Career Management 101: How to Unlock Achievements and Level Up

i want to make sure i had everybody's attention no no dancing here as he said i work for verizon business as a security consultant which is corporate for saying i get to hack things and as far as uh living in a floating hacking laboratory by my estimates there's approximately 10 in the world and mine's one of the top ten

okay uh i as you see here i have some certifications i don't bank a lot on certifications themselves because there's too many certification bills out there where you can go walk into a class and learn enough to be able to pass the exam and still not understand the content so as you see i've got the few you know everybody has to have the system in this uh in this industry now i'm going to start with the basics and it's what you may not know and you may not understand now first off who the hell are you do you really know yourself now you've been around on this earth what 20 30 more years depending on each one of you your

your particular age and but how well do you actually know yourself what do other people really think of you not what they may say being nice but how they feel about you and the way you portray yourself one of the ways to better actually understand who you are is to take personality assessment now you know they're not going to tell you you're going to be a millionaire in five years or any anything like that don't go to somebody that's going to read your palm but as an example is the briggs meyers when i took the briggs meyers test many years ago i was a intj i knew i was an introvert that was obvious but intuitive

no i was a logical person i would sit there and go step one step two step three when i started thinking about it it's like well yeah i start step one step two but sometimes it's like oh wait a minute if i try this and i realize that i would jump ahead several steps and it's not because i'm some you know weird freak that has somebody whispering in my ear or anything like that it's because your subconscious can process things in ways that you're not aware of and if you can tune into that it can be helpful but my real point here was not so much about being intuitive but it was my perception of myself was wrong

and that helped me understand myself better another one is the the disc dominance influence conscientious or steady i took that test and i ended up scoring very high on dominance which led me to start believing the pac the fact that some people would call me domineering and pushy

yeah hey even me i don't know you know i don't i don't know what else i will end up finding out about myself over the years that i didn't realize but i'm sure there's more that i don't realize and i'm just trying to do the best i can so you need to know who you are now we've been civilized forever guys right all my life but if we take a look at how long as an example life has been on the earth if we put that in a one year scale we've had civilization for about 72 minutes now but i don't have much in common with amoeba at least i think i don't now let's talk about primates

if if you take from when primates appeared to today compared to a year about half a day we've had civilization if you go to when the genus homo came about you know a little over half a month we've had civilization now since homo sapiens appeared once again on the one year scale we've had civilization for about a month if you believe in evolution do you really think that we've changed from what we were before we had civilization in any basic meaningful way

now based now on that i'm going to call this the human bios the basic input output system of the of humanity but it's it's basically our emotions whereas we tend to downplay emotions oh that's crazy you got you're feeling funny now there's no reason you should do that or any number of things well we have an innate fear as children of what we would call a bug spider or something crawling or a snake why do we have that well if you've never seen that crawling thing or that snake you don't know whether or not it's poisonous because we have an innate fear we learned not to touch them or pick them up and possibly get

poi you know stung or bitten and die of being poisoned everybody talks about the fight-or-flight reflex in reality it's a three-stage freeze if you're going along and you get some sort of warning your your natural first reaction if you've never been in that situation before is you're going to freeze why because a predator is drawn towards motion you're going to freeze if you realize well you froze but he's already smelled your knees coming at you you're not going to try to fight off a saber-tooth tiger with your bare hands or even if you got a club you're going to run you get cornered well then you're gonna have to fight now what does this have to do with managing

your career you need to understand yourselves and to understand people when it comes to your attitude and what you're feeling it basically comes down to a couple of major points up and down if your friend is sad oh you're looking down today if somebody's doing what a good something good you're going to give them a high five or give them a thumbs up and it boils down to if you're sad or unhappy your shoulders may be slumped you may be looking down and looking kind of depressed your face is long we can pick up on that you know when somebody's feeling sad when you walk up and look to them if somebody's happy they're going hey

you know what i won i did this that's positive that's up and you know that's it's simplifying it but if you walk into a room like this then you tell them you know what your security program's really hosed we got to go fix this this and this and this and that and you're talking like this they're gonna be sitting there going well i don't know do you really know what you're talking about even if they don't say it out loud if you walk in standing up shoulders back head up hey you know what i see we've got a problem here and there's this this and that and all that stuff they're going to respond much more positively to that

