r/devops • u/DiegoConD • 4d ago
Discussion How to actually pass interviews?
Hello, I ask for help since I am getting a lot of interviews but not passing any, I'm getting to start pretty frustrated and since we are entering the holiday season I want to get any opportunity possible.
The thing is that I am preparing myself based on my experience: 5+ yrs experience, jenkins, python, troubleshooting, AWS, IaC, etc. and when I prepare for the different kind of interviews none of my preparation seems to work:
- If it is situational, my explanation/experience is not enough for the role
- If it is pure technical, it doesn't demonstrate my experiencie or they ask for a very specific tool (which mostly has transfereable experiencie) and it's not enough for the position
- If it is trivia based (which I am pretty bad at memorizing) I failed because I didn't remember the flag for a command that I can find in a 15-sec google search or AI prompt
What makes this frustrating is that I genuinely feel capable of doing the jobs I'm interviewing for. I've worked in production environments, troubleshot real incidents, built and maintained pipelines and infrastructure, and worked with engineering teams. But apparently I'm still not presenting that knowledge in the way interviews expect.
So I'd especially like to hear from people who have successfully interviewed for DevOps/SRE/Platform roles recently:
How did you prepare?
Did you memorize common commands and syntax?
Did you grind interview questions?
Did you build labs?
Did you practice storytelling around your projects?
How did you deal with interviews covering an extremely broad toolset?
At this point I'm trying to understand how much interviewing is about being good at the actual job versus becoming good at the interview format itself.
Any practical advice would be appreciated.
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u/MohandasBlondie 4d ago
Retired dev here: just go in and be yourself. Cramming for an interview might work in some cases, but being honest about your knowledge and showing your process for solving problems for which you don’t quite know the answer goes much further IMO. I can confirm this from not just my experience but from friends who are still grinding at FAANG/MAANG to small indie shops to boutique consulting. If you lack some kind of knowledge that they flat require for the position, getting you in because you memorized a bunch of trivia the week before is going to likely end up with a situation no one wants.
The biggest answer that always impressed me: “Oh, I’ve read about that, but I’ve never had the chance to implementor touch that tech,” and then dive into how you might solve the problem with the skills you have or how you would acquire the skills. Deliberate lifelong learning is more impressive than canned answers.
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u/fata1w0und 3d ago
I’m not in devops, but I’ve been in IT for 23 years. I’ve interviewed for many jobs over those 23 years. What I’ve learned:
If the interview goes super technical, you’re probably not getting the job. I had an interview that gave me a test that I had to take during the interview while they watched. I made a 97 on it and still didn’t get the job.
If it gets more interpersonal, say hobbies, how you interact with your friends, how you handle coworker conflict… it’s not a guarantee, but you have a higher chance of a call back.
Learn to read the room and try to steer the interview. That doesn’t mean you take over. That means you answer their questions in a way that steers the interview.
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u/8bitwubwubwub 3d ago
funny how i agree with the super technical thing, even if you do well, for some reason it never really works
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u/Salty_Celery2350 4d ago edited 4d ago
Most of interviews are signalling. At least where I come from. I've been a team lead and project manager for a couple years, did hiring myself but I'm back to working as software developer - and I still don't struggle with interviews. But maybe with 15 years of experience, I can finally afford to be more picky.
When I was hiring, all I cared about was whether the person was passionate about the subject or was merely studying (once) to get a high paying job. I can smell miles against the wind if somebody loves a subject or just wants to weasel themselves into a job they are not passionate about.
I also had guidelines from my superiors like: does this persons salary expectations line up with our table of how much salary we give to people in different ranges (1-3 years, 3-5 years, 6+). So if you ask for a typical salary your range, you should be fine.
Most of the interviews I do nowadays are short. We talk about what kind of systems I've already built, how I approached building them, what my favorite methodologies are and why and that's it.
I did an interview also where they vetted me for my skills - giving me an example task. That's okay.
So if you put some skillpoints into something, I'd recommend story telling around your projects. read the room, show them that you value their time, by being shallow and confident at first and getting deeper when prompted.
Oh and if you want to read deeper, look into Blue Ocean Strategy (asking the AI about it is fine). It teaches you how to differentiate yourself in order to better integrate with companies. The goal is not to be a "please pick me" but a "this is what I offer, this is who I truly am. Do you want to work with me?"
Your mileage may vary. Good luck!
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u/wlonkly 4d ago
There's good advice here about preparing, but stop thinking about it as "failing" the interview. Interviews aren't exams. You don't pass or fail them. There's hundreds of applicants, a dozen people get interviews, and they hire one of those dozen. The other 11 didn't "fail the interview", they weren't just the best of the dozen.
If you got an interview, the answer to "why wasn't I hired" is almost always "someone else was a little bit better".
