How to interview tips...
GLet's face it... We all need to brush up and improve our interviewing skills because it's not something we do everyday. And just like anything else, we need to practice to get good at something. I have included some quick tips to help you prepare for your interview which will help you feel more confident during the interview process.
Most interviews will use some form of Behavioral Interview Questions... These are questions that go something like: "Give us an example of a time you used teamwork to accomplish a task, or share with us a time when you were in a leadership role, how did you handle problems or issues with your team?" These are called behavioral interview questions and are very common in today's interviews with almost any company. The proper way to answer these types of questions is spelled out below.
S - Situation
T - Task
A - Approach
R - Result
In other words - story telling. You will use a story of a past work experience using the STAR format to answer a behavioral interview question. Here is a quick example: When I was at XYZ corporation, we discovered a breach that exposed confidential client data to a third party that was not supposed to have access to it. We quickly mobilized our BC plan and notified leadership of the situation, we had planned in advance for this exact situation so we immediately implemented our training and follow our pre-planned processes, as a result... the breach was caught early on, customers were properly notified, and damage to our brand and reputation was minimal because of the planning we had done previously. We also learned a valuable lesson about how the attackers entered our network, and applied the appropriate patches. We are now even better prepared for the next attempted attack.
By following the STAR method, you can quickly and easily answer multiple questions of this type my simple story telling. The STAR approach keeps you focused and on-message. The danger here is DON'T go too far down the rabbit hole when telling your story. The interview team doesn't need to know every little detail, just stick to the facts and keep it detailed but high level. If you see the interviewer start to fidget or look at the clock, it's time to wrap up your story and get to the Result.
Remember this... ALWAYS try to tie your activities with business outcomes... In other words, what was the business outcome as a direct or indirect result of your activities. The better you can do this, the more valuable you will be in the eyes of the interviewer. DON'T just rattle off a list of activities without answering the "so what" question. Great - you did all these things but so what did it mean for your customer or the business?
Practice answering pretend questions at home, you will soon discover that you can use one story to answer multiple behavioral interviewing questions. Therefore, have three or four stories in mind before you interview, that way you will be prepared. Interviewing is a process just like anything else you do, you just need to be prepared.
Here is a video with more information below:
You can also google "how to answer behavioral interview questions" for more information. Call me if you have any questions...
Al Lerberg- Owner Cyber Security Recruiters