Hi folks I need a boiler plate resume for a Novell admin. I need to see what to look for to hire one now.

Well, first, if they talk about their "Novell vX experience", then do NOT hire them.

"Novell" is a company. It makes a number of products, among them "eDirectory", "NetWare", "GroupWise", "ZENworks" and "BorderManager", just to name a few. So you're looking for "GroupWise v6.5 experience" or "implemented NetWare v6.0" or "built a 30,000 object eDirectory Tree". Someone who says "Installed Novell 5.0 server" sound be roundfiled - how much can they know if they can't distinguish between the company and one of its products? Would you be impressed by someone who wrote that they "installed a Micro$oft v4.0 server"?

As a hiring manager, I'd look for experience in modern versions of the products. Plenty of people have installed and managed NetWare v3.11. But that product is over 10 YEARS old, and was EOLed a long time ago. I'd look for people with experience in versions from THIS century - v5.1 or later of NetWare, for example (the latest is v6.5). You can see Novell's products and get the current version numbers from --> http://www.novell.com/products/

Also, if you're hiring for a modern/progressive environment, then you're also interested in someone with *NIX experience, as Novell is porting many of their products to the LInux platform and now offers SUSE Linux. If Novell is going to give you the *option* of a Linux environment, then its going to pay for you to have someone on staff who can look at that offering and decide if its right for your enterprise, or if you should remain with the traditional-kernel-based environment; or who can gauge when the switch is best made for your business.

Candidates should have a firm understanding of TCP/IP (assuming you're a modern NetWare environment), Directory Services (please note that the laughable "Active Directory" probably shouldn't count, since its really just NT Domains, and an AD person in an eDirectory environment won't know how to leverage the Directory Service to your business advantage, because they won't understand such a powerful tool), and centralized management (e.g. ZENworks).

I'm sure I'll think of more to say, and I'm sure the other TA regulars will chime in with sound advice.

Do you have an old resume that I can see to compare, also oint out highlights for me to pay close attention to?

Can you clarify if you're the actual hiring manager for the company, an HR person for the company, or a headhunter trying to fill the position at a client?

I'll see what I can dig up with respect to a resume. I haven't  been job-hunting in awhile, fairly happy where I am.

yes Man I am the dude hiring the person. I am a NT/XP guy. The College I work for wants to hire and create a new Novell network for the students.

Gotcha. Congratulations on your institution selecting a secure and reliable platform for providing network services to the student population. Clemson has gone down the same path, as has North Carolina State University, just to name two institutes of higher education I can think of offhand. In fact, Clemson was involved in the early ports of NDS to other platforms (e.g. Solaris, Linux, NT), and NCSU uses ZENworks to lock down lab machines and deliver applications to over 20,000 undergraduate students across the entire campus.

In your environment, you would probably be looking for someone with strong ZENworks (http://www.novell.com/products/zenworks/) skills. Specifically, you want at bare minimum of 6 months, preferably at least a year, of working with ZENworks 3.2 or later. The latest rev is v6.5, and it adds a lot of functionality, but if someone has been around the block with ZENworks v3.2, then they should have a firm grasp of the basics of ZENworks, even the newer versions (which are slick as hell - much better than SMS).

You also want someone with a strong NetWare (http://www.novell.com/products/netware/) footing. Experience prior to NetWare v5 should not be included when calculating their years of experience - or perhaps I should say that years of experience with NetWare prior to v5 should not count as much. For example, I would tend to prefer a candidate with 3 years of NetWare v5.x+ experience over a candidate who has 6 years of NetWare experience, but 5 of those years were with v4.2 or earlier. And I'd refine that further to say that NetWare v3 and earlier probably shouldn't count at all. Think of it this way - how relevant is Windoze for WorkGroups v3.11 experience to a W2K3 network admin now? Not very. You're looking for NetWare experience that primarily comes from versions released THIS century (v5.1 thru v6.5).

