Tag Archives: Interview Advice

Hiring a Cloud Professional: Skills to Look For

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I think it’s safe to say that I’ve written a few times about the value of the cloud in business. And, as it turns out, a lot of people agree with me. The cloud is growing incredibly quickly, with cloud services such as Amazon AWS and Microsoft reporting massive upsurges in revenue. For agile businesses such as startups, entrepreneurs have been able to easily adopt the cloud and gain a huge advantage over competitors.

With this increase in demand for cloud services, businesses are looking for cloud-savvy professionals in their IT departments. Perhaps your company is even one of those businesses. With that in mind, these are some of the skills you’ll want to look for when it comes to hiring a cloud professional, or perhaps even learn for yourself.

Data Systems and Databases

Data is the cornerstone of the cloud, and any professional working with it needs to be familiar with the workings of a database in order to qualify. Big Data is increasingly enabled by the cloud, with the sector growing at a similarly rapid rate. In fact, cloud experts are convinced that this trend will become even more pronounced in the future, with businesses storing and accessing their data through the cloud.

SQL and MySQL are standard languages for databases and crucial for any cloud professional to know. However, open source data platforms such as Hadoop and MongoDB. In fact, the former is well suited for processing large volumes of data, making it ideal to embrace the advent of big data.

Linux

While it’s not strictly necessary for working with the cloud, the majority of cloud software platforms are based in Linux. While Linux hasn’t made a huge impact when it comes to desktop computing, it has gained popularity in the cloud community for its rapid innovation and flexibility. Its primary rival is Microsoft Azure, which even includes an option to run Linux’s openSuse OS.

Dual booting your computer is a great first step to start if you’d like to learn the ins and outs of Linux. As an open source operating system, the community is robust and helpful resources are plentiful.

Cloud migration

It can be difficult to switch over to the cloud from typical IT infrastructure, especially as a large business. When it comes time to make the transition, businesses often have to rely on professional services for migration.

Professionals will want to obtain a certificate in migration for the cloud platform of their choice. Giving the complexity and security concerns associated with migration, finding a professional and plan that fits your needs is very necessary.

Quality assurance

QA is one of the most common skills requested in cloud computing job postings, and the cloud presents new challenges to QA developers. QA and QC engineers have always been in demand, and with the expansion of the cloud, ensuring the integrity of a piece of software is more important than ever.

Security

Cyber security for cloud applications is still developing, leaving many systems vulnerable to hackers. With over 90% of cloud applications not secure for enterprise use, the burden falls to developers to secure their systems and protect the organizations that they work for.

Due to mounting security concerns, data protection regulations are being implemented to ensure compliance amongst businesses and leverage fines if their systems are not secure enough. Like many of the other skills on this list, certifications exist for any professional wishing to bring cloud applications up to spec.

Invert the Interview: 3 Red Flags That Mean You May Want To Walk Away Now

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Scott Maurice Interview TipsAs previously discussed, the first step to a phenomenal interview is setting the standard for what defines success for you. Ideally, you have engaged the interviewer on a human level, you are exceedingly prepared, and you conclude the role is a great fit for your skillset and desired career trajectory. However, even when everything in the interview is going excellently, you should always be looking to expand your understanding of the opportunity. If you going to commit to a company professionally, it is always best to fully understand exactly what kind of situation you are choosing to enter. Companies have an automatic interest in selling themselves, so to speak, to the best candidates and saying what they need to say to attract to talent. This can sometimes mean that for a clear picture of what goes on at the organization, you will need to read between the lines. Here are three big things that might mean you need to dig deeper before signing on any dotted lines.

Competency Gaps

In almost all interview structures, you will be given the chance to speak to company leadership and your potential managers. If at the end of those meetings you walk away believing (or even just suspecting) that you could do their job better than them for whatever reason, definitely reconsider the role. Maybe you were deeply unimpressed by the person who would be overseeing your – or perhaps they were fine but your qualifications and experience are just obviously more impressive. Regardless, signing up to work under someone you do not fully respect is a surefire way to create some uncomfortable situations moving forward. Instead of that, lay the discomfort out flat during pre-hiring chats. Press these individuals on the story of their own upward mobility and ability to execute, while you evaluate if this is someone who actually is qualified to oversee your professional development. Harp on advancement opportunities, making it clear that you need to know they will be able to get you to where you want to go.

