I joined VMware Bulgaria 6 months ago as a Senior Manager of Production Engineering, Carbon Black, and decided to write this blog to share my story in applying and to give some advice to anyone planning to apply for a job in VMware Bulgaria.
What made me apply to VMware?
There were two main factors for applying to VMware. First, the culture and people-first mindset appeared a lot in my own online research and from the feedback I received from people I know who were part of the VMware team already. And second, the SaaS transformation and technologies which I believe will continue to be the main driver and enablers of the digital transformation. Some of them are virtualization, multi-cloud, machine learning, and artificial intelligence.
Experiencing the VMware GO Hiring Methodology
During my interviews, I experienced the VMware GO Hiring Methodology. GO Hiring methodology is VMware’s new hiring and interview process that was developed after 2 years of research, design, and testing, and was introduced globally across VMware last year. GO stands for ‘Guided by Outcomes’ and it’s radically different from traditional interviews and even includes a new type of job description.
This innovative approach for interviews focuses on the needs for the role and the candidate’s potential fit, instead of focusing on exact skills and technologies. During my interviews, I had the opportunity to meet and build connections with people from the team that I would be going to work with, which bootstrapped my onboarding afterward.
And with each interview round, I was learning more and more about the company and the role, in addition to my own online research. I found that getting familiar with the people, technologies, and the role gave me additional confidence that the position and the company would be the best fit for me.
Today as an interviewer, I use the GO Hiring methodology myself.
Interviewing for VMware Bulgaria
Typically there are 4 interview rounds: the discovery round, the EPIC2 strengths round, the work sample simulation, and a final round.
Yes, we have more than 1 technical interview but this is because we don’t use traditional interview approaches of the standardized ‘test’ and list of questions. Instead, the GO Hiring methodology has been designed and tested so that candidates have a great opportunity to show us how they would best accomplish their work and complete tasks for their role using what they have learned from their past accomplishments and problem-solving skills.
This allows for a two-sided interview. The interviewee can assess if they want the role and to be part of the team and part of VMware, or not. And for the hiring manager, it allows us to see if the interviewee is the right fit and if they have the right approach and skills.
However, I must stress that we hire for performance and skills, not pedigree or prestige of where you attained your qualifications, and that is another reason why our 4-step interview process is very successful in hiring the right people.
Ace the interview process
As mentioned above, the GO Hiring methodology aims to help both the interviewee and interviewer and to improve the experience. So how do you show yourself in the best light? Here are my top Do’s and Dont’s.
Do
- Be yourself – this is the best advice I can give you
- Be honest and transparent – if you don’t know something it doesn’t mean you will be not a good fit for the position
- Clarify – understanding the question before starting to work on it is extremely important
- Brainstorm together with the interviewers – sometimes the answer can come up during the discussion, there could be multiple solutions to the same problem
- During the technical interviews start from a high level and then split the problem into multiple subtasks
- Use interview time efficiently – at the beginning of the interview, you will have time to present yourself. Learn more about the company and position you are applying for. Structure your self-presentation to focus on the skills and experiences which are the most applicable for the job.
- Be curious – use the time to understand more about the team, position, your leader, and the role
Don’t
- Don’t be afraid to apply – the interview process can bring you only positives such as learning a lot about the company and the role, plus during the work simulations and technical interviews you can gain new knowledge and even find a new solution to an already existing problem
- Don’t think that reaching the interview stage with VMware is a one-time opportunity. If you are unsuccessful first time, you can always come back and try again. Our recruiters regularly reach out directly to people who have previously interviewed with VMware, with new roles to apply for. There are no drawbacks in not succeeding on a previous attempt
- Don’t be nervous about the work sample simulation – the goal is to put you in a real-work situation and understand how you will handle it
Why join VMware Bulgaria and Carbon Black?
VMware Bulgaria is the third most strategic R&D and innovation center globally and the largest in the EMEA region with a team of over 1,600 top engineers, business analysts and product experts. We’re one of the biggest investors in the IT industry in Bulgaria and an award-winning employer of choice for world class talent. We take pride in our teams that work with cutting edge technologies on projects that have significant global impact. Our portfolio constantly evolves adding new job roles and product expertise, and Carbon Black is one of the newest business units formed in Sofia.
Carbon Black develop cloud-native endpoint security software that is designed to detect malicious behaviour and to help prevent malicious files from attacking an organisation. Our mission is to create a world safe from cyberattacks.
In our team we have a diverse range of experts in software engineering, testing automation, UX design, DevOps engineering, infrastructure automation engineering, site reliability engineering, data science engineering, and data analysis. We operate under a software-as-a-service / SaaS model.
We work with a cutting-edge tech stack that includes and is not limited to: big data processing and analytics, AI and ML, Java, Python, Go, Microservices and compute with k8s, AWS (EKS, ECS, Lambda, Kinesis, etc.), Infrastructure automation (Terraform, Pulumi, Ansible).
There are lots of great opportunities to join the VMware Bulgaria team across many teams (not just Carbon Black), and many different types of roles. Interested in learning more? See all open VMware jobs in Bulgaria here and apply today!
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