Started a new job on Monday

Paul Boz

I've gotten about a half dozen PMs asking about what my interview process was like, so here's a quick writeup.

I had three face to face interviews including a four hour, 8 person interview for my current job. The first interview was with the man that would be my direct boss. He wanted to first and foremost feel me out to see if I was even worth setting aside four hours for. At the end he explained the way step two worked then told me I'd hear back within a day. The 2nd interview was two days later. I started with the security team that I would be joining. It was all three of the guys at once. One guy is the primary user access admin, another is the lost/stolen device (we have 20k mobile devices easy) and proxy guru. The third guy is the level 3 engineer who is clearly intelligent and knowledgeable in all realms of security. He's the one that did 90% of the talking.

I was asked a wide range of questions and I'm sure this list is omitting a few. Topics included:

- Knowledge of various security tools such as NMAP & Metasploit
- Active Directory and account management
- DMZ and security zone configuration and management
- SIEM solutions
- IDS/IPS deployment and monitoring
- Incident handling procedures and best practices
- Compliance auditing
- Risk management

After about 45 minutes those guys wrapped up and I met with the manager of infrastructure and the manager of systems. They asked me general management style questions such as how I would work on their team, how I would handle various challenges (like interaction between security and operations), and company culture type questions. After I met with those guys I met with the manager of support. There's an entire fully staffed and tiered tech support department to support the entire company. We mostly talked about growing up from the same place and making jokes. That was the "is this guy normal" phase.

After that dude cleared out my potential boss asked me how things went and told me that everyone was very positive after meeting with me. He told me that they moved quickly once the main interviews were over, but that I'd still have to meet with the security executive. He was out of town so I had to come back the following week to meet him. He basically made it abundantly clear that he was waiving the college requirement and that was about all we talked about. They pay for school so I'm going to finish eventually. Once I finished up with him he told me HR would start the cogs for making me an offer. My recruiter and I discussed a number I would not go lower than and I thought that that's what I was going to get. They offered me about $7k more than I expected so that was awesome. I thought I was making a lateral move and wasn't thrilled about that, but their offer made it lateral for sure.

Anyway, that's how my interview process was. All further PMs will be directed here

Pash

good luck fella.