The first round is an initial phone screen where the interviewer (technical hr) introduced the company and position. Post that asked for your introductions, backgrounds and experience details. Just the usual stuff. Once that is done. They do a quick rapid fire on basics of security/linux/system administration asking about standard ports, difference between virus, malware, trojan etc and some web application security basics.
That went pretty smooth and I was scheduled for 2nd round which was a Video Conference. This was a technical screen. The second round screen, the interviewer asked similar questions but more. They were again basics. Topics covered:
1. Linux System Administration, Hardening and Monitoring - Which command is used to do what
2. OWASP Top 10 - Usual Buffer Overflow, XSS, SQLi, causes and remediations
3. IDS/IPS systems - Concepts
4. Security Risk Management Concepts
5. OSI Stack - Protocols, Ports, Vulnerabilities in different layers of OSI Model protocols.
6. Basics of Cryptography
The interview was fairly okay however, the interviewer was writing every answer of mine. It never felt like an interview but an exam as the interviewer just asked questions and literally wrote my answers for their notes which stretched it to more than 2 hours, what could have been finished in an hour. There was no opportunity to ask questions to the interviewer about the job, roles and responsibilities in detail. Why, because the were conducting a viva-voce exam and not interview. I would've rather given an exam in a locked down environment over hackerrank or similar portal, if that was their intention. It will result in more automated and faster screening.
I don't usually post reviews but the reason I'm posting this is because of the communication issues from SecureWorks and the HRs.
The interviewer (2nd round) said and I quote, "I like the way you're giving answers in details" at the end. This was in reference to linux commands where the interviewer expected only command but I also provided some flags and what they do with each command, the technical details of cryptography with mathematical functions and some other parts of interview.
The interview went well, nice and smooth and I definitely answered most if not all the questions correctly.
At the end, I was informed that they'll reach out within 2 days but they never replied. They totally ghosted. There were no reply even to any of the follow up mail as well. That was completely unprofessional. I feel that candidates who do not get a reply or get automated replies after applying online for rejections are far better off than situations like this, where you get a mail on LinkedIn, follow up over mails with technical recruiters, set up an interview which is unnecessarily stretched for hours and then never hear back.
I'm not pin pointing anyone here and definitely not intending to bad mouth a company for actions of few individuals BUT they need fix their processes and be professional enough to at least reply back.