Zermount Interview Questions
& Process

It was more of a discussion than a formal screening, a one-on-one with the hiring manager over Zoom. Cameras were on. It was scheduled for 30 minutes, with under 10 minutes at the end for my questions.

Got called into the office for an interview at 5pm on a Friday, which is 2 hrs from my house. Very little notice to attend after routinely following up about the role. Met with Justen and Chad. Received a verbal offer on the spot and asked to have the weekend to think about it. Emailed Monday asking for the benefit package and heard nothing back. Once I decided to accept, I then called, emailed and LinkedIn dm'd again and never heard back from them. Feel I dodged a bullet. It was 5 days in the office.

Had an intake screening interview with HR. They immediately jumped into rapid fire screening questions. I only found out the contract I would have been supporting when I asked. It was a short phone call interview.

I was reached out to by a recruiter on Indeed about a remote Technical Policy Writer role. My first chat was with the recruiter, who asked me some standard questions about technical policy writing in cybersecurity. Even though I didn't have direct answers for everything, the recruiter thought my resume and my answers were good enough to move on to a technical interview. The technical interview was on Teams with a group of people. The technical writing interviewer ended up passing me over to the Cybersecurity Compliance lead because it was clear I was a better fit for that area. This compliance interviewer asked me a bunch of questions about NIST, FISMA, A&A tools, and general cybersecurity compliance stuff, in a really laid-back way. They seemed really interested, but told me there was a 6-week suitability process before an offer could be made. Then things got weird. I waited 6 weeks and heard nothing. I reached out to the recruiter, and it turned out nothing had happened. I asked them to restart, and went through another technical interview since the compliance lead had left. This time, I was again moved from a Policy Writer interview to Cybersecurity Compliance. After that, I kept in touch with the recruiter weekly until I finally had a one-on-one with the Deputy Program Manager. The dPM was worried about the time difference since I'm on the East Coast and the job was West Coast, but I explained I'd worked early shifts before. After that interview, I got a contingent offer, pending a government suitability review, which took about 3 weeks. Then, they needed to get me a government ID card, which took another week. After that, they ordered me a government laptop to be delivered to a facility 3 hours away. I insisted on giving two weeks' notice to my old job, so I didn't start until two weeks after I picked up the laptop. During onboarding, I found out the insurance benefits were more expensive than advertised, and the 401(k) match wasn't available until after 90 days, and I couldn't even contribute until then. Overall, the hiring process was okay, but recruiting management needs to be more consistent, and they should be upfront about all the steps needed before starting.