and on top of that not only when you're standing tall and talking to somebody and acting confident you get the feedback from them because they're like oh you must know what he's talking about or at least he must believe he knows what he's talking about and subconsciously they will take what you say and be more ready to believe that you know what you're talking about on top of that if you slump your shoulders and put your head down you will actually through chemical reaction that happens naturally you will feel start feeling more depressed or sad you've all heard about empathy when you walk up to a friend that's feeling sad you're going to kind of mirror him a

little bit or hurt a little bit you're going to go oh whoa is everything okay sorry and that's that's another feedback that what you're doing is between them you know we what not only what you do between people but your own self if you're standing up and you're standing tall you're going to sound more confident because your body's going to say okay i adapt this posture because i am more confident by adapting the posture even if you're not feeling that confident you will actually change your attitude to a certain degree now you're not going to be able to stand up and tall and walk up to somebody and tell them some bs because we do have some filters

but by presenting yourself in a in a better manner you're going to get much further do you want to go into a meeting trying to explain how to get something done and it's an hour-long meeting do you want to spend that hour trying to get them to think that you know what you're talking about or would you rather go in presenting yourself as somebody who knows what they're talking about and spend most of that hour explaining how to take care of things that also goes for if you are actually going in there and you're looking for a raise or going to get a job they're going to value you more by the way you look

now we're going to talk about building your character now that doesn't mean you're going to change who you are there are certain aspects of you that will never change but and i got ahead of myself i see here i'm up to the slide i was talking about sorry about that so what are we going to do about this we're going to build your character and the basic theme is going to be pwn the frame you want to own that situation by the frame i mean the frame of reference you're going to want that frame to be that you are a competent person who knows what they're talking about or you're a competent person that they

want to hire for a consulting gig or hire as an employee and that's what you want to do you want to do that now i think i've alluded to this your first impressions you give a first impression to everybody you meet the first time you meet them it doesn't happen up here they don't look at you and say i don't know if i don't trust this guy up here it's your subconscious that has been evolved to be able to ascertain threats and so when you meet anybody for the first time you subconsciously peg them somewhere if i was standing up here dressed like a bum you'd think i'd wandered in from the streets of detroit

and wasn't an attendee here because of the way i'm dressed

and even though you can give a bad first impression and you can't change that it takes time it takes time think of it this way if you got a reputation for being a grumpy person and you decide that you're going to be happier and you're you're going to treat people nicer not be that grumpy person do you think everybody's gonna believe you the first day would you believe it you're saying okay i don't know what's going on here but the old person's gonna be coming back soon you're gonna be prepared for that now let's get more into the components i've alluded to these in some places talked about it the attire the way you're dressed

that's why when you go on an interview you're told go in a suit that's going to present you in the best light from the attire that you're wearing uh any of you that heard me on the other talk i believe it's called undercover ceo or the ceo who normally shows up in the office in a suit and tie shows up and may be doing janitorial work or maybe throwing garbage and nobody recognizes them as the ceo because ain't no way the ceo would show up dressed like that if any of you know somebody who works in a field where they wear a uniform such as in law enforcement and you that person runs into somebody

outside then on a casual day when they're not wearing their uniform oh i didn't recognize you without your uniform because you've got that picture now as i was talking before your stature you're going to believe somebody much more if they're like this than somebody who's like this because they're not acting confident your personality well you know i could sit up here and think you know why the hell am i doing this and i don't really want to be here now i'm acting that way are you going to want to listen to me even if you don't pick up on it consciously subconsciously you'll pick up on it if i give you a great example i was

enrolled clowns talk it's been a crazy week crazy weekend i'm tired i almost dozed off a couple times and i'm like damn i walked up to her and said hey once you know that it wasn't your talk i'm tired because if you're dozing off in a meeting nobody's going to know that you've spent the last 48 hours working with almost no sleep you're going to give the impression that you don't care what they're talking about and they're boring you good thing i know nikki so i walked up to her and i explained it to her and she accepted it if she didn't know me she might have thought i was blowing smoke so you know the other way is people would

like to be around people that are pleasant rather than that are annoying say smile say hi to people you're walking down the street you're walking through the hallway you see somebody you might not even know their name look at them smile say hi just keep walk going on you notice that person everybody likes to be noticed you made their day a little bit better you probably got a smile from them which made you feel better which means when you go into that meeting you're going to be in a better mood and people will see that

