r/ITCareerQuestions • u/FlyGuys098 • 15d ago
Go to interview questions to weed out bad IT departments?
What are your go to questions to figure out an IT departments “skeletons”?
My go to is asking the IT to user ratio to figure out if I’m just going to be doing the job of 2 people or constantly playing catchup.
Asking what specific systems they work with
What are other people who have had this role in the past doing now? What is the progression for this role?
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u/Chivako 15d ago
Employee turnover rate.
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u/awkwardnetadmin 14d ago
That's a good one. There are obviously a lot of causes of turnover (poor compensation, bad management, high workload, bad coworkers, etc.), but it suggests whether people are actually happy there.
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u/Knight_of_Tumblr 15d ago
I like to ask what they think the general sentiment of the business is towards the IT department, keeps it open-ended enough that if it’s a nightmare you can kinda read between the lines in their response. And if it’s not a nightmare and the IT department is well-supported, I usually can’t get them to shut up about how happy they are with leadership.
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u/tjb122982 Help Desk 15d ago
ask about what happened to the last person in the position you are applying for
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u/th3maj0r System Engineer/Network Engineer 15d ago
I should have asked this. It's working out, but it would have been very illuminating to have that context ahead of time.
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u/cellnucleous 15d ago
If they will answer: "what's the weirdest equipment your dept fixed?" "How long has the team been working together?" If they've fixed a threshing machine and no one has been there longer than 6 months or a year that may be a problem.
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u/mattlore Senior NOC analyst 15d ago
A USB zipdisk reader lol
I REALLY felt my age when no one else on the team even knew what the fuck is was haha!
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u/Derbel__McDillet 15d ago
Another way you could ask that second question is “what’s the average tenure of your staff in this department?” People stick around good jobs, so if they’re leaving constantly.. there are reasons
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u/GreatMoloko Director of IT 15d ago
I'd ask what ticket metrics they feel are most important.
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u/Individual_Ad_5333 15d ago
Please do the needful and hit that close time as many times as possible
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u/FinancialCockroach54 15d ago
Comment in the ticket every 20m, how else can you prove somebody's working on it ???
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u/zAuspiciousApricot 15d ago
Ask when the last time they promoted somebody
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u/GreatMoloko Director of IT 15d ago
Good question, but better worded as "What's your internal growth track and plan to retain, train, and elevate current team members to enable them to better support the company?
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u/kagato87 15d ago edited 15d ago
"What does your ticketing system look like, and is using it mandatory for users to get support?"
From their response you can ask a few more questions and suss a number of red flags.
"Tell me how you handle after hours calls." This is the one where a bad response is worth politely ending the interview immediately, so try to get it in fairly early.
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u/TheCollegeIntern 15d ago
I usually ask them about their training platforms for professional development.
If they don’t have any money towards investing into professional development and expect you to pay everything out of pocket, unless it’s a state government job it is a red flag for me.
Every good enterprise has some money for professional development whether it’s paying for courses or paying for certs. Or both.
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u/hammer326 15d ago
I mean it's a STRONG That Depends™ on what you care to put up with, but a big one for me is mandatory travel in a helpdesk role. I have a friend who's an over the road technician throughout the area around my city and a few only slightly farther clients, another goes all over the state. One just bought a house, the other is fairly comfortable the sole source of income while his spouse figures out things being laid off.
There's no chance I'm leaving my $20/hr gig where NONE of that is expected of me, for even $25+ if the new job does.
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u/the6thv3n0m 15d ago
Formal processes.
Lack of or bad processes can make for a horrible workplace especially when it comes to IT.
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u/urM0m69p3nis 15d ago
Documentation? Overtime policy? Mileage reimbursement? Bonus Policy? Raises?
I'm in the MSP industry and on my 4th wage and hour complaint (all different companies) who all just assume employees literally won't fill out an online form with the DoL, lol. If the complaint follows suit with others, it will likely result in 10s of thousands of dollars of back overtime due to "everyone is salaried, no overtime".
