Recruiter Smack Down (Panel)

so we have one more panel Matt Dern is going to moderate the panel and we have a few people from our recruiting tables who are going to come up here and do the panel so we're going to do a bit of a switcheroo what nope so this is just a quick panel where we're going to recap the day and then you're going to have your chance to answer or ask any questions but we're also going to do a survey pool at the end so if you have not filled out your survey we've got surveys up there you fill them out we'll be pulling from their prizes at the end of this panel so do we have anyone who

still needs to fill out a survey everyone's filled out a survey okay great I'm going to turn it over to Matt I always hate this tiny little microphone but that one doesn't work I don't want to sit down as I can't see everybody everyone my name is Matt Doran I work at tenable I'm also co-organizer here she's my boss back there for for higher ground it's it's all volunteer stuff but we have a lot of fun doing it hope you guys enjoy it as she said what we're gonna do is talk a little bit about what we saw today most of us have been in here all day so we've got a good sense of what was said some major themes

so we want to recap some of that if you didn't get a chance to see some of that there will be talks available in video but you know let's let's kind of get this stuff while it's fresh maybe there's some additional things that we want to say we had real short talks today so a little bit about my background we'll all introduce ourselves and give a little background I've been recruiting since 2001 was the first job I had a school head out of school staffing agency have to make all these calls a day or you're not doing your job but even if it wasn't a good call it's a straight shot into sales has nothing to

do with recruiting it's just get these jobs filled and then let's go make more money somewhere else I didn't want to do that so I went into the corporate side spent nine years working at Geico where I did technical recruiting led that team also did a national college recruiting for leadership program then moved on to tenable where I've been there for the last four and a half years focused mostly on the the research and development but I also managed the technical recruiting team as well so it's consultants preserve things like that so I've been in and around b-sides and all these other things for a little while so hopefully we have a good sense and we've I think we're all that way we

have a good sense of some of the pain points you guys are seeing right now and we're hopefully just going to be able to fix them but maybe make them a bit more aware for everybody else it's all start with a B hello my name is abby malc I am the senior recruiter at R'lyeh quest we are an IT cybersecurity consulting firm headquartered in Tampa Florida and we have a Security Operations Center there as well as here in Vegas I've been recruiting for about five years total I also served on the agency side I agree with with most most comments on the agency side but I wouldn't be a tree-like West without my experience there so learned a lot and definitely

set me up for success here we recruit all technical and operational positions all corporate you know hires come through myself in my team so yeah a little bit about me you're gonna do me last here Jenna Berman I currently work for Deloitte I am NOT a recruiter I'm actually a client relationship executive which sounds far from cyber information security but it's actually related bear with me I started out as a technologist about 15 years in government and another 15 as a defense contractor still maintain my cyber certifications it's just PC eh all of those keep those active the things that are we going into the things that we liked of the day not yet okay but this is let's say so this

is my second b-sides in Vegas and but my 15th year coming out here between the combinations of black hat and DEF CON hello guys my name is Jose Leone I am the human resources director for for Honeywell I have been in the HR arena for the past 20 years working for high-tech companies mainly like compact computer hewlett-packard EBS Schneider Electric analysis of currently Honeywell I am responsible for the cyber division globally I am NOT a recruiter about I am I am recruiting a recruiter now because certainly this market is growing very very fast we are starving for a qualified talent and I wanted to get involved myself in this event to to get to know you guys so very excited to be

here and that's me I am Mexican in case you were wondering you know were they asking is coming from all right so I think in talking with each of the panelists here today I think the biggest thing that we're gonna take away from today's talks and we even heard it a little bit more of it in the last one is really about taking ownership of your career so I know you wanted to start with some of the stuff you really when I talked about that you were really into it so I'd like to hear your thoughts on some of the messages we hear today about taking ownership of your career and what do you think is some of the top things

people should do to take that step as part of my job I constantly connect with employees now employees are my internal costumers and for me it is very important to to get their voice and some of the frequent ask questions that I receive from the customer sees what the company in this case Honeywell previously Schneider and previously Philip Parker everybody asked the same question what the company is doing to take my career to the next to the next step so after after receiving or getting this question many times I I have concluded that it is not a company that responsible to manage your career your career or my career it is our responsibility the responsibility of

every one of us as individuals to manage our career you know if you don't know what you want to do when you row up nobody is going to answer that question so if you really want to do something with your career first you know you need to know what you want to achieve then the company a good company has to be a facilitator of that carrier so when I received a question from the employees and I asked the question back why do you want to do and then let's talk how I I can help you to get there but to me the most important part is to to be clear that every one of us as employees are the ultimate owners

