Post interview question

[jericho]

Hello,

A couple of weeks ago I got press ganged into applying for an internal promotion (ops team lead => presales engineer).

I had the technical interview part of our ridiculous recruitment process yesterday and got asked a question that I thought I gave a reasonable answer to, but now I'm not so sure.

Asking around my team and the existing presales teams hasn't provided much in the way of an answer, so I thought I'd ask here to see how daft I made myself look.

In a nutshell, the question was "What products would you recommend (preferably Cisco) to automate & simplify adding or changing users access to services, and to automate reporting & remediation of breaches?"

I went with ISE linked to whatever the central directory service is for the first part then adding pxGrid & Stealthwatch for the second part.

I'm now thinking I should have thought a bit about SDA/DNA (which I think still uses ISE under the hood?) before answering, wouldn;t have helped as I know very little about them, but may have got a different response from the interviewer.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

Cheers

J

[deanwebb]

I'd go with Forescout, but that might be due to my bias...

Access to services can also be ACI, Palo Alto groups, and Active Directory. Automate reporting and remediation would also include Lancope, a VA scanner tool like Rapid7 or Qualys, and Splunk, provided you have it set up to send out alerts when it gets sufficient syslogs from a particular source in a particular time frame.

[Dieselboy]

I think the products answer which you gave is fine. However if I were the interviewer, I'd have been looking more for your reasons why you chose those products and how that fits in with the ecosystem there.

[jericho]

Thanks for the replies, some more stuff to look into.

@Dieselboy, agreed, the questions were all part of a scenario that they gradually built on. The first part was to do with complete kit refresh, what would I choose and why in terms of HW, topology, protocols etc given needs now and anticipated future changes.

They then asked how I would meet the future needs and why I would make the decisions I did. It was just shy of a 2 hour interview and was not a comfortable experience. I did ask if all the customer meetings would be this intense, and if so could I withdraw my application, which got a giggle from one of the interview panel.

Anyway, looks like I didn't do as badly as I thought afterwards as I've been asked back for the next phase of the 5 stage(!) recruitment process.

Thanks again.

Cheers

J

[Otanx]

Like Dieselboy said, if I was talking to you I am more interested in the why you selected the solution you did, and not the solution itself.

-Otanx

[deanwebb]

5 stages?

Better ask who your manager will be. If they can't answer that, something fishy is going on.

[Dieselboy]

Sometimes you have to consider interviewing the company to see if they're a good fit for you 

[jericho]

Like Dieselboy said, if I was talking to you I am more interested in the why you selected the solution you did, and not the solution itself.

-Otanx

Yup, me too. I'll admit I found that difficult to articulate, mainly as I don't have a great deal of experience with ISE and zero with Stealthwatch. Apparently just picking their buzzwords and explaining how the tech met that requirement was the right thing to do.

5 stages?

Better ask who your manager will be. If they can't answer that, something fishy is going on.

My prospective manager is the person who persuaded me to apply in the first place, which has the happy side effect of meaning I can skip 2 of the stages (meet the team & hiring manager interview). Step 3 is HR interview and the one I just had would normally be step 4. Last step is meet the head of division (in this case, the director in charge of the presales team), so  it's now down to my personality, which probably means I'm screwed.

Sometimes you have to consider interviewing the company to see if they're a good fit for you 

I've been here just shy of a year so far and it's a pretty good place to work. Bit of a lower salary then I was on before, but they make up for it in other ways that are worth more to me than the difference.

Sounds like there are two other (external) applicants and me left in the running now, so hopefully they have worse personalities than me.

Cheers

J

[Otanx]

Yup, me too. I'll admit I found that difficult to articulate, mainly as I don't have a great deal of experience with ISE and zero with Stealthwatch. Apparently just picking their buzzwords and explaining how the tech met that requirement was the right thing to do.

Yep, sometimes all managers want to hear is your confident the product can do it. They don't care or maybe understand the how. Sounding confident is a big part of sales.

My prospective manager is the person who persuaded me to apply in the first place, which has the happy side effect of meaning I can skip 2 of the stages (meet the team & hiring manager interview). Step 3 is HR interview and the one I just had would normally be step 4. Last step is meet the head of division (in this case, the director in charge of the presales team), so  it's now down to my personality, which probably means I'm screwed.

They want an IT guy with a personality? Man talk about a unicorn. Seriously 5 interviews is a yellow flag to me. It seems like too much bureaucracy. Their change management process has 30 steps, the review board meets once a month, and four people have veto power for any changes. I know some people like that, but I am more about the 2 interview level. There is change management, and you need to submit a ticket, but the approval is an email from the IT Manager that says "approved". Of course you are already in the environment so this does not really apply to you.

Sounds like there are two other (external) applicants and me left in the running now, so hopefully they have worse personalities than me.

Good luck. Being internal helps as they already know you, and that you can fit into the team. Bringing in someone from outside is always a risk.

-Otanx