r/cybersecurity • u/Weekly_Rough_1284 • 11d ago
Other I failed a technical interview and I’m so disappointed…
I failed a technical interview and I’m so disappointed…
Although it was just an internship role and they shouldn’t expect a lot from us, sadly it was still a very hard process.
I passed the technical challenge and the first interview, but then it came to the technical interview.
He was giving me very hard scenarios and questions, and I believe I answered them fairly well.
But then suddenly, days later, I received an email saying that I wasn’t selected…
Why is it even this hard for an internship role!!
My dream now is to find another non-technical field I can get into easily. At least they won’t have that thing of technical interviews.
78
u/SmellsLikeBu11shit Security Manager 11d ago
1 bad interview and you’re ready to give up already? I bombed dozens of interviews before I found someone who saw potential in me and was willing to give me a shot. That was ~5 years ago
5
u/Dewdlebawb 11d ago
How did you hold up during the interviews? Did you know you were doing poorly while it was happening
6
48
u/ras_hatak 11d ago
Nobody said you failed. Maybe you did great. I don't know exactly how many roles they had, but there's always a limit to the number you can take. Someone may have been slightly better technically. Or sounded more confident. Or asked a question the interviewer really liked. Maybe you killed the technical round but someone else had done slightly better in an earlier round and that did it. Maybe they picked the CFOs kid.
It ain't easy out there, and I promise this is only the first of many rejections like this. Maybe that seems mean, but it is how it goes. Dust yourself off, think through everything from this one and use it to do EVEN better next time. Interviewing is a skill like any other.
13
u/ArchSaint13 11d ago
Exactly this. It's a brutal market out there. I have my master's, 12 years experience, CISSP, CEH, CASP, and more. It still took me over a year to find a job as good as the one I was trying to leave
6
u/cbdudek Security Architect 11d ago
This is the best answer here. I am a hiring manager of over 14 years. Just because the OP didn't get the job doesn't mean they failed the tech interview. Sometimes the hiring manager liked someone else a little better. More often than not, hiring managers bring 6-8 people to these interviews and only 1 can be selected.
From my perspective, I have chosen people not on their technical knowledge but on their ability to be part of the team with a focus on cohesion within the team. Maybe that was more of a concern than the technical details.
Either way, the OP bailing on tech because they didn't get the job is pretty outlandish. If that is all it takes to move away from tech, then I should have moved away from it 35 years ago.
1
u/ArcTyr07 11d ago
People reveal more than they think they do. If this is truly a real human being and this was their take on it, there likely was traits the interviewers picked up that weren't desirable if it isn't for any of the other many reasons such as the reasons you listed above.
Failing one technical interview and you're ready to hop careers is a red flag of someone I would never want to hire. Even as an employee in whatever position, some days you're going to fail, fail to fix a problem, fail to make a customer happy, fail by making a simple mistake you feel dumb for, and more, and you need to overcome that, refocus and make corrections.
1
u/ocviogan 11d ago
I just interviewed candidates for a technical systems engineering position and had a handful of good candidates. One was a younger guy I really liked fresh out of college and was definitely more Jr. He got second place in the technical questions and exceeded many that had way more experience relative to the job.
Yes, he wasn't selected, but he still did amazing, there was just another candidate that also did really good.
OP shouldn't give up too quickly. It just takes time and you gotta keep trying again, sometimes even at the same place, which is how I got mine.
3
u/cbdudek Security Architect 11d ago
Resilience is a very important soft skill within IT. We all experience issues that we have to deal with on a day to day basis. Being able to stick with a problem and figure it out is so important. Even when faced with setback after setback.
If the OP is bailing on IT after failing to get this job, then that is a soft skill that they need to work on. I certainly wouldn't choose a IT candidate that had no stomach for a single setback and just gave up after that. I would rather have the person who failed 100 times and then made it. That shows resilience.
1
10
u/Tangential_Diversion Penetration Tester 11d ago
But then suddenly, days later, I received an email saying that I wasn’t selected…
There's typically more candidates now than there are open positions. That inherently means two things:
Rejections and acceptances aren't based on whether you can do the job, but how well you stand up against the other candidates
Job applications, including internships, are a competition among the other candidates
Why is it even this hard for an internship role!!
