Private sector IT interviews...

I'm transitioning from the military and public sector IT.

Private sector interviews are brutal... So far I've gotten demoralized at Amazon and Expedia.

That is all.

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cyberguypr

Well, those are two pretty popular companies that must have an enormous ratio of applicant per position available. What role did you interview for and what was the brutal aspect?

Whiteout

Cloud support associate and security analyst respectively. Both were just a relentless onslaught of specific technical questions. I'm used to government side of things, where if you have the basic qualifications and the clearance the interview is a formality... Guess I am getting some good practice atleast!

UncleB

The private sector can be a much tougher gig as you need to justify your cost to the company by being able to do your job effectively.

There are some companies who are less ruthless, but when you look at the ones really pushing growth and profitability (think banks, service providers and the high profile dot coms) then they can attract the best candidates and are likely to put you through the mill to separate the men from the boys in terms of whether they know their stuff.

Having said that, it often means you get a special type of person who gets these jobs which can easily make then ego centric and competitive, so that can actually make these work environments their own special level of hell.

Treat this as an exercise in how to improve at interviewing so you can hopefully shine when the right opportunity comes along. In the meantime, keep up the studies as they are a permanent part of life for a techie.

good luck
Iain

whiteskies

I am going to piggyback off of Cyberguy. When you apply for big name companies like the ones you mentioned, it's very competitive. To add on to that previous sentence, when they're hiring a lot of people are applying. Real Life Example:

I had an Interview with Verizon in Northern Virginia a few weeks ago. I arrive at this huge fancy building complex with about 3 other buildings all attached, with one of my favorite suits on. Security didn't know the name of the guy I was looking for, said it's been a lot of new people hired and a change. About 10 minutes later a guy comes up to the desk and says hello (my first name). He only knew my name because he looked at the sign in roster and seen my name and looked at me, he put 2+2 together.

We go up to the next floor sit down with two other individuals in jeans looking like they just finished cutting grass outside. One of them had a ponytail like its 1997. The interview went great, which I knew it would. I am pretty confident, I know my resume like the back of my hand, and I am whiteskies. At the end of the interview out comes literally no joke this like 10 page test ( I had no idea about, neither did the recruiter). It was all security related, Linux questions (I know I got all of them right), and about 30 what does # port number mean. For some strange reason I assumed they were going to call me back. I talked the talk and walked the walk. I knew I didn't get a 100% on the 10 page ASVAB they gave me but I was pretty sure I did well. Point: People study the job description like that is all they are going to ask questions about, joke will be on you for sure

What you want to hear. During the interview he stated that the two people downstairs with me were recruiters. He said they didn't sign in and didn't acknowledge him so he didn't acknowledge them. I informed him I seen the job on a few different recruitment/ company websites. He said Verizon has a lot of companies that are trying to fill positions for them. He said he takes the best 2-3 resumes from each company and selects them for an interview (made me feel good for a second). Point: The resume is the hiring managers first impression of you.

Moral of the story:

IT is very competitive, it is MORE competitive for big name companies. No matter what you have cert wise and degree wise means little. That 10 page SAT he gave me had nothing to do with a good portion of what I learned/remembered in school. If you say you remember everything you learned in 2-10 years of college I'll question your integrity. If you (for this role) didn't know Linux (luckily I know a lil this a lil dat) know ports and protocols, what a firewall is, what you would do with a DDOS attack handling incidents, etc ,etc you were not getting a job ( I knew all of that and still didn't get it). I think it's more about what you know and what you can show than a piece of paper and what exaggeration of the truth people put on the resumes. It is competitive. I swear I applied for Amazon 10 different times for 10 different positions day/night. They had a night I applied a day I applied all for the same job title.

