It's Not You, Job Searching is Broken

alright everybody let's get started again welcome welcome you are in the Gold Room and we have up on stage daydream and Eric and whether you're looking for a job or whether you yourself are looking for job applicants they're gonna talk to you about how you can take back control of your job search in a talk called it's not you your job search is broken let's give them a nice round of applause all over the u.s. from somebody that's constantly being asked about how to get into the field and how do I get training and supportable besides really answers that so those that sponsor to us others you're awesome because we have a problem not only do we

have a shortage problem yes it's true we have a shortage we also have a recruiting problem a job searching problem and we have a retention problem so this talk was inspired by Eric who is our chief security architect at cyber s/n and had spent years and years job searching as a security professional only to be horrified each year worse and worse and then found us and was like teacher we gotta we gotta get out there and talk about this we've been together two years he's learned a lot about the business and was like I gotta help get this out there so I'm the founder and CEO of cyber SM I got into cyber security in 2007 by asking to take my

sales model that I had built in staffing recruiting for IT and software to build rapid7 sales and so the founders I had worked for in staffing owned rapid7 that's how I got into cyber I then went became a CEO of one of our other companies before I built this company and it really stems from the love I'm a social promote justice major my buddies ended up being all cyber people and then I started watching everybody just have terrible search problems and I thought oh my gosh I got a service industry so that's where we were born I also founded a few years ago a company called brain baby org you can see it out there that

is a play to stop those fades and and get the diversity problem solved and we staff conferences with Steam students doesn't matter what you're studying you're interested in working RSA blackhat what have you we RSA we stopped this so solving big problems so that's who we are and native lives here in the area my mom's from Butler so I'm always happy to be here we're a national firm doing really cool stuff so what we want to share with you is what is going on so that you can empower yourself we're gonna use stories of Eric's search a little bit in later in this so that you can see like how do you avoid that because you probably have already had

that experience or you know somebody that has and so we're really going to show you first of all how it's broken how agencies fit into this thing and then what you need to do to take control of your own search or if you're hiring what you need to do to find the talent because the statistics show that eighty-nine percent of the cyber security marketplace will talk to a recruiter doesn't mean they get to talk to a recruiter doesn't mean if they do talk to recruiter they know what the hell they're talking about it just means that they they're not completely happy where they work and most of that is due to two things it is due to you know

their unhappiness is due to not taking security seriously or people those are the two things we hear so knowing that 89% of the marketplace would love to work somewhere that gives them more happiness and they can't find it it really bothers me significantly meanwhile like our dating apps all right right like we figured it out I could go on a date tonight in any city with whatever profile I wanted to go on and it would be fun and that's crazy that you all can't find each other in that same capacity it's nutty so we're solving that we'll talk about that a little bit at the end so let's look at what's going on okay the digital era

started really truly about ten years ago in terms of really advertising and and getting out of print and newspapers and what-have-you and so one of the first things I noticed when I got back into staffing after leaving it ten years and going into software was the whole SEO content piece really skewed what's what contents being given to you so for instance meaning it's free now back in the day before running an ad you would never be pages long of a job description ever because we would pay five thousand dollars to put a paragraph in the New York Times LA Times Fawcett right over it was on a Sunday and that's your one shot and that was your one entry point

into finding people getting four jobs and you better know how to write your content it better make sense and you better speak their language well today it's free you can do pages and you got to deal with SEO which means you got to put keyword searches in your write in your resume and your job descriptions 10-15 times each keyword so of course you're all working everybody's working who's got time to job search this makes it incredibly incredibly hard so this is the number one problem I'm sure all of you now at this point those of you that are a little bit seasons have experienced that you can read an ad and you know whether or not they know

what they're doing in their security practice right or if they're just cutting and pasting somebody's ad which is typically what most people are doing so this is a major problem it's the number one thing we do when we come into serve as a client is sit down and really understand what are the tasks what are the projects what percentage of their time are they working on that and so this is a big big piece why the marketplace is so messed up everybody's just working on keywords and if you're in fiber it's not like software and IT this is not a business of technology it's a business of safety and security and yes there's some tech involved lots

of tech don't get me wrong but it's not about being a technology and so there's 35 job categories 150 different titles adding to it every day seven different profiles of a security engineer that doesn't happen in IT right so this is very very complicated and we need to start words matter and we've given words to not matter now and this is a big big piece of this so am I qualified am I not if you're a woman we've all tested we know that women don't respond to ads unless they know a hundred percent they can do the job now whether or not we can we're gonna change that but that's the way it is so think about what has happened to