and when you're happy you're going to be showing more energy that's that up hey how you doing guys i got energy here and i want you to be here with me that's going to keep your attention of the person you're talking to but at the same time you don't want to be going because nobody can stand that because they don't know what you're going to be doing next you want to have energy but you want to be steady and calm if it sounds like you're scared or you're acting like oh my god i'm up here and i'm not used to talking to people and i'm kind of scared you're going to feel that you're going to be able to tell that

it's going to impact your credibility it doesn't matter if you're the smartest person on that subject if you're the subject matter expert that knows it inside and outside they're going to have a harder time believing you because you're not acting like you know what you're talking about

negotiations doesn't matter what you do whether you're a consultant whether you're an employee whether you're going in there looking for a raise you're looking to pitch a new design for the website you're looking to do an update to the infrastructure whatever it is even if it's not formally called negotiation you're negotiating you got an idea or you want to sell your services or you need a raise because you know it's expensive to live and gas is going up and you want to be able to afford to be able to drive to work and put food on the table or you just want to be able to have some money that you can go out to see a movie

once in a while whatever it is you need to have some basic skills in negotiation first thing i've heard many a person that's going to an interview for a job say well i know i'm worth x amount maybe it's 60 maybe it's 80. maybe it's 150 000 whatever it is okay you've made a conscious decision of what you're worth you may or may not be right but the real thing is here what does that company or that person feel your worth is you could walk out there and you know in the industry you can make seventy thousand dollars just about any place but you're going to interview with the place that has no value for what you do

they don't value it even though they might need it you think they're going to offer you 70 000 they won't you walk in it's always good to have an idea of what i call your opening bid and your minimum why an opening bid everybody likes a deal how many times have you been someplace you got some high pressure sales guy oh you know this is the last one but you know what if you buy it right now i can give you 10 off because i want to go home wow you got a deal you're paying less than what you're supposed to be paying for that you come in there and you're you're looking to make 70 000

you tell them you want ninety five thousand and it's realistic and they get you to come down to that you end up agreeing on eighty thousand or seventy five thousand they feel like they got a good deal you might be ready to jump up and down and say yes yes yes but don't do that in front of them because then they're going to know that they paid you more than they could have gotten away with because they want the best deal they can get to by you starting at one level and coming down they feel like they've got a deal another trick that'll work unconsciously jokingly say well you know i'd really like a couple million but

let's be realistic how about 95 000 by setting the bar mentally at a couple million even though they know there's no way they're ever going to pay you that studies have shown that the final price that it's come the final price whether it's for your services for a year or for a project is going to be higher because you're hacking the human mind now the other thing is what does that other person or company on the other side of that table because you're usually going to be sitting on the opposite sides of a table or you're going to be presenting like me i'm up here i had to decide what are you guys going to want when i

talk about this you're going to want to hear what's going on you're going to want to have an understanding you're going to want to walk out of here with something that you can use now this is not going to make your life golden tomorrow but if you're not using these this could help you so i need to know what you guys wanted and hopefully i'm giving it to you now the other thing is why would that other entity give you what you want i wanted an opportunity to be up here and speak to you people and hopefully give you some advice that will help you in the long run help you with your career maybe even help make you a happier

person because you know what if you're getting things you like usually you're happy now another thing is what do they not want to give you if i bore you guys you're going to start sneaking out unless you're really nice or you fall asleep so you also want to look at the frame as i said own the frame you're coming in there positive you're starting out on a positive frame if you're coming in there negotiating for a pay raise you don't walk in the door and say i know you really don't want to give me this money you set the wrong tone yeah he's right i don't want to give him this money because he's already working

here why do i want to pay him more you walk in there say hey you know i want to talk you know how i did work on this project and i did this and we saved the company money here and we the website was up and because the website was up by this fault tolerant design we put into place we didn't lose any of that revenue that we would have lost over those 72 hours when we lost our main server yeah he is valuable or she is valuable to us so they're going to be more looking at it on top of that you're giving them either where you've increased the revenue of the company you've saved the money