Final Thought:

I talked to a hiring manager for HPE aka HP for those who never worked for HP. He said he has questions that the person can get wrong and questions that the person must get right. If you miss those you have to get right questions he isn't even considering you for a job. The catch is, you don't know what question/questions they are

Point: You might miss that one question where they know you are not getting the job, but you still are in the interview for 20 more minutes getting asked questions they could care less if you get right

Good Luck,

Whiteskies. Capital W

rsutton

What type of job are you looking for & what qualifications do you have? Unless you already have specific experience, sometimes the best route to go is to find a Help Desk or Desktop Support job & work your way up from there.

whiteskies

Master Chief,

I am going to be honest, I have said this before and I'll just repeat it because I am a nice person. Sometimes it's about the area you're in. The city and the state play a factor. With those certifications, degrees, and a clearance of secret or higher (especially higher), you could find a job here no problema. Where is here you ask? Good question! Northern Virginia/Washington DC is where. When I say Northern Virgina, I mean Northern not far from DC. I bet you wouldn't go 40 days without a job here. If you quit today you'd have another job before the middle of March. Seriously. I had took my resume off of job boards because of the emails and phone calls.

It is a lot of Veterans owned business in this area that have govt contracts, that only hire Veterans . So, you have an advantage. Not saying it is not 100,000 Veterans already in this area but you do have an advantage.

Moral of the story:

Sometimes it is not you, it is the city/state you live in. Ok, my job is done here. On to the next post.

Good Luck

Whiteskies. Capital W

Iristheangel

Whiteout wrote: »

Cloud support associate and security analyst respectively. Both were just a relentless onslaught of specific technical questions. I'm used to government side of things, where if you have the basic qualifications and the clearance the interview is a formality... Guess I am getting some good practice atleast!

I don't mean what I'm about to say as a judgement of you because you were used to public sector and maybe you would have studied a bit harder before the interview if you knew it was going to go down like that. That being said, Wow! A lot of government jobs just rubber stamp you if you meet the basic qualifications and clearance? That makes me sad for what is probably the caliber of IT or security individual that is working government if that is the case. Again, not saying you - I don't know you and you may be a standup guy - I'm more thinking of the 95%-ish of interviews I've done where people looked great on paper but failed the most basic technical questions. I can't even begin to think of how we would ever get anything done if he just hired based on paper credentials but I guess that's why a lot of people complain about that sector. I'm just more taken aback by the fact that they don't give a solid technical interview but I've never worked in public sector so it's outside my experience and it's interesting to hear.

goatama

As someone who currently works in the public sector (and has for the past 10 years), I've never gotten a job without a decent amount of technical interview questions. My current position had a written exam, I was told after being hired that it was meant specifically to break applicants, but also to weed out the "management-types" who are desperate for a job but know how milk a resume to pass muster.

I thought that was kind of jacked up, until we had to interview for a contractor recently. 30 applications, only 5 even came close. Of those 5 that we interviewed only 1 actually answered enough of the test questions to even be considered. We weren't asking a lot, really, but so many people think their pooh don't stink (see whiteskies' responses for an idea of what that looks like), yet they just don't have what it takes to do the job.

traceyke

Whiteout wrote: »

... So far I've gotten demoralized at Amazon and Expedia.

PREACH!! I feel your pain regarding Amazon lol. I had my phone technical interview for the AWS Cloud Support Associate gig last Friday. Studied/Prepped for a week and I still felt destroyed afterwards! I have no idea what to expect.....but I will hear from them again this Friday.

E Double U

Whiteout wrote: »

Both were just a relentless onslaught of specific technical questions. !

Just about every IT job I've interviewed for has been like this.

Iristheangel

whiteskies wrote: »

I am going to be honest, I have said this before and I'll just repeat it because I am a nice person. Sometimes it's about the area you're in. The city and the state play a factor. With those certifications, degrees, and a clearance of secret or higher (especially higher), you could find a job here no problema. Where is here you ask? Good question! Northern Virginia/Washington DC is where. When I say Northern Virgina, I mean Northern not far from DC. I bet you wouldn't go 40 days without a job here. If you quit today you'd have another job before the middle of March. Seriously. I had took my resume off of job boards because of the emails and phone calls.

Hmmm... I know quite a few high level and low level IT workers in Seattle. It's actually a GREAT place for jobs. I don't think lack of IT jobs is an issue here and moving somewhere just because you can't handle technical interviews isn't great advice. The only reason to move is if there aren't opportunities at all in a given area. If the OP is struggling with technical interviews, my advice is to strengthen those skills: Study, do mock interviews with peers who can grill you, do some research into the job prior to interview, etc. Don't just move because you hope the interview will be "easy" somewhere else. That's a cop out and that won't really help in the long run if he wants to break into the private sector again or wants to move to another part of the country. The better approach is to compensate for the lack of skills in one area (technical interviews) because in the long run, there will be more doors opening for you, OP, than just moving and hoping you never need to move to another area or job that requires a technical interview.

on the mat

I'm finding IT interviews in general are much more rigorous than other fields. I'm transitioning to IT now, but my first interview out of college many years ago was a quick call with the HR rep and a 45 minute talk with the hiring manager and someone else with a reply a few days later. I've done a few senior level interviews since and most were two phone interviews then in person interviews with usually 4 managers.

