Are you looking to get hired on your next cloud architect interview or
solution architect interview? If so, this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects. We are an
organization that's dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing and networking
careers. I've been working in technology for over 25 years and I've been helping others get their
first tech job or get promoted in tech for over two decades. And my absolute favorite thing in
the world is when one of my students calls me and says, "Guess what, Mike, I just got cloud hired."
In today's video, we are going to help you with that-cloud architect interview or solution
architect interview and we're going to talk about behavioral interviews. Specifically,
we'll talk about what is behavioral interviewing, we'll talk about what is the STAR method, which is
a common form of behavioral interviews used in the cloud computing environment by some of the bigger
cloud computing employers. We'll talk about what hiring managers desire and the perfect employee,
and then we'll talk about how to answer these behavioral questions for maximum success.
So let's talk about what is behavioral interviewing? Now,
behavioral interviewing is really a structured approach to the interview process.
Now, it's an approach that's a little different. It's a process of asking you how you behaved
in the past. Now, behavioral interviews work on this assumption. They assume that what you did
in the past and how you acted in the past is how you're going to act in the future. So when
an organization asks," Tell me about a problem or something... That mistake you did." They're hoping
to figure out what's going to happen and what kind of mistakes you're going to make in the future.
So that's the assumption of behavioral interviews, as your past actions are the best predictor of
your future interactions. Now, I'm not saying I agree with this philosophy because maybe somebody
got educated or changed or learned certain skills which could impact their future behavior from
their past behavior, or maybe they learned, but the process of the behavioral interview
works on the assumption of your past behaviors are going to be indicative of your future behaviors.
And that's why people are asking you about things that you've done in the past.
So, just understand that when you're going through these processes and that will help
you understand the process better and maybe be better at the process. When an organization is
asking these questions, it is a little different than a competency question, which might be,
"Tell me about this piece of tech." They're trying to ask here, your ability to work in
a team or your problem-solving ability or your leadership abilities or your interpersonal skills
or your conflict resolution skills, or how you're going to interact or act under stress.
So there's good reasons organizations try and find this because they figure when people show
up on an interview, they're all prepped for the interview and they've got a set of answers.
So they hope that if they push people and make them off balance, then they'll have
a set of real answers, which are closer to the truth. Now, the reality is most people are going
to practice for these behavioral interviews like they would practice for an interviewer,
but we have to understand the theory. We have to understand what's in the employer's mind,
so we know how to answer these questions better. So that's why we're talking a lot about the theory
of why organizations are doing. The most common form of these behavioral interviews
is actually using the STAR method or the STAR model. Now this is an older model. It actually
comes from the 1970s. And basically the model asked the questions related to the situation,
the task, the action, and the results of those actions.
And it's a fairly systematic approach. And I'll walk through an example or two.
So the situation is what's going on around? So the question might be where you'd asked the client or
the potential candidate, "What was the situation you were in?" Or "Tell me about a time..."
So as an interviewer, I might ask these questions to the candidate to try and figure out what is the
situation we're going to talk about, and then after I figure out what's going on,
then I'm going to ask him about the task. "What is it you were trying to accomplish?" Or,
"Where were you when this was going on?" Or, "What did you have to do?" So I'm trying to figure out
what went on task wise, and then I'm going to try and figure out the action that was taken.
What did you do to fix it? What did you do and why? But it's always going to be this
action, action. What action did you take to accomplish the task?
And then I'm going to be asking for the results. What are the results of your actions?
How did it turn out? So the situation, what was the situation you were in?
Task, what was the thing you needed to do? Action, what were the actions that you needed
to do to accomplish the task? And finally, the results. What were the results of your action?
That's what the STAR method is. So they're going to ask these kind of questions and if you can
frame them in these methods, it's going to be easier for the interviewer to hear and to like.
But that's what's going on. They're going to be asking questions and surrounding these things to
find out how you act. So the more you know, the better prepared you are. So being prepared. Now,
if you're going to answer these interview questions and theoretically, and we hope
you answer them honestly and correctly, but you should still know how to frame your questions.
And when you're framing your questions, if you can frame them according to an organization's
leadership principles, for example, people that are interviewing with AWS, they've got a series of
interview principles and adhering to those leadership principles makes the answer sound
sweeter to the interviewers at AWS. So for AWS, those leadership principles really matter to them.
Now, all organizations have leadership principles that matter to them, but
hiring managers also have principles that matter to them. So, when you're being interviewed,
you're going to be interviewed by two sets of things; the organization and their culture,
which is going to want to hear a certain thing, and the hiring manager, which is also going to
want to hear a certain thing or things they're looking for. So when you're framing your answers,
let's talk about what a hiring managers want. When we ask hiring managers what they want,
the first and foremost, they say is the ability for somebody to do the job.
That means technical competency, ability to do the job. Doesn't mean how long somebody's been doing
the job, the ability to do the job. Then hiring managers tell us they want someone they can trust.
And then hiring managers tell us they want someone that is safe. Meaning they know what they know,
they know when they don't know and they know not to do things they don't know without getting help
first. So they don't make mistakes like that outage that occurred at Facebook,
which cost $8 billion. Someone didn't know what they knew and didn't know what they didn't know,
so they made mistakes. Then hiring managers are looking for energetic individuals that are
enthusiastic about the work, they're looking for individuals that are called energizers or
emotionally intelligent and bring out the best of others. Then typically speaking,
organizations are looking for team players and people that are willing to go above and beyond.
