It's Not You; Job Searching is Broken

all right so now we have it's not you your job searching is broken and we have Eric lichte who is a senior architect with cyber SN and de jure diamond who is the CEO and founder of cyber SN welcome them please can you hear us everybody has a sound good awesome awesome awesome I'm gonna kick off and definitely want to start by saying it's a pleasure to be here my mother's from Butler Pennsylvania so up until about seven years old I used to come here from California which is where I was born and raised to catch fireflies so it's been a long time since I've been in Pittsburgh until we opened our office here a year

ago so anyhow it's a pleasure to meet you all as you know the founder and CEO of cyber s and when Eric asked me to do this talk with him it was so amazing because Eric story is the story that I've been seeing in staffing my entire career never mind in security staffing so I'm lucky I all these companies here just so you know my background and my stories I and how I got into cyber which was rapid7 I felt their sales model up to 50 million the founders that I worked for there I work for for three companies I've got that story of 21 years with the same people and so I pay attention to retention and

to job satisfaction it really matters to me and being in the staffing business I can tell you that I don't see much of it in fact I see hardly any of it and it really breaks my heart so I spend a lot of time out in the field talking about retention talking about the statistics that are really plaguing our community and when I met Eric a few years ago before he joined us it was quite interesting to watch his reaction after learning all the things that he's learned from being with us about this thing we call job searching so we're here to talk about that to give some pointers some some tips we only have 40

minutes it's not a whole lot of time but it should be enough to give you all some good some good content and some helpful hints about what your job searching experience could be like if you had some more knowledge so that's what we're here to pretend we're gonna use Eric's story as a part of how to share with you some tips like what as a senior cloud security architect looking for worked for two years prior to meeting me it's and thinking that job searching are sneaking to himself there was something wrong with him meanwhile not only did I not represent him and get him interviews we hired him that's how he is so it's a

it's a completely oxymoron so I'm gonna let you to hear his story and then we're gonna talk about some real challenges and he ran into why was the two years of interviewing such a nightmare for him and how can that be if we've got over a million cyber jobs open you know what's that like so so I'll give you some pointers when we hear his story he's already whoa I'd like so this is me I don't like doing introduction slides because I like talk about myself so that's a picture of me rather I'd rather use this time to talk about how this talk came to be as they dree mentioned that we met and she hired me a year ago

and actually ironically it's a year ago today crazy enough as it is prior to that I spent 15 years working for a defense contractor middle of Pennsylvania it was a great great company great opportunity a great mentor and I have you the opportunity to do everything in the cyber realm I was innocent handler I did perimeter protection not tuned to IDS's we had a great budget great team it was a great great company I'm likewise it what it did is it for to me well back then I was 20 with the wife who is a medical school new kid so I play anytime I would spend 60 plus hours a week working because it was a great

time to learn grow and as my career grew I also paying certifications as last night indicated so I certified I learned I've had in my resume Mary my resume grew immensely so after 15 years I started to see that I needed to do something else I needed to be diversified I need to go into retail or a different sector and I thought that all right cybers hot now that's after the target breach at TJ max breach the cyber industry grew and so did the salary so to career so I thought wow I have a great resume I'll launch it off people knocked on my door I'll name my own price it'll be great I launched my resume I monster I got

calls I got interviews I did not get a job what happened one time I thought maybe it was me I thought maybe I was something was wrong with me so I started having a lot of self-doubt a lot of wondering that maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was so I started taking jobs and taking interviews that I wasn't I was beat at over qualify for or wasn't interested in to understand the process behind what's the secret sauce and landing these jobs over time I just gave up it was in 2015 whenever I was at RSA Condon I met daydream and she haven't sat down next to me and she introduced herself as a cruder and I

mean they throw ahead my hasn't looked great you know other ways San Francisco just enjoy a cyber conference I sit down next to your cruder just like what's wrong I said recruiters are awful the whole system's broke and I hate it and little I know that I'd struck a chord with you and we became kindred spirits since that and she said she would work with me and help me find a job fast forward EP months later and what I am finding out she's recruiting me and I joined cyber ascend a year ago and what I've learned that year is invaluable it wasn't me it's this this the staffing thing we do is awful so I'm gonna let

