I've been a contract sysadmin for a long time. In a former "life" part of my work was doing phone screens and job interviews for contract sysadmin candidates.

If a candidate's answer to a nonspecific troubleshooting scenario didn't begin with (or contain very close to the beginning of the answer) "look at the logs" I'd bump them. Anybody whose problem-solving methodology doesn't including gathering pertinent data early in the process isn't somebody I want "solving" problems for me.