The time you spend in job interviews is some of the most important time of your professional life. You want to be able to sell yourself and your skills to the interviewer, and you need to be prepared for questions about your experience and qualifications.
But what if you’re interviewing for a position in cybersecurity? How can you prepare for questions about an area of expertise that is constantly changing?
Let’s consider some tips on how to prepare for your next cybersecurity job interview.
Research the organization you’re interviewing with
When you’re preparing for a job interview, it pays to do your research. Knowing the organization and their products and/or services can be a great way to impress your interviewer and demonstrate your commitment to the role.
Start by doing an online search on the organization, paying careful attention to information related to their products, services, goals, and accomplishments. You might also want to find out who founded the organization so you can better appreciate their mission and values. You can often find this information on an organization’s website, especially if they’ve published a recent annual report.
Check out press releases, too. They can tell you what’s been happening in the industry recently. Take notes on anything that stands out during your research, particularly if you can identify any cybersecurity risks or implications regarding this activity.
LinkedIn is a great resource for this. Most companies have a LinkedIn page that features information about the company (historical and current), posts from the company’s social media team, and a list of people who currently work for the company.
Doing this research is crucial for giving yourself the best chance of success when it comes to interviews.
Understand the skills required for the job role
It is important to understand exactly what the job role you are interested in entails and what skills and knowledge are essential for success.
Take time to research the job role, looking at typical job descriptions. You can do this by searching for similar roles on Indeed, analyzing those job descriptions to round out your knowledge of the tools and skills typical for a professional in a similar role. Conversations with recruitment experts and employers can greatly assist this process. Again, don’t be afraid to use LinkedIn to reach out to folks with these questions.
After gathering this information, you can identify which skills are highly desired for the job in question and begin to tailor your resume or CV accordingly. While technical skills are a given, demonstrating your grasp of soft skills will help you stand out among the candidates. Some of the core areas you may want to focus on include communication, problem solving, decision-making, and negotiation. The LinkedIn Learning course Soft Skills for Information Security Professionals provides a great overview of soft skills that can help you land the job.
You should also consider specific sector knowledge or particular qualifications that could prove invaluable when applying for a certain role. Many sectors have unique cybersecurity requirements. Retail organizations are required to comply with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), while healthcare organizations are required to comply with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). A quick review of applicable standards and regulations will help you better understand the specific cybersecurity controls that matter most to your future employer.
With informed research of key job specifications before submitting applications, your chances of success go up considerably.
Be prepared to talk about your experience with various cybersecurity tools
Cybersecurity tools are a vital component of protecting information systems from potential threats. As an individual with experience in the field, it is important to be prepared to discuss your experience with various tools.
Cybersecurity professionals should have a basic understanding of how to identify and secure devices on an organization’s network. Tools like nmap exist so technical professionals can scan networks, identify devices, and even identify some of the services running on those devices. Vulnerability scanners go one step further. Not only do they identify devices and available services, but they also crosscheck those findings against a database of publicly disclosed vulnerabilities to help professionals prioritize any vulnerability remediation work. And while most scanners focus on host level vulnerabilities, tools like OWASP ZAP exist to provide that same vulnerability management information about web applications.
The LinkedIn Learning course Security Testing Essential Training includes guided exercises on how to use many of these tools.
It’s also worth noting that having practical experience with both cloud-based and on-premise solutions will further demonstrate your level of expertise in this area. If your future employer has systems in Amazon Web Services (AWS), you can brush up your skills by exploring the free resources on the AWS Training site. If the organization relies on Microsoft Azure, you should check out Microsoft Learn for Azure. And Google Cloud Training has a blend of free and paid resources to help you improve your skills.
Be prepared to discuss how to respond to security incidents
Having faced multiple security breaches and incidents during my career, I understand the importance of being prepared to face such situations.
Preparing for and responding to security incidents is a key responsibility for any cybersecurity team, and understanding the best practices for incident response is essential. Drawing insights from the NIST Special Publication 800-61 Revision 2, also known as the Computer Security Incident Handling Guide, can ensure these teams follow consistent, repeatable processes.
But you should be prepared to discuss security incident response in more than just a theoretical sense. Even if you’re not currently working in cybersecurity, chances are you’ve got security incident response experience. Have you ever received a notification that your personal information was compromised? Has a criminal ever taken over one of your social media accounts? Have you ever helped a friend or family member remove malware from their computer.
If you can speak to an actual security incident that you helped out with, and if you can tie it back to the steps in NIST SP 800-62, you’re sure to impress the hiring manager.
Be able to explain your thought process when solving problems
Being able to explain and articulate your thought process when solving a problem is an important skill to develop. Not only does it help you to figure out the solution quickly, but it can also help others understand how you came up with the answer.
It’s helpful for employers to be able to see your strategy for working through a problem in order to give you accurate feedback about your approach with respect to their organizational culture. Many of the most successful organizations are those that leverage the contributions and insights of their team members, and being able to articulate your thinking process can be an invaluable asset in such settings.
To prepare for this, you can select a problem that you’ve faced at any point in your life, and then walk through that problem following this process:
- Define and understand the problem
- Identify the goals and objectives
- Generate possible solutions
- Evaluate and select the best solution
- Develop an action plan
- Implement the solution
- Monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the solution
- Learn and improve
Those last two steps are the most important. Many candidates will likely stop at the implementation of the solution. By demonstrating that you understand problem solving is a cyclical process that includes learning and growth, you’re also demonstrating that you understand that cybersecurity isn’t a project: it’s a program.
Practice common interview questions
For any job seeker, interviews can be an intimidating experience. Although it’s a common part of the job search process, there’s nothing quite like the feeling of walking into a job interview unsure of what to expect or how to properly respond.
Fortunately, there is a simple way to increase your chances of success during an interview: preparation.
By reviewing and practicing common interview questions beforehand, you’ll have the knowledge and skills necessary to answer questions confidently and put yourself in the best position for success. Developing a repertoire of potential responses will also give you greater flexibility in your answers and allow you to connect your responses to each interviewer’s style.
One way to put that list of questions together is a quick internet search for common cybersecurity interview questions. Chances are that the top results will contains dozens of questions, though, which can be overwhelming. That’s what I recommend you consider ChatGPT as an alternative. You could use a variation of this prompt to instruct ChatGPT to play the role of interviewer.
I’m interviewing for an open position as a cybersecurity analyst, and you are the hiring manager. What are the five most important questions that you will ask me in the interview?
And if you follow Simplifying Cybersecurity on LinkedIn, you’ll see posts from time to time that include both common interview questions and guidance on how to answer them.
By following the steps outlined in this article, you’ll be much more prepared to ace your next cybersecurity interview. Good luck!
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