How to Fail a Cybersecurity Interview

Want to win the cybersecurity interview? Learn how to fail first. In a recent interview with Stephen Semmelroth, he shared excellent advice on helping cyber professionals ace their job interviews. In this video, we recap some key takeaways but flipped to reasons why people fail.

Some of the reasons why include:

- Not conveying a deep and broad understanding of the cyber domain when answering technical questions.
- Not demonstrating passion and self-learning abilities through projects outside of work.
- Not aligning and contextualizing your application to the job description and company needs.
- Poor audiovisuals and personal optics for a virtual interview
- Social faux pas and basic etiquette.
- Insufficient due diligence about a company

Preparation doesn't necessarily mean doing everything right. More often than not, it's avoiding mistakes. Knowing what to avoid during your preparation helps you avoid mistakes.

Be prepared. Learn how to fail a cybersecurity interview.

00:00 Intro - How to Fail a Cybersecurity Interview
00:37 Not being able to answer the "DNS Question"
02:10 Not having an active side project
03:24 Getting filtered out before the interview
05:19 Failing because of Quiet, Clothes, Camera
06:17 Not doing your due diligence on the company
08:20 Personality and Decency Issues

#CyberSecurity #InterviewTips #Cyberspatial

[Cyberspatial]

What are some other ways you know of to fail a cybersecurity interview?

[soulextracter]

Interviewer: -"Why do you wanna work here?"
Me: -"Well I'm educated in cyber-security, I have no job, and I need money."
Interviewer: -"What is it about our company that excites you?"
Me: -"You have a job opening that requires someone educated in cyber-security!"

[frkangungor]

I want more videos Cyberspatial. We love and respect your work.

[Harshkumar-bisw]

Gosh! The content on this channel is pure gold !! Subscribed right away

[justindittburner]

I've got a big interview for an internship later today. I watched the full interview earlier this week and just watched this. Thanks for the advice! I'm a lot more confident and comfortable having done research on the company's culture and business practices as I can make them relate to talking points about work I've done in the past.

[zuberkariye]

I was literally on the phone with HR and she was asking questioning, there was three stages, (1) HR questioning, (2) The team will look the if i have good resume, (3) the actual interview, i passed the HR but did not have enough college credits since this is was my first semester in college ever. By the way, this was a internship offer ar Cerner, this does not i am going to stop doing what i like, i was not even mad because i didn't fail or anything i just didn't had enough hours of credit, don't let rejection stop from your dream or goals

[brooklynzoo]

This just makes me want to clean toilets, lol.

[hthr]

These videos are so well produced and thorough! Thank you for your work. I've been considering a career/degree in Cybersecurity and found your content to be amazingly informative. Can't believe I found this channel before it hit 100k subs.

[nate]

... I have to be able to explain input methods with USB peripherals to answer that DNS resolves hostnames? Why is it that interviews are so convoluted? 99% of my job in the tech industry so far has been taking these long winded answers and simplifying it to one sentence. It just seems so unnecessary.

[SimplyCyber]

Talked in CH today w you. Thanks for your thoughts on cyber YT channels . Appreciate it and great work w cyber spatial. Very inspiring.

[a__romitbhaumik]

Most of the points you spoke apply for any job profile interview, not specific to cybersecurity except the DNS one of course

[RK-siln]

Awesome video as usual.

Can you make a separate video about how to answer a dns question?
Like how you would answer.

I have an interview in a couple of weeks and I am pretty sure this question would show up.
Thanks

[riddler]

The title is the only reason why I clicked the video

[minhld]

Really complex, but helpful videos, thank you.

[tonyconiglio]

Answering literally everything that happens with a 0 & 1 from clicking a keyboard to whatever happens on the other end of the internet would literally take books. I once tried to explain what happens to make a Twitch stream and it took me like 10 pages to get 5% of the way there.

[jordanmatthew]

I like to see Cyber and Joshua Fluke duke it out, would be cool.

[Keyumiz]

What exactly is a maker space and could provide an example? Thank you 🙏

[Negurasis]

I am now scared. It is Harsh, I am a student on the first year of the cyber security course.

[MrKrecikKret]

I don't really get that DNS part. Unless this is some shibboleth question I don't know about, explaining how DNS works in this scenario isn't wrong and certainly isn't "trivia". I will gladly start by explaining how transistors and logic gates work and work my way up to 5G network slices if we have 4 hours to spare, but my first instinct here would also be to talk about the DNS.

If the interviewer wants to probe my knowledge in other areas, they should ask follow-up questions, not say "you missed 90% of the question". That's just rude and unhelpful. Or at least indicate in the question, that you want to hear an entire 7-semester CS curriculum in a nutshell.

[bambzld]

If you want get the job, be so good that you can't be forgotten.