IT administrator job with puzzle on ad

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#1754929 3-Apr-2017 17:48

My last three open positions all had in the application requirements section that the candidate was to attach something extra to their applications that should have taken them no more than 5 minutes to prepare. I've no interest in hiring someone who cannot follow simple instructions or doesn't take the time to read the advertisement correctly, so well over half of the applications went straight into the bin.

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zgreen

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#1754934 3-Apr-2017 17:52

freitasm: Removed the answer.

But yes, an IT Admin help desk may know about DNS but not necessarily programming. A generalist is usually just that.

I get that, the job is not a software dev job, but for someone that can tweak things as required. As I mentioned earlier, my motivation for picking a TXT record was to take something a generalist might not know about and get them to google it and go oh, so that's what it is, let me figure out how to apply this. I would never expect a generalist role to know everything off the top of their head. If one was to visit that link then you'd get another thing I wouldn't expect many except maybe AD / security specialists to know off the top of their head either.

However, maybe that is just too hard at this stage of the process. My expecations are probably too high from the ad. The whole thing was meant to just be a google and apply to the situation puzzle which is the main skill I expect from a generalist.

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#1754937 3-Apr-2017 18:04

Sounds good to me.

TwoSeven

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#1754948 3-Apr-2017 18:43

In my own view, I think someone doing that without testing it would be doing well, as it requires knowledge of the ASCII character set in Hex.

I would suggest the reliable return value of the function is job.enatel.net only if the input is 'jobapplication'.

For a word that contains a 't' in position > 9 then I would expect that it will simply take the first 3 letters of that word and subsititute it for the www, so if the input was bobssometext I guess that the return value would be bob.enatel.net.

If the input value did not contain a value or did not contain a 't' after position 9, then perhaps the return value would likely be it.enatel.net.

Only in this case would I think the output be txtrecord.enatel.net. as given by the console statement.

The code also required the static keyword to be added to enable it to run in a console app. I did not check to see what happens in different codepages as my assumption was either 7 bit ASCII or UTF-8.

The odd bit for me was the reference to getting the TXT Record as suggested by others; DNS is not my field, but I figure that a a TXT record consists of a name, value and TTL. I made the assumption that a text record would exist with the name property set to 'job' and the value field being some arbitrary text (which is not specified in the requirements). Given any of the other values that could be returned, one would need to check for no TXT record being found.

Just my thoughts.

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gbwelly

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#1754955 3-Apr-2017 19:02

zgreen:

Hi,

We're currently advertising

yes, you've got yourself a lot of advertising for an account with less than 10 posts.

zgreen

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#1755965 3-Apr-2017 20:24

gbwelly:

zgreen:

Hi,

We're currently advertising

yes, you've got yourself a lot of advertising for an account with less than 10 posts.

Sorry, didn't realise it would be frowned upon to set up an account and ask the question. If this is inappropriate then I don't mind if a moderator removes it. I have a personal account but I don't like mixing personal and business stuff. I genuinely wanted some feedback about it because clearly it's too hard or appropriate candidates aren't applying / trying / reading properly. It has been listed for 3 weeks now on other places where I'd expect job seekers to look.

toyonut

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#1755983 3-Apr-2017 20:50

Took a bit of brainpower to make sense of the code sample, had to rewrite it a bit to make it work.

https://dotnetfiddle.net/FCvXpd

Which gets you a txt record to look up here:

https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=txt%3ajob.enatel.net&run=toolpage

Which leads to another site with a question on it.

You want to add a user account creation feature?

Honestly, I am not sure who you are targeting with this, a sysadmin is probably going to skip it as it is C#. A person who can write C# to a decent level is likely to skip it because they probably don't want to be a support desk generalist. There is more than enough demand for C# coders. It is a fun exercise though, good on you for doing something different.

Depending on the level of person you are after, maybe remove the cruft from the code question like the redundant return, var answer and console.writeline. I don't think they add to it. Also maybe try and write it in a Sysadmin language like powershell, bash or python. You might pick up more sysadmins if that is actually who you are after.

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zgreen

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#1755985 3-Apr-2017 20:56

toyonut:

Took a bit of brainpower to make sense of the code sample, had to rewrite it a bit to make it work.

https://dotnetfiddle.net/FCvXpd

Which gets you a txt record to look up here:

https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx?action=txt%3ajob.enatel.net&run=toolpage

Which leads to another site with a question on it.

You want to add a user account creation feature?

Honestly, I am not sure who you are targeting with this, a sysadmin is probably going to skip it as it is C#. A person who can write C# to a decent level is likely to skip it because they probably don't want to be a support desk generalist. There is more than enough demand for C# coders. It is a fun exercise though, good on you for doing something different.

Depending on the level of person you are after, maybe remove the cruft from the code question like the redundant return, var answer and console.writeline. I don't think they add to it. Also maybe try and write it in a Sysadmin language like powershell, bash or python. You might pick up more sysadmins if that is actually who you are after.

Thanks, yeah I might simplify the code as really that's not the main point of it all. Target is someone that knows a bit of C# enough to find their way around code / make changes as required. I considered doing it in a more sysadmin friendly language, but C# really is the most important one. Based on all the feedback so far, I think it would be a good idea to remove all the trap stuff as you've mentioned and just leave it as a simple problem so people can focus on the real reason for the test (google unknown stuff and apply the answers to the situation).

toyonut

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#1755986 3-Apr-2017 21:04

Fair enough, I just re-read your OP and saw you were definitely after someone with C# experience, not just a sysadmin.

Good luck with the candidate hunt. It took a while to find someone good at the last place I was at. We did get there in the end though.

Try Vultr using this link and get us both some credit:

http://www.vultr.com/?ref=7033587-3B

zgreen

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#1755997 3-Apr-2017 21:17

Thanks. Yeah it is a bit of an odd role. We're a manufacturing company with a couple of hundy staff and my department (including this role) is 2 people. We don't outsource anything, so really is a wide open role which makes things difficult. Had a real issue getting any remotely interesting applications last time we advertised so this was my attempt to do something a bit different and make candidates that can follow instruction and apply solutions found online stand out a bit even if their CV didn't look so flash.

Kiwifruta

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#1756055 3-Apr-2017 23:25

Personally, I don't apply for jobs when the advertisement has than instead of then or has spelling or grammatical errors.
Makes me wonder about the about the professionalism of the place.

Maybe your advertisement is dissuading suitable applicants.

bazzer

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#1756070 4-Apr-2017 01:01

Out of interest, what is the salary range?

I could start my sentence with ""Puzzle: " but only if it were worth my while. :)

zgreen

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#1756106 4-Apr-2017 09:06

Kiwifruta:

Personally, I don't apply for jobs when the advertisement has than instead of then or has spelling or grammatical errors.
Makes me wonder about the about the professionalism of the place.

Maybe your advertisement is dissuading suitable applicants.

Thanks, I hadn't noticed that. That bit was added by HR. I'll get them to change it.

Salary depends on experience, could be 50's for someone new or up to 80's for someone with some reasonable experience. Ideally someone with experience would be better, but not sure many of those people would be applying for the role so it is more pitched at someone in a t2/t3 helpdesk kind of role that wants to expand to do other things as well.