all these different results and just having this bad content so this is one reason why job searching is broken right contents bad and if we've got bad content and you're all working how do you have time you don't want to talk to people that you don't have the job for you so it's a big mess all right so this is a big piece of it here's the other piece of it so my goodness well you know we get through all of that we come in we figure out what we're looking for we can identify the talent get them in front of it no problem we'll pay whatever and the reality is they won't pay whatever

their salary bands have to be changed and now we're waiting on offers three or four weeks and we're losing candidates I see a lot of heads nodding it's maddening so this is a big piece of why job searching so broken right now is that people don't have correct salary data or they want to put cyber people in IT you know categories which as of this last year the salaries have raised 25 percent over IT it used to be 15 it's now 25 percent so trying to do that doesn't work and so we get you even when they find people they're not able to onboard them because of these salary challenges and getting signatures and so

this is a bit of a mess and we'll talk about this at the end in terms of how do you talk if you're in you know looking for a job how do you talk about money what did the equal pay do to job searching which has already been institutionalized in Pennsylvania so what is that all about we'll talk about that at the end that's a big piece internal hiring practices most companies they're pretty archaic the real sad part about this is that we force internal recruiters to speak cyber and they can't it's not gonna happen you can't speak every language there is you can't it's just not possible I had to build products for my you know staffing

specialist to interview from and take job orders from so there's just no way you can put that burden but we do and the other problem I see here which is pretty mind-blowing is that there aren't staffing agency budgets that HR is willing to give to cyber but they give it to IT and software all day long it's SuperDuper strange I'm still seeking to figure this one out so in the meantime I've been telling everybody put it in your own budgets put your you know staffing budget in your own budget don't rely on HR there's no way you can staff your teams without a specialized staffing partner it's just not gonna then most cyber professionals aren't on

LinkedIn and even if they are they're just not interested in talking to everybody who doesn't speak cycle so it's really hard and then on top of that just you know internal practices of like giving tests and all these things that just get in your way that make no sense so it's a it's pretty bleak and then like I said the delayed it's on average I did a research study on average people wait six months before they come to me six months meanwhile we can fill it in 30 days with somebody that's really gonna be happy to be there a we've got the reach but be it's because people aren't generally in love with their company and I can choose my

clients and find good stuff but you know so anyhow at the end of the day it's uh it's pretty hard to you know it's impossible unless you speak the language all right so I'm gonna transition over to Eric in a minute here but this purple unicorn I mean how many of us have heard in the cyber space like oh I'm a unicorn or I want a unicorn right like that's like the common thing a purple unicorn or you know I'm looking for a purple unicorn for a long time I used to think oh that's so cute you know like meaning that we all think of ourselves as rare and we are rare and then I realized well

what that means is people are doing three jobs and get purple unicorns don't want to be purple unicorns anymore I started you know the purple unicorns are like hey can I get some help over here and can we hire people and and so now I'm like hate telling everybody to stop thinking it's a good thing that you want a purple unicorn because purple unicorns don't want to be purple unicorns they don't want to do three jobs and they want teammates so but this is a syndrome that we see that people because the budgets are so under-budgeted cyber has come hot and fast and CEOs and the cost has come hot and fast and it's hard to

get that money and so they've made it such that people are doing three jobs and it's a disaster actually so I say let's not make this so cute anymore and let's recognize what we're saying when we when we feel good about being purple unicorn I you don't want to be pigeonholed into three jobs forever so on that note I'm gonna pass over to another purple unicorn it takes to share his experience and what-what happened to him when he was job searching and then I'm going to tell you all how to avoid that it's a very common stuff yeah joining Cypress and I worked as a security architect at a defense contractor mid Johnson Pennsylvania and