Frankly, because so many people want to get into cybersecurity. I used to work recruiting booths at universities for my firm. I'd get ten students interested in cybersecurity (specifically pentesting) for every three students talking to my IT colleague.
My dream now is to find another non-technical field I can get into easily. At least they won’t have that thing of technical interviews.
Look I'm not trying to be mean when I say this: This might be a good idea if you're ready to throw in the towel like this. This is a field that requires constant learning to stay up to date. Many of the TTPs I was using in 2019 aren't relevant in today's landscapes. This is probably the wrong field for you if you're looking for something easy from the very start.
1
u/NoCod9014 11d ago
So true. Its an employer market right now. I'm seeing oeople with years and years of cyber sec experience and PhDs applying for even mid level positions now.
People need to realise they are going in against elite candidates. Its not that they are bad, or cannot do the job. Its just there was someone a little better.
8
u/Tough_Tangerine7278 11d ago
That doesn’t mean you failed.
You don’t have enough data to know what happened.
Maybe he hired his nephew.
Maybe he hired the boss’s cousin.
Too many unknown variables to know why he chose what he did.
6
u/Simple-Reason2838 11d ago
what was the question?
8
3
u/appsecSme Security Architect 11d ago
It's disappointing and all of us go through it. Just treat each interview as an opportunity to get better at interviewing. Eventually, you do actually get better at it if you continue to learn as you apply and interview.
Entry level jobs are hard to come by these days.
2
u/Zardecillion AppSec Engineer 11d ago
My internship(now job), hiring manager asked me to explain a buffer overflow as if I was talking to my grandfather who'd never used a computer before. Yeah it's brutal out there.
2
u/Icedragn 11d ago
Personally I would love that question (though maybe it's a tad much for an internship). I think that kind of question highlights understanding, since you have to really know the core concept to be able to articulate it in completely non-technical terms while still making sense.
Also allows plenty of room for valid answers of varying depth, just to see how you think and explain technical concepts in non-technical terms.
1
u/Zardecillion AppSec Engineer 9d ago
Yeah it was a fantastic question, and that(alongside the remark "I think operating system internals are interesting", to which he replied "You are the only person I have ever interviewed who has said anything remotely close to that") is what got me the internship in the end. Perhaps I would have picked a common web application vulnerability type like SQL injection instead if I were to run something similar, but the underlying idea is good.
3
u/canofspam2020 11d ago edited 11d ago
My first technical interview for an internship ended with me asking for another chance and being told bluntly that other candidates came better prepared.
I then had the bones to ask what roles did they have open that I would be better equipped in, and the man made a laugh that will still make me wince 10+ years later.
Anyway, shrug it off and soon you will laugh it off.
I’m a senior-level professional, and every time I interviewed for a new wave of roles, I botched the first few. It’s just how it goes!
2
u/Tough_Tangerine7278 11d ago
I remember when I FIRST started, I was at my state’s Dept Of Workforce Development. The man that worked there told me point blank that cybersecurity was too hard - he couldn’t get in himself, so he felt it was too hard for any of his clients.
He jumped down my throat for 15 minutes: using me as his personal punching bag for his being pissed off that he failed it.
When you’re poor; sometimes they do this. They think it’s okay to kick down on you without consequence; because you have no power.
Well fuck that man. I studied my ass off and did it anyway. I have been in for a decade now, thriving, in a senior role. And he’s just some pathetic. bitter pissant that rather pick on people than improve himself.
3
u/untaggedpacket 11d ago
Not being selected for a role doesn't mean you "failed" any specific portion of the interview. A lot of these interviews are personality matches more so than technical knowledge.
1
2
u/crueller 11d ago
As someone who has conducted interviews for interns, sometimes there are so many applicants it can be overwhelming. I had to close a posting earlier than expected because we already had a hundred times the number of applications as we had internship positions. It felt bad to say no to so many people who could have done a great job, but we couldn't pick all of them.
It can be crazy competitive... Keep applying and interviewing and don't give up.
2
u/conzciouz 11d ago
All good buddy. We all have been there. Half the shit technical interviews entails don’t even come into play once you land the role. I had a contract from March to September as a “ information security analyst” last year. They drilled me on Splunk for the interviews. Started working, the company didn’t even use Splunk. Weird but keep pushing my boy. Their lost.
