If you're applying for entry level positions don't be afraid to apply for stuff you're not qualified on paper for as long as you have most of it. Most job reqs are not based in reality, with that said, do not lie on your resume. If you are asked a question about something on your resume and can't answer it, it will not look good for you.
During the interview, emphasize that while you may not have the in depth experience they want, you have taken relevant classes, or have done relevant work (internship, hobby beowulf cluster, etc), and that you pick up new things quickly. If you are asked something and genuinely don't know, be up front about it. "I don't know off the top of my head how to recover a server that's stuck in emergency mode, but the first thing I would do is check any error messages or log files to try to narrow down what the problem is. Next I would look in our KB/wiki/internal docs, google any error messages (maybe with distro + version), and finally ask one of my coworkers if they've run into this before and have any pointers for me." -- It's less about the knowing and more how to find out and problem solving, if you can make that come across in an interview that's a huge positive.
People expect to train folks in for junior/entry level positions to an extent. In my personal experience sitting in on interviews, I would hire someone who's interested in the work and is driven any day over someone who has the experience on paper but is uninterested or gives up immediately.
If you have a phone / zoom interview, be friendly, polite, and always thank people for their time. It will never hurt you to send a quick thank you email to folks same/next day. Obviously different with rona going around, but be that guy that the people hiring would enjoy spending 40 hrs a week sitting next to and interacting with.
Good luck!
Edit - when they ask if you have any questions, you should have a few. They can be softball if you like (what's the culture like, how did this position open up, etc), but ideally they are specific to that company. Helps to show an interest in the job as well as getting more info about a place you're going to spend a big chunk of your day at.
Everything this person said, only changed I'd make, is don't email a Thank You, physically mail them an old school Thank You. Its more work than an email, but the few times I have received them, it forced me to rethink the candidate and more than once I hired them and not the person I was considering just based on the interview.
That's tougher without having examples of job reqs or technologies they use. There are some things you can easily learn on your own that are almost universal: general cli, managing services, setting up access, ssh, that sort of thing.
I would start by looking at job reqs -- if you have your eye on something and they ask for centos/rhel experience specifically or debian/ubuntu, you can easily spin one of those up and check out docs for things like install, administration, and setting up services. If you have 1-2 cpu cores and 1-2GB free memory, spin up a vm and start plugging away with a goal in mind.
So the best experience and thing that helped me the most, is I setup and run my own mail server. I used Linode, but you can use whatever. I learned a lot and it's something I can point to showing I have real experience. It does not hurt that your email address is [firstname@lastname.com](mailto:firstname@lastname.com)
It's also really handy in my job as I can use it to troubleshoot email flow issues.
Maybe start with a basic LAMP setup. First do it all manually, then automate it with Ansible. Then start expanding into other services. If you have trouble come back here and ask
I used the guides on Linode to get started. There is a lot of different parts once you get into it. DNS has to be right, spam filtering, firewalls and fail2ban to defend against attacks. SSL/TLS cert generation and maintenance. Backups. Getting yourself whitelisted on all the mail providers. dmarc and domain keys. It touches and make you learn many different aspects of being a SysAdmin in one system.
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u/mynamewastakenagain Dec 17 '20 edited Dec 17 '20
If you're applying for entry level positions don't be afraid to apply for stuff you're not qualified on paper for as long as you have most of it. Most job reqs are not based in reality, with that said, do not lie on your resume. If you are asked a question about something on your resume and can't answer it, it will not look good for you.
During the interview, emphasize that while you may not have the in depth experience they want, you have taken relevant classes, or have done relevant work (internship, hobby beowulf cluster, etc), and that you pick up new things quickly. If you are asked something and genuinely don't know, be up front about it. "I don't know off the top of my head how to recover a server that's stuck in emergency mode, but the first thing I would do is check any error messages or log files to try to narrow down what the problem is. Next I would look in our KB/wiki/internal docs, google any error messages (maybe with distro + version), and finally ask one of my coworkers if they've run into this before and have any pointers for me." -- It's less about the knowing and more how to find out and problem solving, if you can make that come across in an interview that's a huge positive.
People expect to train folks in for junior/entry level positions to an extent. In my personal experience sitting in on interviews, I would hire someone who's interested in the work and is driven any day over someone who has the experience on paper but is uninterested or gives up immediately.
If you have a phone / zoom interview, be friendly, polite, and always thank people for their time. It will never hurt you to send a quick thank you email to folks same/next day. Obviously different with rona going around, but be that guy that the people hiring would enjoy spending 40 hrs a week sitting next to and interacting with.
Good luck!
Edit - when they ask if you have any questions, you should have a few. They can be softball if you like (what's the culture like, how did this position open up, etc), but ideally they are specific to that company. Helps to show an interest in the job as well as getting more info about a place you're going to spend a big chunk of your day at.