I went through the whole game of growing my career so a tiny sans classes and getting gr certifications SCS SP learning continuing to volcana keep off technology and so great company can learn a lot I love that place things change and careers want to evolve so I started looking and I thought oh great cyber is hot industry with all my certifications and my experience it's me no-brainer right create a resume launch it sir again calls from recruiters hi every time hey what do you do what are you looking for same pitch same spill never once that I get the feeling that they're critically understood what I was saying so I was trying to explain to them what

is packet capture what is an IDs how do you manage a firewall and through the process I was like man's frustrating right so what I did is I reluctantly went on some job interviews that I quasi interest in but you know want to see more and interesting things happen I'm gonna share a few stories with you what happened one of the companies is a major industry in this town I went through did the phone screen everything was cool salary was right when in great interview aced it right didn't get a job offer called up and said hey this is anything coming to pipeline they're like now sorry you were looking for another candidate oh cool like you found

somebody more qualified like what happened give me some feedback so I can read define my job search their answer was astonishing it was um you're the most technical qualified candidate came through certifications skills everything you weren't a cultural fit like whoa did I say something wrong like what happened like you wore a suit to the interview what you wore a suit to interview I'm like what was this most the where well we're more relaxed culture so you're coming from a defense contracting your worth suit more and more of a t-shirt and jeans tight place so we're gonna pass on you okay the other interesting interview I went on a recruiter call me and said I see

you have a lot of different firewalls on your background do you happen to know Palo Alto make sure I use it small cases but I don't know anything big time none of the layer 7 application layer stuff but I can work my way through it a little bit training I could figure it out right okay cool so submits my resume they're going suck the interview about an hour into it the one individual who's won a firewall team started ask me all these Palo Alto questions I'm like dude cool I was a checkpoint guy and iptables guy the Juniper guy I wasn't really a pal out to go I did a little bit it's like well why'd you listen you arrest me

I'm like I didn't assign him my resume and so now he's like well it's right here and he hands me a resume and I see that and I start seeing all this other content on this resume I'm like it's not my resume he's like well yeah it is cuz here it is and I am floored like my face is red I'm like this isn't my resume and the interviews one side I'm like guys like too many things are off thank you but no thank you and just abandoned it I mean they got on the phone and it's called my recruiter it's like yeah you mentioned so I doctor up your resume well what did you tell me this and you're like no no

this is how we get you in a door so at this point I'm I'm just over it over it right I go to our saying and I sat down next to daydream and I just wanted to drink one of the cocktail and she's sitting next to me I'm like oh hey what do you do it she's like I'm a recruiter like and she's like why and I start explaining this right and grant up a few drinks in and so we developed this relationship from my misery and from there she tells me it's not always like that and after joining cyber SN and realizing it there's a lot of things to go behind the scenes in recruiting and

HR just as a systemic problem and it wasn't just me it this is out there so what we want to do is from this store is what did we learn from it and also what we arm you guys with as you search for your next stage so based upon my yes really just to shed some more light on our teach security officers in the room he literally got up after about five minutes of he's like says his CSO like why don't you talk to her I saw it go down do is hysterical but again I get it I know most recruiters are terrible and I also didn't introduce who I really was I just said recruit of

it anyhow so so let's talk about this the his clothing so what I what what do I want to do I want to tell you take your own job search in your own hands if you were going through my firm we would say to the to the client what do you want them to wear and we would tell you so if you don't have that support you need to ask and it's not to say that you know maybe he wouldn't have never wanted to work in a place like that because that's pretty messed up of a way to deal with people and yet give yourself the opportunity to say no to them versus them say no to you and maybe it's just

one person that blew it from that perspective and you know why put your destiny in the hands of one person that may or may not be in this firm or even important in this firm to your success in the firm so the idea is empower yourselves ask ask whoever is setting you up on the interview what should I bear we call it prep and package in our organization like did you prep and package that person so not only what to wear who you know are there tricks to getting in the building there's nothing worse than like not finding the building interest feeling like you might be late rushing like you're not gonna kick it off right so things like tricks to

getting into the building who's gonna greet me who do I ask for like take that into your own hands so that you don't have any of these problems when you show up right the the resume piece we'll talk about in a minute when we talk about how to manage your recruiters if you're working with recruiters and the agreements that you make up front let's talk about them in a minute so so ask all the prep questions Who am I meeting for get let's get their first and last name do their look them up on LinkedIn ask questions about them any particular style that they interview with do they give tasks how long do you expect

they'll be with each person these are all things again we would do so that you show up feeling like you know what's gonna happen so do it for yourself right ask questions about them is there gonna be a test right the getting in the dress code and then like I said test so I do this so they don't think that on here is it's important to be interested and interesting and every conversation so the more prep you do before you show up shows you're taking a really great interest in the job you're going after so even before you walk in that door you're more qualified than the other candidates going in because you did your

