- So now that you went through the triage,
you went through the first round of interview
and you schedule your next rounds,
it's time for you to continue moving forward.
There are different rounds, right?
So as I mentioned before,
technical excellence is sometimes covered
by one interview only, because that interviewer
will focus only on technical questions.
That's not the rule of thumb.
This is something that it can happen.
As I mentioned before,
maybe you have one interview covering multiple competencies,
and technical excellence is one competency.
So it really depends.
If, for example, the position that you are applying for
is about, let's say, cybersecurity analyst,
maybe the style of interview will bake technical questions
as part of each round of interview.
For example, the interviewer may say,
the interview number one, let's say,
interviewer number one will ask questions
related to collaboration within the realm of cybersecurity.
So they will give you a scenario, a cybersecurity scenario
and see how you collaborate to resolve that scenario.
So this is a very interesting point,
because when the company approached this way
all the things are embedded.
It's not a very clear cut.
It's not just, oh, okay,
let's just focus on collaboration in general.
No, I want to bring cybersecurity scenarios
where you're gonna have to show me collaboration, right?
For example,
let's say the question is you are investigating a breach,
you found some evidence, some indications of compromise.
Now you need to obtain a log from the database
but you don't have access to that database.
What's your next steps to obtain the logs from the database?
Well, we're gonna have to collaborate
with the database administrator, with the data team.
You have to understand who owns that database,
if the owner of the database allows you to have access
to the log so you can do another investigation.
So you have to collaborate with different teams.
So keep that in mind about the competencies.
The questions can also be
and can also come from different angles, right?
I can ask a customer focused question
related to a cybersecurity topic.
For example, a stressful situation.
The customer opened an incident saying
that his computer got hijacked
and now he is unable to log on
because there is a message said
that the data got encrypted by a ransomware.
How are you going to deal with this situation,
and which questions are you going to ask to the customer?
How empathetic you're gonna be with customer situation?
All those things.
In the book, I bring some examples about scenarios
and the different angles of each scenario.
For example,
for a cloud security architect senior level position,
the angle of the interview is looking more
for a implementation perspective.
So the question might be more hands on,
while the interview is looking more for a design angle,
the question would be more
from the architecture perspective.
So there is that too.
the position, the seniority of the position
will also dictate which angle the question is gonna be.
When we say technical question, it's a very broad term.
It can be multiple angles, not only from the hands-on,
but understanding the technology,
the implementation considerations,
the architecture and all that.
So keep that in mind.
Some other considerations that you may think about
is some recruiters and some organizations, actually,
they prefer to schedule back to back meetings.
In other words,
you schedule from 8:00 to 9:00 to do one round,
9:30 to 10:30, another rounds.
They sometimes give at least 30 minutes interval in between
so you can rest and you can refresh.
This usually happens more in a in-person type of interview,
when companies fly you to the headquarter
or to the location where they have the office
where you are going to be potentially hired.
And they do back to back, for example,
they schedule the whole morning of interviews to you.
What is very important, if this is the case,
if you are going to onsite interview
or even online to this matter, is that you always are fresh.
Very important to be fresh, hydrated,
and keep the same enthusiasm and attitude
across all the interview.
What I mean by that is sometimes people
get lack of motivation
because the first round didn't go well.
It's not the end of the game
if the first round didn't go well, you can still
impress the other interviewers.
Because remember, when the whole thing is done,
all the interviewers
are going to get together and decide if they
are going to offer the job or not.
Which means that
if you were able to impress three out of four,
that's great, because if those three are very impressed,
that one that was not so impressed
is probably not gonna be the one
that will veto your hiring process.
Unless the company says that
in order to hire you have to have a unanimous decision,
which it can happens in some situations.
But what I've noticed is
that if the majority of the interviewers,
they believe that the candidate's a good fit,
the process is gonna move forward.
So be ready, be present, be enthusiastic.
You have to bring the passion.
You have to bring this mindset of, I'm here to do my best,
I'm here to help, I'm here to make your company better,
I'm here to make your team better, right?
This enthusiasm is very important.
There are some anecdotes, tales in the book
that you can read about my own experience hiring people,
that sometimes the technical person was actually the best
technically speaking, but the overall was not.
So we select someone that we saw just a lot of potential
and it was the best decision.
So this is possible.
And do not lose motivation
if something goes wrong in the first round.
You still have time, you know, to catch up and impress.