I received an e-mail from a director to schedule a phone interview and talked for about an hour initially. The questions were mostly focused on selling and flexibility in travel(not much technical). They asked about my experience with Check Point software in the first round(which I had a decent amount but no certs.) The interview wrapped up with a scheduled phone interview with the hiring manager and a planned onsite presentation/demo. I made mention that my public speaking skills were weak but they were OK with it. I've never applied for a sales engineer role(this being the first).
On the second phone interview, I was asked what a connection table was and gave an adequate response to go forward with an onsite(plus basic info on demo’ing URL filtering). I was also asked to present a topic I knew well. Card decks make a lot of eyes glaze over these days and I avoided that.
In preparation, it wasn't clear that the intended environment should only be VMWare workstation or that Windows was required to make the client work properly.(I have OSX and use VirtualBox). Fortunately, having enough neteng/devops experience, I hacked it together with an older laptop at least from a connectivity standpoint.(without being able to apply policy from a client standpoint) Also, my pres. was not well delivered but I have the technical knowledge/skill for a lot of it.(although some learning req’d which is good potential in my opinion given this position) The hiring manager did reach out to see how the demo was coming ahead of time but I had nothing concerning at that point.
Day of the demo/presentation, I showed up on time, received a temp badge in the waiting area, and went with the hiring manager to a conference room. On listening/looking at the environment, there wasn't much chit-chat or many smiles as you would pass people but I wasn't there for long. I was introduced to a few people including one remote person. I was also introduced to the Acct Manager I would be paired. I was given a little background on the sales goals and targets. The AM, in true sales fashion, claimed they'd be buying another sports car when they hit particular numbers(which was a red flag). The presentation was first and then the demo when I asked. I set up things in pretty short time(a few minutes) and then started the presentation. Before I started, someone showed up late but acted like they didn't want to be there(which is fine since I wasn't setup yet). I introduced myself and went on with the pres. As I proceeded, I stopped after about 10 minutes of presenting to get any questions. They didn't have but a question and wanted to move onto the demo of URL filtering. I prefaced with I wasn't able to apply policy(Virtual Box) and switched to the Windows laptop to use 'demo' mode to simulate. I started to show an example of applying filtering based on content. I showed them how it works as well as ways to block for particular gateways, how to log, etc.
Based on the questions asked, it was clear that I was overqualified technically for the implementation they were asking but I definitely required work in selling the Check Point product(which I understood). A decent way through the interview, the AM just left along with the guy who appeared he didn't want to be there without as much as a 'goodbye.' At first I thought it was a test since you see it sometimes in sales' pitches and kept proceeding in the demo but then I realized they were just unprofessional. Certainly a shame...I asked questions additionally about culture(do you spend much time in the office as an SE? do you collaborate on PoCs with other security engineers?) and the answers I received were that there is some collaboration on PoCs but "if you're not in the office, you're not doing your job." That was enough for me. I have a colleague that works in a different office where the environment has a better culture I've been told(and I've met a couple of the people in the other office that validates his claim). I professionally thanked them with a handshake. I thanked them for the opportunity and heard back the next day that they would be passing onto other SE candidates(which was fine).
Takeaways:
1.) The SE hire req is actually Sales Engineer(not Security) when you get into the interviewing. I'm concerned that someone taking this job is going to want to move to another company at some point and not be as desirable technically since SecEng is a bit of a reach from what I've seen.(which may be why the req is open)
2.) The management client(Smart Console) requires Windows. Appears it was developed in Visual C++(not Java for portability). There is a lot of potential here for their market if they could re-gear for portability.
3.) I like their product from a mgmt standpoint(not much experience with their hardware) and the gateway/management server is built on Linux which I like. I'll probably stay an investor and look for potential roles that are more technical(not sales).