homework you're really interested in you're not just going through the motions because even though you're in your female from all places they're interviewing multiple candidates you want to set yourself apart yeah yeah I didn't see that but the video there's a lot of video interviews test it can tell you how many times that goes awry and then people are nervous and sweating and it just takes away from it being great the whole being interested interested thing is like again you decide if you want to work at the company don't let them decide so if you come with your game every time even if you're not sure you want the job you'll have a chance to see if you want the job

because you'll stay in the game of the interviewing process you'll get to the end and if you don't you don't but at least give yourself the chance so being prepared being interested asking good questions I'll get you in the position to make that final decision of do you want to work there there is no question that people are looking for you all even though it doesn't feel that way it's really about weeding through the noise okay so your your recruiters so so I'm gonna tell you in a minute about the recruiting you want to do that first yeah let's go back and let's tell Stephanie and sure to do that let's do that okay it's gonna freak you out let's

just do it a lot of it freaked me out the second time around and I learned some stuff like most staffing agencies don't share candidates never knew that my 13 years in staffing we were a group we'd share across continents it didn't matter but in most staffing agencies I learned that do I bring you in and I'm the recruiter that brings you in you you don't get to see other jobs that my fellow recruiters have what it's mind-blowing to me so now what happens in your life is dictated because of my commission check are you seriously freaky-deaky as I call it so which is one of the reasons why I'm a platform to transform a job

searching it is ridiculous it's almost like it stupid human capital beyond human capital its ownership of humans disgusting so when you go work with an agency you ask them do you share candidates and if they don't do not participate that is ridiculous do not participate force them to have good hygiene as humans so what this means is even though you're working with one recruiting agency that recruiter may not share you unless they're colleagues so yeah it's very silent yeah yeah yes on purpose because quote that's their Commission check super gross okay so there's contingency and search firms and retain search firms retain traditionally has only been for executive staffing c-level staffing which means if it's retained they're

gonna put some money up front they're gonna pay you up front they'll pay you a third upfront a third and thirty days and then a third when the candidate starts that's traditionally only been executive contingency is where the bulk of staffing is and contingency means the staffing agency does not make a penny until you've been at the org ninety days like find you get you there you need to be there ninety days okay so what do you think that breeds like who works for free other than people they're just trying to wheel and deal in life in our life situations it's nutty absolutely nutty and I never I was always contingency for all my years but

because we should worked in groups and stuff you'd walk in and I can show you ten opportunities in two days so you know as a team so we didn't care we were you know sharing and working together but you put contingency on top of an on shared model it's even worse right I my business today is forty five percent in retained engaged even though our specialty is engineering practitioners red team blue team doesn't matter I our threat that that's our our bulk of our business I'm not touching it unless you're putting skin in the game not with the problems that we've gotten cyber today and well I can go deep in my conspiracy theories of whether people

really want to fill jobs or not I would talk about that another time so so so understand that the way that the industry works is it there's no license you don't have to have any training and then you get a bunch of people on the phones working for just the Commission check make nothing unless it happens it's uh it's a silly cheating one of the eye-opening experiences me was whenever I was interviewing the one was a recruiter in town here he's like hey I don't understand cyber which is awesome like so he was very aware of it and very forthcoming and I'm like oh cool how long you been his new staff he's like dude six months just months

ago I was working at an hour primarily car okay so how are you qualified to represent me to a company right and what I learned is there's no license you don't have to go take an exam or get a degree in recruiting you show up and here you go right how does that person gonna represent you and your career because we're all professionals here we all are going places right you want that person to be your agent and really know what you're doing yeah super weird so the other problem that you may or may not if your hiring manager you probably do know but the relationship between agencies and external agencies and internal staffing departments is forward