why don't they share a little bit of it with you you know what is your op you know that goes right to the what's your opening you open on a positive note you don't want to walk in and sit there and say i'm going to say this and they're going to say that and i'm going to say this and they're going to say that because you're going to say this and they're not going to say that now what do i do now you're lost oh my god my whole plan just went away you want to have a theme that theme is you want to get a raise you're going to be able to be flexible

and if they go you say this and they say that you're not going to be sitting there saying i don't have that scripted you're going to say okay you're going to be able to respond to them naturally you're going to be able to prove your point or negotiate for what you want that said if you know of some points that are going to be sticking points you might want to have a few lines where you can well you know i know you saved us this but you know last year we had that one problem and you know if you'd gotten done what you're supposed to on time we wouldn't have lost that money how are you going to respond to that you

better have an idea and don't once again don't script out a whole dialogue have in mind of some things how you're going to respond yes i know but you know what i really learned from that problem and we've never had anything like that before since then and i've gotten much better and the whole team we learned a valuable lesson from that now you're giving it the positive spin so we want to talk about the tactics here we talked about first impression even if you've been working with this person for five or ten years when you walk into that room you want to give the right impression if you're doing consulting and i love this one

you're a consultant and you're going out there and say you do you install servers and things like that so you walk in you're dressed like a technician and you're trying to sell your services of installing those servers you don't look like the guy he's going to negotiate with to do the work you look like the guy who's going to do the work well you're both don't show up dressed like a technician to negotiate the deal show up with like a technician with your jeans on and your grubby clothes we're going to be going to be crawling around that dirty closet but don't show up that way when you're negotiating once again statue your presence you want to be relaxed you don't want to

be nervous if somebody's nervous well what are they nervous about you know are you really going to pay attention to me do you really want to be here i hope i hope i'm doing a good job of trying to vary the way i'm projecting so you can see not only hear what i'm telling you but kind of see how i'm changing and my your impression of me is changing if that's if that's working then you i'm hoping i'm getting the idea across anytime you go in like i said no scripting you're dynamic you're adjusting you're moving back and forth you're answering their questions they may go off on a tangent you weren't expecting as long as you know your material

you're going to be able to respond even if it's like well you know what that's not something that we've had to deal with before your situation is kind of unique here but let me take that back to the office and do a little bit of research or see if somebody else has been in that situation then i can come back with you and i can tell you how we would hand we could handle that as i said you know you're opening how are you you know what's your opening bid what's that two million dollar joking tag that you're throwing out there to kind of bring them up and if you're going in to work for

somebody i'm gonna give you a hundred thousand dollars for to do this job you might be saying yeah man you know what i'm only making 85 right now this is going to be wonderful and you accept that and then you find out there's no paid time off there's no medical benefits there is no option for you except if you want to go to a conference except to pay for the conference take unpaid time off and go there you may have been better off at that other job that had those benefits so you want to ask about total package if you're not sure you want to accept something it's always a good option to say well what's the

total package here are there any vacation days any sick days you know what if i want to go to a conference what about training do you have a training budget you know you just want to negotiate those things you know these are different things that you can ask for more pay you can get a signing bonus sometimes i don't know how common these are nowadays but if you're looking for more money and they don't want to pay you more they might be willing to give you a signing bonus to get you to start because that's a one-shot deal and it may be worth it worth your while to take it don't take it and leave because most of

them have six nine or one year contractual obligations if you take it and you leave before then you own the money back pay time off a good one is oh yeah you know i really want to come here but you know next week i'm going to besides detroit and i won't have any vacation time or any holiday time then and i don't want to lose some money well you know what i can give you that day off we won't worry about it we'll pay you for that day and you can go there it's not standard but they want you to come work for them and they're willing to give you that little bit to start

yeah oh yeah i'm interested but i want training maybe you want a specific training that's coming up you can ask for it don't go down a list and say well can i get more pay well if not then how about a signing bonus well if not how about more paid time off because they're going to get tired of you asking those questions you want to know what you want and be able to ask for it sometimes just saying just sitting there and thinking about it they'll sit there and go oh well this doesn't sound like a good offer to them and they really want you they'll say well you know what i can give you an extra week of vacation paid

