How to get a job in IT (according to the experts)

Key Takeaways

who are you and what uh where do you work what do you do yep i'm joe hudson joe hudson iv father to the fifth and uh i work at a company called hunt source i'm actually coming up on my five years there i've been recruiting for the entire time i definitely have a lot of experience working directly with clients and helping kind of clients build out their roles and of course filled teams but the evolution of the job and getting to be really plugged into the beginning conversations and some of the some of really some of the helping of decision-making to say hey if you guys are looking between these candidates you know what not like that's been the best part is to actually feel like we're not just messengers bringing a candidate but at the same time it has uh introduced me to a lot of problems in the hiring process that that keep me up nice and so that's kind of a bigger part of the discussion as opposed to get a job find a candidate fill it that sort of fills the air in between the real mission i'd say now so uh but yeah coming up on five years very proud of the work we do and just very proud of kind of this industry that we've become a part of awesome so you know i remember when i first started uh applying for jobs and i was like very new in the tech space i had never dealt with a recruiter and i'm like it's just like is this the company i'm applying for is who is this what are they doing so can you like real quick explain for everyone who's brand new to this world what exactly is a recruiter what's your job what's your role in that in that whole process great question actually i will ask people a lot of times have you ever worked with a recruiter before you know just to kind of gauge what are their expectations because i do think i've gotten some messages before that are like hey it's been two days where's my interview and i'm like oh you know i forgot to just make that happen i'm sorry um but i do think that there's a lack of knowledge about like what recruiters do there's also plenty of uh understanding about what people think recruiters do which is wake up and ghost people for a living um really it's a it's a it's such a fast-moving position i mean i actually just got caught up on 278 texts today um and that can be a you know that can be a real steady thing for a lot of people where you're getting messages from every sort of platform i'm getting invitations to discord channels and i want to be like yes i would love to i cannot take on another communication form right now um but there are different types of recruiters you know you had mentioned do you work for the company are you sort of an external partner there are plenty of people that work internally but they don't necessarily specialize uh in one thing they may have 30 jobs on their plate and it's all kinds of stuff and there's sort of a prioritization but some of those jobs they're not going to get to for months and they know that already so there's a little bit of a different sense of urgency i work as an external partner to a lot of different companies and even individuals helping them uncover some opportunities but i don't get paid unless a person gets a job um you know i'm not getting paid to send someone's resume in and i don't care how that makes me look i want to i want to make sure that this is a good time for the the candidate and for the client and so you know externally we get we get business from clients usually raising their hand saying hey we've been working on this for two three months or we already know what this is going to look like we would like to pay you guys a bunch of money to go find us a human being and bring them here and and tell the story and really be an extension of our company you know and be a messenger for our company so it's pretty fascinating and getting to know what all these different companies look for their quirks uh the change of the changing of the guard so where you can tell a new story it's uh it's fun it's really fun um and stressful for sure yeah it's a really interesting thing like you know i'm now in a position where i hire people and i totally get the need of a recruiter because it's hard to find good people it's almost an art it's a skill so you specialize in cyber security is that correct yeah for uh for the last five years that's been probably 80 to 95 percent of everything that i've focused on and our company's focused on we do a good bit of data and data science and machine learning analytics and then there will be clients that we work with closely that we love that that will throw us a curveball job and we'll say hey you know yes we can fill that but just this once probably because there we also might refer them to another firm that says hey yeah we can fill it but these guys probably have somebody teed up right now but cyber is cyber is where it's at cyber's all i really i love it i just love it i love it so much i don't know how to describe it i got to come up with better ways to describe it i know this is good it's good people love just loving it i do the same thing i say the same word about 15 000 times in the video people get sick of it and i ask my video editor to make a meme out of it every time um so good idea if you sound stupid just ask them to just go for it make yourself sound even dumber and it becomes content [Laughter] so right now i'm going to kind of get to those questions but i want to build the story up a bit so cyber security do we see more and more jobs happening is that like what you're seeing or is it kind of been the same over the last few years what's the state of the industry right now oh i think that there's plenty of new jobs but they might not be new in what they actually do what their function is they might have a new title or be part of a new buzz concept um you know a shift in mentality so to speak in what companies want to be doing there are also plenty