I mean in fact the platform that I'm building hit me in the second week because we were talking to a fortune 100 that was yelling at second week of business already got my website up we already got an offer from a big company that you would know that was breached for a security engineer and this HR person is ripping our heads off and it's like you know what I left this entry ten years ago I forgot about these people I have to get out of this I can't do this I need to empower them or somehow empower the managers there's this three-pronged inside out that's terrible we're fighting over budgets right so we're brought in but meanwhile we're

taking their budgets that's why I'm like put it in your own budget get out of this you do it for software and technology all day long get out of that it's ugly ugly ugly it's I hate it we work our best to make that not happen oh we've got to be really good at communication cuz it's hard yeah what we do is we go I wanna we go and talk to our manager directly so we want to know exactly what you're gonna do and then we're gonna find the best candidate for you yeah we're not gonna work we're not gonna work a job we're not talking to the hiring manager and so that's like oh

well you can't talk to our hiring missus wait what are you talking about so so that world is pretty crazy and bizarre and so the other thing is if you are submit your resume and a recruiter submits your resume or to recruiters so symmetry resume you're out so we'll talk about it with managing your recruiters here in a minute but that you gotta you got to understand those referrals and so every time an agency's three four a candidate you get six months to a year ownership of that which means if they hire you and anytime in the next six months or a year the agency gets paid so you get a double referral they're not

going to touch it which is why and let's just move on to that in terms of managing your recruiters again you have measurable agreements one agreement is they do not alter your resume whatsoever and you make that clear I'm gonna work with you don't get to alter my resume I'm gonna work with you you do not submit my resume unless you ask me first right so if you all take control your search write down everywhere you sent your resume anywhere that anybody's talk to you about a job you document it all somebody calls you with an opportunity you can check your work make sure you haven't been submitted maybe somebody else called you about the same job you

want to be clear and who's done what and figure it out you do not want a double referral so in my firm if anybody ever sent out somebody's resume without confirming with that person it would be grounds for termination that is terrible again we will not be causing problems we need to be solving problems so however a lot of agencies use resumes to quote open doors to try and get in the account right got your resume you're a hot cyber person let me try and get in here so you have to make the agreement with them upfront they're not gonna make it with you like we do and sometimes what happens is these larger organizations

you may go and fly for one job but then another job pops up three months later you want apply to that and sometimes you're never called back for that job and it's nothing because you're not qualified it's because you were locked in on this particular department that they're not sharing you over there and there's no way you could get ahold of it yeah the only good part is if you have a good recruiter they can put a call and push it through is like why is this can't get ignored what are you doing this can is periphery you have to move on or else he's gonna get picked or he or she it's gonna picked up by another company so move

yeah I mean you're a recruiter ought to be your advocate your agent I honestly don't know how people get hired without us it's fascinating I'm starting a live greenroom situation where I get to share stories because I'm listening constantly I love understanding what's going on and it's pretty mind-blowing types of things that we have to do yeah let's talk about why I recruited yeah so this is a trip right so my entire career I was trained and you know and how everybody used to handle money is what what are you making today yeah that's what everybody started with what are you making today and that always tended to be just salary like nobody looked at total copic which is

salary what are you making today and so what we would tell everybody is look when you get asked question make sure that you talk about the whole package do not just answer the question with your salary because you may have more vacation you may have a different higher bonus you may have thought you think that you got to get it all out there car phone whatever it is cars the old days huh so that was old school and so when you get asked the questions we'd say give them everything tell them everything well here we are 2018 and we now have the Equal Pay Act does anybody raise your hand if you know what the Equal Pay Act is Wow okay so

we've got like 10% in here that or maybe 15 okay so the Equal Pay Act came to be because to help women and minorities make the same income as other professionals and so the idea was that women don't negotiate and they're traditionally taken advantage of because they're a woman from the perspective of money and so they start out lower and then they never catch up even though they're in high-ranking positions they're still making less than their male peers and so what went into Congress years ago was solving that what's the Equal Pay Act well it finally hit this year it's taken a couple of years to get into play and one of the most interesting things about this and

I'll tell you how to handle it but the quick that the law says I can I ring organization it doesn't matter what position you hold I can't ask you what your base salary is I'm not legally allowed to ask you anymore and so that's supposed to stop basing the offer on what you are last making and base the offer on industry standards and what other people in the company are making and it's working it so works all story oh my gosh and it's just happened this year but in we do every time we place somebody in the organization there's a mail that goes out of the story and what have you and we all the stories are

including $50,000 raised $60,000 raised no joke because they have they're just going by what everybody's making in the company and what the industry nobody gets asking the question any more it's fascinating and guess what they're men so for those of us that thought that we were you know women are gonna get special treatment or whatever it was always some you know people getting upset about that law I'm not here to tell you all its benefiting everybody it's benefiting everybody it's super cool so so they may not ask you you can decide to divulge it it's not of course you legally can tell anybody what you're making it's just that they can't ask so you know what ends up happening

