This Is Not The Career You Are Looking For - Martin King

now obviously i had a look through the uh the speaker profiles and then saw obviously omri was on before me and uh inspirational speaker traveled the world and then i thought okay little old me after that i can i can cope i can cope so today what i'm looking to cover is a bit of to be honest it's it's a bit of career advice i've been in tech nearly 20 years uh i've worked for lots of different companies i i enjoy the technical side but i suppose more recently been doing a lot more of the management side of things and actually what i find really exciting is developing and coaching uh young and old staff and making sure i get the absolute

best out of everybody i can possibly get so at the moment i'm working over in liverpool uh been there just over a year uh started as a consultant to do a transformation hopefully a few of you have heard the football pools um they've been going 96 years um but they're going through somewhat a digital transformation so we're going from people still posting in a coupon every week with some selections of which matches they think is going to be score draws through to a modern-day uh fun and leisure sort of gambling company so what i'll do today it's like i say a little bit of advice over the years uh but what i'd like is some questions right the way

through as well so i'm gonna touch upon some of the things i love some of the bits i hate um a little bit about me uh probably a bit too much about me as far as all of you are concerned but i do enjoy talking about myself um and then just a top 10 tips of sort of a career in tech how to get into it how to advance yourself some of these tips will be uh you know known to everybody some will hopefully help even if you can just take a couple of little tips away i'd be made up and then how to keep in touch so the things i love i do love tech but i

love people more and i love the community communication connecting with people learning everybody should be learning on almost a daily basis if you're not something's wrong this is not the career for you mentoring and coaching i do a lot of mentoring i do a lot of coaching with different organizations and i'll talk a bit through that i love martial arts as well uh questions volunteer and very very long powerpoint lists it's also a big favorite of mine so the the things i hate is i don't like cheese now please i i know everybody get cheese really yes hate it can't stand it i get cheese free pizzas and before you ask the bbq sauce holds the contents

together quite nicely so don't worry about that laziness and people that don't want to listen people that just genuinely don't want to learn i i can't comprehend those types of people i think you know if you're going to work in technology you really do need to learn on a daily basis uh keyboards without green backlights it's just uh it's just a no and also wonderful stock photos of what hackers really look like in the real world um i'm sure a few of you have used these in presentations that you've done so a little bit about me and i did say a little bit about me so this is one of my first days of work at chester

zoo so i was uh i was there for about 14 years so saw lots of different animals i've got lots of stories um i've got some health and safety things that i won't put on video but if you want to come and see me later i can happily talk about um firstly i got an e at gcseit so the the idea of this is or me telling you this is to say that look while school is important it really isn't the be all and end all uh you know i i then managed to get talk my way into college a bit of early social engineering um and then i was asked to leave after about six months

and i managed to get myself an apprenticeship luckily otherwise it probably would have gone down a different path and then i just work my ass off really i mean to be honest i think everybody that works in tech um or anybody that has a good career in tech tends to find that they're doing something absolutely every day they're pushing themselves they're always learning new things and without that really you're probably in the wrong game um i i obviously then over compensated for the lack of education uh so i then went and got became a chartered fellow with the bcs uh and got my sis as well um and again these are i'm a big fan of

certification for the right reasons um so so don't do it to overcompensate and just to put a label on yourself do it because you you feel like you need to better yourself give yourself a challenge a goal they're the complete right reasons oh by the way that was that that photo i appreciate it looks like it was only last week but uh but it wasn't honestly it was it was quite some time ago um so again uh just there's me and lima um so as you can imagine pretty cool that was it that was at the zoo um so i sort of worked my way up from from first line support up to head of i.t at the

zoo and then i went over to wrexham and became a head of i.t at moneypenny then i set up by myself a company called it transformed and then i started at the football pools as the cto on an interim basis as part of my consultancy and then actually ended up they they talked me into joining the the exec board so i've been there for about 18 months now um a little bit more just to come back to the bits i did before um so i chair the the bcs chester and north wales branch so it's a really active group we do talks every month we um we regularly send out comms if anybody wants to join or even come along

they're completely free you don't have to be a member of the bcs to come along free food free drink great speakers really good topics just to say free food again just uh just like reiterate that um and then i also um i i do some uh speaking and mentoring i also look after the website a number of other things for cyber girls first uh what we do is we we focus on age 14 to 18 uh girls who are looking at getting into technology who sort of get elbowed out by the by the the boys that get in their way um we've still got a big diversity problem in it still need to address it um so recently i was i was

