Questions posées lors d’un entretien d’embauche pour Network Support Engineer II chez F5

There are meant to be three interview processes. First with Recruiter, The second round is with the manager and one engineer. This is a general interview with some supposed basic technical questions, but they aren't that basic. The third round will be a two-hour in-depth technical interview. They keep firing you questions non-stop in the second stage.

Attended screening round and preparing for next round. Interview does not expect to explain the topics in depth but is trying to get an understanding of candidates overall exposure to technology.

1. Technical Screening The interview process started with a technical screening video. During this process they sent me a link that took me to a website where I was asked a series of questions, a few examples being. What FTP commands are used to upload and download files? (put, get) Can you describe TCP handshake? (SYN, SYN-ACK, ACK) Are you comfortable with using CLI? (Yes) What port is DNS? (Port 53) What is the difference between UDP and TCP? (TCP is connection-oriented, UDP is not) 2. Phone Screening About a week after this was sent in, I was emailed for a phone screening with the F5 recruiter that I was working with. On this call she seemed to just be gauging my interest, looking to see what salary range I wanted, and several questions about my background in tech. At the end of this call she advised that she would like to schedule an interview at their building in the next week or so, and after a few days we were able to schedule this out. 3. In Person Interview The in person interview is a 2-3 hour interview that begins with a more grueling technical screening to see if you are a better fit for a NSE 1 or NSE 2 position. It consisted questions about Linux (e.g. how to view file permissions, change file permissions, how to view open ports, reading files) and then the interviewer wrote some advanced commands on a whiteboard and asked if you could step through what they would be doing. My main takeaways from this exercise was to know that WC and XARGS are. After the Linux questions we ran through several scenarios with a diagram of an existing network, and answered questions about how to fix various issues with traffic not exiting or moving correctly between a WAN. Main takeaway from this is to go in knowing how switching, routing, firewalls, routing protocols, and other general Layer 2 to Layer 4/5 technologies work so that you can troubleshoot and answer questions about a network. Most of this knowledge you can get from a Net+ exam. Not being in a network administrator or engineer position before I did struggle with some of the network and Linux questions, but did my homework beforehand to have a general idea of all of this. The second step in the in person interview was to site down with two of the support managers and find out why you would be a good fit. Most of the questions were traditional (e.g. give an example of a time that you had to deal with a difficult end user, have you used ticketing systems before, why are you leaving your current job, where do you see yourself going from here), but the question that did stick out is that we played 20 questions toward the end of this interview. This was actually my favorite part of any interview that I've had, as I feel that it does show an underlying skill for troubleshooting something you may not know anything about. Just be sure to ask the right questions, and operate in sort of a binary search tree manner. Use questions to eliminate the most items possible right out of the gate. The third interview was with the VP of services and this was similar to the previous, though maybe at a higher level. I took the time to ask him questions about F5, the future of the network security industry, and the future of support that I genuinely wanted his opinions on as a successful individual in the industry. 4. Post Interview After the interview I met with my F5 recruiter who walked me out of the building. A day or so later she contacted me advised they would like to extend an offer, but for the NSE 1 position instead of NSE 2. I had been expecting that after the in person technical interview, so I was excited about the offer. It has taken about a week for the referral and background check to complete, which is fairly normal in my experience.

-Phone Screening -Onsite Interview on the same day in two round; 1st round technical with you Sr Network Support Engineers; 2nd round with the Managers; 2-3 interviewers in each round.

2 technical interviews, one building upon the other. This is the same as most major I.T. tech. interview processes. 1 phone call from the first screener followed by contact from a mid level H.R. person, followed by a call from 1 or 2 team members for a competency test / interview. Personality match probably counts as much as doing well on the actual questions.

Interview process was lengthy and took 2 months. Complete process was frustrating and Tiring. HR are very lazy and I had to personally follow-up via email and call for status. They never reverted back. After one month process I was told that i am shortlisted and selected. Later HR neither called me or updated. After multiple email follow-up and calls HR told me that position does not exist & I applied for position which will come in near future. I will never re-apply in F5 again.

I was impressed with the F5 interview process - the HR person seemed pleasant and friendly. The HR person asked about 10 - 12 very technical questions on the networking side of things and 10 questions on Linux that I did not have much experience with so I could not answer the questions. I took the phone interview because I did not know how deep the Linux knowledge would be reqired (I know enough to be dangerous.) I also was honest on the supplemental questions when I applied online and said that my knowledge of Linus was very limited. Even though I did not pass the Linux portion, some study material was recommended and I can call back and retake the Linux portion. My advice it to study the TCP/IP and OSI model like you were back in college. Can't comment on the Linux portion as I was only asked one question but if the questions were anything like the TCP/IP networking questions then I would study Linux the same way. There are bonuses for customer service satisfaction at the end of the year and the salary range seemed approproiate for what I researched (high 60's to low 70's plus bonus.) for this type of position.