So someone that can do the job, someone that can be trusted, someone that's competent and safe,
someone that's energetic, enthusiastic, emotionally intelligent,
willing to go above and beyond and a team player. So now you know what the manager is
and what they desire. And now that you know these things, now you know how to frame your answers.
Let's walk through a couple of examples of questions that you might see. "Tell me about
your most challenging customer. How did you resolve their issues and make them satisfied?".
What are they asking of you right now? They're checking your conflict resolution skills. They're
checking your leadership skills. They're checking your emotional intelligence. They're checking your
soft skills and your customer relationship management. They're asking a lot here. So
try to find a time where you had a customer that was challenging, where maybe you used some empathy
and saw things their way, or you had a customer that was challenging that had been wronged.
And if so, how you brought all the pieces and parts of your organization to the customer
to make things right for the customer. Talk about a way that you delighted that customer.
Not only their fixing their issue, but resolving it. Look for an example like that.
Look for examples that include some leadership, how you brought in people from the team and
you led the team until the team was done, and then you made sure the customer was satisfied,
and then show how that had a positive impact on your organization. These are the kind of
things we're looking to see. So we're trying to figure out... That sounds like a simple question
but it's not. Let's take another example, "Can you give me an example of a time when you exceeded
expectations?" Again, let's go back to all those things that those managers care about, that
organizations care about. Exceeded expectations, wait, we know the hiring managers want to know
that your willingness to go above and beyond. We also know they love energy and enthusiasm.
Okay? So there's a couple things automatically that are there that you should start thinking of.
So next, think about a chance or an opportunity in your past where you went above and beyond.
Now, when you went above and beyond, did you do it in a matter that brought people with you?
If so, that's a good example. Maybe you went above and beyond, did it with the team,
you got promoted and you got the team promoted behind you. That's a great example.
Did you do something that took a lot of effort and you did it and you made the customer so satisfied
that the customer bought more? Again, a great example. But try and bring back an example with
a benefit to the organization or a benefit to how you helped others at the customer or
others in your organization. Tie it back to something. Don't you just say, "I worked 100
hours to accomplish the goal." Show how your actions, the things that you actually did,
that are part of that STAR method impacted the customer or the organization, and you will win.
Another very common question is to figure out how you deal with criticism or negative feedback.
So, pretty common question. Think of a time you received negative feedback. How did you deal with
it? Okay. So it's checking your open-mindedness, how easy it is to lead you. Are you intrinsically
motivated and do desire to get better every day? These are the kind of things that are being asked
here. They're trying to determine your motivation. Are you willing to go above and beyond, take a
setback and say, "Okay, I didn't do this right, but I'm going to get better." They're trying to
find these things out. So your answer should show that. Show energy, enthusiasm, passion, commitment
to excellence, attention to detail, and the desire to improve. That's what they're looking for.
Let's take a safety question. "What do you do when faced with an unfamiliar task?" Okay. "So
what do you do when faced with something unfamiliar?" What are they trying to see?
One, are you reckless? Are you just going to act without thinking? So don't it answer that way.
Remember, the technology, we make one mistake, we can have big outages. Look at what happened with
Facebook and their BGP outage. $8 billion was the information that was reported of lost earnings.
So, we're looking for people that when they're unfamiliar, are going to be safe. So if you had an
unfamiliar task, did you research the task? Did you find someone else that could be a
peer or a mentor? Did you build a team of people, of subject matter experts?
What did you do? So the organization is looking to see, did you go above and beyond? Did you
find a way to make it safe? Did you do some research? Did you do something special in
the process that shows that you went above and beyond? Did you do something in the process of
research that delighted the customer? Did you do something that helped others along the way?
Let the organization know. See, the way to win at these cloud architect or solution architect
interviews is to really think about what does the organization want? And also think, what is the job
of the architect? So we architects transform an organization's business through technology.
So hopefully, some of your answers show some form of a transformation
because that shows that we are architects who are transforming. Hopefully, some of your answers can
show some transformation. So we want to tie it all back to the business benefits. Make
your answers around what the hiring managers want but we have to be honest with these answers too.
So these are the things I want you to look for. I want you to look for examples from your past,
for which you can do the following. The pointed behavioral interviews,
is if I ask you questions from your past, I think I'll get information from your future.
And the theory of the interviewers is, "We're going to bombard you with questions you're not
prepared for. You're going to be off balance and you're going to give us real information and from
there, we can determine if you're a good hire or not." Guess what, you can prepare for these
questions and we all are now. So, be prepared. When you get to the interview, it should not be
your first time asking behavioral questions. To know when you get an answer, one-word answers,
not good, but be concise. Don't ramble. Organize it. Take a couple seconds to
organize your thoughts so you can highlight those benefits that you can impress the organization.
Be specific. When someone asks you some of these questions, like," What did you do?"
This is not a time for equivocation and baling, this is a time to be
very specific. "I did this." And now I'm going to be quantitative. "I took this
action and it saved the organization 11.7 %, which equated to X, Y, Z dollars per year."
See, be quantitative. So when you answer these things, be prepared, be concise, be specific
and be quantitative, but be honest because when you're not honest, organizations can feel
dishonesty and they won't hire you. So the key is preparing for these ahead of time. So you can
know good examples that are going to highlight you in a great way. I hope you've enjoyed this video
on solution architect, interview and cloud architect interview behavioral questions, and how
to win at the behavioral interview. I hope to see you in another video coming very soon, take care.
It was so nice having you join us for this video today. Let me tell you about some free services
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subscribe and hit the bell. I look forward to seeing you and I look forward to assisting you
in your technology career. Thank you so much. This is Michael Gibbs from Go Cloud Architects.