daedrea explained everybody here what she's told me and what she's taught me cuz she's well he's a better than I can then I'm gonna share with you my story I'm gonna show you the few interviews that I went on and what went wrong she's gonna explain what went wrong so alright so I think it's actually the next slide here since I founded the organization after doing 13 years of staffing and then eight years of software development I realized how broken staffing was when I first got back into the industry after leaving for eight years and what things like SEO have done to our ability to communicate meaning them the need to put keyword searches into content and

ten is how we share what the job is and and make it such that people can self-select and find qualified and interested well that doesn't happen because of SEO it doesn't happen because people in HR and hiring managers cut and paste everybody else's job order so what a security analyst is to one company is not the same to another and so we have this massive content problem that's perpetuated by SEO and also by a common language lack of common language in cyber right and that you know truly we have not defined what we all do what everybody in this room does like let's say IT has or software development has because this is more than tech and we

all know this in fact I'm at thirty five job categories at this point job categories in cyber it's not the same in IT or software so we've got SEO we've got big job descriptions and we've got a bunch of recruiters that don't speak cyber internally externally and so there's all this churn to even see if you're qualified and interested and what ends up happening when you add on things like salaries negotiations and the problems that we have with that because salaries change weekly daily monthly people have budgets they can't go above by ten grand I just published a study that with Gen C wing x-force or to say hey everybody stop and stop you know

losing talent based on 10k of a salary because here's the data I have the largest cyber security staffing firm in the now internationally when their national last week here's the data like stop like I can't help everybody I want this community to be more sound not that it's not about me so raise your salaries by 10k and you'll stop losing these people so I'm constantly out there banging that drum we know that internal HR can't speak cybersecurity that doesn't mean they're dumb or something's wrong with them it means come on how are you gonna speak all these different languages of all these different types of jobs and then we're gonna throw on cyber that we

people barely understand it's not really fair nor smart to take that strategy I firmly believe that with you know if any any company that wants to fill all of their site our jobs and puts the right sort of talent on top of doing so can regardless of a talent shortage but because of how messed up everything is because with all these examples I just gave you with along with people want to hire purple unicorns meaning things that don't exist I was speaking at hacker halted last week and I said we do know what a purple unicorn is right it's fictional meaning they don't exist why are we looking for them and yes there are those of us

there's about a hundred people in this community that are defenders attackers and serious cyber business people and that could be a purple unicorn and if we want to do that well so great so we're all looking for a hundred people you know what are we doing so so so we've got a lot of challenges that these this is from a job searching community perspective and you think about what's happening we've got a Content problem we've that's that's that's pushed by SEO and we've got a common language problem and we've got more recruiters than we have professionals which means we're just got all this churn of communication so when somebody like Eric goes to job search and his one of his main

requirements is that he needs to work at home because he's raising his daughters his wife's a doctor it doesn't surprise me that it made it even worse for him however you know working with a firm like us I would have six offers in six weeks but again we work directly with the hiring managers what have you and I can't help everybody so what are we gonna do we're gonna give you folks some advice of how do you have the same kind of coaching that somebody could get with working with my firm that's our objective is to is to leave you with understand that this is so messed up that if you do get in front of somebody

you can take control and and work that conversation to help you better HEV results and from talking to that person two years of talking to people regularly no offers it comes from not knowing how to have it how to manage that so we're gonna get into that and sweet my clients try and steal them all the time so you must be a purple unicorn all right so let's get into some examples what happened to you while you were out on the street this is one of my favorites it's not funny however it is a constant that we hear this it's funny now so one of the first offer interviews I went on after watching my resume was with a

local retail firm here they're doing e-commerce in a retail sector is really near where I live so I was like five-minute community like awesome it even though it wasn't a telecommute ah it was close enough that I could do that hold life about work-life balance I was looking for I was really excited do a lot of research into preparing for the interview I'm technical wise I'm really prepared I went on the interview and I thought I based it I thought I'd note how the park every technical question came out way home run I thought that I asked 20 questions about the job want to know like what the growth of the company was where this position is involved over

