- There are some things that you have
to keep in mind when it comes to attributes and behaviors.
So depending on the type of the job,
that the interviewer might be looking
to specific attributes and behaviors.
That's something that is very common.
So mainly, for example, if you are dealing with a job
that require, you know, emotional intelligence, be calm.
Such as incident responder,
you're gonna be really dealing
with these stressful situations.
So there are attributes that are important.
Stay calm under pressure, something extremely important.
Excellent problem solving skills,
critical thinking while investigating the incident.
All of those things are important.
So the question is how prepared you are for those things.
Now, if you are new to the cybersecurity field,
and you have not done incident responding in the past,
and you are applying for a junior position,
and you know that this type of job require those behaviors,
those attributes and behaviors,
how can you exercise yourself to get better on that?
So that's the point, before apply to a job,
research about the job, research about the desirable
attributes and behaviors for that type of job.
Because you can start, even before apply,
you can start exercising those things,
getting better on those things,
so that by the time of the interview
you're ready for the interview.
That's why it's so important to before apply
do the research about the job,
about the position and what is required,
not only from the technical perspective,
but for the soft skills perspective as well.
The other thing is interviewers may have
different approach to ask questions,
there are different scenario based questions
that will validate your experience and skills.
The scenarios will vary according to the job role.
Different job roles will, you know,
go towards a more direct type of question.
The other one may have a scenario-based type of question.
So let's go back to our example of incident responder.
A potential scenario be a troubleshooting scenario.
How you investigate this
from the troubleshooting standpoint.
In a cybersecurity architect role,
well, in this one, the potential scenario's more around
designing the solution, because they want to understand,
they want to understand from you how you approach
designing a cyberarchitecture solution
covering the different pieces and everything.
This is a very complex situation.
And if you are in person, they may require
you to draw things on the whiteboards and things like that.
So keep that in mind.
Let's go through some sample questions
like sample scenario-based question.
Let's say you need to implement a solution that detects
potential attempts to RDP brute force in any VM
and automatically create rules
in a firewall blocking the source IP of the attack.
What solution would you use?
So they give you the scenario.
And they ask you, okay, this is the scenario,
what you are gonna do now.
This is a scenario-based type of question.
Now, one thing that you can do here is ask questions.
It's very normal and actually good.
The first question you can say
is this RDP brute force happening often?
There is a pattern that we see, that the IP address
of the attacker is coming from a random place
or is always from the same place.
Is this always to the same VM or random VMs?
Things like that to clarify the scenario.
So if you feel like you need clarification, you can do that.
The other thing is, okay,
I need to automate the creation of firewall rules.
Does this firewall allow remote creation of rules
so that I can create an automation,
probably using API calls or there is any script language
that the firewall allows me to do?
What is this file located?
Is it in the cloud, it is a physical firewall?
Questions that help you to understand the scenario
so that you can design the solution.
So that's all important.
The other type of question is what we call
the direct question, boom,
that's a very straightforward question.
Let's say for example, the interviewer asks a question
that can be based on your experience
or based on your understanding about a specific topic.
This is when the interviewer asks questions
based on your experience, my tip is only tell the truth.
Do not made up things.
Do not create fictitious scenarios
just to say I experienced this in the past.
It is very dangerous to exaggerate
or even lie during the interview process.
But in situations like that, because the interviewer
might ask follow-up questions,
that's an interesting scenario, tell me more about it.
And if you start to dig, dig and ask questions,
and if you're lying, you're gonna forget something,
you're gonna make a mistake.
So don't lie about scenarios.
Don't lie about things that you don't know,
that you never lived.
It's okay to say I haven't experienced that in the past yet.
I really didn't have any experience
with this particular scenario in the past.
What I did experience was this,
you can replace if it is applicable,
but don't create things that don't exist.
That's very dangerous.
Or it can be direct questions,
such as what does collaborations mean to you?
Define to me what collaborations mean to you.
Or a technical question.
What are the principles of zero trust?
That's a direct question too.
But here, there is no scenario.
It's just like, okay, what this means to you?
What is this?
The definition of this.
What are the principles of zero trust?
Direct questions.
Previous experience questions, what I said before.
In this case, the interviewer will try to dig
to understand how you handle previous experience.
For example, tell me about a situation where you were able
to resolve a problem after a bad escalation,
where the customer was really upset,
but you were able to revert the situation,
the customer was happy at the end.
As a customer focus, troubleshooting,
describe and be clear on your description.
If you really lived that situation,
you should know about it.
So you can be verbose as long as you are leading
to the answer that the interviewer is looking for.
It is also fictitious scenarios, but this is the interviewer
asking about fictitious scenarios.
So the interviewer may come up with a fictitious scenarios
where he puts you in a position of power to make decisions
or in a position of pressure to see how you behave.
In this case, for example, let's say you are under pressure
to finalize the project in the next 10 days,
and you need leadership support to make this happen.
What would you do to convince leadership
about the importance of this project?
So here is a fictitious scenario.
They put you in a situation of pressure
to deal with leadership.
What you're gonna do now, again, this is a situation
that you may have not experienced in the past.
And it could be tricky, but be logical, calm,
describe what you would do at that point.
Don't say I've done that in the past if you never did.
Just describe what would you do and how you approach that.
And I always try to correlate the main attributes,
collaboration, customer focus, empathy, adaptability,
how can I fit all those attributes into this scenario?
The other thing is make sure
that you learn from the interview process.
If it happens that you are not selected,
this is not the end of the world,
this is not the end of the tunnel, there still is a journey.
You will fail.
And this is expected because if you are trying,
you're gonna fail at some point.
Now, if you don't try, you never fail,
but you also never get there.
So just be mindful that you are either going to get the job
or you're gonna learn from the interview process.
As long as you are learning, as long as you don't reach,
at the end of the interview process,
I was not hired, that's not fair.
I don't care about this company anymore.
What did you learn?
You just think you're too much for the company
and they didn't hire you because they didn't like you
or something, or they didn't like some things that you said,
or they didn't think you were prepared,
or they didn't think you were a good fit.
And that's fine.
You have to learn with the interview process.
Because without learning,
you don't really reach your full potential.
So it's a cycle.
We go through the cycle.
Phase one is the preparations, is the research.
Phase two is the applying for the interview process.
Phase three is really learning, incorporating the feedback.
Many times you are gonna have a chance
to talk to the interviewer and say, okay,
thanks for letting me know that I was not accepted.
Do you have any feedback from me?
I would really appreciate if you could share some feedback
so I can improve in those areas
that you all believe I need to improve.
So that's great, you gave a good impression.
Your open mind, you know, with this growth mindset,
that you realized that you need to improve.
So think about that.
The interview is a process, it is not the end.
It is a journey, and you may have to go to multiple rounds
to get where you want to be.