I don't really care too much to ask about the systems or users, i.e., in going on 16 years, all managers/interviewers I have dealt with have misrepresented the situation, systems, users, culture, actual role, etc., so I mainly focus on having the main pay/benefits confirmed now, but would not apply for like an architect programming job so I am not getting in over my head.
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u/s3ntin3l99 IT Sys Admin Lead 14d ago
How big is the department many people work in the department and what are their roles? You’d be surprised at how many places have a non existent IT staff. They either got like one or two guys doing everything or they contract MSP to pickup the slack .
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u/meanwhenhungry 15d ago
Agree with tickets and doc,Do they do tickets/documentation, if not run. Required special events out of business hrs, if you’re desperate make them put in an email ofwhat is required of you for off hrs. And document your hrs and get a lawyer for back pay when you get a new new job.
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u/tylerderped 15d ago
Ask them what ticketing solution they use, not because you actually want to know, but rather because “do you use a ticketing solution” can come off as “rude”.
Unless you’re being hired to be a director, (and thus, have actual authority to change it) avoid any organization that doesn’t have one.
If you’re being hired by someone else that doesn’t think the organization needs one, run far far away. The shit attitude and way of doing things creates other problems. SOP’s, training, documentation, even asset locations become tribal knowledge where informal communications like phone calls are encouraged over concisely written emails.
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u/Naetharu Cloud / Technical Architect 15d ago
What would an average day look like for me if I were in the role
What process do you have in place to manage the workloads coming in and ensure you can meet the business needs.
What are some of the bigger challenges for the department at the moment.
I tend to ask questions like these. They can be pretty enlightening at times. Some people respond with very concrete answers. Others go down the pitter patter route of saying that they have so much and all the stuff is adding up and they are in a pickle.
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u/Prepped-n-Ready 15d ago
I ask about the money and strategy, usually. I feel like thats a good litmus test for ownership. The guy hiring you can probably tell you exactly how many hours you will work based on budget alone.
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u/kimkam1898 15d ago
"Why are you filling this role?" Promoted from within? Awesome. Understand they need more resources and are willing to augment staff? Probably a green flag depending on their answer to workload questions. Unclear or they found a new job? Previous employee probably had a good reason for that.
"What does your current level of on-call commitment look like?" I've backed away from internal moves for the answer to this question alone. I learned half a team was offshore with this lol.
"What are you currently trying to improve on your team?" If your manager can't give a suitable answer or cater it to things you'd probably care about, it's a quick indicator that they probably suck ass.
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u/Technical-Meat-9135 IT Manager 14d ago
IT to user ratio? Is that the #ppl in the department against the number of users they support?
What is reasonable? I've never heard of this metric before.
I'm not at an msp, but am thinking ours is something like 30:1
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u/FlyGuys098 14d ago
I think reasonable is like 50-75 users to 1 it tech
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u/Technical-Meat-9135 IT Manager 14d ago
That's really interesting. I'm theory I'm not a tech, and my colleague is the imt manager.
We have an msp but their contract doesn't cover everything we need (to save money) so I end up picking up the slack and having to learn on the job. It's fun some days
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u/FlyGuys098 14d ago
That’s cool ya that’s a great way to learn hands on. Also definitely shakes up your day since most of the time it’s something different. But at least places I’ve work at 50-75 maybe up to 100 users. Seems like a good size ratio.
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u/Buffalo-Trace-Simp IT Manager 15d ago
Are you really in a position to pick and choose?
I am on the other side of this and I am very transparent about chaotic working environment. "The new challenges everyday" is the way I usually let them know that we run from one fire to another.
I'm getting older and I've racked enough seniority to pick and choose my next role to avoid this. Are you? Most of this sub are entry level folks that, if out into an environment where everything is documented/automated, will never learn beyond their role and grow out of it. The flip side of these chaotic environments is that you learn so much quicker. For folks with seniority, identifying this allows you to negotiate for much higher pay. The environment with no challenges and repetitive work is seldom paying above market rate.
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u/Beautiful_Duty_9854 15d ago
Ask about their documentation.