now is people are gonna ask you what you want yeah and they definitely have you know what do you want what's it gonna take to get you it's a really being put in your court and I'll tell you what I said back in the you know before the law and I still believe it today don't quote a number because whatever you quote is either what you're gonna get and you could have gotten more and you left some money on the table or it's too low and use me too high and you priced yourself out of the job and you would have taken it for less but you were playing what you thought maybe was the negotiation

game or whatever and nobody wants to hire somebody thinking oh well they think I'm paying them less than they're worth or they want so it really could mess up the deal for you so instead you say you know what I'm all about the total package which is the job the opportunity itself the people the entire package of what else you have beyond the salary I want to know everything and really until I have all that information I couldn't tell you what I'd take as the base salary what did you have in mind you know start picking their brain a little bit hear what they have to say and then again stick with the I don't know until I hear

everything that you have offer and really that means finishing even the interviewing process because truthfully nobody comes to my agency because of but there's just that's not that's not it right I mean you guys that's not it it's really more about the job the people maybe location can you work remote I mean that was one of the biggest challenges for York which was that you remote you know your wife's a doctor you raise your two children and the funny thing is like frost remotes no problem it doesn't matter of it for meaning you could still help but the he didn't people didn't know how to you know represent you wrote at that and talk to folks and sell you based on that

which unfortunately you have to you know that's what the marketplace is because we're not dating apps yet we don't have that down yet you need an agent I'm gonna create one though or I have so let's talk about the interview fails so this is another thing like how many times we get in an interview and we say one thing and we come out of her mouth and we think that we answered the question right and then somebody misinterprets it so I just picked a few like three here to go over and these are generally common like so I don't answer these yeah why are you why why are you looking to leave your current job what's

what's the safe answer yeah well okay so truth sells you can tell them all about truth go with truth however words matter and he can say one word that it gets a reaction and say another word and it gets a different reaction and it's the same context so you must think that you must practice you must understand without knowing the truth your truth I you know can't necessarily give you the answer however truth sells now I don't like my boss it's probably one of the most common common things nobody wants to hear that that's not the answer that they want to hear so what do you do if it's you don't like the people you don't

like your boss and you still want to speak truth well go through your list so what I took what I said leave all-time is first make a list what are all the things is it really just the boss is there is there like career aspiration stuff that's missing is there maybe of you know the commute is really long maybe there's other things that it's all truth and maybe the dot the the the boss one is number one but who cares if the career path one is there use that because people get a little weirded out even though we all should be able to relate that you know so it really is about like first put all your reasons

down on a piece of paper figure out which ones will be less challenging for people to get you know and and talk to practice it really have it down because this is the number one thing people are looking for they want to hire on passion they want to hire like that you you're gonna be happy here you're gonna be passionate about what we're doing and so you know I tend to think that the best way is to focus on the role and the responsibilities and and tackle it that way it's a it's a tricky tricky thing for sure and what ends up happening is there's a when you ever you have these interviews that are

multiple people like we've been on them where you go through rounds of three five people a few of them want to see what's good and you what can you bring those are the really experienced interviewers there's a few people that go on the committee that just want to find something wrong with you me a reason why I can't hire you and those are where you're these land mines you really have to be cognitive because you can ace interview with those other people and that one person finds something wrong and just it's like hey let's move you more people let's go on pretty soon you're kicked to the curb and everybody forgets about you it's super true we're all just because we're

not trained on hiring naturally we're looking for reasons not to hire even though we met your brain may not tell you that I can tell you that in that every time we have a you know somebody interviews and all my years of recruiting like the first things out of their mouth when you say how did it go it's always the bad and even when they end up hiring that person they still start with the bad or the things that they thought weren't there because they're just looking for that majority of what we do is coaching is really get back on the phone of higher manager well what did they do good yeah yeah Mon this

is what you can do like the thing you're thinking about is so minor and so like you're overanalyzing it yeah tons and tons of coaching cuz video like you said there's a committee and you know new managers and do I fight for this person cuz I like them but somebody else in the in the company said no to them and even though it reports to me should I take that on should I challenge that person oh my goodness and so imagine if you don't have an agent sticking up for you to find out well what happened and what was asked and well why did they ask them that question that question has nothing to do with this job and defend you

