Are you looking to find your first cloud architect job? Well, if so, this video is for you.
Please subscribe and hit the bell to be informed of new cloud computing videos every Wednesday. Hi,
my name is Michael Gibbs and I've been working in technology for over 25 years. During this time,
I've mentored countless individuals and I've helped them find their first jobs.
In this video series, we're going to teach you how to find your first job when you don't have
any commercial-based experience. In this episode, we're going to be focusing on the interview.
We're going to focus on the interview because when you're new, it's going to be hard to get
an interview. When you get that interview, you don't want to waste it. You want to win.
You want to wow them so much that not only do they hire you, but they hire you for a better position,
and they give you a higher starting salary than they were expecting to pay.
With a few simple steps, you can easily separate yourself from the crowd,
and help ensure that you get this position. I want you to think about things about the organization
and why they want you, and what the manager wants. Because if you understand what the
organization wants and what their goals are and what the manager wants,
you'll be able to answer interview questions in a manner that the organization is going to
think very highly of you. We're going to teach you how to do that.
What does the manager want? Because the manager is the ultimate person going to be making the
decision, do I hire this person or do I not hire this person? Make sure you know that you
can help the manager meet their goals. Let's talk about what their goals are. What does the average
hiring manager want? They want someone that can do the job. That sounds quite simple, but they
just want someone that's technically competent. The reason they want someone that's competent
is they have work to be done, and they're judged by their management team based on whether they
can deliver their work. If they have a team full of people that can do their job, and if they can
do their job well, the manager is going to look better, and the manager is going to be promoted.
You know what, if you do your job well, that manager will promote you along the way, because
you'll be different than the rest. Be someone that makes the manager's life better. Know what the
manager wants. They want to meet or exceed their goals that have been given to them, so find a way
to help them. In your interview make sure you can show them how you can make them meet or exceed
their goals. If you've had other jobs in life and other experiences, show them how you helped your
previous manager improve their goals. If you can do that, that's going to make a big difference.
What else does that manager want? They want someone they can trust.
I can tell you when you're managing someone and you ask them to do something,
and they don't deliver on time, you can't trust that person. If they don't know something,
you give them a task and they break things because they didn't ask you, you can't trust that person.
That will limit their career. On your interview, show them you're someone they can trust.
If they ask you a question and you know a lot about it, tell them, wow them with your knowledge.
If they ask you a question and you just don't know,
tell them succinctly, "I'm sorry I don't know. I've not had the chance to learn this yet, but I'm
very excited to learn it. I do know a lot about this." Show them what you do know. If the manager
needs to know they can trust you, if you're lying on an interview or trying to fake your way through
an answer, they're going to know, and you're not trustworthy. You've already lost the job
just based on that, so be honest about what you know, what you don't know.
The manager will see that as trustworthiness and some loyalty,
and they'll be much more likely to hire you, even with less knowledge,
because they know they can trust you. What else? They want a degree of competency
but they also want to know that you're going to be safe around others, meaning that they want
to know that you're not going to be the person that they add to your team that causes damage
to the team. You're busy telling them about your bad day. You're busy telling them about
this bad customer. You're busy talking about how you don't like the job. That's toxic.
Show them that you're going to be someone that they can trust,
someone that's always professional. Someone that's not going to be looking for ways to spread gossip.
That's not what they want. Be professional, classy at every possible thing and time during
your interview. Now, energy. Nobody wants to hire someone that looks like they need a nap.
They want someone that can deliver, and energy and the ability to get things done
is something that every manager wants. I want you to show that you're energetic.
Show that you're passionate. Show that you love the technology, assuming you do.
If you don't love the technology, that's okay, but find another career.
These types of careers demand that you learn, learn, and learn some more. The only way you're
going to do that and like your life is if you love the technology. I love technology,
and that's why I've worked in it. Even before I worked in technology, I still loved technology and
that's why I left internal medicine and started working in technology. I made my vacation or my
passion my job, and I don't think I've ever worked a day in my life, despite my 25 year career.
Managers want people that energize others. Be the person that walks in the room and gets everybody
excited about work. If you can do that and you can show your passion to the hiring manager,
they're going to be thrilled, because you're going to make their life better. If you can make their
team better, they do better and they get promoted. Lots of good things come from being an energizer.
They want to know you're a team player. No one can ultimately do everything on their own,
and the better you are, the more things you can do, but good things get done in teams, and you're
going to need teams of a diverse skill set. Because you might be good at one thing. I might
be really good at networking, somebody else is really good at security, somebody else is really
good at databases. When you're building a holistic environment, you want the best and the brightest
on your team, and you want them all a little bit different so they can support each other.
Show you're a team player. Be able to talk about things that you did in life,
whether you were on a sports team. Talk about how you've helped someone. Even if you're a parent,
you can talk about what it's been like raising your children and guiding them in the right way
and bringing out the best in them. The manager wants to know you can do that, so share your
experience. We all have experience. There's never a time where we don't. Think about how your
experience is going to help that company grow, and help that manager do their job and show them.
