You're asking the wrong question :) It's not about what specific questions you should ask. The question you should ask yourself is "what am I looking for and h

You're asking the wrong question :) It's not about what specific questions you should ask. The question you should ask yourself is "what am I looking for and how to I detect this?" Only you can answer the first part, the second part follows from the first. When you write down a question to ask you must also explain to yourself and the other interviewers why you are asking this question. For example, recently I've just been interviewing SysAdmins to manage a diverse data centre. Three key traits that I believe are extremely important for the position I've been trying to fill are: 1. Automation: the ratio of servers to people to so high that you have to want to automate as much as possible, otherwise you will drown in a sea of menial tasks. 2. Rigor: dirty hacks and unfixed bugs have a tendency to creep on you; I'm looking for people who will go beyond hacking in a work-around and instead take the time to fix things properly - not just reboot the machine in the hope that the problem goes away. 3. Debugging skills: sysadmin problems often involve subtle interactions between multiple layers of the software and hardware stack; you need a broad understanding and the skills to home in quickly on the problem area to be efficient. So, this is what I consider important. What questions do I ask? 1. I ask questions like "how would you install Linux on 50 machines?" Burning 50 CDs is not the correct answer :-) The key is not whether they can explain PXE/KickStart but rather whether they show an inclination to automate the process. 2. I ask questions where there are quick and easy work-around answers, and I look for candidates who take the long term view and say "I'd do blah blah. I know that it would take longer in the short term, but it's better in the long term because ...". 3. I do a debugging role play. I explain that I'm interested in how they go about debugging a problem and then we do a role play where I describe the first "help me!" email, they say what they'd do (e.g. I'd check log file X) and I tell them what they find in log file X and ask them what they'd do next, etc. It doesn't matter whether we get to the "final answer" or not, what I'm interested in is how they think. There are, of course, more questions. But each one is asked for a reason. Decide what is important for you, and then ask questions that reveal whether the candidate has these characteristics.