that's why I'm like how does it even happen without us you know it's pretty interesting what we didn't do the weaknesses one oh yeah yeah or two more actually so the other common thing is what are your weaknesses been asked that question sitting here hands it's the worst right again be ready for it what's your answer how much you know can't come from truth without saying you don't know how to document you know and then whatever you find coming out of your mouth when you're preparing when you're writing down things fix that to make your weaknesses your strengths do you know we only have weaknesses when we don't know there are weaknesses typically in my world that

being said it is it is true that people will ask this question I want something significant so what is that gonna be for you you know for me I'd be like I Drive by you know I drive by every executive in my company I just sit down you know and some of them love it and some of them are like oh my god I'm gonna you know they're they're pulling their hair out they're pinching themselves under the dust it's super uncomfortable for them and that's a weakness I shouldn't I need to pay more attention to that I don't want them uncomfortable I do love to just drive by and let's do this so that's what I'd say if somebody asked me

so you got to think about it and prepare for it and then where do you see yourself in three years this is the fun classic one right and and also difficult to answer and so think about it so the good news is that in your profession in cybersecurity there are you know where you want to go and so what I tell people is don't be afraid put it out there you know you might be an analyst today you want to be a chief information security officer great say it don't hide it anybody this doesn't like you because of that you don't want to work there anybody who doesn't like the path that you've decided to choose and that's

holds that against you great you've eliminated them right instead of waiting till the end to be told they don't like you when you don't even want to work for them and then you your psyche gets damaged like no be yourself put it out there what is the answer to this where do you want to be in three years and put it out there like I said it isn't like it the market the market will absorb you in a great way it might be painful as hell but once you land it'll feel good so be truthful be prepared like write your answers down think about them what if somebody said that to you when you were interviewing them would you like

that how does it let you know words are SuperDuper impactful they start wars and they end wars and I think about that every day when I'm speaking is that I can blow stuff up good enough or I can calm stuff down I can move things forward or I can make it go back just by my words just by what I say to people in at the office all day long clients doesn't matter who it is I can make that happen so can you we all do the best part about these questions is they're gonna ask them to every single candidates interviewing so if you could own these you move their front line yeah yes yeah yeah you separate yourself

you're not you not you no sweating you're ready you're putting it again I just want you to keep thinking about you decide whether they hire you not they decide you're taking control you're showing up ready you've got information you're interested you're interesting now it's all in your seat you know you get to make this let's talk about how we find the jobs okay you go I'm gonna drink some Drive Zion you all know how my executives feel now so yeah how do we find these jobs you job we keep hearing there's so many cyber jobs and there truly are remaining industry there was so many vacancies there but how do you find them we got so

many different job boards you got in Dean you got monster you got all kind different laces look but not everybody say each job works they each cost different fees right and a lot of companies think like hey we're such a popular brand they're gonna come to our website our career page and find it reality is they're not you're not and then you're gonna get there and you're gonna read the job description some of you wrote it from the beginning of our talk we said is there vague they're gonna copy and paste and it's not gonna be the dog you're gonna blow by and you're gonna board or move on so unfortunately and so link LinkedIn is

there and I know that is cyber professionals 10 minutes the cyber professionals we are gonna sit of what we put on social media for operational security you're not gonna get fined unless you're not on LinkedIn yeah it's your choice it's a choice it's definitely choice we're all about privacy and that doesn't give it to you that being said that is the number one place people go and the interesting piece about it is that they're gonna message hell out of you and you've got to decide whether you're gonna talk to them right so there's nothing convert about it you're really you know not able to figure out who they are very easily so here's the deal there are more technical

recruiters than there are technologists which by implication says there's more to recruiters than there are of you all because people lump it under there is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard so that means these boards are made for agencies they're made for us okay they're not made for you by any means all their money comes from us we pay I pay LinkedIn a hell of a lot more money than you'll ever have to pay them to have the same access like $3,500 a month per a year per recruiter where you pay 60 or so for the same for the same access okay so that's where they make their money and then and then posting

the ads are and Linkedin is the most expensive fifteen hundred bucks or so you know but they're made for agencies they're not made for you so it doesn't mean you shouldn't you know go after them look at them apply to that I'm just saying that it's it's it's a lot of work and if you truly are committed you're gonna have to work the boards if you don't have an agent the events like that's one of the great things about b-sides and all the events we do this is a place to market and meet people I know that there's entry-level people in this room and I and I tell them all you've got it the worst because

