The practice of practice — and flying through your first interview
Opinions expressed are solely my own and do not express the views or opinions of my employer
The one thing I’ve noticed as I continue this series of posts, is that it is getting easier for me to put proverbial pen to paper. Obviously, a part of that is the encouragement and feedback from all of you who have liked and commented on my posts, and reached out privately to ask advice. It’s really rewarding and motivating. Thank you!
More importantly, I believe that a large part of it — is the “practice” I’m putting in. I’ve always been a firm believer that practice is absolutely essential to learning and critical to improving yourself.
So I decided to focus this post on some of the lessons I’ve learnt over the last few years about practicing effectively. This post is focused on how to apply these lessons on effective practice to one of the most nerve wracking aspects of getting a new job in the security field — that first interview. There is of course plenty of advice already on how to answer technical interview and behavioral type questions and sample interview questions all over the place.
So this is not that type of advice — it’s more about giving you some quick advice on how to perfect the practice of practice effectively. I therefore encourage you to read it even if you are a seasoned practitioner — the practice of practicing can be applied to so many other areas of security that require deliberate practice and rehearsal to ensure their effectiveness.
Breaking it down
Firstly I think it is essential to think of an interview and any area you’re looking to improve on, as not just as a single opportunity for improvements, but as a series of events, situations and skills that you can individually practice and improve on.
These opportunities for improvement could include everything from what you would wear to the interview, how to get to the interview on time, introducing yourself and shaking hands, answering technical and behavioral questions to even how you leave the interview. You can further break this down into components and skills that you can focus on improving individually. In essence, there should be no aspect of the interview process that you can’t practice or rehearse and no part of the process that you can’t be comfortable with before the interview.
Breaking it down to the components that you need to excel at and therefore practice, also helps avoid situations where you become complacent and overconfident in your ability — I sheepishly admit that early on in my career I showed up late for an interview because I didn’t think about the commute in my preparations and underestimated how long it would take at a certain time of day. Lesson learned.
Relish the feedback
Following on in the same continuous improvement mindset, I feel it’s important to view every bit of feedback as an opportunity for improvement and not a negative. Every opportunity to get better at something is something you should relish — right? Obviously a great way to prepare for an interview is through a practice or “mock” interview, before you progress to using actual interviews as feedback sessions for your next actual interview (That’s right — even real interviews can be practice for your next interview).
The trick to effective feedback is make sure you get feedback that you can immediately act on. It has to be actionable and not vague hints on being more confident. Personally I find that the most effective feedback is both gathered through my own measurement, as well as validated from external “expert” feedback. After every interview, I find it immensely valuable to immediately write down things I want to improve on using a More / Better / Different / Less framework for behavioral change. The key thing is to write it down almost immediately because I’ve found that you won’t be able to trust your memory as the adrenaline of the interview fades. Your notes could be as descriptive as better answers to a specific technical questions or as broad as shorter answers to questions, but you’ll find that you become a lot more aware of your areas for improvement just by thinking about it.
The external “expert” part of the feedback is as important to the feedback phase. You’re looking for honest, objective and relevant feedback — not something you’ll typically find from your family and friends. Ideally, you want to practice with someone who works in your industry and has real-world experience interviewing job candidates.
Of course, they are unlikely to be able to give you credible fashion advice or give you insight into the commute, so make sure you’re pretty clear on what advice you’re looking for and you’re talking to right expert.
Make it challenging
My last bit of advice is to keep increasing the difficulty and challenge. This could be as simple asking your mock interviewer to increase the technical difficulty of questions they ask or changing the type of position you’re “interviewing” for.
I find this incredibly important as it teaches you the importance of adapting to “new” situations, as well as teaching you how to answer questions when you don’t know the answer. It’s incredibly impressive for someone to admit they don’t something, and even more amazing when they can talk you through their thought process for figuring it out.
Similarly I would encourage you to practice in ways designed to provide with a new challenge. This could include different interviewers, including at the same time and through multiple mediums. Everyone has a different way of interviewing and each interview will be slightly different — especially when you consider in-person, phone or video interviews.
In essence, you want to be prepared to adapt to new situations, rather than be prepared to simply answer a question you’re prepared for.
Keep up the practice of practice
Hopefully you’ve realized that these lessons about practicing can actually be applied to anything not just the interview prep and can apply it to a lot more aspects of your security career where preparedness is essential.
As always, let me know what you think and feel free to reach out and ask for advice.