time why it was vacant etc a week goes by I don't hear anything next week comes by still nothing so I called the their hire manager they're not hiring me as I'm sorry the the HR representative and asked what's going on with his position there's like oh thank you for your time or forgot to call you back but we decide to go off the different candidate like okay cool like can you give me some feedback like what would I do wrong I thought I did a great job and their their response to me was you are the most technically qualified candidate we've interviewed we've had not had a technical more technical can it come through these doors however

you're not a cultural fit okay why why explain me what that means and came out of this I wore suit to the interview believe it or not I got denied because I wore a suit to an interview this come to use trying to be progressive they encourage their employees to wear shorts and t-shirts they want to become a Google culture something I overlooked I thought you always wear suits in here furthermore they told me that I did have enough experience outside of the DoD I was at the ADEA contract 15 years they said that my mindset would not fit in with their culture and they're passing on me so so daydreams yeah so okay well first of

all lucky that he got feedback most people don't get feedback we know that so that's awesome however the feedback is something that yes it will happen often so I said to Eric when I heard that I said if you were working through us one of the things that we send you is what to wear and you asked so if you don't have an agent you gotta ask you gotta say hey by the way what do I wear to this interview Who am I meeting with how long what kind of interview style will they have like all the things that a good recruiter would give you like you're gonna meet with so-and-so and he or she likes to talk about these things

you can still get for yourself so number one you know get this information because it happens all the time person didn't dress correctly you know who knows we all a lot of us were raised you always wear a suit the world's changing now again as I say to Eric who the hell wants to work for these people anyhow however you never know it could be one person that you know you wouldn't be working with anyways that you know cause this problem so you don't want to take yourself out of the game give yourself the opportunity to see if it's a place you want to work so ask the questions what should I wear right what's the culture

like ask the question everybody you're signing up to go on an interview with replace yourself think like your job is to prep and package yourself that's what we call it hey did you prep and package so-and-so that's going on an interview today which means get with them ahead of time to give them every piece of information you could give them on who they're gonna meet how long they're gonna be there is there a test what to wear you know any any tricks of getting in the building there's nothing more frustrating than showing up and you can't really figure out how to get into the building and you're going on an interview and it throws you off your

game so so those that those are my suggestions and it would have been really helpful because if you would ask that question you would have gotten the response to dress casual sure and then this would have never came up but then I would've been a little higher I'm so glad it did however but we also have a lot of people interviewing via teleconference now Scott whatever and they fail to test the software ahead of time and then the interview gets runs late or doesn't go off as need it so well yeah that yep not just live video - and um there's a quote that you've told me that I really like to highlight here is when you're on this

interview you want to be interested but you also want to be interesting so you want to be interested in what what the culture is a soft skills yeah yeah this is a tough because some people say oh I don't know if I am interested well you might not get the chance to be interested if you're not interesting and so I tell everybody just go out and be interested in interesting get get offers and make decisions don't make decisions before you know it go meet everybody and see what's happening it's it's amazing what you find out by talking to people and if you're interesting ie interested in others which is what makes people interesting the ability to engage and

convert back and forth then you'll find that people will create positions for you they will refer you to other folks other departments friends so know even if they're remotely interested don't show up remotely interested you know because you never know what could happen who that person knows who they refer you to what have you for sure so the second story I'll keep it short because we're only yeah somebody keeps okay goes with a large large player in this town I went there with Doron during the process it was a recruiter who referred to me and they they asked me questions about my expense of firewalls and I came from shop with heavy checkpoint but we also

did a little bit in Jennifer Lennox that filter a little tiny bit on Palo Alto and the recruiter had asked me do you experience a pal option I said yeah I'm a small map just like little endpoint devices but nothing that I would call home that I'm an expert okay cool went on to the interview and they start asking me questions heavily on Palo Alto and I was like why you asked me arch is about Palo Alto and I don't know enough music well it's on your resume so it's fair game like it's not on my resume like no dude it's on your resume it's right here why can I see this place I got my resume

