Job Interviews

The purposes of the job interview are:

  • 30%: confirm your job qualifications, and
  • 70%: determine if they want you to work with you 40+ hours in a week.
    • Could they imagine themselves talking around the water cooler with you?
    • Could they imagine putting you in front of a client to deliver a presentation?
    • Will you treat everybody at the office well?
    • Will you be a contributing team member?

Interview Tips

  • Show up early.
  • Dress well. Match or exceed your interviewer's dress as far as professionalism. If you think your interviewer will be wearing a long shirt and tie, show up with a long shirt, tie, and suit jacket.
  • Do NOT ask about salary, vacation, or benefits. Find these things out through another method.
  • Do NOT use profanity. You might think it makes you sound relaxed or cool, but it comes off as unprofessional.
  • Communicate that you want this job. This job is not among many you are considering. This job is your top choice.
  • You are also interviewing them to make sure they are a fit for you. But be careful not to ask questions that are too personal about the interviewers themselves.

Guaranteed Questions

You should expect several questions that will be asked in nearly all interviews.

  • "Tell me about yourself."
    • "Where would you like me to begin?" or "What would you like to know" are acceptable responses.
    • You can briefly state the factors that led you to apply for work at this particular company.
    • You could briefly summarize your education and experience that are relevant to the position.
  • "What does your home lab look like?"
    • Everybody needs to keep learning. Working professionals are constantly learning.
    • A home lab could be a couple of virtual machines on your laptop.
    • You might have purchased some surplus networking equipment.
    • You might be building stuff in the cloud using the AWS free tier.
  • "How do you stay up to date with cybersecurity?"
  • "What questions do you have for me?"
    • Do not say something like, "Nope, I think we covered it." This is the worst possible answer and may kill your job prospects immediately.
    • Some possible questions are:
      • If you were to higher me today, how would you use me?
      • What are the most rewarding parts of this role?
      • Can you tell me about the team I would be working with?
      • I read the Company's mission on your website and it mentioned X. How does this role contribute to the mission?
      • What advice would you give me for succeeding in this role?
      • What are the qualities of the person who would succeed in this role? (As a follow-up, you can explain how you have those qualities.)
      • What kind of support for ongoing training and certifications do you provide?
    • It's okay to ask different interviewers the same thing.

Handling Behavioral Questions

Use the STAR method for answering questions about past experiences such as, "Tell me about a time when you had to deal with a difficult team member." STAR stands for situation, task, action, and result. It's a storytelling framework that works well in job interviews.

  • Situation
    • What was the context?
      • Where were you working?
      • Was it a project?
      • Did something break?
  • Task
    • What was your role in the situation?
  • Action
    • What specific actions did you take to resolve the issue(s)?
  • Result
    • How did your actions lead to a positive outcome?

For example, "Tell me about a time when you broke something."

Potential answer: "I was doing web development for the first time. My boss asked me to add a dropdown menu to make it easier for people to find links on our intranet. I found some tutorials online and built the menu using JavaScript. It worked on my computer, so I uploaded the code to our production environment. Unfortunately, the code did not work on older web browsers which, it turns out, lots of people in our company used. I was able to revert the change quickly and restore the working web page. That experience taught me a lot about the need for having a thorough test plan. I fixed my code, tested on all web browser versions support in our company, and then deployed the version that worked for everybody."

Handling Tough Technical Questions

Especially for entry-level jobs, you are not expected to know everything. Interviewers might ask tough questions to evaluate your thinking process. If you are asked a hard question and you're not sure how to answer:

  • Ask clarifying questions. Make sure you understand the problem correctly.
  • State your awareness of the issues surrounding the problem. For example, you might be asked a question on asymmetric encryption that you don't know. In this case, you could explain some relevant parts of asymmetric encryption that you do know.
  • If you don't know the answer, describe how you would find the answer.
  • Try not to get flustered. The tough questions might be a gentle way for them to see how you would work in stressful situations.
  • Avoid hubris. This is not the time to "fake it." The interviewer might have deep expertise in the topic and be turned off by attempts to persuade them that you know more than you do.

Post Interview

  • A "thank you" email shows courtesy and interest.
  • Email every person who interviewed you. If you had one interview with four people, send four separate emails.
  • Cover three things briefly in a "thank you email":
    • Thank the person for meeting with you.
    • Mention something specifically that you discussed that piqued your interest.
    • Make a positive, forward-looking statement.
  • You may not hear back for a while. Be very considerate if you choose to follow up to ask about when you might hear back on a decision.

Example Follow-up Email

Below is a sample email that shows the structure of a simple "thank you" email.

Hi Beth,

Thanks for meeting with me to discuss the system analyst position. Your description of Project X was fascinating. I can see myself contributing significantly to that project. I look forward to hearing back about the position.

Sincerely,

Your Name