Compensation Acrobatics

Be very wary of ownership compensation. Equity compensation has recently skyrocketed in popularity, surely buoyed by over-sensationalized media coverage of tech billionaires and starry-eyed optimism of start-up culture. The company posits that rather than pay you what the market says your input is woth, they will make up the difference in equity. This is a very different situation than offering market-competitive wages and relying on equity to put the offer over the top as compared to other players in the industry. This could be indicative of financial distress, so when you hear those words, be sure you have personally evaluated their financial projections closely. Then, you will have two options. You can either politely walk away or become more aggressive, holding their feet to the fire. When they offer you compensation packages that pay below what the market would suggest is appropriate, what you hear as a potential hire is that they are choosing to give something which has no guaranteed value over actual money. Basically, they are underpaying you and crossing their fingers…at least, that is what you are hearing. Put the onus on them to tell you more about the financial power of the company, as well as how they are going to do more than just say you and the position you would hold are valuable. How will they show you it is valuable?

Watch That Workload

Always be careful when you hear a company casually extricate itself from the way in which employees handle workloads. Organizations love hiding this kind of structural issue as a sort of cultural characteristic, and it is particularly common in government, nonprofits, and education.  These places adopt an entitled philosophy, in which it is such a privilege to work there. As such, they fall victim to “hero syndrome.” This means that when you ask shining examples of excellence, everyone points to the individual who is always staying late and going way above and beyond the call of duty.

This might seem counterintuitive but, more often than not, this is a bad sign. When a company extols the virtues of an employee who “just gets it done,” even when that mean he or she is donating dozens of extra hours per week, it means they are way to comfortable avoiding the real issue at hand. That would be, “why does this person need to work so hard just to excel here in the first place?” Poor planning, disorganization, inefficiency, terrible communication, or uninvested leadership can all play a role in how so much comes to be asked of employees just to get the job done. To avoid finding yourself in that kind of scenario, take the control back in the interview and stop them in their tracks. Be authoritative. Question why it is they value employees who give up their free time and throw off their work/life balance to accomplish something that could, should, and would have been finished on time if there had been a contingency plan in place. What actions is the company taking now to avoid having to ask the same overextension from their employees on such projects in the future? Really drill them directly – you want to commit to a company who is able to actually follow through on their commitment to supporting you.

Invert The Interview: How To Ask Questions That Conquer

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Scott MauriceIt happens every time. The hiring manager and you have closed out a fairly traditional and unsurprising back-and-forth. Hopefully, you did your due diligence and excelled thus far. Every question he or she threw in your direction was an opportunity for you hit a homerun, and you managed to accomplish exactly that. Then, the HR representative agrees to open the floor to questions. You are somewhat tempted to sit back and relax, resting on the laurels of your great answers up to this point. Whatever you do, resist the urge to slip into autopilot. This moment is as make-or-break as any other in the interview scenario.

Just because you are the one asking the questions does not mean the dynamic will change without a concerted effort on your part. Step one is to refuse to lob him or her the easy ones just to coast at the same frequency you have already established. This portion of the conversation can (and should!) be much more than just a formality. So eschew the old interview model. Do not ask the polite questions you know you are “supposed to ask.” What does that really achieve for you and your professional success in the long term? More likely than not, it won’t be much.

Instead, ask yourself prior to the interview what it is you even need. Do you just need a job? Do you need to know if you can tolerate this one, or is it important for you to now that you will sincerely love it? Could you stand to benefit from some overall career advice? Identify how you can most effectively leverage this chance to sit with an official representative of this company for your own benefit, and then execute once you two are face-to-face. Walking in with an agenda almost always throws the interviewer off and sets you apart. Even though the contrived interview has come to be accepted as fact, it definitely does not need to be.

Every question you ask will be evaluated and scrutinized. So, ask questions that can help you out in two ways – illustrate your capability to dominate in a professional environment and extract the kind of information from a person that you could never get from a website or brochure. To do this, you will need to prepare and tactfully deliver strategic inquiries. Instead of just asking if the workplace is “fun” so that the HR manager can spoon-feed you the company line about culture fits and happy hours, dig deeper. Figure out what “fun” means to you, and then ask questions about that. On the flip side, remember to demonstrate your value as well. If you want a workplace with a mentoring program, and this one lacks it, could you be the one to start it after you were hired? Those sorts of follow-ups are fantastic indicators of leadership and investment on your part.