vacations and you were just thinking of it or maybe they wanted you to start tomorrow and you're going to give two weeks notice because while two weeks notice is not a legal requirement it's a generally accepted practice you work at places and you walk in and say i quit walk out the door you're going to start getting a reputation you tell people i need to give a two weeks notice most places are going to understand that and they're going to find it acceptable because if you're going to leave them they'd like a chance to be able to get some information off you maybe document a few things maybe have you work with somebody to pass your information on or turn a

project over to somebody else or maybe you got a project that's going to be done in three weeks you say you know what i'd normally get asked for two weeks but i'm almost done with this project it's going to be done in three weeks let me finish this project off so i can walk away without dumping on somebody and them struggling to get it finished in the last week

now you notice in writing it's a different color you can agree to anything and then they come back and say i don't remember that which they may legitimately not remember you may be at a big company and interviewing manager says i'll give you this and hr says that's not documented i'm not giving you that you could be talking to somebody gets run over by a bus before you actually get hired in you could be talking to somebody who offered you something they're not authorized to offer you so you want to do that you know your first this all comes down to your perceived value and to get you to increase your perceived value hack yourself

your social engineer yourself and social engineering does not require deception because do you think you're going to fool yourself into being a genius in networking or the ultimate security guru just because you think you're good no but you can do things that will increase your perceived value that will make you more confident there's a saying fake it till you make it and you're not really faking it though what you're doing by standing tall you're giving your body is giving you feedback you get some chemical changes where you're more positive you question yourself less the people see that they respond to that it's going to be better for you then what all this that i've been

talking about this is social engineering s e yourself self social engineering

now graphics that i had in here that's done by digipea guy is fantastic brilliant and that's his website the music that i started playing that's dual core he does stuff packing gaming computers you might find it interesting and my bio photo that's done by this gentleman here i recommend him he's local are there any questions any comments well you're at verizon correct correct now your hr part like most edger partners like previous talk would say they'll list out skills which for that job basically may not be used so if you're going to interview are you su posts will be ultra troopers say here's my skill set or are you supposed to go into there and

basically tell well yeah i could do all this but basically you really can't do all that but in a sense hey john says that's what you need the old dilemma of they want everything but the kitchen sink plus galactus yes yeah you you've hit a difficult situation everybody would like to have somebody with five years experience that's worked with every product that they've ever used and have in that environment you want to lie what who was who was it at yahoo that just got bounced out most companies will fire you for lying you tell them you can do all these things and you go in there and you can't how long do you think you're actually

going to be working there you go in there you let them know what you do know what you can do and if you're very good at picking things up quick tell them you know what hey you know what i don't know that but i'm very good at learning things i'm mainly self-taught a little bit of training here i can get this figured out or you know well you can sit there and say well i'm not really sure about that but is this x or that or do you mean this and show them that you can think about it and that you can grow into some of these pieces because you're never going to find somebody that's perfect and especially

with a lot of these places they'll put out the laundry list and they'll put required on that laundry list if you get in for that interview and you start talking with the person and they believe you and they believe that you can do it because you're acting confident and you're dressing well and you're articulating yourself slang is a good thing to avoid when you're in an interview by the way you are going to have a better chance of getting that position but you know there's going to be some places you're going to walk into and they're up this we have to have this not done as i said before i'm not a big fan of

certs but i got a sisp because you can't you there's very few people that have the skills and the notoriety or the fame to get a job in security without that and it's not me you guys here listening to me talk about careers so i'm guessing probably not many people out there have those that reputation to be able to bypass the sisp did i answer your question anybody else

oh elizabeth since we're talking about careers don't you have a website related to that

basically it's just a process of workflow that allows you to apply for a job i get an automated email um and then i have volunteers that are hired actual hiring managers and you can go through the interview process exactly as you would and we'll even there's only three job descriptions right now but i can add whatever job description you want um and you can go through the interview process exactly as you would you know for

okay for anybody that's on the ustream i'm going to try to summarize her great description elizabeth and a few others correct elizabeth have set up a website that you can go to and it will give you the opportunity to go through an interview process as if you were going for a regular job the website is mock infosec jobs.blogspot.com now there's currently only three positions there but they can add additional positions if i understood correctly if somebody has a job type that they're looking for and can find a description you'll be willing to put it out there and have somebody give them an interview based on that correct well i either did a good job i bored you

but that's all i got guys