I applied online. The process took 1 day. I interviewed at HostGator.com (Houston, TX) in Jan 2012
Interview
Applied online at http://hostgator.com/jobs. Was contacted by someone from HostGator (HG) who was a recruiting coordinator for the company. She emailed me and said they would like to set up a phone "interview" and asked for my availability. Once the date and time was confirmed they sent me another email confirming such. Day of they sent another email confirming the phone interview and the time it was scheduled for. All very nice and helpful. In the email it also described some of the things you would need for the "interview". It suggested I would need an SSH client and described some of the topics that would be covered in the interview.
Interestingly enough, it said I was allowed to use any resource available to me to answer the questions (Internet, books and such) and that there was no time limit to the test, however, they did take into account the length of time it took to complete a question.
This is where I should clarify, the phone interview wasn't really an interview at all. It's strictly a skills test that involves using your computer and an SSH client to login to a test evaluation server they have and performing tasks and answering questions. At no point during the "interview" was I asked any personal questions about my background or anything of that nature. It was simply, "Hello, how are you. Do you have an SSH client? Ok good, here's the IP address of the server you'll be logging into".
This approach is likely due to the number of applicants they receive because of their large scale advertising on billboards. I previously lived in Nashville, TN where I saw them on the interstate and after moving to Houston, TX (where one of their offices are located) I saw many more. This is fine and dandy, but it really means you have to have top notch chops in order to do well on the skills test.
I unfortunately probably didn't have that. I consider myself a good Linux user, and have self taught myself basic system administration through things I've learned on the Internet and through the help of friends and IRC.
Some of the questions were very basic and I could answer easily. Others not so much.
I applied through a recruiter. The process took 3 days. I interviewed at HostGator.com
Interview
After an initial phone screening from HR I took another interview/test with an administrator. I SSH'd into a box they had setup and performed some steps that he told me over the phone.
The technical interview was fairly easy, especially since I could take my time and was allowed to look up any details/man pages when needed.
I applied through a staffing agency. The process took 1 week. I interviewed at HostGator.com (Austin, TX) in Nov 2012
Interview
The entire process took 1 week from initial interview to job offer. The first interview was question-based. They were looking for your experience and what your thought process was. The second part was an interactive interview, where you logged into one of their test environments and performed various commands and demonstrated various skills like searching, creating files with one command, networking terms, ports, etc. A lot of focus on CentOS, cPanel, and Linux.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
How do you change a list of words in a file from slug format to Capitalized words? (ie police_officer to Police Officer)
