I was out of work for quite a while before the right friend heard I was in the IT field and said she knew the manager of the Help Desk at CCE. She called him, he called me, and we had a 1-hour informal phone interview that was mostly him asking me about my personal background to get a feel for who I was and whether I might be a good fit for the environment. They called me in for an in-person interview and skills assessment, so I came in. I was interviewed by 4 people: a long-time analyst, the Help Desk's trainer, and 2 supervisors. It was essentially more of what was asked on the phone in addition to how easy I think I am to train and some typical interview mean-nothing questions like "what are your 3 greatest strengths/weaknesses?" I fed them my canned responses I had thought of beforehand just in case they were behind-the-times enough to still be asking such questions, and they ate it up. After a half hour of in-person question/answer, they gave me the skills assessment and left the room. The skills assessment was 25 questions pertaining to some general computer knowledge as well as knowledge of domains specific to their Help Desk. I think I left 9 blank and probably missed 6 others. They said people don't typically do well on it, so I was only marginally worried by how difficult it seemed. When I finished the test, I turned it in to the secretary on the same floor and left. That was that. One of the easiest interviews I've ever had. I was very overdressed in my $120 suit and tie. Every Friday is jeans day and every other day is just nice khakis and a polo or sweater... Also, the skills assessment had little to do with the tasks associated with the job. The questions were so contrived that I still couldn't answer some of them after working here for over a year, and the others were either so common sense it was just ridiculous or were not relevant to performing this job anyway (for instance, "Name 3 ways of finding a computer's IP address" - One of the first things they go over in training is how to use a special tool [that isn't normally on a PC!!!] to easily obtain the IP address, rendering your knowledge of 3 or more ways completely useless).