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.