of our destiny and we need to hold ourselves accountable for that and yeah I mean I would definitely definitely agree with that I think that there are some companies that do succession planning career path planning a little bit better than others but if we don't know what direction you want to go what you want to do or what you want to be when you grow up you know sometimes that doesn't come to light sometimes it's not facilitated but if you speak up and let someone know hey this is what I'm interested in I was thinking about looking at this certification are we gonna have any positions that I'll utilize that in etc and help facilitate

that conversation with your manager it could go a lot further than you probably think you're probably not the only one and then that may be a project that you get involved in is helping build out that career path plan helping build out that succession planning for your entire company so it's about speaking up and taking initiative so this is really this is a couple of folks have asked me about the certifications in training and education and how they should keep themselves current and talked to a lot of employees having been a hiring manager and they've come to me frustrated maybe our company at the time is run out of funding for training sometimes that gets cut halfway through

the year but again I tell them nobody is going to care about your career more than you do how many folks are certified have a technical certification right do you ever want to take that test again do you want to really jeopardize by not going to something I've found all kinds of annoying companies that I've worked for in the past have run out of money or not been able to send me to for training I figure out a way you know there's always some sort of creative way to continue to develop yourself and keep yourself current no company no recruiter you shouldn't put that in the hands of anyone except yourself it's great if those companies will fund you it's great

if an agency will fund you you know whomever you work for but really keeping on top of that owning your professional development that's key and it will never do you wrong either they can't when you change jobs that experience goes with you it stays with you anything you learn it's not ever subtracted from you it's not a benefit that you ever lose so I think that is something that resonated with me through the day so I want to get to the audience quickly yeah I mean we don't have to do all these points we have on here from the group we have here anybody want to share anything related to ownership over your career things we've talked about so far

gentlemen hold his hand up here would love to hear it I have a question for each of the individuals on the panel as an individual what do you look for for me to build my own personal brand that will attract you me as a candidate they want to take it yeah I'll go for it okay so personal brand so I look for people that are really and this might sound fluffy but I really look for people that are self-motivated if I ask you you know what do you do to develop yourself what do you do to keep current I want to know that you're reading you know all the professional journals that you can possibly read I want to know that you're

looking at the websites for the latest vulnerabilities or whatever it happens to be for your particular domain or specialty right I want to see that and I also want to look at maybe some network you know usually it's part of your network and you look at the people on the periphery that you're connecting with I look for somebody who's trying to build their network and trying to improve and also trying to be helpful in the community what else are you doing besides your job because you aren't your job so are you involved in Issa or some other professional organization is e squared whatever it happens to be besides are you showing up and volunteering at one of those

conferences putting in your time I look for all of those things because that speaks more to a person's integrity and character and how they may fit in with my team yeah so i 100% agree with everything that she just said so i'll touch on something a little bit different and it was actually touched on in the panel just before us it does go both ways so the same as you are receiving maybe blast messages from recruiters when you go to apply for a job I want to know that you did your homework on our company and this specific position so writing a custom message in your application or in your objective in your resume goes a long way

as well as opposed to your applying to every security job out there and you're just looking for anything I think that that goes a long way as well and it does help you know the recruiter because there are so many applicants a day that aren't qualified it helps the recruiter it stands out and it helps them get back to you faster I think just because it's it's different than just attaching your resume can I ask you a clarifying question when you say you want to improve your social brand or what do we look for in it do you want to be found or are you looking for it as a way to highlight on a resume well I really put

myself out there but more to be found because I have a number of certifications other things so when I decide to make the switch and actually go and do a search what's gonna help attract the better recruiters it'll probably track the others as well because some of them do keyword searches whatever but what are you looking for for me to have on my profile or on my website or whatever so that you can say okay this guy is the person or this gal is the individual that I want to maybe approach and see if they're a right thing because I can't document everything I've done you know 20 years of experiences 20 years of experience right let me let me tell you

something obviously too our presence in social media to have presence in LinkedIn is a most no so you have to be there other way you are not going to either and most of the people showing their profile a bunch of tasks of activities that they they have done in their career however what I look and I think most of the companies look as well is for results I am interested to know what you have done for your companies what you have learned in your previous positions I want to know a specific outcomes I want to know quantitative results of your previous positions something that I can get evidence from and that can help me to predict your future performance to