My first IT interview was for a Help Desk position that paid only $40K and it consisted of a phone interview with a technical test, a follow on intelligence test, and a psychological test. Then the process would go all the way up to interviewing with the CIO. My second opportunity consisted of 4 virtual interviews and that's just the first round.

I was going to make a thread about how the IT interview process seems crazy relative to other fields.

Iristheangel

I know what you mean, Mat. In most cases, it's not to be mean or bully the folks going for the jobs. It's mostly because there are a lot of people who fake credentials or **** their way into their credentials and it's the employer's responsibility to filter out the BS candidates from the real ones. I'm not a hiring manager but I've lead or been part of the technical interviews for my current team and the previous job I had. My boss wouldn't even talk to them at my previous job until they passed my technical interview first so he didn't waste his time. You would be shocked how many people on average couldn't answer the most basic questions despite having a laundry list of credentials. If you're hiring for an entry-level job, it might be different but a lot of the mid- or senior-level jobs aren't looking for people who don't understand the foundations and can't pass a technical interview.

Another thing I often see people do is take credit for projects they didn't even do themselves. I.e. "Deployed ISE to over 50,000 endpoints through monitor, low-impact and closed mode over 10 months" and then as you start to ask them basic questions about ISE, they finally admit that it was a VAR or another professional services that actually did the deployment and work. They only had it handed off to them at the end. I think about the professional credibility aspect of that. One of my friends and I were discussing it today and he said something that rung very true: "Do I see this guy being honest with me during an outage if he can't even be honest on his resume?"

My point is that there is more than a few reasons why larger companies tend to be more vigorous in their interview processes. Sounds like the OP got thrown off but I think with some practice interviews with his peers and other mentors, he could probably get to a point where it won't be an issue anymore.

DPG

E Double U wrote: »

Just about every IT job I've interviewed for has been like this.

As they should be. Even the lowest level IT position can end up being a huge liability for any enterprise.

gespenstern

Iristheangel wrote: »

You would be shocked how many people on average couldn't answer the most basic questions despite having a laundry list of credentials.

Just a curiosity, what's you impression on their credentials, are they totally phony (like you ask them for a cert #, go to on-line verification tool and there's no such a person) or do most people you interviewed actually had them (but probably braindumped them)?

Iristheangel

gespenstern wrote: »

Just a curiosity, what's you impression on their credentials, are they totally phony (like you ask them for a cert #, go to on-line verification tool and there's no such a person) or do most people you interviewed actually had them (but probably braindumped them)?

As far as verifying credentials, I don't bother for lower-tier and mid-tier certs but I will typically check if it's one that I can easily verify. JD Murray posted a good blog post awhile back which goes through the different lines to verify certs: How Do I Verify That Someone Is Really Certified? - TechExams.net IT Certification Blogs

As far as the higher-level certs, I say more people braindumping those than actually lying about it. I've seen a couple people say they don't want to share their CCIE number because it's "personal." I just tell them to have a great day at that point

I know a couple companies are getting very aggressive with weeding out **** now (Cisco being one) and thanks to some changes in testing delivery and just some changes to the labs they're starting to implement, there will be less of that thankfully. I've been hearing about CCIEs losing their numbers because they can't pass the written anymore since certain tracks have adopted more of a CISSP-strategy on the delivery of the exams and it's only going to get worse for them. They're pretty easy to weed out in a technical interview thankfully.

gespenstern

Iristheangel wrote: »

I've seen a couple people say they don't want to share their CCIE number because it's "personal." I just tell them to have a great day at that point

LOL, yeah, "nice try and have a nice day"!

