Common workplace systems

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Hi guys.

Ok, so lucky little Dexter applied for his first tech job by email on Monday. Dexter got a phone call two hours later asking if he would be available for a telephone interview the following day, he was and after that interview was invited to the a face to face interview for the 4th march. yeh!!!!

Ok so enough of that! ha! But I am expecting to get tested a bit by the interviewer so I've done a little bit of reading concerning other peoples experiences in such situations. A few people have mentioned being asked questions like "Could you explain what Citrix does?". Until reading about it afterwards I had no idea what CItrix did, despite the fact that it seems to be common with many large companies so I was wondering if some of the members who currently work in the IT industry could give me a rundown of some of the most common technologies in their office/workplace. Just some stuff to read up on to be prepared for any similar "what is X?" questions.

 

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I don't work in IT yet so all I can say is good luck Dexter

 

That's a pretty open question. Systems and applications are usually dependant on many things including the needs of the company and the industry standard. For example, some companies may use Exchange, whereas others might choose Lotus notes, and another may go with an open source solution (i.e. Sendmail, Open-Xchange).

Here is a recent thread that might help give an overview

 

Hey Dexter, congrats on the interview first of all. Hope everything goes well.

In the environment that I work in is very broad, we use many different technologies anything from Microsoft office to citrix to Blackberry Enterprise server, etc.

It depends on what type of job you're applying for, if it's desktop support I could give you a few ideas as to what some organizations are using, etc.

What I use in the office: Applications include Microsoft Office, Citrix, Symantec Ghost 7.5, in house applications (different in every company), etc. Operating systems include Windows 2000 professional, Windows XP professional, Windows 2003 server, Windows Vista. More on the server side would be BES, doing AV server tasks, creating-unlocking-resetting users passwords in AD, troubleshooting server based applications.

It could be different for you. But I would recommend freshening up on things like MS office, maybe get an idea about ghosting, operating systems, etc. Basically the idea is to understand the modern days technology that companies use on a daily basis. It shows that you have potential.

Good luck.

 

Search for every software application and hardware technology in existence. That's the scope of the questions you could be asked. It all depends on what the company uses. If they company doesn't use Citrix, they won't likely ask you any Citrix questions. As a result, I wouldn't be able to tell you what they're going to ask.

More than likely, they won't ask you as much about "what is X"... they'll likely ask you "Here's a scenario. What would you do?" You either know it, or you don't. There's really no way to "brush up" or study for something like that, where you could be asked virtually ANYTHING.

If you're the best fit for the company, then you'll be offered the job - it's as simple as that. Best of luck to you!

 

From Wikipedia:

Complete article here.

Microsoft licensed a version of Citrix' WinFrame (then renamed to MetaFrame and subsequently PresentationServer) and incorporated into their professional and server versions of Windows. You'll find it labelled as "Terminal Services" or "Remote Desktop". Once again from Wikipedia:

Complete article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminal_serviceshere.

The Citrix product is more full-featured and runs using a protocol called ICA (Independent Client Architecture) whereas the Microsoft version uses the slightly less-efficient RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol).

You'd be amazed at how far Citrix has penetrated into the market. For example, I support a large number of Citrix clients out here in the middle of nowhere (type Kirriemuir Alberta Canada into Google Earth if you want to see where that is). A lot of oil and gas installations use Citrix apps deployed from the main office and I have the extreme pleasure of trying to make them work over not-so-high-speed KA-band satellite links. I don't care what Citrix' promotional literature says, their software doesn't handle latency worth a tinker's damn, and satellite is nothing but latency. If the round-trip time on a packet exceeds what the Citrix server is expecting the session disconnects. I deal with this on a weekly basis and I'm a VERY rural service technician. Expect to run into even more Citrix products in a major city.