You'll also want someone who knows their way around eDirectory. An ideal candidate would have NDS/eDirectory (http://www.novell.com/products/edirectory/) experience on more than one platform. For example, someone who installed/managed NDS for NT, or eDirectory for Solaris. If someone has been around the block with NDS/eDirectory on more than one platform, then they probably have a good grasp of it. Bonus points to someone who can tell you the latest version and patch level of eDirectory for NetWare/NT (ANSWER: v8.7.3 SP3, aka v8.7.3.3).

Finially, you want someone with a good understanding of TCP/IP. This is why NetWare versions v5 and later are more relevant, as the older versions generally used IPX and had extremely limited TCP/IP support. NetWare is an excellent multi-protocol router, and BorderManager (http://www.novell.com/products/bordermanager/) a decent firewall (I'm biased towards hardware firewalls, so BorderManager loses some points with me just because its software atop an OS). Any candidate should understand TCP/IP and network management principles and practices (e.g. subnetting, collision domains, routing tables, filtering, SLP, etc. etc.)

Other plusses for candidates: Apache experience (NetWare v5.1 and later ships with Apache webserver); Perl, PHP and/or MySQL experience (NetWare v6.0 and later ships with all of those); iSCSI experience (NetWare v6.5 can function both as a target and an initiator); cluster services experience (NetWare v6.0 and later ships with a 2-node Cluster Services license *included*).

The rest of what you're looking for will depend on what services you're planning on delivering to your student population. For example, if you want to give each student a full-fleged E-Mail account complete with collaboration services (like shared calendaring, message routing, shared document libraries, etc.), then GroupWise (http://www.novell.com/products/groupwise/) fits that bill. However, if you want to take a more ISP-like approach and just offer mailboxes accessible thru, say, any ol' IMAP client (such as Thunderbird), then NetMail (http://www.novell.com/products/netmail/) is probably a better choice (and a lot cheaper, too). And that's just one example of a service and the different ways in which it might be delivered.

If you can tell us where, geophysically, your college is located, then an Expert might have some ideas of good candidates, or at least be able to suggest places for you to advertise.

I would also suggest, seeing that OES will be released in a couple-three months or so, that Linux experience would be a plus.

I thot I said that in my 11/17 @10:12am Comment: "Also, if you're hiring for a modern/progressive environment, then you're also interested in someone with *NIX experience, as Novell is porting many of their products to the LInux platform and now offers SUSE Linux. If Novell is going to give you the *option* of a Linux environment, then its going to pay for you to have someone on staff who can look at that offering and decide if its right for your enterprise, or if you should remain with the traditional-kernel-based environment; or who can gauge when the switch is best made for your business."

I feel invisible..... >wah< !!!!

(Sorry, Raziel989, the invisible bit is a long-running joke in this TA)

Sorry - a quick scan of your comment didn't register that, so I said it anyways.   Oh, well.

No problem, I thot the situation was funny. :-)

I’m just adding to the great recommendations so far. As you know business directives and funding go hand in hand which also dictates the environment. I’ll only speak on the ZENworks side. For a ZEN worker, you need to have someone experienced in all levels of desktop and application management. Not to mention experience in directory structures and data movement over an enterprise.

ZfD Qualifications:

- Ability to create, edit, and evaluate applications to create MSI’s for deployment.
- Experience with InstallShield, Wise, and other MSI editors.
- Working knowledge of Windows GPOs.
- Linux
- Thrives in a fast and stressful environment.
- Long hours and politics on application distribution priorities.

This is just a primer,
ZENworker

I don't hire anybody that tries to use INETCFG to setup a test server :)

-Mojo

But what if what you're testing is INETCFG?  hehe.

I am desperately in need of a Job. Does anyone know of a vacancy? Is there a site for NetWare ZENWorks jobs.

Thanks in advance.

Shabbir

Raziel's looking for someone... :)