Interviewing for a part time internship for Entry Level IT. I am a full time student Comp Sci major and wanna go into networking, servers, security, so hopefully this gets me my foot in the door. I am a terrible soft skills person and really nervous. My friends told me to print out my resume and transcripts, I will surely do that. Anybody got anything else to suggest?
Update: I got the position! I honestly didn’t even prepare for it, didn’t even know what the company did. The comment that talked about learning to search things up was right on, they asked me what I would do if I didn’t know how to do something. I answered “looking things up, asking others, and consult documentation.” The company seemed really cool and is structured pretty much like Valve Corp in that they wanted jacks of all trades and it was company owned.
Thank you for all the helpful advice. It definitely helped me out, and hopefully, it helps others out as well.
Don’t try to bullshit your way through anything. It’s actually a strength to admit that you don’t know something. Bonus points if you can describe the resources you would use to learn the answer.
Almost a repeat of the first one, but slightly different. Don’t play buzzword bingo or you’ll sound like the 5th grader that just learned a new curse word and is showing it off on the playground. It’s fine to use the industry jargon in appropriate ways; just be sure you know them.
It’s an entry level position. The kind of skills and initiative they’re going to be looking for is the desire to learn, the ability to correct/improve documentation, understanding/following procedures, thoughtful suggestions for improvements, and having enough confidence and competence that they don’t have to babysit you constantly.
Networking / servers / security really covers a lot of ground and it leaves me wondering exactly what it is you’re saying you’d like to do. Give some thought about how this entry level position helps you build your skills on your path to your ultimate goal and how you’ll provide value along the way.
Everything here, but I’d like to build a little on this.
Remember that you are also interviewing the company. You need to make a decision about whether this is a place you want to work. Will it give you the opportunity to learn when you need to learn? Are they a team that treat each other well? Do they have good dynamics? Can you see yourself benefiting from working here beyond just taking a pay check?
Worth noting and not crazy important for an entry level position. Double true if there are limited options available. Take the job, learn some skills (including how to work in a bad environment) and then look for and move on to better opportunities. Caveat: Just don’t take one of these roles with a place where it’s going to stereotype you and/or give you no transferable skills/knowledge.
Even if you decide to compromise, it’s worth doing so knowing that you are. It also looks good to the employer if you’re taking a real interest in the position and sizing it up.
Even if it is a deadend job, usually a year doesn’t hurt. Unless the work or pay suck, but that’s true everywhere.
Bullshit only works on non technical people. If you are in a technical interview saying you don’t know is the correct answer.
Im a senior engineer at a global MSP, when doing my interview I 100% blanked on the TCP threeway handshake. Even now I only remember 2 of the steps, syn and synack.
Building on this, if you don’t know at first but think you might, it’s ok to ask questions to flesh out and better understand the question. It highlights your troubleshooting skills. If you still don’t know and they tell you the answer, there’s nothing wrong with asking follow up questions. This can demonstrate your interest in the subject as well as possibly highlight knowledge they haven’t specifically asked you about.
In this vein, don’t forget that logs usually exist, and if they don’t you can often enable debugging. When something’s going wrong the first question I usually try to answer is “what’s the error message?” There isn’t always one, but if there is, knowing it can be a big help.
ETA: Most technical interviewers recognize that the average candidate will need some training for their specific environment, especially for junior positions. They’re looking for trainability, critical thinking, and troubleshooting skills. You may not be well versed in the specific tool they use for, e.g., configuration management, but if you demonstrate an understanding of the concept, that will show them that you can be easily trained to meet their specific needs.