very lucky to be able to go to number 10 and talk about it uh so that was one of my uh one of my photos i try and wheel out um and i've also been doing safe and secure with isc squared for for quite some time as well probably about four years uh even before all the garfield stuff came along if anybody else is a safe and secure volunteer so now on to the actual uh the bit that's really well hopefully important uh but you'll be the judges of that so quite a lot of these are naughty stuff that everybody kind of knows but it's nice to have a bit of a refresher every once in a while uh it's good to be able

to just see it see it on paper sure the slides will be available as well um but really it's about sort of the things that i've gleaned over the years that have actually been quite important to me um so i'll start rattling through them and look this the first one actually is really quite important every single company is a technology company these days doesn't matter if you're in manufacturing uh if you're in catering building marketing obviously gaming education everywhere uses technology so if you can be an intrinsic part of that uh technology then then you've got a career for life now technology moves and adapts and and being able to keep up with that is probably the most important part of

the role but the idea is that actually as a as a person that is feeding in from all levels making sure that technology is a part of every business it means that you'll be in a job for life so again just to just to reiterate a lot of these will be uh pretty simple things for most people but you know be eager to learn new things you know bounce ideas off people don't be scared to go and talk to people and make sure that they know that you know they can come to you and and do the same it's really important that obviously this industry uh is so so helpful and actually if you just go and ask pretty much anyone even

even rivals of the company that you're you're working for you'll probably find that they'll come back to you and they'll actually be really quite nice receptive and you know recently started talking to some other people in the gambling gambling arena who actually i thought they're not going to bother speaking to me i'm a rival and actually they just opened up started chat we had a really big open and frank conversation we shared a load of the same problems and actually it was really quite important for the both of us and then you know again continuous learning i was trying to think of that that old adage of a of a shark and it's standing still but i couldn't remember

it so and it was half one when i finished these slides last night so also couldn't be bothered looking them up but you know what i mean so quite a lot of us actually forget that that you and your brain is the asset so people don't implore you to go and do the same thing as every everybody else actually the the most important part of you is your brain and the way you think and that's why you're in that role so again people are starting to get worried about uh you know automation taking over jobs and things like that okay some industries will be hurt more than others but actually if you can find a way of automating

something that means that then you're free to go and think about something else to add value to so don't forget that your brain is the part that adds the value and and diversity is what builds teams great teams you know if you've got a you know a room of 10 people in a team who have got the same past diversity is probably the biggest biggest differentiator you can throw into that mix you know bring somebody else in bring somebody else that challenges you that make sure they don't just go along with everything you say you want people to actually challenge you it means you get the absolute best ideas don't be scared about diversity in every

team so look you guys know this already you know i'm looking around lots of people in the room that i know are industry veterans you tinker every day you go find resources but just for the people that are looking at this as a as a new career or just starting out you know go and have a look uh you know at aws uh d.o that you know there's tons of free vms that you can go and play with just go and have a play a tinker experiment you know just there's plenty of words there but just go and have a play it's the by far the best way so this is one of the things that i get

quite frustrated by when i'm when i'm working with teams is that they don't they don't become self-sufficient you can quite easily spoon feed people with all of the answers but actually you know what they're not the first person to ever have this problem everybody else this problem would have been somewhere else and just being able to use a search engine efficiently is probably one of the biggest things that you can change because then people you know give a man a fish he's he's hungry for he's he's fed for a day teach him how to use a search engine he can google stuff that didn't work did it but you know what i mean so this one is particularly pertinent in in

the sort of the cyber sec arena as well is that actually a lot of people don't like people they want to be able to sit in a corner be left alone look i even seen son and somebody get nudged there not like people no i mean either way um you know if you slip into that typical techie type of person where nobody wants to come and speak to you you're not approachable you know uh you walk over to the infrastructure guys and ask them for something they just grunt and you know you walk away it's not going to help anybody so actually you've got to remember first and foremost that relationships are exactly why you're there and that's why

everybody else is there everybody comes to work to do a job but if you can actually communicate with these people effectively and learn to ask different types of questions and lead people where you need them to go you'll find actually that sorry go on

okay so so so yeah the first the first option was probably the they'll want to go down but actually do you know what go and sit and have a coffee with them take them take them out for a coffee get them out of their their safe area um arrange something where you can go and have a have a chat explain what you would like them to do i think is the best success that i've had before um and also try and try and make them understand on uh the impact of what they're doing and actually none of this is difficult stuff it's it's again i suppose it it's just about being able to have that type of

