[AusNOG] Job: Head of Network Operations - NEXTDC - SydneyC

[Andy S.]

"Go and find good engineers by speaking with them about interesting
engineering challenges rather than first looking for CCIE numbers. And be
open to global candidates."

Interesting read.
I assume you've been burned by "fake" or "paper" CCIE?

P.S: Sorry, Ben. This mail should've included the list, not a private email.

Cheers,
Andy

On Sun, Feb 22, 2015 at 2:02 PM, Ben Buxton <bb.ausnog at bb.cactii.net> wrote:

>
> I will chime in here, I've interviewed well over a hundred network
> engineer candidates for Google (hi Phil!). Some personal thoughts here...
>
> On Sun Feb 22 2015 at 9:14:36 AM Skeeve Stevens <
> skeeve+ausnog at theispguy.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> I'm seeing a massive amount of foreign application these days (90%) but
>> equally missing relevant experience and the certifications rarely seem to
>> be as 'solid' as locals.
>>
>> What strategies are Google/AWS using to find good candidates locally - if
>> you don't mind telling us?
>>
>
> I think I've found your problem.
>
> 90+% of the world's network engineers live outside Australia, so it only
> makes sense that you will get a substantial number of applications from
> overseas.
>
> My experience tells me the following generalisations (there are
> exceptions):
>
> - Certs are a poor signal that someone may be a good candidate. Candidates
> with and without certs are equally likely to perform well in a technical
> interview and job. All it tells me is that they can memorise and rattle off
> the vendor literature. In fact, I tend to find that those with large cert
> counts are particularly poor candidates as they seem to lack actual
> experience and cant work through oddball real-life problems.
>
> - The location of a candidate has no correlation with how good they are.
> There are equally good candidates from around the world. You need to seek
> locally first to get a 457 i think, but there's only 1% of candidates
> locally.
>
> - Candidates who have worked in large companies can often have very narrow
> experience due to siloing. They may have just touched the firewalls, or the
> access side, or the peering edge. Whereas often candidates from smallish
> companies/networks often have had to be "jack of all trades" and their
> dealing with knock-on effects across infrastructure mean they can quickly
> become brilliant engineers at large networks.
>
> So by excluding (or strongly biasing against) foreign candidates, those
> without certs, and those from smaller companies, you have just gone and
> dropped your pool of quality engineers by 90%. There's your problem.
>
> Go and find good engineers by speaking with them about interesting
> engineering challenges rather than first looking for CCIE numbers. And be
> open to global candidates.
>
>
>> Or... what advice would you give to engineers who might be missing in
>> some experience, to help them fill the gaps?
>>
>
> Be curious. Turn on interesting protocols in a lab and fire up
> wireshark/tcpdump on them. Break them in interesting ways (and see what
> tcpdump shows). Write some software to do tedious tasks for you.
>
> Dont just memorise the cert cram material. This becomes really obvious to
> a seasoned interviewer.
>
> Apply for positions at your dream company, even if you think you might not
> cut it. Many/most of my colleagues never thought they'd get the job, but
> did.
>
> Unfortunately it seems you may need certs to get past some resume
> screeners...but you probably wont be happy working for those companies.
>
> BB
>
>
>
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