Iristheangel wrote: »

I know a couple companies are getting very aggressive with weeding out **** now (Cisco being one) and thanks to some changes in testing delivery and just some changes to the labs they're starting to implement, there will be less of that thankfully. I've been hearing about CCIEs losing their numbers because they can't pass the written anymore since certain tracks have adopted more of a CISSP-strategy on the delivery of the exams and it's only going to get worse for them. They're pretty easy to weed out in a technical interview thankfully.

That's great to hear. Unfortunately, Microsoft, last time I checked, doesn't do a good job at this and this undermines their certs value a lot IMO, I usually get suspicious about them the most when interviewing. (ISC)2 on the other hand does a good job, I don't know how and what they do, but I wasn't able to find legit braindumps last time I checked (less than a year ago) and I did a pretty thorough research... There are **** that CLAIM that they are CISSP ****, but if you get them they are actually **** from cccure or transcender or from sybex book or from Conrad's book. Luckily I had all of them at different points in time so I was quickly able to recognize familiar questions, lol, especially the ones that are wrong -- that's how I was able to remember them well, usually when I encounter a question that I can't explain I'm like WTF and start digging deeply until fully satisfied and these cases are then get injected into my memory so deeply that I can easily recall them if I suddenly get awaken in the middle of the night...

PS BTW, JDMurray's blogpost gets outdated slowly, as EC-Council, for example, now has an online verification tool. They are embracing progress!

dave330i

I don't bother with the Trivial Pursuit questions when I interview candidates. Only thing it really measures is how well they can memorize facts. I ask essay questions regarding fundamental technologies. I want the candidates to answer "why?" & "how?" questions. Based on my experience, it's a much better measure of candidate's skill level.

DPG

Iristheangel wrote: »

I know a couple companies are getting very aggressive with weeding out **** now (Cisco being one) and thanks to some changes in testing delivery and just some changes to the labs they're starting to implement, there will be less of that thankfully. I've been hearing about CCIEs losing their numbers because they can't pass the written anymore since certain tracks have adopted more of a CISSP-strategy on the delivery of the exams and it's only going to get worse for them. They're pretty easy to weed out in a technical interview thankfully.

Cisco really should re-evaluate the requirements for recertifying the CCIE. It shouldn't be as simple as passing an easily dumpable written exam every two years. Maybe extend the current status to three years and then require a remote lab to recertify?

Iristheangel

DPG wrote: »

Cisco really should re-evaluate the requirements for recertifying the CCIE. It shouldn't be as simple as passing an easily dumpable written exam every two years. Maybe extend the current status to three years and then require a remote lab to recertify?

Then you would just have people paying someone else to go take the remote lab for them

The new things they're doing to mitigate it seem to be working. There's a couple people I've wandered across that dumped the CCIE in the past and I've seen them on them INE forums complaining that they can't pass the written even though they passed the lab about a year and a half ago and they state they can't be ready in time with 6 months. It'll be interesting to see how many CCIEs expire in the next 2 years.

No_Nerd

Regarding the interviews .... On the government side if you have X and Y with Time in the system then you are usually good to go ( I.E. stamped in). In the private sector you have to meet everything and then I found you have to be humble during the interview and make them think you really really want/need the job. I have an issue with the later part so I usually don't get a second call back but that is OK with me better for them to not hire me if they can't stand a bit of confidence than for me to get on board and then people ask too many questions in regarding income levels etc. Again some people get turned off by it and some people love it so it is always 50/50 for me.

sj4088

dave330i wrote: »

I don't bother with the Trivial Pursuit questions when I interview candidates. Only thing it really measures is how well they can memorize facts. I ask essay questions regarding fundamental technologies. I want the candidates to answer "why?" & "how?" questions. Based on my experience, it's a much better measure of candidate's skill level.

Can you give a couple of examples?

E Double U

Iristheangel wrote: »

I've seen a couple people say they don't want to share their CCIE number because it's "personal."

Are you able to maintain a straight face at that point?

No_Nerd

E Double U wrote: »

Are you able to maintain a straight face at that point?

I am wondering the same ...

You might as well hold up a sign that says " Ok, fine you got me .... I kindda cheated/ don't have it""

dave330i

sj4088 wrote: »

Can you give a couple of examples?

Essay questions? I ask VMware related questions, so something like, "How does HA work?" or "What are the pros & cons of vDS vs. vSS?"