relationship whether where you can be completely honest with them uh but the best results i've found is like i say taking them out for for something to eat or taking them out for a coffee um you know pick somewhere where you can go and sort of take yourself away from from everybody else because the last thing you need to do is is to try and have that conversation in front of other people in your team uh because again that will just especially if they're a senior manager as well you know i'm assuming the senior manager will just go and go to the person that they want and go and tell them they need to go and do it now and and

and then they just need to go and do it yeah i yeah look making them understand the impact of it which is difficult um but but for me it's take them out for a coffee make them understand the impact tell them actually that other person is gonna work on other things and and if you stop them from doing that they're gonna have a detrimental impact on some of the other bits as well it's it's there's no there's no magic solution you know it it's i suppose it's just about building up that communication and trying to get them to see why they're being disruptive yeah no magical solution unfortunately um but again i suppose coming back to the

fact that you you know if you go and network like days like today is great so you can network with people who are like-minded um and you can go and have a talk with people and actually that should make most people feel uh feel pretty comfortable but actually go and network with people that are outside your peer group as well so um i've been a cto go to a lot of cio cto events but actually i quite enjoy going to sort of business events as well so marketing finance it's actually it gives me more experience being able to network with people who aren't necessarily within my uh my direct peer group [Music] so i think i've covered the the star

wars uh things here and so so who sort of went through and read this in their head as yoda all right good good quite a few excellent i i have been practicing my yoda voice however i i decided that it wasn't good enough to be able to uh especially now it's on camera as well so um but at the end of the day yeah you don't learn anything from success it's fairly basic you know you you learn that you already know how to do it so when you fail just you know don't give up go grab some resources go google it and go make sure actually that you you go and understand the steps and the

troubleshooting steps that you took to be able to go and actually fix it um and and again that that bottom point there i can't stress enough the the fact that actually you need to be willing to be able to hold up your hands when you fail um as a manager that's looked and managed teams i can't stress how important that is so somebody coming to me and going look i've really stuffed up here i need your help holding your hands up and going yeah i you know i need somebody to help me i need i need to pull something out the bag i'm not going to hit the deadlines just go and talk to people again just to

reiterate always comes back to the fact that communication with all your peers is so so important question everything um so i've been annoying my my family my parents for quite some time probably since i could talk that i literally questioned everything but i suppose this comes back to more the fact that those steps that you take in your head is that you know if you do the same thing every day why are you doing the same thing every day in the same way go find out how to automate it go and free up your time to be able to do something more efficient you add value because you're doing something different because you're thinking differently so

go and find a way of being able to go and do it differently automate it and then whilst you're doing it have a think about how how somebody else like an attacker could do it differently as well it's actually it's really quite important to be able to take your take your head out of how you're doing it and how you've been doing it for quite some time and actually be able to just take a step back you know go out of work for half a day go to a coffee shop go and listen to some conversations just remove yourself from there and put yourself under a bit of sort of mental stress and go and have

a think about how other people can do it because that's generally where i find i come up with my best ideas either that or the shower but either way so i suppose just to cover a few of the the basics off um so i've listed a bit of a list there like i say these slides will be available but um apprenticeships it's how i started i love apprenticeships um there are you know as we speak there are four or five cyber security apprenticeships in liverpool um so that on that website you can search for them have a look lots of people are hiring uh you know cyber security system admins all those sorts of careers feeder

careers into these these pathways um education again you know quite a lot of people will come back to education if they don't go there initially but you know again great pathways into it um volunteering as something that's that's close to me um you know i i love doing volunteering uh i take holidays off work to be able to go and do it because i find it's really important it also helps me have a bit of a mental break and stops me getting sort of burn out which again is really important to make sure that you look after yourself as well um although i was saying that um two years ago i was doing triathlons running all

the time i've started my new place i've literally not done an ounce of fitness put on about four stone nearly so so you know preacher and all that but um i've concentrated obviously on my volunteering more than my personal fitness but i'll i'll get it back eventually as soon as the canteen stopped doing subsidized bacon sandwiches in the morning so work experience so actually there are loads of people in this industry that will be happy to open the doors and let you go in and do work experience so actually um when i when i started my own company i i went and gave somebody out there a call i won't mention who it is but i went