me that's something very easy to work at some point to assess at first sight and that will take my attention or not I am NOT interested to reread a job description with just a list of tasks and one thing I'll add on that you gotta be careful about if you would be the radical that's fine you know if you want to comment and not be mean about it but you know speak your mind and be that person that is challenging what the norm is that's cool you just got to know that that's going to limit some things for you there's some companies that don't like that kind of stuff but then there's a ton of more that that do and not for

the negative reasons but really because we want somebody that can think for themselves and maybe they are trying to I'm gonna use a buzzword bingo disrupt the the environment which they're in but but the more point I guess I want to say is if you are doing other things I think somebody talked about it was Johnny earlier talked about putting yourself out in social situations getting getting out of public getting out with peers and other folks that that you can learn from and meet and maybe you'll find that person that's looking for exactly you but going out there and showing that you're part of this stuff can actually help you with ok here's where I am I may

not have everything but here's what I'm talking about here's what I'm interested in here's some things that I'm interested in in you knowing about me from a public standpoint and then that will help when they do the search because we're gonna look at your profiles no matter what it is I we're looking at Facebook I mean there's a whole group that just sources on Facebook that's fine but we're gonna look at that stuff we're gonna say hey it's got some good stuff maybe we should talk to him you have a question back here all right Jenn you had some actually I was gonna say if you're looking for a way to start yourself down that quantitative path of like showing

eminence go through whatever you have out there and where it says responsible for and get rid of that that is the biggest pet peeve people put responsible for on their resumes and on their LinkedIn go with some action verbs that start showing what you've done you created you author you maintained and then that starts pushing you towards putting those that quantitative data into your resume into your LinkedIn start showing some of those results might still be nebulous and you might not want to put too much out there you know depending on how you feel about social media but at least gives the recruiters I think oh and hiring managers a little bit better idea what

you're really doing and real quick to add to that so if you're looking for if you're looking to be found for the right opportunity because maybe you're not actively looking and there is the right opportunity out there that wouldn't allow you to make a move or inspire you to make a move I agree with you know blanketed messages and recruiters doing keyword searches and and just pinging you because there were keywords but truth no matter is I'm not gonna find you if you don't have some of these words on your profile and it may not be what you're doing now maybe it's what you want to be doing and that's what I'm looking for so there has to be some

presence and some sort of I guess you know your profile has to be filled out in some way shape or form in some fashion whether it's on monster with your whole resume or on LinkedIn with a couple of things you know maybe not even your jobs listed but what you're interested in there's a there's a section for interests on LinkedIn so I mean recruiters aren't going to find you without keywords just make sure that what you're putting out there is the keywords that you want them to find so we have a question back here it was a follow-up question to the other one and I think hos that you might cover this but I'm curious on your advice to folks that

more are broader and less deaths of non-specialists let's say I'm not a firewall engineer I can be your firewall engineer I would advise you against that but more the jack-of-all-trades folks that start bridging those gaps or have many years or decades of experience where they might be not a special c-more but can cover more broad areas in the advice to those folks of how to convey either their worth or pique your interests in I am NOT a specialist anymore I am now more of a broader based person easing the pique your interest in that those types of folks so I'm actually glad that you brought that up because there has been a lot of kind of

specialty talk and just for my company specifically we do look for jack-of-all-trades or people who are not necessarily specialists because that shows to me that you're open to learning new things you like learning new things and you can grasp new concepts so for that I mean your profile is gonna speak to me anyway but I think it's important and in that instance you have learned what you liked in which you haven't liked by that time so your objective or your body of your email with your application that has to express to me what you're looking for that would be my main question to you is you've done all these things and I mean if you've

enjoyed them all great but there's got to be some things that you haven't liked to do your that you didn't enjoy or that wasn't you know something that you want to pursue so instead of maybe if you aren't sure you know what you want to be so when you grow up you know however many years of experience you have at least know what you don't want to do and then I can maybe help you find that right fit yeah I think another part of that is is to understanding the types of companies that and then what they're looking for and knowing that there's a target list that you you see yourself doing I've seen these jobs other way

other places I know people that have these types of things and then you know if you're applying to a job and I'm not sure if you're applying or being found but if you're applying to the firewall engineer job you're gonna be expected to be a fire royal engineer not not everything else so it's really a knowing exactly what you want to do and and knowing that there's an opportunity a particular company for you because again you're just gonna be wasting your time not getting that response back that you talked about earlier another piece of maybe no-brainer advice is if you go target the job you want so if you think about like the hacker methodology right

