How to Prepare for Technical IT Interview Questions

- select the contributor at the end of the page -
Here's an extension of our top interview questions tips for those of you facing job interviews that will weigh heavily on your technical acumen.

These technical questions may be asked during your interview in addition to typical HR inquiries. Keep in mind that if you are going for higher-level, more specific job interviews such as Exchange Administrator, or Hyper-V Administrator, the questions will be more specific and a lot harder. I included a few examples at the end. You should know your stuff – get some training, do your part and study up :)

Make sure you land that opportunity with tips from the Ultimate IT Resume Guide

Entry-Level IT Position Interview Questions

The original list of questions that really struck a chord with our readers. We got such a great response that we decided to add more to the list to highlight emerging technologies:

1. What is a network?

2. What is a default gateway?

3. What does DHCP stand for? What does DHCP do?

4. What is a Cloud?

5. What is TCP/IP and what does it stand for?

6. What is DNS and what does DNS stand for?

7. What is Active Directory?

8. What is a VLAN?

9. When would you use a VLAN?

10. What is the difference between a switch and a router?

11. What are the 3 major classes of an IP network?

12. What is a Class D IP address?

13. What is a MAC address?

14. What is OSPF?

15. A user is complaining of delays when using the network. What would you do?

16. What is virtualization and why would you use it?

17. What virtualization software solutions do you know?

Network and Server Administrator Position

These are the typical interview questions for network and server administrator positions. Depending on an organization you may also be asked other questions targeted to admins. I added some question about cloud services and virtualization solutions to my top list. Please note, there are few tricky questions listed here as well. You need to be able to tell which ones are the tricky ones and know how to answer them. Be clever :)

18. How do you keep your technical knowledge and skills current?

19. Do you belong to any user groups?

20. Tell l me about your greatest technical challenge and how you handled it. Is there anything you would have done differently now?

21. What is the maximum number of systems you have worked with at one time?

22. What is your home network like?

23. How do you document your network?

24. What is the different between IPv4 and IPv6 Address?

25. What is the significance of the IP address 255.255.255.255?

26. What is the difference between TCP and UDP?

27. What is a TCP three-way handshake?

28. What is a UDP three-way handshake?

29. How do you distinguish a DNS problem from a network problem?

30. What will happen if you leave the default gateway information empty while manually configuring TCP/IP?

31. How can you access a shared folder from a remote computer? Name at least 3 methods.

32. How many layers in OSI model? What are they?

33. What is the difference between layer 2 and layer 3 in the OSI model?

34. What is the new OSI model layer 10? Why was it added?

35. What is a default route?

36. How do you set a default route on an IOS Cisco router?

37. What is ARP/RARP?

38. What is the subnet for a class C network?

39. Where are the most common RAID levels and how many minimum disks each of them requires?

40. What is a site?

41. Which is the command used to remove active directory from a domain controller?

42. What is the file that's responsible for keeping all Active Directory databases?

43. What is Microsoft's Virtualization solution?

44. What is Windows PowerShell? Why and where do you use it?

45. What is the current and latest version of Windows PowerShell?

46. What are the differences between Windows PowerShell vs Command Prompt?

47. If I don't remember a Windows PowerShell cmdlet, what command can help me with that?

48. Which cmdlet creates a user account?

49. Which cmdlet deletes a user account?

50. What are the minimum hardware requirements for Windows Server 2012 Installation?

51. What is a User Account?

52. What are the Group Types in Windows Server 2012?

53. What are the Group Scopes in Windows Server 2012?

54. What does an OU stand for and what is it?

55. What are the Server Roles in Exchange 2013?

56. What version of PowerShell does Exchange 2013 require?

57. What are Digital Certificates and why do we need them?

I hope these questions help you feel more confident and prepared for your interview. Make sure to check out our Ultimate IT Resume Guide for more ways to standout to potential employers.

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Contributor

Gosia Grabowska

Gosia Grabowska is an experienced Network Support Specialist and an expert in Windows Server support. She graduated from DePaul University, Chicago with a Bachelor degree in Network Technologies with highest honors. Gosia has over 8 years of technical and support experience and has worked as Systems Administrator for a high profile law firm, where she managed the Backup and Disaster Recovery plan. Gosia has been a part of the Train Signal team since 2006 as the Product Manager and has written many articles on a variety of topics, including Exchange Server 2007, Windows Vista, Small Business Server, and more. (MCTS Active Directory, MCTS Vista, Network+, Linux+, Project+, PMP)