My First Cybersecurity Interview
What a way to start the year!
I already have some great news to share as my year started on a high note but that will come in my next article.
This article is basically an update on my first article this year. Sometime in December 2023 just a few days to Christmas, I applied to a cybersecurity internship opportunity. Honestly, I was skeptical about applying because it was basically going to be focused on Security Operation Centre (SOC) duties and as you already know I’m training for Governance Risk and Compliance (GRC) roles. I applied regardless, no knowledge is lost in this field, best case scenario is that I decide to go into SOC or worst case I get an added advantage by gaining SOC experience.
To my surprise, I received an interview request email in the first week of January! The company had announced that they had received about 1000 applications so I was pleasantly surprised to get the invite. Anyway, I was excited and extremely nervous, I saw the email invite 3hrs to the interview, as it had come in late the previous night. The problem was I had a family situation to handle on the scheduled day. Knowing how competitive the industry is I knew I needed to reschedule to stand a chance but also knew they had 1000 entries and didn’t want to lose the opportunity. I went ahead to ask for a reschedule and it was granted for the next day at the same time. Now let me mention, I was in no way prepared for an interview and this made me even more anxious than ever. Since I already had a busy day scheduled, I decided to listen to several podcast episodes and youtube shorts on cybersecurity interviews throughout that day and these really helped me understand what to expect during the interview. I’ll make out time to write an article on my interview prep materials soon.
I can’t tell you how many times I took deep breathes on the actual interview day cause I was really anxious. I was so stressed, I prayed and then sat in front of my laptop ready, at the end of the interview I was so pumped because I aced it! I had a wonderful interview session and was certain I’d get a call back if there was another stage and I sure did. I got a final stage email later that day and this single thing made me feel on top of the world. Knowing the very first Cybersecurity role I applied to picked me out of 1000 people and then I made it to the final 10! I knew it was a make or break stage because just as I earlier said I wasn’t exactly the best fit based on the SOC path but I know my confidence probably made up for anything I might have fallen short of. At the final stage interview, I was still just as confident but I didn’t get the role because my background wasn’t in SOC but GRC.
Honestly, I am grateful for that interview experience because it made me realize I’m actually good at this cybersecurity thing especially because imposter syndrome is something I’m still struggle with. I had a great interview experience but sadly didn’t get the role and that’s absolutely fine. Something better that is more aligned will come, hopefully soon.
Thank you so much for reading to this point, I don’t know if they’re lessons to be learned here as this is just me journaling my experience but I do hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I loved writing it.
Until next time, find me where the good guys are!