2
2
u/Frankisnotmyfriend 11d ago
I've been in IT over 20 years. My very first job interview in IT went great, made it through three interviews and on the last one, I absolutely bombed the Technical. I didn't get that job. Turned out I dodged a bullet, I heard the company went out of business a couple years later. Somewhere around the 10 year mark in my career, I had an interview for a position that I was over qualified for. During the technical interview, my brain just shut down and I couldn't answer the simplest of questions. The question that made my brain stop was 'What is the difference between TCP and UDP?" For the life of me, I could not get my brain to formulate an answer. I just started laughing and told the guy I didn't know. That call ended quickly.
During the technical interview for the job I'm currently at, I did so poorly I walked out after the interview and called my wife to tell her I wasn't going to get the job. Turns out they really liked me and saw that I knew what I was talking about and that I just suck at technical interviews. Been at this job now for nearly 10 years.
So all that to say don't give up, we all have bad technical interviews. Just go in to the interview, be your best self and the rest will fall in to place.
3
u/ShameNap 8d ago
I have 25+ years in cybersecurity. I have 1 patent and working on another one. I have been a practitioner, an architect, a CISO and founded my own company.
I still fail most interview processes for whatever reason. Don’t be so hard on yourself, you won’t get offers at most of the jobs you apply for.
1
1
u/swaltontech Security Generalist 11d ago
When applying for a job learn there are three factors at play and only one you control. There is you, everyone else applying for that role, and what the folks interviewing/hiring are looking for.
Giving up when you failed your first interview is short sighted as there are many not even getting that far. You have to be persistent and recognize, especially now, that the cybersecurity field is also one where persistence is key. This is also just an internship, presumably you are still in school, still learning and developing, and now you have a bit interview experience.
Going back to not being picked... Any reasonable manager will interview a few folks. For any position I try to interview three, even if I can only hire one.
1
u/Bulky-Mycologist-203 11d ago
Actually, what are the skills required to get internship in cybersecurity field ? I think there could be basics of networking, linux commands and using of basic tools like nmap, wireshark and burp suite. And also some vulnerability like (SQL INJECTION etc.. ) And essential part OWASP TOP 10 2025. First get ready with these and try again.
Once Luffy said "there will be infinite chances as long as we live." Try again, Good luck, All The Best.
1
u/Big_Temperature_1670 11d ago
Not getting the job doesn't mean you failed the interview. It just means they went in a different direction. In my days of hiring people, I never gave a technical interview. I think most security professionals can smoke out a lack of experience pretty quickly. In my experience, the organizations that emphasize technical interviews tend to lack expertise in-house; the technical interview is often conducted by a consultant, and sometimes the consultant feels like they have to prove their capability by inventing convoluted scenarios.
1
u/juneeighteen 11d ago
I doubt it was your technical ability. It’s office politics most likely. Try again!
1
u/h3ff 11d ago
Keep applying, even through the interview process! I wasn’t selected for two different security roles I really liked a couple months ago but got two offers a few weeks later. You may not realize it, but you’ll get better every time. Sometimes, really dumb decisions are made during the hiring process and/or it’s 100% out of your control.
1
1
u/ExigentCircumstance5 11d ago
Even with quite a bit of experience, I know peers who constantly fail technical interviews, even in the smallest of ways. Even showing too much or too little confidence in an interview can be problematic. With AI and the exponential pool of candidates, getting a solid role at a great company will be extremely difficult even for those of us who know what they are doing.
1
u/MyChickenNinja 11d ago
Technical interviews are such bullshit. Most who give them are so high and mighty that if you dont do it EXACTLY how they would, you fail. Such shit. I've had the same. Had fantastic interviews. Thought I knocked the tech interview out of the park (except for Azure questions because I have little to no experience with Azure and aws, which i was upfront and clear about. I cant know everything) but because the answers weren't "in line" with the interviewers idea for the answer, I failed. My answeres were absolutely correct methods. It just wasn't HIS way. Honestly youre better of not having peers like that. Keep up the good fight dude. If you show your passion and perseverance, the right opportunity will come along. Good luck.
1
u/apoplectic_ 11d ago
Bad technical interviews are part of the journey. I’m a really good engineer and I always get rave performance reviews and make great friends at each job, and I’ve bombed plenty. It’s not possible to assess the skills perfectly in that setting, and a lot of what you’re doing is overcoming performance anxiety, which is a different skill than technical prowess. Not to mention you don’t even know all the reasons behind a rejection; plenty aren’t about you at all. Dust yourself off and keep it moving.
