TL;DR
Like it or not, interviewing is an unavoidable part of advancing your career. While you don’t have to enjoy them, knowing how to properly prepare for interviews, answer questions with confidence, and show your best self (even when you’re stumped) are all invaluable skills to pick up. In fact, we may even go so far as to say that, no matter how many certifications or courses you manage to complete, if you don’t know how to sell yourself in person, no job is guaranteed.
Fortunately, our mission at Cybrary isn’t just to help you pick up new cybersecurity skills, but also advance your larger career goals — which includes knowing how to master the cybersecurity interview. With this in mind, I reached out to Cybrary mentor and instructor Rob Goelz, who just happened to have recently (and successfully) gone through the interview process himself, to see what kind of advice he had for anyone trying to land their next job. Here’s what he had to say.
1. Know what to expect going in
Do you have an impressive list of credentials to show off? Do all the career highlights and skills on your resume practically speak for themselves? That’s wonderful — but it may no longer be enough.
“When I first got into IT, interviews were based mostly on your experience and certifications,” said Goelz. “But as I’ve gone forward, it’s become less focused on what you have on your resume and more on what you can prove.”
While this may be bad news for anyone expecting to lean entirely on their work history, it may actually be good news for everyone else. That’s because the modern interview is all about emphasizing what you can actually prove. “You’re going to have to be able to talk intelligently and succinctly about what you know,” noted Goelz. “Both in a technical interview and during a technical trial.”
What will this look like? Expect to solve problems under some sort of time crunch while your interviewers are watching. You may be asked to solve challenging software questions or work through algorithm problems. Or you may be presented with some kind of hypothetical scenario, such as a broken server, then asked how you’d go about fixing it. Whatever the case, you’ll have to rely on much more than your past experiences. You’ll have to be able to draw from your current well of knowledge and show that you still have what it takes to succeed.
2. Take advantage of the job description
Now that we’ve set expectations, what can you actually do to start preparing for the specific interview?
“The biggest thing I do,” said Goelz, “is to break down the job requirements listed in the posting and create a bulleted list of items to go through. I’ll see what I know first, then note down the items that I don’t know so that I can focus on getting up to speed.”
Taking a strategic approach like this can be a great way to reduce what may seem at first like an intimidating task into a much more approachable set of action items. This will make it much easier to know your more obvious strengths going into an interview, as well as what you may need to polish up on beforehand. Or, if a requirement is just not in your wheelhouse, knowing about it ahead of time will allow you to at least conduct some research so that you can ask more informed questions of the interviewer.
“You can tell them you were looking at this resource or that resource,” said Goelz. “Or even ask them about what kind of support they offer inside the organization to those trying to get up to speed.” All this will show that you’ve done your homework, which is always a smart way to stand out.
Bonus: Don’t be discouraged if you fail to meet every criteria
Found your dream job, but worried you won’t be qualified? Don’t be, said Goelz. “You only need to meet around 60 percent of a job’s requirements,” he said. “And usually, you really only need the first three or four bullets. The rest are nice to have.”
However, if you are having a hard time figuring out which jobs fit you best, Goelz recommended using the job postings to your advantage. “Pull up 10 or 20 listings for that role. Then put together a spreadsheet and tally everything up.” This way, you can see how often every skill or requirement comes up, giving you an easy way to determine which items are most important for you to focus on.
3. Study up on the fundamentals
When it comes to preparing for actual questions, you can always search Google or Glassdoor for common topics. Better yet, using labs and open-ended playgrounds can be a good way to explore problems and practice ways to solve them. But one of the best ways to prepare is to just review the basics.
“Never discount how effective it can be to go back through all the stuff you already theoretically know,” said Goelz. “Because it can save your butt.”
The big reason for this? Interviews can be high pressure moments, especially when there’s a clock ticking behind you, so if you suddenly need to recall something you haven’t thought about in months (or maybe years), you may not be able to do it. Instead, you should try to commit as much as possible to your muscle memory, whether that’s basic concepts, first principles, or simple command lines that you might otherwise take for granted.
“You should understand the basics of networking, how IP addresses are structured, how the DHCP process works,” recommended Goelz. “You should probably read up on how subnetting works.” Beyond that, there are foundational concepts like the CIA triad (confidentiality, integrity, availability), as well as really any of the concepts you might find covered in a CompTIA Security+ course.
“These are things you may get called out on because they're basic things you don't really think about every day,” said Goelz. “But they're concepts that you need to make sure you understand at a fundamental level so that you can prove you know what you're talking about.”
4. Remember to prepare for non-technical questions
Brushing up on your basic networking knowledge is great, as is knowing how to talk fluently about more complex technical topics — but don’t forget to also prepare for questions about how you work, communicate, and get along with others. In fact, some interviews might focus on these behavioral-type questions above everything else.
“The big thing that you'll find as you go further in your career is that it's less about being an individual contributor,” Goelz said, “and more about your ability to work with other people. There's no such thing as a wizard in an ivory tower anymore. Everybody has to talk to everyone else to get things done.” And this is something you’ll have to show you know how to do well during your interview.
The best way to do this is by talking through specific examples in which you dealt with difficult people or challenging situations. Also be prepared to describe your communication style, both to technical and non-technical people, as well as how you address conflict. Even better is if you can show them ways in which you’ve promoted or encouraged collaboration in the past. You want to be able to convince your interviewers that you think about and care about the relationships you have at work.
5. Ask questions (and be honest about what you don’t know)
Asking informed and thoughtful questions during your interview is not only a great way to show you’re inquisitive, it’s also a good way to take back control. “I like to interview the interviewer,” said Goelz. “It helps you slow it down and manage it on your own terms, rather than just having to answer a bunch of rapid fire questions.”
To do this well, he emphasized, try turning the questions around after answering. If you get asked what you would do under certain circumstances, don’t be afraid to ask them the same question back after you’ve answered it. You could do this directly (e.g., “What would you do?”) or, if that feels too confrontational, you could simply ask them what they thought of your answer. This is a great way to get immediate feedback, while also getting a good feel for the company and their culture.
And if you just don’t have a good answer to give? Goelz had this advice: “I don't think there's any harm in stating that you have some blind spots. Because everyone does.” Instead, he went on, it’s better if you can elaborate on how you’d mitigate the blind spot in order to think through and fix the problem. Ultimately, a good interviewer will be more curious about your overall problem-solving abilities than your ability to solve a specific problem.
6. If you fail, don’t give up. Try again.
Finally, the truth is, no matter how great your answers are or how eloquent you come across, sometimes you just won’t be seen as a great fit. “There's going to be a lot of interviews where you're just not going to meet the invisible criteria,” said Goelz. “The stuff that you just don’t know about until you get there.” In fact, this will probably happen a lot.
That can be hard, he acknowledged. “You might be heavily invested in the company,” he said. “Maybe you’ve even spent a lot of time preparing for the interview and have already thought about what you’d do in the role. But you’ve got to leave that behind because there’s going to be more misses than hits.”
Instead, the best thing to do is to learn what you can from the experience, then dust yourself off and move on. That’s the way you progress.
Get your prep started with Cybrary
Your career journey may have its twists and turns, but can always get started (or restarted) with Cybrary. Whether you’re just starting out in cybersecurity or want to advance up the next rung, we have courses and career paths ready for you. Learn the fundamentals with courses like CompTIA Security+ or CISSP. Alternatively, dive deep into more advanced topics like CompTIA Linux+.
Whatever your interests, there’s never a better time than now to sign up and start exploring our course load. We can’t wait to see you there.