You will not be viewed as the rest of the people. You're going to be viewed as someone
that's a strategic asset. If they have to teach you some tech along the way, they'll be willing to
do it because they're going to like you. They want someone that goes above and beyond. The reality is
in most cases 20% of the people do 80% of the work. That works across industries.
Show that you're one of the top 20%. You want to be there anyway. That's the fast track for
your career. If you love something and you really care about it and you're passionate
and you're not lazy and you're energetic, you're going to be in that top 20%,
and your career is going to rise like a sky rocket, because you're a rare commodity.
Now that you know what the manager wants, let me give you some additional steps to
things to be successful. Be early for your interview. It shows you respect
the manager's time, but it also does more. Organizations do not like procrastinators.
Procrastinators tend not to get things done. By showing up early, not on time but early, you're
showing an extra degree of motivation. There's a military adage that says early is on time,
on time is late, and late is never acceptable. Always be early for an interview. Never be late.
Now, this is something I'm going to suggest. When you arrive for the interview,
assume that the waiting room you're in is being watched. Assume that everyone is part
of that interview process, because they are, not always, but they are.
When you check in, walk in, stand tall. When you approach the receptionist, be very nice, be very
polite to that receptionist. Show them extreme respect. If they tell you to sit down somewhere,
sit in your chair with good posture. Don't slouch. Be nice to everyone in the waiting room.
Show that you're a high class individual, and you know what, people sometimes notice.
Maybe the manager will come out to greet you. Of all the people I've ever interviewed,
I've always walked out because I wanted to see what that person looked like in the waiting room,
before they've put on a show for me. Assume you're being watched and do so.
I already talked about being honest on your interview, but when they ask you a technical
question and it's an area you know a lot about, wow them with that area. If I ask you a question
about a certain component of cloud computing and you showed me depth of knowledge beyond what I was
expecting, I might not interview [inaudible 00:08:27] on anything else. I can tell you,
in the interviews I had in my career as well as those that I've coached,
if they answered a question with sufficient depth, 90% of the time the interview ends there.
What I mean it ends there, there's no reason to find out what else you don't know.
An organization wants technical competency, but more than that they want someone that can learn.
If you can show them you know a lot about something, then they already know you can learn.
Then filling in the gaps or sending you to do training is no big deal. Organizations generally
don't mind sending you to training, especially big successful ones. They want to know that you can
learn, and they want to know that you're going to create an environment that's good for all,
that you're always going to deliver, that they can trust you. Help the manager meet their goals.
Just really make sure that you know and you can highlight on the interview that you're
a team player, that you've been successful in the things that you do. Know what your strengths are,
know what your weaknesses are and be honest about them, because they're going to ask you
what are your strengths and weaknesses. Find your best strengths. Also, find your real weaknesses,
but also tell them your plan and what you're doing about solving those weaknesses. We all have them,
so show them that you're aware of them, because they're going to find out anyway.
Also, show them that you work very hard to make yourself better every day.
Because it's very hard not to want or love someone that's whole goal is to be better every day.
When you're in that position, they're really going to be interested on you. If this is your
first job, really focus what you've done and make sure they know all the things that you've
done above and beyond. Make sure they know about your lab that we talked about in a previous video,
how you've built your own cloud and done your own virtualization, and done PCI passthrough,
and single route I/O and all the things that
are new to cloud computing that you can actually build, and build your own cloud.
You know what, a good motivated person will not only learn the tech, they'll design the tech,
they'll build their lab, and at some point configure it on AWS, but don't stop there.
Configure it on the Google Cloud. Configure it on the Azure cloud. I
became a Google professional cloud architect first. I did it because
it was the most industry standardized certification. The questions are based on
case studies, and they're less like exams that focus on a specific vendor name.
I used that as my first cloud computing certification. It really doesn't matter.
The point is that all the clouds for the most part work in a very similar manner.
There's some name differences, but show you've got diversity in your education. Build your lab.
Learn your lab. Design it, design things, and then build them, and then build them on multiple
environments. You can then put that on your resume that you actually know other environments.
Really this is about showing why you can do the job,
showing how you can help that manager, and showing how you can always stand and deliver
with excellence, that you're passionate about learning, that you're going to do anything you
can to make that company a better place. You want to help it grow, and you want to be a team player.
It'll be very hard not to hire you, assuming you have some baseline technical knowledge.
We talked about baseline technical knowledge in the last video,
where we talked about building your home lab and all the things to do.
This is the next step. When you get that interview, then make sure you don't waste it. Wow
them, deliver excellence in that interview, and watch your new job and watch your career success.
Thank you for watching this video. We wanted to let you know that we have several free
offerings to help people get certified. We have a free AWS certified solution architect
associate eBook. The link is in the description below.
Every Monday we have free AWS certified solution architect associate mentoring, where people ask us
questions and we answer them live on a call. We do this for free and we do it every week.
We also have launched our new online academy, where we have the AWS certified solution
architect associate course. It's a full HD video course, and full video lectures.
We also have labs, but we also have a lot of other things like mentoring sessions, eBook downloads,
and things to help you build a real career, not just pass an exam. We go far above and beyond
in our training programs. Thank you so much for watching this. Please take advantage of
some of our free training services, and we look forward to seeing you in a video next Wednesday.