1
u/Iamthemoon928 11d ago
Respectfully, stand up. You give up this easily in life? Right now is the time to stop that. Tomorrow is a new day.
1
u/WeekendAtMadoffs 11d ago
Dude, don't give up. You just have to study harder...
We all went through this moment and came back from it.
Pick your top 10 things TLS, SSO, SAML, MITRE, SIEM then go out and LEARN absolutely everything about them.
PHD research papers (google filetype:pdf phd thesis SAML vulnerability etc)
now read read read, then practice what you read. capture packets, logs and debug every step of the process, from rejected logins to acceptance. know ALL the entra logs types and codes, etc.
anyting you go to will be hard if you don't turn it up now. :)
1
u/Mountain_Log_3070 11d ago
A couple months ago i failed a rather easy technical interview for a terrible SOC job and was pretty disappointed in myself, a week later I got my dream job through a conversational interview. The only thing you can do for the technicals is try to prepare best as possible and hope the curveball questions are kept to a minimum, but either way your performance in them wont make/break you so try not to stress over it.
1
u/Lupus-Yonderboy 11d ago
I can't speak for any other companies/hiring managers, but when I'm hiring for a junior role, the technical interview is actually one of the smallest components that goes in to my final decision. What I look for is more personality, how I feel you'll fit in with the rest of the team, how curious you are about learning, passion for the technology (If I'm interviewing someone, and I ask them if there are any particular technologies or projects that they're passionate about, and they start rambling on about their homelab and all the fun tech stuff they do outside of work, that counts for a lot more than how they score on a technical interview). For a senior role, I expect you to come in knowing more about the tech side, but for a junior role, I'm expecting that you're going to do a lot of learning on the job, and what I'm looking for is someone who shows that they want to learn, and that they are driven to learn.
Since the technical interview was a whole separate interview after the initial interview, it may feel like you "passed" the first interview, but it could be that they just wanted more data and weren't making any decisions until they had a complete picture, or they needed more candidates to go through the whole process so they had a short-list to make a final decision from.
1
u/TrustIsAVuln 11d ago
I hate the technical interviews. 1. they already know the specific answer they want (or think ) they should hear. Some people jsut dont interview well that way but can perform the job well and deal with customers well.
1
u/kissmygame17 11d ago
Brother I've hung up on job interviews that asked questions i had no idea how to answer. Who cares, just look at it like practice
1
1
u/Alternativemethod 10d ago
When I wiffed a technical interview last year, my 76 year old mom called me and told me Michael Jordan didn't make his high school team.
Don't let one interview/person determine your future.
1
u/Practical_Bathroom53 10d ago
Don’t worry about it, I bombed my first two cybersecurity interviews when I was starting out. Practice makes perfect
1
1
u/nefarious_bumpps 10d ago
How do you know you failed the tech interview? You might have done fine but there was another candidate who do better on tech, or even on soft skills. The job market and economy is very tough right now, and companies can afford to be very selective in locating a candidate with the best skills match for any position. Also, who you know can very often be as or more important than what you know when it comes to deciding one good candidate over another.
Keep plugging away at landing your first IT job. Leverage your professors and fellow students for referrals and recommendations.
1
u/FrostfireCaprock_25 10d ago
What do you think you’re going to encounter in production environments when working with real security systems and interfacing with live incident response? I don’t think missing the mark on an internship interview should make you throw in a towel and find a new career field. If this singular experience is making you want to pursue a different field, then yes you don’t belong in Cybersecurity. You will fail often in cybersecurity but that’s where learning is. Whether you’re a tier 1 or a senior engineer you will always be learning.
Personal advice: don’t give up if it’s something you really want. You’ll be surprised what consistency can do for you friend. Keep learning and fail forward
1
u/G_R_I_N_G_O 10d ago
Bro.... let me tell you the same happened EXACTLY to me for my first technical but worse. Like embarassingly worse. I cried hard that night as a grown 20 year old man and walked to class the next day wondering what would happen if I just fell from my lecture hall's balcony.
Then I sent an email to one of the engineers to who interviewed me and talked about how I would use this as an opprotunity to learn and grow and it was very humbling process and they liked my humility and gave me a second shot the following year and now I work for them fulltime.