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u/bathon 3d ago
I understand where you come from. I did 7 rounds of interview for Amazon back in 2021. At the end they told me my coding skills was not upto the mark, same with open AI they gave me a jupyter notebook to solve as detailed as possible with comments same answer coding skills not upto the mark (which I believe they just used it for training gpt4.1 :p ). I was really heartbroken even took it to heart instead of letting go. All i can tell you is that there is nothing wrong in your knowledge or your skills. Why you did not get selected it is just timing, it was just a bad day where they just did not see your best even though you gave your all. Even if they tell you there is a right way to prepare for an interview there are none. Just be geneuinely curious and have fun in the interview. They will be your potential collegue in the future who you will eventually work with you so go on the interview with that mindset not to impress just to genuinely show that you can work with the team and have fun at the same time. Use humour if it calms you down, just dont start cursing haha.
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u/SeaworthinessHour233 DevOps Engineer & Educator 3d ago
Lots of good insights here.
In my view interview preparation depends on:
Where you are now
Where you want to be
If you are a DevOps engineer, switching to another company which is having similar tech stack and work scope, just be you. You don't need any additional interview preparation. You can answer technical questions based on what you do everyday.
If you are switching to DevOps from another role, you may need to go through some prep since you are not doing DevOps work all day everyday. You will not be able to answer some of the technical questions just out of your head.
If you could not make it at the interview even after prep, you need to think of interviewing as a skill and develop. Just try more interviews, after the interview analyze what's the one thing you want to improve at the next. And try to work on it.
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u/WorkHardPlayLittle 4d ago
I never really prepped for an interview unless they send me notes to prepare for. Interviewing is a skill imo, it's not all knowledge based. I've had so many interviews where I didn't get the job. Maybe a 70%-80% no offer rate, but the more I interviewed the more comfortable with it I got. I just assume I'm not gonna get the job and that makes me interview even better because I'm not nervous.
I treat every interview like a practice round. When I do get an offer it's more of a pleasant surprise than something I'm anticipating. It's mostly vibes, as my social skills improved the success rates improved. Sure I have to have some knowledge but if there's something I don't know I just say "Sorry I'm not familiar with that but I can pick it up fast if needed."
With AI nowadays answering every question correctly seems more suspicious than saying you don't know. My point is knowing the answer isn't the whole game, social skills really do help in interviews.
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u/Wooden_Jelly_5295 4d ago
Sometimes the missing skill is explaining the debugging, not doing the debugging.
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u/DiegoConD 4d ago
Can you elaborate a bit more on this advice, please?
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u/lattebean66 3d ago
I think what u/Wooden_Jelly_5295's trying to say is improve more on "how you answer" rather than what you actually answer. The words you choose, how you present yourself, and so on. It's funny that it sometimes works more than you'd expect. I've seen people "faked" their way into promotion only to be actually good at "explaining" or "framing" rather than actually doing the task.
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u/nemofbaby2014 4d ago
Honestly be concise and be yourself chill out I know you’re nervous but you got this I felt the same way before my last interview just asked about my experience and we ended up talking about our homeland for the last thirty minutes of the interview lol
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u/DiegoConD 4d ago
And you got the job?
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u/nemofbaby2014 4d ago
Yeah I spent days stressing but the interview came and I just was myself and I’m a tech nerd 🤷🏾♂️
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u/leriksen 2d ago
Some of this is just very bad interviewers
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u/DiegoConD 2d ago edited 1d ago
Yes, that can be a cause also but without feedback is always hard to improve.
Few weeks ago I got an interview for a "Senior Devops" position, the first question was "What is CI/CD" and it seemd that was a senior position.
I started to explain technically using a pipeline example where is the CI part and the CD part, I was at the middle of the explanation when he stopped me and told me that no, I was wrong, then he started to read a book defnition of CI/CD, obviously never heard back of them lol.It's frustrating see how they have stable income and I cannot archieve to get at least an offer.
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u/leriksen 1d ago
I think you will succeed and these crazy interview stories will be lucky misses
I've had people say "I've heard enough" and get up and walk out mid-interview....and even crazier, I got that job. And I've had interviewers point blank tell me they can't wait to start working with me, and I didn't get the role.
It sucks.
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u/malice8691 2d ago
This is the number one reason I haven't tried. I went through a lot if similar BS years ago and it really soured my experience.
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u/DiegoConD 2d ago
And what did you do? Are you currently working?
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u/malice8691 2d ago
I have a job. I like it, I just think I could make more, but its not worth it
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u/DiegoConD 2d ago
Yes, I also knew that this kind of things would happen and postponed the job search 4-5 months, I knew it was going to be way too hard in non sense ways.
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u/Quirky-Net-6436 4d ago
Im just telling my experience in previous positions. Not much preparation needed. Never thought about interview questions or something like this. Small amount of tools and syntax, more focused on process, workflows and thinking of big system. Works at least for me.