and I start going through my resume I start going through and I realize it this recruiter was adding things to my resume without my knowledge on so this I was just floored and I'd like the interview went south because I'm freaked out that this isn't my resume and stuff like that so ultimately we abandon the interview and I didn't get in but yeah does this happen yes yes yes yes so when I first got into business which was January of 1994 I walked into a great model somehow so the stuff that goes on in staffing agencies I didn't realize until I was much older so here's the rehears the things that go on most staffing agencies will alter your resume

so you must tell them when you start working with them they do not have permission to alter your resume unless they have a discussion with you and if they have a discussion with you and it makes sense why that you should you should alter it then you'll alter it so you you want to have that discussion with anybody you decide to work with or you run this risk of showing up to an interview and your resume is altered and you know your what the hell do I do now okay so that's one thing number two most agencies do not share candidates this is why this industry is so messed up and we're we have built software lon we're

launching next week if you looked at my website you'd see my vision is to change the staffing industry it's so messed up it's gross however let's look at what it is they don't share candidates that means if you come and meet me and you uh you don't get to see jobs of any of my colleagues crazy crazy crazy that's the way the industry works so when you sit down and meet with an agency and before you decide to work for them see if they're one of those agencies if they are that's not the right one to work with work with ones that share work with ones that work together this is a commission based industry which is the

one of the number one things that screws it up which means that nobody makes any money as a staffing agent until you show up and you're there 90 days so all the work to find you all the work to help get you hired and then you're there 90 days before anybody makes any money so when you play in a field like that where there's no certifications that needed to be in the role and talent acquisition is the hardest thing for a company to do because as humans we don't know how to talk to each other then you can see that a ton of chaos and negative behavior can come when you're you're starving to make

money so to speak however if you're really good at what you do of course you can make money which is why a lot of people get into it and so this is you got this sure in here and and so you know the key is that you manage your recruiters there's great ones out there and there's horrible ones out there you got to make sure you find great ones ones that share candidates ones that are gonna prep and package you one that actually have relationships with hiring managers and you need to ask them not to send your resume to any organization until they talk to you first because you're going to need to work with multiple recruiters it's so

broken and that way you can not be double referred because if you're double referred meaning to agencies to outside agencies send your resume the company's not going to interview you beyond all of our challenges we've got this battle of internal XH our external recruiters it's actually so ugly that I was in business one week and was reminded of how HR treats recruiters he didn't matter my title my resume what I'd done in my life so far I still got that treatment that I hadn't seen for 10 years after I left and went to software and I thought oh no no no no this business is so you know messed up I we have to do this

differently meaning we have to take out third parties like myself so anyhow manage your recruiters to give you the information that you need to not have a double referral so you keep track of everywhere you send your resume everywhere any recruiter sends your resume that one way when somebody calls you can say yes or no I've been submitted there I'm already sent my resume there you you don't want it you don't want to end up in losing an opportunity based on that so yeah you really have to set those agreements with your recruiter so that these things don't happen cool and so one of the first questions that recruiters always ask me is like how much you make what do

you want to make so those are always the question you don't want to tip your hand to because let's face it we all want to make the most money so I would do things like let's table that for long a discussion later yeah inevitably and never went well because there's either find out that it wasn't that was before I was applying for a job that wasn't never gonna meet my compensation requirements and then if I felt like I pushed my conversation I would not even get I wanted me so it was a messed up thing so can you tell us about yeah buddy yeah this is a tricky one and it's about to get even trickier so most states or a

lot of states have passed the Equal Pay Act and only more and more coming from it so I believe Philly has passed but not pizza not Pennsylvania yet excuse me uh hello I'm pretty sure that it's it's local and that Philly's there and that you folks are on your way but everybody's goin this way so what this means is employers can't ask what we're making anymore meaning which is the number one question that comes out of everybody's mouth when job searching is going on so we've got a couple of things to realize one is for right now it's still legal and it doesn't change until July of next year in most states and so until then most people are still going

to ask you this question so I'm gonna give you an answer of how to deal with things until then and then talk a little bit about what's gonna happen once this law goes into effect and again the laws the law is there because systemically women make less money for doing similar jobs and the reason they make less money is because they start off making less money and so they can't get caught up or they're not getting caught up and so the law is to force you know organizations to catch them up and that's what it's intended to do it's gonna give us a lot of challenges of how you know compensation works and it's certainly

