Take this job and ... give it to me!

May 30, 2011 6:46 AM

Help me ace this job interview, where they're looking for someone to "support a bazillion printers and MFDs for a crap-ton of users and offices all over the world." (my translation of the HR-speak)

Pursuant to this this question, I have an interview coming up tomorrow. I've had one job offer already from another firm, and a couple of in-person interviews that went well, but I'd really like to ace this one.

Here's the description:

"This position is primarily responsible for the configuration and implementation documentation and third-level support for the Firm's end user printing services. These tasks will account for no more than 50% of the position time. As a law firm, we have almost 1,700 HP printers and HP/Xerox multi-function devices throughout our 37 offices world-wide. This position is involved with certification, testing, creating configuration standards and deployment procedures, training our System Administration team, help desk and second level team in the deployment and providing third level support to local and regional IT teams responsible for the individual printers and MFDs...multi-site Active Directory Microsoft client/server print services environment."

I have experience with consulting for legal firms, so I understand how critical this is for them - but most of the firms I've worked for have been small, under 20 lawyers. This firm is huge, with over 2,000 lawyers. I need to be able to convince them that my skills are scalable and that I can manage their environment.

To that end, I know what I would say about how to handle the challenges of this position, but I'd like to see what the hivemind thinks. What would this hiring manager like to hear?

Note: the rest of the position is regular sys admin stuff, mainly in AD and VMWare.

posted by HopperFan to work & money (5 answers total)

Well, if they are Lexmark MFDs you can use things like the Lexmark Management Console to manage all of the printers from one console. The thing that I would worry most about is not the config of the printers but the service. Do they have a service contract with someone for these 37 different locations?

For the record, that's a lot of work for one person, unless everything is already running smoothly and they just need you to maintain it.
posted by dgeiser13 at 7:11 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

I know what I would say about how to handle the challenges of this position, but I'd like to see what the hivemind thinks.

This part of the hivemind thinks you're bluffing and would like to hear your solution before telling you how to do your job.
posted by Civil_Disobedient at 7:18 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

"thinks you're bluffing"

I never bluff. I'd probably say something like :

Are you looking for someone to re-engineer your environment (or parts of it), or just maintain the current setup? What kind of change and configuration controls do you have in place? How many print servers are in place, which OS, and are they VMs? Do all of the printers follow an established and consistent naming convention? How do you currently integrate scanning with your existing document management solution (note: It's Autonomy iManage, I asked the recruiter about this) Tell me about your AD structure - are the printers mapped to users via GPOs? Do you use roaming profiles? Are you using WebJetAdmin, alone or with other solutions for remote management?

etc...
posted by HopperFan at 8:35 AM on May 30, 2011 [1 favorite]

It looks to me as if there is a pretty heavy training component to this job, so think about preparing for that aspect of it too. How you'd set up curricula/outlines, delivery across offices, etc. Talking about standardization across offices is also not a bad idea, although good luck with actually implementing standards in a law firm ;-)
posted by Gorgik at 8:49 AM on May 30, 2011

Use the Laserjet 4 driver for everything. It will work fine.
posted by gjc at 5:38 PM on May 30, 2011