Let’s say you’re assigned the challenge of contributing to the hiring efforts of your business or organization. You’ve already contributed some content for HR’s general job posting, and now you’re interviewing candidates for an open web administrator position. What interview questions do you pull?
Naturally, the answer to this question will vary based on the individual. You should always carefully consider the individual and their work/extracurricular history before formulating a full list of questions to ask.
But your prep time is limited and today is the day. What should you ask?
We’ve reached out to our IT, CIO, and other contacts to conglomerate a list of web administrator interview questions and hope you will find some of them useful in your search for the perfect candidate.
Basic web admin interview questions
Here are a few to establish the candidate’s credibility right out of the gate:
Can you explain CORS and what experience you’ve had with it?
- You’ll want to know about their experience with cross-origin resource sharing. Listen for responses which highlight identifying server credentials such as Cookies and HTTP Authentication data.
What is a firewall?
- Another of the most basic questions you could ask: the candidate should show strong confidence in answering this. Ask them further about their experience with firewalls in both software and hardware.
Have you ever created a custom WordPress theme?
- Obviously only valid if your org’s site is WP-based.
How would you check for and fix a broken link?
- This establishes their habits for solving a common problem.
In what situations would you give or deny admin rights to a local user?
- Can you trust them with this responsibility?
What is your experience with web management tools?
How do you measure website conversion rates?
What are a couple reasons for low loading speeds and how are they fixed?
What is your experience with SEO?
More in-depth questions
Now that you’ve established base-level fluency, it’s time to ask questions which get to the heart of the candidate’s experience and how it might fit within your organization’s needs.
What types of network cabling have you worked with?
- This is especially important to ask if the person in this position is going to be working with any data transfer or AV.
If you had to estimate, what are the server capacity needs for our org/company?
- Only ask this after some introductory discussion of your company and its overall needs.
Tell us about a challenge you’ve solved that required a unique solution?
- This is more of a personal accomplishment question which should be phrased warmly and with genuine interest — after all, this is your web administrator candidate’s chance to reveal more about how they solve problems in-the-moment.
We will soon launch a new website [with XYZ specifications or details]. How you would approach this?
- Obviously more useful if your org is, in fact, planning this. Gives you more insight into how much they’ve prepared by researching your business/org and what ideas they could bring to the table.
Where do you go to learn more about new web tools?
- Is this candidate in the habit of keeping up to date with web administrator best practices? What initiative do they show?
Have you recently visited a website that could use a much better user experience? What was it like and what would you recommend?
- This will give you further insight into their problem-solving and perhaps provide an opportunity for some levity. Interviews are stressful – help them relax by showing it is ok for them to wax poetic about how bad the site was and, more seriously, what they would do to help it out.
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