Business English p.5. Preparing.

Дата публикации: Jul 17, 2015 6:2:21 PM

1. Tell me about yourself

My name is Vyacheslav Kazakov. I'm 39. I'm from Russia.

I have 8-year experience in this area.

I graduated from The Ural State University of Railway Transport and my major is Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering.

As I have always enjoyed working with computers, I started working as an assistant in one of the computer labs while I was studying at the University.

There, I had a lot experience of administration and supporting the IT infrastructure.

Then I worked at Uraltel Ltd and then at Mobile Telecomunication Systems, both are Mobile Network Operators.

My responsibilities were configuration and troubleshooting of the local branch office billing subsystem infrastructure.

Later I decided to change the focus of my professional interest a bit and started working at a regional system integrator company - U-SYS Co. Ltd.

As you can see, before that I had worked for consumers of IT-services and working in a system integrator company let me have an experience of planning and deploying new hardware and software systems.

My team duties were providing technical support and outsourcing of IT-infrastructure to the customers.

I specialized in a unix operational systems area, especially in Sun Solaris OS.

After that I worked as a team leader of servers and storage support team at Nvision group Ltd for 5 years.

I was in charge of operational planning and quality control of the team members' activities and management of cooperation with the main Hardware and Software vendors in planning and implementation hardware and software systems.

However, I was still working on some complicated cases, especially on heterogeneous ones.

I kept specialized in different unixes and cluster systems, for example Sun Cluster software.

Now I'm working at Sberbank Technologies Ltd as a senior engineer of the developing environment administration department.

My responsibilities are preparing testing environments for the development departments, performing stress testing and analyzing the results of them.

That's all about my education and work history.

As for my personal characteristics, I'm very motivated, confident and reliable worker.

Besides, I'm an initiative team-worker.

I like to communicate with people, share my knowledge and learn from others.

As I've mostly been working as a technical support engineer, my motto is "keep calm and never give up".

So I'm sure that almost any aim can be achieved if I'll keep trying.

Now, I'm moving on to the projects which I was involved in.

One of the projects is a High Availability Solution of Credit Card Processing Subsystem for one of the local banks.

I was in charge of planning, implementation and testing the system.

The system consisted of 2 x M5000, 2 x Sun Storage 6780, storage area network and two Sun Cluster implementations between two hardware domains with Solaris 10 Zones on them.

Firstly, I organized a demonstration of similar hardware and software complex in cooperation with the vendors.

The demo-session was very successful, so the customer started the project.

Later, I went to the site, deployed and got tested all of the hardware and system software.

It was very interesting project and I had much experience from it.

That's all about it.

In addition, I'd like to tell you about one of my technical support cases.

It was very complicated and consequently very interesting.

A Sun SPARC server was hanging during reboot when it had an HP tape library being connected through SAN.

When the tapes were disconnected from the server, everything became okay, but the server needed those tapes as it was a backup server.

The environment was very heterogeneous:

The first, the Sun Server with Qlogic host bus adapters.

The second, storage area switches were Cisco MDS' but they were bought from different vendors: EMC and HP.

The switches had a different microcode and they were supported by different technical teams.

The third, the HP enterprise level tape library. It had a couple of SAN-concentrators inside itself.

I attempted to fix it by many different ways:

On the one hand, I opened support tickets at vendors technical support to analyze the server's behaviour.

On the other hand, I updated OS and HBA-drivers, I managed to organize the process of updating microcode on all the switches but with no success.

Then, I investigated that the problem was in the multipathing software. It was PowerPath who took the tapes as arrays and hanged the server.

After the PP was updated everything became okay.

Finally, I'd like to tell you about my recently activity at Sberbank Technologies Ltd.

I am in charge of some SPARC T5-servers and I had two tasks: to automate new testing environments deploying and to optimize hardware resources usage.

So I deployed Jumpstart and AutoInstall servers for Solaris 10 and 11 and created golden images for the LDOM and zone deployment of both OS.

Then I prepared my ldoms and zones so that they can be migrated to the other server if needed.

As for optimization, I made a procedure of measuring resources usage by ldoms and zones and if the consumption would be low, I can decrease the amount of resources for the particular domain or zone.

In addition, I'd like to give you some extended information about my professional skills and certifications.

I have more than eight years of experience in design, deployment, administration and technical support of different Unix systems.

Moreover I have a broad ranging certification of relevant software and hardware, for example:

Oracle Certified Solaris 11 Specialist, also I have Sun Solaris 10, 9 certifications

Sun Certified System Administrator for Sun Cluster

Sun Field Delivery & Help Desk Engineer

IBM System p Administration Specialist

Brocade Certified Fabric Professional

Symantec Veritas Certified Storage Foundation Specialist

2. Why did you leave your last job?

I’ve been with Nvision for over five years and I’ve enjoyed working there.

I learned a lot about making projects in IT-area and how to work effectively with my colleagues.

Now, I’m looking for a company that will allow me to more fully utilize my skills and where I can take on new challenges.

Counter question

Well, if the position you are describing/offering is that good, how can it's vacant?

2.1 Why are you looking for a new job?

As you can see, I have broad experience and knowledge in the area of my professional interests and now I’m ready for a new challenge.

I want to work in a company where I can be challenged and where I can make a contribution.

Your company is a leader in the industry and I’d like to be part of that.

3. Why do you want to work here?

As you can see, I have broad experience and knowledge in the area of my professional interests and now I’m ready for a new challenge.

That’s why I’m now looking for a company that will allow me to more fully utilize my skills and where I can take on new challenges.

What I can see in this position is also the opportunity for growth and advancement.

I think that my skills and abilities are a good match with the current needs of your company.

4. Where do you see yourself in five years?

My goal for 5 years is to be a technical support team leader in this company.

One of the reasons I am applying for this position is that this is a large company with a lot of opportunities for advancement.

If I continue working in the support department I can take a managerial position.

5. What are your strengths?

I'm really good at planning, installation, implementation, configuration and troubleshooting of mission critical systems, especially based on Oracle Solaris OS.

I am very focused person and I always make sure that what ever project I work on, I will see to completion.

I like to be challenged, especially if it is investigation into some complicated issue.

My favorite book is about Sherlock Holmes and I try to use his methods in my professional area.

As for my personal characteristics, I'm very motivated, confident and reliable worker.

Besides, I'm an initiative team-worker.

I like to communicate with people, share my knowledge and learn from others.

As I've mostly been working as a technical support engineer, my motto is "keep calm and never give up".

So I'm sure that almost any aim can be achieved if I'll keep trying.

6. What are your weaknesses?

Earlier, I was a little too focused on one task so it wasn't simple for me to switch among several tasks.

When I realized that, I decided improved my time management skill so I took some lectures in the Internet on this topic.

What's more, I took a Project Management course at Coursera web site and started using project planning tools in my work.

Now, I use this type of planning for all of my major job tasks and even at home, I document all of my steps when I do my work and I move through my task from milestone to milestone so it is easy to switch among several project having plans and documentation about all stages.

So now my weakness doesn't prevent me to do my job effectively and efficiently.