Kindly ignore my writing skills. English is not my first language. I finished my bachelors in electronics and communications a decade ago. The only subjects in bachelors that I scored " A " are wireless communications, Network Theory, digital communications, microwave theory, satellite communications and Linear integrated circuits. Continued my masters in electrical engineering with major in computer Network Theory, Advanced network theory. Built my very first router on Free Bsd that can function as " router on a stick" with fail over capability. Even created a script that can send me snmp alerts to my mail, which of course never worked. As I graduated, I passed CCNA with help of packet tracer, internet and basic cisco switch hardware. That where my real struggle started, for 9 months after graduation I did nothing but studying , practicing on packet tracer to find my first job. It was fairly well paid job but was a short 3 month project. My task was to design and build a security NAC device that runs linux with HA with single sign on capability. I spent hours in the lab, building and testing the design. Even spent weekends, trying to make simple configuration work. Passed the final pilot design to the full time engineers and called it a day. It gave me enough thrust to push my career to land in second job, which was of a "certified network engineer" role. Job was easy and simple with enough scope to learn new environments and technologies. Level 3 Engineers used to prepare the design, configuration for us(admins) to execute during weekends and off production hours. This is where I first implemented routing/switching protocols in real production environment. Here is when I learnt how PPP technology work, how WLC/LWAP and Autonomous APs , mesh APs, data center switches like Nexus , WAAS, QOS and as I became senior I got hands on CSM and ACE, VGs and H3.323 protocols etc and I was laid off after 2 years because of budget. Ever since for the past 6 years, I was purely working in routing and switching environment and recently decided I should try a new job that gives me same hands on experience in network security, wireless security, load balancers/application managers, cloud or SD WAN. As I appear for interview, I loose all my self confidence failing to answer some of the questions that are considered very basic by some. Like for example, in one interview, interviewer asked me how DHCP client-server requests are exchanged. I was able to answer how the multicast are sent by the client, and how ip helpers act as relay for dhcp packets , how option 43 is required for lwap dhcp clients etc, but to the question about what are the dhcp messages (discover, offer, request, acknowledge)?, I had no answer. I can answer questions on how BPDUs are exchanged for STP etc, but when asked what is the lowest priority you can use for STP, my answer was 4096, which was in fact very wrong. And this happens with dynamic routing protocols like eigrp, ospf as well. While troubleshooting eigrp, I probably have seen 6 to 7 scenarios all my life, most of them being L2 loops , SIA and issues like unidirectional multicast issues where seen mostly while troubleshooting PPP telco links. When interviewer goes little out of my comfort zone and shoot a scenario that has predefined answer, I cant simply answer him as if the answer is right in front of me . I start analyzing the scenario and I start the answer with multiple sh command outputs, logs, recent config changes and debug output then coming up with a possible conclusion on where the issue probably sourced, based on multiple possibilities. Where as interviewer expects me to give a "BINGO" right away as if I work on that scenario, everyday ! This makes me introspect, do i real worth it ? Am I really poor with my skill set ? How do you folks out there prepare before hand for interviews? Is there a particular type of homework that i have to prepare before hand? Should I upfront prepare for more scenarios than those that I actually ever implemented and be ready to answer ? And second I would like to be a wireless security guy, I have wireless experience with couple of certifications but no experience working with firewalls, proxy servers, ACS or ISE. Recently took CCNA security and palo alto ACE. But with this level of confidence that I have at the moment, I feel myself terrible looking at how fast network field is moving towards cloud / virtualization and I am still here introspecting what should I do to present myself better during interviews. I am sad that I am not the same network engineer when I first graduated from unviersity :'(
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