IT interviews in Somalia and Somaliland are usually a panel of three to five people: the IT manager or a senior technician, someone from HR, and often a manager from the department you will support, who is not technical at all. The panel is rarely testing whether you have memorised commands. It is testing four things, and each one has a line on the scoring sheet.
- Method: how you find the cause of a problem. A candidate who says “first I check whether it is one user or the whole office” scores higher than one who lists ten tools.
- Plain communication: can you explain a problem to the finance officer or the director in one sentence they understand? Most of your users will not be IT people.
- Data protection and backups: do you have habits, not just opinions? Backups that are tested, access given only when it is needed, passwords that are never shared.
- Honesty: do you know the limit of what you know, and do you say so? An IT panel can check a claim with one follow-up question, and a bluff ends the interview in their minds.
The process usually has a practical part. For support and network posts it is a live scenario: “This laptop cannot print; show us what you do.” For developer posts it is a coding exercise of 30 to 90 minutes, sometimes sent by email the day before, or a walk through code you bring. For data posts it is an Excel or Kobo task with a messy file. Ask HR which of these to expect when you confirm the invitation, and bring your own laptop, charged, if they allow it.