I got rejected from Google and here’s what I learned from it

I got rejected from Google and here’s what I learned from it 👩🏻‍💻

At the time, I had about 3 years of experience working in cybersecurity and still wasn’t the most confident interviewing. But this interview specifically taught me so much on what to prepare for as well as my areas of improvement! 

1. 📕 You learn more when you fail: There’ve been times in the past when I aced something and was ecstatic but as I’ve gone further in my career, I’ve found that it’s actually the times that you fail where you get the most insights and growth opportunities. When you succeed, there isn’t as much of a feedback loop on what you can do better next time, and the people I know who’re the most successful have also failed the hardest and the most often, but they always come back better than they were before. 

2. 👓 Focus on Security Design interview prep: These are the interviews that go deeper into your technical experience, personal projects, as well as foundational cybersecurity knowledge. You get to work through a problem or a question with your interviewer and is much more interactive and relevant to what you’d actually be doing on the job than a typical one-off technical cybersecurity interview question. (More on how to prep for these in my interview prep course linked below!)

3. 🤝 Mock interviews are a MUST: If you’re just starting out in your career, going through even just ONE mock interview can make the biggest difference when you start interviewing. Sure, a question may sound simple to answer when you read it on a list of “50 most common cybersecurity interview questions”, but actually formulating your thoughts into an answer can be a very different experience. Always practice with mock interviews and record them to look back on and analyze later for what you could be doing better!

Now that I have more cybersecurity interviews under my belt, I feel much more confident interviewing since it really comes down to the idea that “Practice makes perfect”. 

You can check out the full video detailing my interview experience and everything I learned from it on my YouTube channel here! - https://youtu.be/5YvD-JEQb8M 

💡 Currently in the cybersecurity job search? Check out my Cybersecurity Interview Prep Mastery Course to help you ace your next interview and land your next job! https://learn.withcybersecurity.com