the first thing you do is intelligence gathering on a target right and you figure out where you want to work or maybe some similar companies that do that type of work go look at their job openings print out you know print out and or save them off and come do comparisons of the keywords of the types of skills and certifications that they're looking for and then you can use that almost as a composite to start developing your skill set towards that job that you want to comment on that real quick as well if you did do your research on on the company or companies that you're interested in and you go on their websites and you don't see a

position that you're interested in I may still reach out to you if you do apply for one of those openings just to you know have my contact information but it's probably listed elsewhere so if you take the time just to find my email address outside of a job posting that's listed and just say hey I did some research on your company the culture looks great you know I like what you guys are doing in terms of innovation but none of your job postings are really speaking to me maybe we can just set up a conversation and see what you have coming down the line that would go a long way as opposed to what they were

talking about before applying to the wrong position then it looks you know your credibility is maybe a little bit questioned something to consider so another question for those of us that have developed pretty extensive networks through our career how do you guys feel about us contacting through our career back into the hiring manager before you even see our resume well you're gonna get a bunch of different answers here I think I'm not a recruiter but I would say as a hiring manager I don't mind I have in the past I've had good relationships with my recruiters so I would say oh look a referral hey a recruiting team I got this this person reached out to me could I've

done some initial conversation which is completely legal in the hiring process and you know just to find out what you're interested in and then I would loop in my recruiter and get that process going when they HR side to make sure that you know you can work for the company and all of those things I think it can go several ways so I mean obviously if you're trying to get in touch with someone and you're passionate about the company in the position I don't mind if you go to my boss or whoever else to get in touch with someone there or to talk to them about the hiring process I think that there are some people that may speak with the

recruiter at the company and maybe get an answer that they weren't expecting or that they didn't want to hear and then try to go around the recruiter so that's obviously different can of worms but I mean ultimately if you're passionate about getting into the company or rely quite specifically we don't care how you get in touch with us just you know as long as we get you into the right hands and we can get you through the interview process and that's that's great stay on this one because you guys I know Honeywell sometimes I was about to say that I am NOT a recruiter but I am a hiring manager and a hiring manager I do appreciate to find proactive

candidates if I got a contact from from the candidate directly racing the facts of why I am being approached and why the person is interested in the position if well structure certainly that person is going to take my attention and certainly that the people that I would like to get in my organization so to me that's very welcome well again that might bring some conflict of interest with a recruiter at your parenting so I would understand that but from having man-mana your perspective I would strongly encourage you to I guess building on that too from the last panel if you have a good recruiter you shouldn't have to go around them one of the things I'll

so there's a lot of some companies like oh god no we want everything to come through HR right is tracking and metrics and things like that but if you talk to any manager out there that's read any recent books on how to hire and recruit and things like that a lot of them are actually being given metrics to say if you have an opening you better have a couple of people that you can bring in here and and bring to the recruit and if you have a decent of recruiting staff and they're okay with that they don't have this ego that says I have to find everyone then that makes a great relationship for that manager

which you know encourages things like that so I like it go for it if you can't find me I'm sure you can find somebody else we don't make it very hard to find ourselves but you know if you know somebody they can get you in the door they say go for it that's what that are working he's about so exercise of network yeah there's other things we wanted to get to I know we're running super late here we have time for one more no all right anybody guys quick nothing nothing going going any hiring managers I already learned but those so I heard somebody asked maybe the question earlier about how to better work with

recruiters and as a hiring manager and person of the company I was trying to figure that out myself so there were a couple things that I did one I did white board so I liked that recommendation up here I white board it because my company had different contracts all over the place with different clients whether that was NSA DISA Cyber Command my recruiters didn't know who did what in cyber and who was responsible for what and how that all worked so I wait boarded it for them and they were like oh okay so I see why I wouldn't hire this type of person for this contract versus you know this type of person that helped and then I also made them a big

key word slash related word list where I had I had a portfolio of programs and I listed out the programs and here are the skill sets that I would want for each one of these programs the types of information security or cyber people that I would need depending on the program and here's some related words keywords that you might see that also means that something very similar so trying to help and fine-tune mostly technologists I think in the audience I was tuning my sensors I was actually tuning them almost like network sensors I would push this information out and then I would get those resumes back from them and take a look and I'd be like oh like this one or

I'd see something else and say well I don't really want this and here's why and fine tuning those sensors and we had a great working relationship we'd have you know lunch is over this topic and it really helped it helped both end goals you know the recruiter and the hiring manager as well as getting the right candidates in the door I want to thank everybody for coming out today thanks for the questions thanks to our panelists for everything did a great job