Are you looking to have an amazing cloud architect interview? So this video is for you. Hi, my
name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of GoCloud Architects. And were an
organization dedicated towards building high performance cloud architect careers. And today,
we're going to be talking about the shutdown the interview technique. Now the shutdown
the interview technique is a technique that I developed about 20 years ago. And it's a
way that you can take control of the interview on your terms, answer an interviewer's question
and answer it in such a manner that they don't ask you any more questions and they hire you.
So let's talk about what this technique is and how to use it and why it works. So let's
first talk about why this technique works. So the technique works because as hiring managers,
we do technical interviews for the following reasons. I want to see your level of technical
competency, but I also want to say your verbal communication skills. See, by getting those
two things, I know a lot about you because a cloud architect will literally spend at
least half of their time communicating. And they're going to be meeting with clients,
they're going to be obtaining customer requirements, and they're going to have to design a solution.
And in order to design a solution or an architecture, you have to know how the whole picture works
and how everything works.
So here's how and when to use this technique. When the hiring manager asks you a technical
question, if you are lucky enough to have some good subject matter expertise on that,
answer the question with real depth. And I'll talk to you about some examples on how and
why, but if you're asked a competency question, answer it with so much depth in a clear, concise
manner that there is literally no doubt that you're an expert. And when they see and hear
your level of expertise and knowledge properly delivered, there won't be any more technical
questions. They'll start talking to you about salary and desires. I've used this technique
multiple times throughout my career, many of my clients have, and they've been highly
successful.
So let's talk a little bit about that technique. So when you get asked a question that you
know a lot about, answer in depth. I will give you an example from 25 years ago in my
networking career. I was interviewing with a vendor of networking technologies, a company
that made routers and switches. And I had my first technical interview on the phone
and the person that gave me the interview, he asked me a question, he said, what is the
multicast address of an OSPF Hello? And I took that question. I said, it could be 224.0.0.5,
which is for all SPF routers, or he could be looking for 224.0.0.6, all DR other routers.
So I said, I don't know how you really want me to answer that question, because if you're
asking for all SPF routers, you're talking about 224.0.0.5. And if you're talking about
all DR other routers, you're talking about 224.0.0.6.
And something interesting happened. He said, the person that was interviewing me, he said,
"Wow, you look like you know, let me ask you another question." And he said, what is an
LSA or link state advertisement? So what did I do? I said, a link state advertisement is
the way that these routers can determine their typology by each router advertising the state
and their links. There's a type 1 LSA, which does this, a type 2 LSA, which does this,
a type 3 LSA, which does this. And I did it all the way through the types of LSAs. And
he finally stopped me and he said, I get it. You know OSPF. I don't have any more questions
for you, but I definitely want to recommend you to the hiring manager to come in for an
in-person interview. I've used it there. I've used it numerous times. And like I said, people
have.
So let's take a simple example. Let's say you're in an interview, either AWS or another
cloud provider, or like a bank that wants to use cloud services and they ask you some
of these questions. Let's say, someone says, what is S3? Now you've got options. You could
just say S3 is object storage on the AWS platform, or you could say S3 is a form of object storage
on the AWS platform. Let me tell you a little bit about object storage, and then I'll tell
you a lot more about S3. And you could say that object storage is a special type of storage,
where data is broken down into little pieces called objects, and that each object has metadata
or data about data. And it's that metadata that makes object storage so unique. And we'll
talk about how that metadata can be used in SQL queries and other things along the way
to enable you to build data lakes and things, but let's at least describe what these technologies
are.
So I mentioned that it's object storage. Now object storage is really great, for example,
for files that don't get changed a lot. And the reason it's great for files that don't
get changed a lot is with object storage, every time you modify a file, it creates a
new object, which could fill up your rate arrays if it's in your own storage area network,
or it can get very costly on the cloud. And then let's say since S3 is the AWS branded
form of object storage, let's talk about some special things you can do with S3. S3 is a
cost-effective way for you to store your data. And I could go on and go on and go on and
go on. Then I'll start talking about S3 and I would talk about Lifecycle Policies and
different options and encryption. And I would show competency.
So see what I did. They basically asked you what is S3. And instead of giving the one
sentence answer, wow them, get deep. Show them that you understand how it works, why
it works, why you would use it and how to architect it. And you're going to shut down
the interview. They will shut it down on your terms. And if you can do that right, they're
not going to ask you any more questions, which is great, because let's say you only know
S3, and you can answer it with extreme depth. You answer it in such a way that impresses
them, they won't ask you any more questions and there you have, you've won the interview.
So, if you are lucky enough to be asked that question on your interview that you know a
lot about, dazzle them with your knowledge, prove your level of competency, show them
you are so much better than the rest that they have no choice, but to hire you. I will
tell you, I've used this numerous times, I've had many clients that use this many times.
And if you can prove such extreme depth, then you're hireable right then and there on the
spot and they will stop asking you questions. So that's the shutdown the interview technique.
It's something we developed approximately 20 years ago, and it's worked for so many
of our clients. And hopefully, it'll work for you too.
Let me tell you about some offerings we have, most of which are free. Every Monday and every
Thursday, we have a free how to get your first cloud architect job webinar. On these webinars,
we talk about what hiring managers hire, how to build a certification in training portfolio,
how to become the ideal cloud architect candidate, things that as hiring managers we want to
see, and it's really about helping you build a plan to have the perfect cloud architect
career. We have these calls on Monday, we have these calls on Thursday, and they are
absolutely completely free. I'll leave the link in the description below.
Now, let me also tell you about our cloud architect experience webinar. As hiring managers,
we're typically looking for people that are competent and capable. And there's a big difference
between AWS training and cloud architect training. See, AWS training trains you to basically
know the services and how to configure them, which is great, but a cloud architect really
spent their time meeting with clients and obtaining business, legal, technical, and
regulatory requirements in designing a solution. Unfortunately, there is no correlation or
carry over between AWS training and the job of a cloud architect. The AWS training is
perfect if you want it to be a cloud implementation engineer instead of the CLI all day, but it's
not what a cloud architect does.
So in this webinar, we will tell you how to get the real hands-on experience that are
going to dazzle hiring managers so they can hire you. And we do that free every Tuesday.
Many Wednesdays, we do a free YouTube live, where you bring us your cloud architect career
questions and we answer them live. We don't do them every week. So please subscribe to
our channel and you will find out.
We have coming up a live six-day bootcamp, where we will cover all of the things that
are necessary to be a cloud architect. We will cover the curriculum from an architecture
perspective of the Certified Solutions Architect Professional, the AWS Advanced Networking
and the security. And again, we will cover them from an architectural perspective and
not an implementation perspective. We will then spend several days designing highly complicated
architectures for banking and retail and global enterprises, even healthcare organizations,
so you can get good at designing cloud architectures. And I'll leave the link to that in the description
below.
Now, if you're working on getting AWS certified, we have a free AWS Certified Solutions Architect
– Associate ebook. I'll leave the link in the description below. It has everything you
need to pass the exam. And we have a free and full AWS Certified Solutions Architect
– Associate training program. I'll leave the link in the description below so you'll
have access to that. Please check us out at training.gocloudarchitects.com to see a list
of our training programs. I look so forward to seeing you in another video very soon.
And thank you so much.