gonna make staffing harder and all these things because all of us don't like talking about it who likes talking about salary and what you're gonna pay me it's a terrible thing it's not a lot of fun to talk about and we all think oh we need to negotiate it's like getting a car it's so horrible right so it's not fun we're not skilled at it and now we've got a we've got some laws coming to help however here's the number one thing salary is one piece of your compensation package okay it's one piece and to speak only salary would be a disservice to you and to the organization because I can tell you I've seen people get down to the offer stage

and salaries fine but total comp is not and I've also seen people you know walk away from opportunities not understanding that total comp would have been more than they were thinking you know so it you really need take the money conversation to a total comped conversation and today people do want to know what your base salary is and they're gonna keep asking so the answer today is I'm currently making X as a base salary I get X as a bonus my bonus is paid mic X I get extra benefits I have a car allowance a phone you know whatever you have everything you have your entire compensation is what you put on the table because you're you're not

gonna take less I mean to this day we even though people have said to me hey I'd take less to get XY and Z in my life usually it's location and and still to this day we haven't had to do that so you know it's pretty safe to say that people don't take less money so put your entire package on the table and say I'm looking for your best offer never give a number and if people push you for a number which they will you say I couldn't possibly answer the question of what I would take until I see the entire opportunity which is the people the role the responsibilities the location the you know the and your entire packages of

benefits and everything else so so I'm happy to work with you on compensation I'm happy to work with you on a package I would need to understand the opportunity fully before I could do that and that's the truth it's the actual truth and it saves time for everybody so they have an understanding of how your current compensation looks and they know that you know if they proceed that it's something that and higher and it is helpful sometimes we don't like to put money out there because we think we're being paid too much or too little and it'll hurt the opportunity and I'll tell you you know it's just fears it's it's it's a terrible thing you just got to go

with you got to go with how things flow people get turned off by not wanting to have the conversation so just jump into it the way I I did and tell people if you think you're underpaid tell them let them respond today you know because of the shortage I think we're seeing people be smarter and smarter although I still do see people lose people over 10k so I'm a little 50/50 on it however honesty's it just works out the best you know we personally won't represent somebody won't discuss money with us however we'll take the time we'll take the hour to get into the conversation of of it all to help you know because we know

it's not fun and it's not the you know what people you know want to feel like they're gonna lose money in a negotiation or something we know that so we take that time but it is tricky tricky tricky okay and then after the loss you know you can tell so here's what the law says the losses are not required to tell anybody however you can if you want to so how are we all gonna deal with this I'm not quite sure he asked you I talked to him you got attorneys that are helping me figure it out we've done some webinars with them we're gonna do some more webinars and it's definitely something that we all need to

pay attention to it it comes from a good place so I'm hoping we can all make it work all right how we on time we got payments ten minutes sweet so wisdom with some sort we're gonna leave you with wisdom is where the intersection of knowledge experience come together yeah knowledge I've learned over the last year and experiences of my failures is interviewing lettuce of this so as we're induced to full ring with some job seekers and they just gonna cover wisdom to people who are looking to hire market so this job seekers I'm gonna break one of the cardinal rules of PowerPoint read a quote does this quote is very I love this quote it came from Dan gear at

blackhat 2014 the keynote address when younger people asked my advice on what they should do or study to make a career in cyber security I can only advise specialization those who were in the game early enough and who who have managed to retain an overarching generalist knowledge cannot be replaced paraphrasing here because while absorbing most new information most of the time may have been possible we begin a practice no person starting from scratch today can do that now see Rose Festival ization is all that I all it can be done in a practical way and what that really means is like people like myself and I see a lot of older people in the audience as well the entry was

smaller we could wear many hats I mean I wore many hats my previous job and I can do many things I don't think you can do that anymore because there's so much of a need for cybersecurity that you have to figure out what your niche is and go that route if you're I see some students in a room too if you're looking to figure out what that is I highly advise you entertain a position as a stock analyst because you're going to get a high volume of data coming your way and you're gonna get the feed and figure out what you want meeting us at handler a penetration tester offensive defense is so on and so