gave him a call i just said look i've not done hands on security for a couple of years do you mind if i rock up the doors were open spent a week with them absolutely loved it uh terrified me how much i'd lost just in a couple of years actually you know obviously things move on very quickly and being in the management scope tend not to pick it up as quickly but really enjoyed it hopefully i was helpful and not a pain in his ass um but again if you need experience this is such a good community go pop it on linkedin go put it on any of the forums people will find you experience uh you

know as long as you're you're ready and willing people will find it uh industry events like this uh blogs so actually i mentioned quite a few blogs there but there's a few of my personal favorites there uh holly's actually over there as well so she got a shout out um podcasts obviously i you know had to mention our hosts uh jenny there from human factor uh smashing second and defensive sec as well um there's a couple of really good bunk uh bug bounties go and take a look at them go sign up actually even if you're not going and actively doing them there's great forums around it as well and actually lots of people talk on there

which i suppose brings us to that bottom one as well so just to reiterate this industry is absolutely incredible and actually everybody is super helpful by the caveat obviously not everybody but you'll find that some are slightly more anti-social than others uh there's a anti-social engineer out there that was one for him but he hasn't joined us hey-ho um but you'll find that actually the first thing to do is go find a mentor it doesn't matter where where stage you are in your career go find a mentor it's actually really important i've got three or four mentors at the moment who who guide me when i need help uh one of them is more of like a coach which i go and

have a day with every uh every month but actually it's really important to go find a mentor and once you've got one go find another and another and then once you're at that stage go and be one because it's actually really important you find who who in this room just by show of hands has got a mentor okay who wants to find a mentor [Music] okay that should be everybody honestly you can never have too many mentors so just go find one who's willing to be a mentor i've got i've actually got a letter on the next one but yeah so so just just say who who is actually willing to be a mentor right there's a load of people there if

you're one looking to find one look at whose hands are up and go and speak to them honestly it's the best thing you'll do go find some mentors and then be one because literally anybody can learn something from somebody else so just go go and do it already okay so how i found my mentors was on twitter and linkedin all i did was i just appealed to their ego right so that's literally all i needed to do i said excuse me mr fantastic security person i've been following your career for quite some time and i would love to have a coffee with you and discuss it at some time you'd be amazed how many people just go

oh yeah yeah no i'd absolutely love it because they just feel like yeah actually most people are in a position where they're willing to be able to give advice you know the main key points are play to their ego right be flexible so say i can do it over skype whatsapp whatever whatever works because i know your time is really important you know understand what you're looking for out of a mentor because actually if you can give them some focus it'll be a lot easier for them to be able to give you advice because they generally only dip in and out of conversations but you will find it genuinely important uh to be able to just say i'm looking

for somebody to get to the next stage of my career i'm looking for somebody to be able to you know help me get into management looking for somebody who can um you know guide me to what qualifications i need again keep it keep it targeted and you'll find you'll get more a lot more out of it and again don't just pigeon pigeonhole yourself i've been to cfos i've been to ceos one of my uh one of my mentors at the moment is the the ceo of one of the largest sort of uh manufacturing companies just because i'd seen him at industry events he talked and actually it doesn't matter who they are you know it matters

what they've done and that's what you're asking them for so again make sure you uh play to their ego so dear awesome security person i've followed your posts and articles with interest and i wonder if you could help looking to try and do something please help me out and you'd be amazed how many people will respond okay any final questions does anybody want to get pickies before i go on okay and get get quick picky now if anybody sends me one of these on linkedin later more than happy to all right yeah i could do a response app yeah no i'm okay thanks yeah okay any final questions

well hopefully you don't know

yep

you know what you're never going to be able to do that i mean i'm already laughing because you know if i'd been the 18 the 18 year old me and i'd probably just watch this um i probably wouldn't listen to most of it but you know what only takes one or two little things i think probably the best advice i could give to those is that become their mentor whether they want to or not so what i've found that actually is that you know caveat the sentence with i know you might not want to hear this but actually quite a lot of the time even though they may not want the advice sometimes if you can give a little bit

of advice um without being forceful with it it'll sink in so i think you know the main thing is um just make sure they know that you're there if if you ever need them and that they can trust you to come and talk um and i think that you know they will come and talk to you eventually if they need it but yeah informal bits of steering i i tend to find and and certainly things like in meetings where you can see that they're being either either pushed out or they're not being included they're not being asked for opinions make sure you ask them for opinions you know i you know even just stopping the meeting go so what do you guys think

it's it's actually it goes a long way any other questions okay thank you very much