Interview number 1 -- Arizona Department of Economic Security
I was scheduled for a 2:00 interview downtown. I spent the morning going over my resume, practicing what points I wanted to talk about and mentally preparing to answer technical questions. I arrived early, maybe too early. I wanted to get there about 1:40 but the traffic was light and I arrived at about 1:20. I waited patiently at the receptionist desk, just kinda stood around. There was no receptionist there. Finally a smaller older lady came around the corner and asked if she could help me. I told her I was a little early but was here for a 2:00 interview. She walked me down the cubicle filled hallway to an empty office and had me fill out some more paperwork.
After a 20 minute wait she came back and had me sit in what I assume is the break room area. There was a coffee table with some random magazines on it, all old. A white 12 cup coffee machine that looked like it hadn't been cleaned in forever. The couch was not very comfortable and looked like someone had brought it in from their house and donated it. Another short wait and a middle aged guy with glasses asked if I was ready for the interview.
I went into another room, this time it looked somewhat modern and sat down opposite from 3 people. I handed the guy in the middle my resume and copy of my certifications and he passed them down to the man on my left. They told me they used the STAR method for interviews.
S - situation
T - trouble
A - action
R - resolution
They each proceeded to ask me for examples where I had a certain technical situation and what I did to troubleshoot and resolve. The thing is, the questions were extremely basic. Like have you ever installed Windows before. There were several times where I was going over an outage I worked on and I could tell I was speaking over their heads. I had to dumb down my technical responses to a level that they could understand. I managed to make a few jokes in the interview and had the guy on my right laughing out loud several times. I felt good about that, I didn't set out to be funny during my interview but I felt like I was overqualified for the position and just decided to have fun with it.
The whole company felt very old and outdated. They seemed very non competitive and rather boring. It wouldn't be my first choice for work as it felt like a step backwards in technology and work.
Interview number 2 was entirely different. -- CGI
This one was scheduled for 9:30am. I spent the previous night going over sample interview questions and felt pretty prepared going in. I arrived early again but not too early. I checked in at the guard station at 9:15 and waited for the team lead to come and bring me to the interview room. He showed up about 9:30 and I was surprised to see he was close to my age and wasn't very dressed up. He seemed very laid back and casual. We talked a little as we walked to the next building where the conference room was.
I had decided that the interview started the moment I met him and used the walk across the parking lot to talk about my work with IBM and where I wanted to go in the security field. We made it to the conference room and he sat across from me along with another member of his team. He used the speaker phone and called his manager who worked out of Canada.
The hiring manager Mike started the interview out by asking me some general questions about what i have done and where I see myself going in the next 10 years. They were very general getting to know you type questions and had nothing technical in them. I did my best to sound up beat and positive over the phone. I really prefer interviewing in person because I can judge my answers based on the other persons body language. Its a lot harder to do that over the phone.
Next the team lead said he was going to start asking me some technical questions to get an idea of my knowledge and then go from there with more advanced security questions. I wasn't nervous, I had prepared the best I could and I knew that if God wanted me at this job He would make it obvious. Knowing that, it really took the pressure off of the interview and put my mind at ease.
The first round of questions were very simple networking questions. Networking is one of my strong points and I breezed through these. Next up were some security related questions. His first questions was identical to the practice questions I had read the night before! I already knew the answer but I felt like I had to play along and pretend to think about it, I paused for a few seconds and then gave him the answer. His other security questions were very similar to the ones I had already prepared for and I felt like I did a great job in answering them.
He turned the interview over to his team member and he handed me several pieces of paper with an output from a packet capture. He asked if I could identify what program made the capture and if I could decipher what was happening. I took a guess and told him the program was Wireshark. I really wasn't entirely sure but it looked like it might be. I looked at the log it generated and gave him my analysis of the capture and he seemed happy with my responses.
He asked me a few more questions and he concluded his part of the interview. The hiring manager spoke up on the phone and said he was very impressed with my interview skills and he was happy to have someone come in that spoke clearly and was able to give good technical answers.
The hiring manager hung up and the team lead said he was going to be honest with me. He said that I did an awesome job on the interview and the technical questions. He said they had several trick questions in their and they were surprised I was able to get them right. He said he would recommend to his manager that they bring me on as a full time employee. I was pretty excited but tried to taper my enthusiasm a little bit. I knew it wasn't official yet but I felt good about it.
When we were walking back to the main building the topic of church came up and I found out that the team lead is a Christian and once he found out I was too, he stopped, shook my hand and made the comment "Its going to be great having another Christian working here in the SOC"
A few days later the HR rep from the company called offering me a full time position with them. I was expecting a pay cut since I was moving into a new technical field but was surprised when they offered me the same pay and almost identical benefits to what I was getting with IBM.
Megan and I had both prayed that God would make it plain and obvious which job to take. With the same pay, benefits and having a Christian for a team lead it really seemed like an easy decision to accept their job offer. My first day at CGI is January 9th
Finding a new job really was a year long process. I began studying at home for my security certifications back in September of 2010, I spent hundred of hours practicing hacking in my lab and reading as many security books and articles I could. I left IBM in July and really hoped to have a job by October. We were starting to get a little stressed that I hadn't heard back from anyone yet. I applied for over 90 positions and only had a handful of callbacks. Out of all of those I only had 3 real interviews and they all came in December. We knew God had the perfect job for me, we just had to be patient and trust in His timing.