. Not knowing about this tool indicates a flippant attitude toward software reliability.

Q. Describe regression testing, version control, and make utilities?
A. These are three of the strongest tools in professional software development and are essential for efficient system development life cycles. Unlike the other questions, lack of knowledge in this area only indicates ignorance, not incompetence.

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