cyber yet hasn't figured out succession plans and and so therefore we can absorb juniors and so we're not absorbing juniors necessarily easily it takes a lot of time to find so you all need to pound the pavement at these events these bracelets are nice I also tell people make a t-shirt put on the back of it I'm looking for a job I mean no joke put one on the front I mean we are in a crisis of content overload some you'll say what are you doing yeah I mean these are great but man imagine if that's why I wear this shirt all the time like whatever I'm shameless I don't care I put my own money we're doing a great

service I'm gonna wear this thing so you all got to think the same way it's broken get it out get yourself out there so these events are massively massively important and just be willing to talk to people and Tillery but you're looking for a job very very soon we will have a covert job platform for you all it's not too far away we use a lot of the technology ourselves today we will release this it will compete with job boards because uh you know today that's the only place to go but it'll be for you not for agencies yeah and it'll change the game yeah well one of the reasons why I have the cyber team

that I have yeah we're building a platform for them so you can market yourselves without getting her ass without and yes you know if you see our jobs posted today if you take a look at cyber sitcom just them they are posted using a product it speaks common language you're gonna do this every day this percentage this percentage that percentage is it's the baseline of your funds we've got questions we've got five minutes left let's let's do it yes

and the question rittany obama is that pretty much every woman for sponsorship so how does it job seeker be that's right that's right well that's what this platform that we're building is gonna do which makes you covert but also clearly shows what you are so those women get their pictures and their profile and traditionally men are supposed to come ask women so that's why that works but you know you know what that woman looks like and you know a lot about her before you get to say hi to her right well that's that's the sex act not the dating act so different story but that's my answer is that it's what do you do a

security title doesn't tell me anything and most likely the stuff on your resume isn't gonna tell me anything because here's what you do as job seekers we wide our resume based on the jobs we want so right and as hiring organizations we make our ads based on the persona the person we think we want to hire three years of this five years or that that's not a job description that's a persona of the person we think we want to hire so we need to flip it around and we all need to say this is what I do for the last year I've done 10% this 20% this 20 right and the year before I did this and so that people can

stand who you are are you that pretty lady and that's pretty to me right we're all beautiful to each other in different ways or not and so that's my answer to you and there's some analytics behind it maybe too

yeah oh you're by yourself

yeah let's restate the question yeah good mic dude for who the microphones let's restate the question so the question is about salary calculator how do you know what you're worth or what the she's paying is what yeah this yeah and the data one to two years old at best it falls under IT we already talked about it's 20% higher so you got it you understand your graph yeah I said look this is an IT this isn't software this is cybersecurity I need to be need to be looked at that way that's too low for me that's not the band's I'm in today if you want to share what you're making today share it if that at that moment it probably would

help you right because nobody expects anybody to take less money so at that moment it'll help you I'm two months away from releasing a real-time salary guide like real-time everybody it's in our system anybody who wants to participate around the world put your base salary covertly in here let's empower HR it's a big problem for me and my clients on my hiring managers nuts we're working so hard we're working so hard then we go to HR and they've already been told yeah you can hire over the budget but then they go to hire and now they need three weeks of signatures so now I've learned to like oh my gosh I'm not starting that job until those

bands are hurt you know so it's a nightmare and HR is using really old data so you just gotta stand around I'll have something for you all soon that will empower everybody just stand your ground come join our network yeah sell your calculator be there take a look at how we do jobs is really different it's all based on percentages so you definitely know immediately what the job is yeah totally and if you're hiring me well you know what here's the advice they're hiring the questions cuz I hate to not take all questions I saw some hands where did I miss one no any more good you guys are all professional job interviewers now so hopefully we'll have

a career track here next year we've been talking to besides about it there's a lot more content we can give you happy to help out at anytime I wish I could stand in here for four days that I've got a jump on a 5:30 flight which is not usually I'm stay for hours and talk so anybody wants to chat with me but my stuff I'm very social all it really did just send me away so just we have a table a brainwave table of their Lance's there he's our pittsburgh managing director of staffing so he's here if you want to talk to him please dude I hope this was helpful yes yeah yes what's a contract side but cyber sn.com

and we're all on it yeah yeah we're all there thank you everybody it was lovely to be at besides I love besides so much