This is easiest when you set your mindset accordingly beforehand. At the beginning of my career, I was ready to move into my next opportunity and lined up about a dozen interviews. I accepted an offer from the third company with which I spoke, but then needed to figure out what to do with the rest of my scheduled conversations with different potential employers. Once I knew that I already had a job, I totally transformed the way in which I approached those talks. Instead of over-stressing impressing the hiring manager, I finally prioritized learning. And, just like that, I abandoned the back-and-forth interview in favor of real conversations that would add real value to my professional success.

Co-opting the interview situation into one that is beneficial for you requires planning and commitment, but the payoff is well worth that time and effort. It’s a chance to improve your skills in relationship building, negotiations, research, and more. Walk in with your head held high and eyes set on the prize, which should almost always bigger than just the specific job on the line. Put your career first in the conversation, and you will be surprised by what you stand to learn.

Invert the Interview: 3 Tips On How To Turn The Tables On HR Managers Everywhere

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Scott Maurice image of interviewThis particular scene to nearly every working adult in the United States. Two people, on opposite sides of a desk, facing each other. One, a hiring manager, asks questions – first about information that can be found on the resume in front of him or her and then, perhaps, a few more difficult (but predictable) ones. The other person, the candidate, answers them with the same canned answers he or she has spouted since they started their job hunt this time around. Some variant of this scenario plays out every single day. It is the cultural norm and the industry standard. It’s also entirely wrong.

An interview, whether in-person or over the phone, does not need to exist in that age-old power paradigm, where the HR person with the clipboard is calling all of the shots. In fact, it should not. The best applicants are able to do so much more than just knock a question out the park. They’re disrupters and know the hard truth – an interview is not about the company. It’s about you.

The System Is Broken

As an individual who has worked through a number of extensive Fortune 100 trainings to be the one asking the interview questions, I can confirm that there’s a common framework at play that is ineffective and inefficient. Companies are searching for certain core competencies, and shape the interview according to certain domains to peek into your critical thinking and depth of knowledge. However, the typical interview format just does not produce a rich enough experience to reveal all of that. Should the candidate answer all those questions, the hiring staff still fails to completely grasp whether he or she is a good cultural fit and can actually do the job. The best they can hope for is an impression.

So, to set yourself apart from the pack, you need to go deeper. Be targeted. You should not just be interviewing for that company, you should specifically be interviewing the company itself. As the representative of the company, the hiring manager is therefore your interview subject. One of the first things you should do when you walk in is set the tone by communicating that you have questions of your own and getting them answered is just as much a priority as responding to theirs. Ask if they would prefer you ask them upfront. These questions typically occur as an afterthought, once the hiring manager has gone down their own checklist. By offering to lead with them, you make it clear you are more than prepared, willing, and qualified to take the reigns of the conversation itself. This disrupts that traditional power dynamic, flips it on its head, and puts both you and the hiring manager on equal footing.

Change the Rules

This candidate-first perspective alone can be deeply powerful and truly freeing. Be confident in your value as a candidate – human capital is the most critical resource in any industry, without exception. Act like it. The hiring manager may be acting as the face of the company, but he or she is also a person. So, an interview is so much more than just a employment-centric interrogation. This is your chance to connect on a personal level with someone qualified to tell you everything you would need to know about whether this position is even the kind of opportunity you want to pursue.

Open yourself up and be a little vulnerable to earn trust. Be honest and direct about the kind of position you are looking to procure. Coax them out of the elevated position and linear back-and-forth to which they likely have become very accustomed; engage in a sincere conversation. You want to be two humans having an honest discussion. Once you have built some trust in your dialogue, you can uncover what is really valuable to you. Of course, you will need to define exactly what that entails beforehand.

What do you need out of this job interview? Regardless of whether this position is a great fit for you, what value can you derive from this investment of your time? You can invite some excellent career advice from an interview situation, as well as feedback regarding how you perform as a candidate. You can even tease out information about the competition, which may well inform whether you end up applying there.

Beat Them at Their Own Game

It’s the hiring manager’s job to know the role that needs to be filled and do some research into the kind of person best suited to do so. So, if you are serious about controlling the conversation, then the old adage rings true – “knowledge is power.” Look at the company’s competition and be well-informed about their industry and how they are performing therein. Where the company is going is to impact your potential job. How does this specific role factor into resolving whatever the company’s current challenge is? Claim the advantage and ask the hard-hitting questions.

Tailor those to your precise needs. “Do you enjoy working here?” (or any of its many different permutations) is a waste of time because it leaves too much room for the hiring personnel to decide what warrants enjoyment and to fall back on canned company responses. Figure out what you would need in order to enjoy working somewhere, and ask about that.