Essential Guide to Acing Cybersecurity Manager Interviews: Prep Tips & Strategies

Believe it or not, some people want to be managers.

There are few resources about how you prepare yourself to get a manager job, much less in cybersecurity. So I decided to add something that hopefully others can learn from and make their own.

This post is meant to be a concise guide to interviewing for management positions in cybersecurity, but certainly not all-inclusive.

Key Concepts for Cybersecurity Management Leadership

For the sake of this post, I’m considering a “manager position” to be one that has leadership accountability for a team of people and the HR responsibility to hire/coach/fire them.

Being a "leader" is different, and anyone at any level can do this. You'll need to be good at both managing people and leadership to be successful.

Becoming a manager in any field typically requires a person to demonstrate many skills that have nothing to do with the team of people they are leading.

But at the same time, with tech teams, you also have to demonstrate enough “street cred” to lead a team of more technical people. You have to be able to talk shop, understand enough of the “how,” and filter and translate direction and strategy outwards and upwards.

Preparing Effectively for Your Cybersecurity Manager Interview

You’ll be expected to speak about your principles and approaches on a wide range of non-technical topics for the interview.

Essential Topics to Discuss: Management and Leadership

• Your management style

• Your leadership style

• Your perceived weaknesses

• How do you motivate and lead teams

Key Summary Points: Influencing and Leading in Cybersecurity

• How you drive and manage work

• How do you influence and lead others

• How do you motivate people

• How do you engage and convince stakeholders

• How do you manage expectations upwards

In-Depth Discussion Points: Your Cybersecurity Passion and Value

• What you are passionate about

• What kinds of problems do you like to solve

• Where you feel you provide the most value

• How do you get support from the people you lead

Real-World Examples: Your Impact in Cybersecurity

• How you reduced risk through strategic planning

• How you made security easier for your end-users

• How did you enable the business in a secure way

If you recognized that, you'd be spot on.

These are softer skills; these are skills that show how you manage work and get the buy-in from everyone around you.

The higher you move up, the less it becomes about the work itself and the more it becomes about WHAT outcomes you achieved and HOW you got them done.

The rest is details.

Additional Resources for Aspiring Cybersecurity Managers

Here are some other resources to get you prepared to think and act as both a leader and a manager in the cybersecurity field:

• An interesting take on management philosophy

• A Twitter thread on the books that helped me the most throughout my career

Most of this is stuff you can’t fake, at least not for long.

You have to have real experience navigating these things and proving yourself, but you’ll never get the chance if you don’t sell yourself when you have a shot.

That's it! Let me know what I might have missed or what else you think is important.

Whenever you're ready, I made a short video course and a Notion doc on the personal framework I've created to advance my own career.

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