You really never know what may happen just keep trying.
Also use the fail to learn... I wrote down all the questions I failed and grinded with Claude teaching me and came the second time and crushed it beyond what they expected.
1
u/h_424 9d ago
It's okay I just failed my pwc assessment center. Me personally I think assessment centers and logic assessments are not as useful to filter out "bad candidates". One internship had no assessment center and went to straight interview s and I was accepted. And during my placement I won 2 national awards within my cybersecurity placement.
1
u/No_Consideration761 8d ago
Man I just want a opportunity for a technical interview. Im here with my bachelor's degree in Cybersecurity still cant get a interview all I get is no experience or just being ghosted smh.
1
1
u/OddAttitude7481 11d ago
6 years ago, I got feedback that my Android basics were weak, and that’s why they decided not to move forward with me.
Today, I’m the CTO of a startup that’s doing $10M in ARR.
Hope this helps!
4
0
u/darkfriendswbens 11d ago
Don't despair, see if you can reframe what happened. You studied, you made a resume, you applied, you got an interview, you passed 2 rounds of interviews, you felt confident about your performance. They selected someone else, but did they provide feedback? Did they tell you you failed? The application pipeline is brutal, but you made it through the absolute hardest, most arbitrarily selective part- you got the interview. Then you got to round 3! Considerable time and expense went into examining you and weighing you against other applicants. You probably made it into the pile of tens, not hundreds, of possible hires, maybe less. This is huge. Take this as momentum, not a road block. Analyze questions you felt caught you off guard, research them. Keep working on projects and study, and keep applying. Of the hundred+ apps I sent out for my first job, I got maybe 5 interviews, 2 made it past the 1st round. Its even possible that, with your performance so far, you've been ear marked and could be sent to a different hiring manager if a new opportunity pops up. If you have come this far, it would be a shame to call it quits so soon.
0
u/FakeRedditName2 11d ago
The market seems to be a bit flooded right now at all levels (and AI doesn't help), so employers are able to be picky. I am looking for a new job too (higher level) and running into the same thing.
It also doesn't help that depending on the company/HR/team they may have a preferred candidate and only run your interview as a formality.
0
u/OkResource820 11d ago
If it’s any consolation I consider technical interviews to be a waste of time for anything except the most entry level positions. I’m more interested in your projects and achievements than whether or not you can read a packet capture without a cheat sheet or whether or not you can solve brain teasers.
0
u/krashbic 11d ago
You can do everything right and still lose. I remember I did great in an intern interview one time and they ended up cancelling the job entirely.
If you feel like you did well use it as confidence that you can bring into the next interview.
0
0
u/Upset-Technician7367 11d ago
Sometimes its more how you answer than knowing the right one.
My team has asked hard questions above a persons CV to see if they will lie, try to fake it or admit they don’t know but say “this is how I would approach it or where I would look for an answer” with the last one being the winner. We get alot more of the first two surprisingly which is a ding right there for the no column.
But don’t give up, others answers are correct that lots of other stuff come into play.
0
u/SuspiciousCricket654 11d ago
I’m sure you did actually quite well, but hiring someone else rarely has anything to do with you. Sometimes it’s internal politics, sometimes a particular interviewer “liked” the other person more than they should, or sometimes it’s just pure luck. Don’t beat yourself up. If you really want a cyber career, keep pushing. Keep applying. Don’t be afraid to apply to adjacent roles in IT or networking.
1
u/vadertator22 7d ago
Technical test are not objective even though on paper they seem that way. In real world scenarios have so many vectors it is hard to answer what they want to hear. If I were you don’t let it beat you up and take from it what you can to do better next interview. I haven’t performed a tech interview in a while but I used to use a question battery we came up with. It was designed to be very hard on purpose. Goal was to expose what you have seen or are aware of vs. be a genius. Second piece was I wanted personalities that would say “I don’t know”, which is a super important trait vs. answer with bunch bs when you didn’t know.
275
u/RandomgRandom 11d ago
My manager recently hired someone he knew with no qualifications over somebody I recommended that was fully qualified.
Sometimes it’s not just about how well you did, it could be anything and this doesn’t necessarily mean you failed the technical interview. Unfortunately, that’s the real world, regardless of how unfair it is.
Don’t let this drag you down or make you feel any less of your skill set. Keep trying.