forth and what that means is to know yourself know what your interests are because then you'll find a job that you love going to every day I'm fortunate off that I found one actually two of them but this one I really love know the market know what the market is going I talk to people who are going into so forensics and that's as we talked about that's a very single industry I mean it's very much a law enforcement agency so your opportunity for outward growth beyond that in history is small if you want to specialize that something's hot right now I think reverse engineering applications security engineers pen testers those are very cloud security a

cloud I can take change and know the company know the company you want to work for know if you want to go startup or a big time on an individual level high something you must do if you don't exist on social media if you don't exist on LinkedIn is to be very hard for a recruiter find you in contact with you resumes are still needed for the interview as a formality however there static in nature how often do we really update our resumes maybe when we're looking for a job but we really don't go back and fill LinkedIn though is a great way because it constantly reminds you that hey I got a skill set and or somebody it also allows

recruiters and staffing organizations of finding to find out who you know because the people you surround yourselves with actually gives you ranking in a job interview and also participate in community events the fact that you're here means you care which is awesome right there's many other community events besides Pittsburgh I saw John here earlier but he runs still City InfoSec which is a great it's a great monthly meetup John if you're ever Asian but yeah that's a great Meetup it's a great way to interact with network of peers find out what's going on the market who knows who and what you should be done learning because you may think that you're not qualified for something but

as you talk to people you realize you know more than what your surrounding peers do your should foster that and go that way or find a mentor somebody can help you absolutely alright so as a hiring manager and both sides understanding the marketplace so again over a million jobs open we know there's a shortage that that means if you do find somebody you like you must move fast every day some client that loves us to death text me and says teacher I can't believe I like we lost something now I'm not operational but I know them and I said I don't know what you can't believe you know you've got to move quickly we've been saying this forever and so

you got to be prepared how do you make offers where do you go to make your offers who's going to support you in making offers you got to be ready number two is you got to be willing to take somebody a little bit more junior than you originally start your search for or you've got to be willing to let your search last a much longer time so that the statistics are showing that jobs are open nine months on average in cyber so we've got a million openings we're short plus they're open nine months but 60% of cyber professionals and technologists are looking for a new job right now 60% of us are unhappy where we're at now

here's the interesting thing we're not miserable where we're at we're on we're just not in love with where we're at it's how often do we run into people that love their jobs I actually like talking about love in the workforce it's important to me I've been able to do it and I hate that others don't so that's what I get out there and talk a lot about how to create cultures of love and productivity and high volume revenue which everybody wants any so you know the idea of you know being short plus are oh my gosh I'm losing my mind here not enough people you got to move you just got to move and you got to move

fast and yes and you gotta pay them more than you're expecting so jobs are staying on average the nine months is because the salaries are too low that's what I was trying to tell you hello all right so then they wait nine months and then they raise the salary and then it's another three months four months before so ten $15,000 is hurting they want us one of the major problems we're seeing is the job descriptions there people yeah yeah so job descriptions how they happen hire manager says hey I want to hire somebody HR says great give me a job description so was the hire manager do qualified write it they go out and look at other

job scriptures so they copy/paste says a pretty soon you have this frankenstein-looking job scripture that is nowhere near what the actual job is and so as a candidate I'm looking at like am i qualified or am I not like shall I apply should I not and so either you don't fall you don't apply because you're feel you're not qualified you miss on a grand per community or you apply and then you get into the interview you realize it's not the job you thought it was so simplify your job descriptions break it down just by what are what do I need this individual to do on a daily weekly monthly basis that's it exactly anything else doesn't matter don't put

her longer yeah absolutely thank you all right we talked about the purple uniform this is where the training comes in so here's the big oxymoron this going on we all need people and there's all these junior people graduating and they're not getting hired I get calls from programs that are year of cyber training and then they're in their internships I see all the students saying yes I'm so sorry it happens it takes about six months it's ridiculous but it's gonna take you six months the new time here's why it's happening so these are I'm saying about people that got a year training then went to Google Twitter's in their socks as interns for six months and they can't

and they don't keep them and they don't get jobs you want to know why use nobody has a role that's a FTE role a full-time role that they're willing to give to a junior person when they need so much help everybody's so understaffed and there's so much going on and there's no training program even the big organizations don't have a way to take in juniors now we all saw this in the IT era we all saw this in the software era the problem is it's a national security issue the Susan's like oh one company gets to win and hit their revenue because they nailed IT and software training staffing now this is a national security issue so it's actually

craziness that we haven't solved this and there are some good organizations I'm working really closely are we have a not-for-profit that's called brain babe please read about us it has nothing to do with we think we're beautiful is everything to do with I can't stand that we haven't that we still have booth babes and that we don't train women and minorities and so you'll read my blog of how it all happened but anyhow my point is that the organizations that are talking with us and you know girls who code so lots of us out there doing something about it's gonna take some time so I need all of you I need folks that run you know cyber practices to

understand that if you don't have succession training programs if you don't have programs to take entry-level in you you're gonna really struggle to be able to have a cyber practice that stays consistently staffed and and happy so what are the statistics in cyber for how often a chief information security professional changes their job anybody not exactly so if the system is changing every 18 months what's going on in our question we're struggling in tech in general 12 to 18 months of technologists is changing their job what can we get done what are we gonna be effective lots of upset lots of people not having a good time this is where our cultures need help and here's the things they're

lacking they're lacking training programs they're lacking growth programs they're lacking the conversations just how we talk to each other I give this talk of eliminate these five words from your vocabulary because they're always will cause us problems it's on video on our website if you'd like to see it but is one of them it's the worst word on eliminated they have no I'm gonna wrap up I'm sure we're running out of time to say as hiring managers you know it's when people come to us and they're looking to leave it's never money it's always you know wanting a place to grow stay challenged people what is it like who I work with it's never technology

either I'm telling you it's not how I want to work with Splunk and I work with you know what have you no it's not it it's the cultures so let's do it together we've got a we've got a national security reason to do it more so than anything else so it's nice to meet you all it's been great to share this story we've got two minutes if we wants to ask a couple of questions we're happy to to take some yes yes our salary with no application on Brasserie or something and said what what did your desired salary there you know get a chance to discuss wow I've never used that does it if you don't

fill it out will not let you submit is it I would love to see if it's a drop down or if you can write text if you can write text if your tip it's any sort of content that you can you know write your answer right what I said you know write the whole story I wrote a blog on this in terms of how to talk about salary so it's there if you guys want to find it on cyber centcom so that you have reinforcements every time you're thinking about it yeah yeah well anybody else any questions thoughts comments yes [Music]

yeah so I got to self-proclaim that I am commercial I have not done Govan I'm sure there's a lot of govern this room I do we do do contract and perm which is not consulting it's much different but but yeah I'm hearing some folks in the audience say yes in the government contracting space I am I do hear that that's how it goes would you make the right it's much more prolonged even how do you how do you wait that long to know if the bid was won and it's that stuff's even trickier yeah I'm sorry go commercial oh no make me alright yes calm that I had I've seen drop descriptions as they ask for everything

yeah I assume that they order yeah and unfortunately for women the statistics show that we don't respond to ads if we think we're not qualified a hundred percent we're just less aggressive that way so in all I see a ton of women in their head so these ads are just killing us I saw another person

yeah yeah so if you don't have if that's your only way to apply to that company then I would say yes typically if we see a requirement like that and it's for a job that it doesn't need to be required with typically we'll be able to get them to remove it so yeah that's why I say yes because I can get them to remove it the CISSP is the one people love the most for sure without a doubt it is the the hot ticket certification generally speaking siesta speed is a require unless you're working in the government world 70 yeah it's not required but people want it yeah totally [Music] totally yeah yeah we see it and we

remove it and I see people put it as requirements or things as requirements that they'll remove all the time as I'm saying it's so broken so if it's your only way to apply apply because you never know I would suggest going on linkedin and linking in with people in that organization first before sending your resume down to the pit of despair [Laughter] thank you thank you thank you [Applause]