of new jobs that are actually backfills we are in the tail end of the great resignation i don't know if we really have actually experienced a full resignation like it's being called i think there's a lot of factors that have gone into the you know the changing of the roles but um it's always a high trans highly you know attrition high attrition because they're as soon as you i mean i know a guy really well he just started his job yesterday or last week and he's got another interview for another job this week and you know he's making 50k but this new job's offering 75k and i said look you know as a recruiter i'll never tell you yes ditch the company and go take that interview and get the job but as a dad who has daily stress and has all the things that come with life to get a 50 increase in my salary from 50 to 75k i'm never going to look at dad in his eyes and tell them no don't go do that yeah there are a million of those scenarios happening every day in in different shapes and sizes and cyber is paying so high and not necessarily always validated in my my opinion but it is what it is and so it's really tough to talk someone off the ledge of leaving when they're getting so much money thrown at them they kind of feel like well they'll fill my job if i leave i'm just a person here there's not as much incentive and so it's just i think we're going to see plenty more openings but they might not be new hires they might be just people trying to backfill a lot too so it's tough for companies to get ahead where they want to when they're constantly having to take a step back just to catch up again yeah i mean not only that you know there's the great resignation but then there's the age-old advice if you want to make serious money in cyber or i.t in general you got to make some moves every couple of years to keep getting those uh that higher salary so yeah it's a lot of things stacked up against them now um it's much more accepted now as far as the jobs that you have coming at you to fill um what's the ratio unlike we want experienced people versus like hey we just need entry level people what are you what are you seeing right now our firm specifically we focus on a lot of roles that companies have struggled with the most and so we don't get a lot of entry level we've been asked to do some extra level before to where we've said hey you do not need to pay us a lot of money to go find these people what we can do is shrink your pool of 200 applicants very quickly um we can go through and say hey i can advise certain people to just go apply online and then i'll tell you when they're in their your database but like my dream if i could spend my entire day on just closing the gap and just trying to funnel people to new opportunities to break in that would probably be the most fulfilling way for me to spend my day honestly it's it is the it is the it's the biggest elephant in the room that has to be addressed every day in different shapes or sizes or we are not going to get caught up and we're going to be regurgitating copy paste stats for the next 10 years that everybody's saying the same thing and it's not even accurate um we get asked to do a lot of really technical stuff a lot of buzzwords that aren't buzz yet and so it's kind of cool because we get really tough searches and by the time we come out of that search we're a little ahead of the market in what's coming next and we can actually say hey team container security is actually going to probably be a job let's start you know rap and that was last summer you know and we're getting asked for that all the time now and so it's kind of cool but not easy for sure so that's really awesome to hear it's so cool to hear that like you're you're kind of getting the forecast before anything else happens like people are like hey we've got this new kubernetes thing you know security we need pen testers for this and all that and you're getting the the 411 on that this age-old question right so we'll see companies put a job requisition out saying okay we want someone with you know 20 years in kubernetes it's been out you know for not 20 years um what do you do when you get like a crazy list of things and you're like okay there's no one out there that has this resume what do you do do you tell the company let's get realistic here's what you actually need absolutely yes that i would say my first year and a half two years here i wasn't so bold um but now i you know i've been in this this specific field for long enough that i really do feel confident that i have a a decent pulse on the market and decent knowledge about the history of skill sets and whatnot that people are looking for um there have been plenty of scenarios over the last like two months even that i can think of to go well this just doesn't make any sense what you guys are asking for and here's why and also even just making it sound in a way like i'm asking for permission even though i'm going to do it anyways but saying hey are you guys cool if i change the requirements on the job description based on what we talked about today because it sounds like mr manager or mrs manager you don't care about this this this this or this you know less is more is going to be here but let's really curtail it to what the story is to the top skills and let's not scare anybody away that's the main thing um and i also think that there is a lack of education there's just a lack of education you know they're i don't remember the last time a hiring manager told me that they had asked a candidate about the process hey by the way how's this been going for you since you applied to our job has this been fun you know did you expect to get a call back based on our 49 requirements you know like there's not enough discussion between the candidate to the hiring manager to the firms like us to the internal hr and it's just so much fluff gets put out there that's just scaring people away honestly and that's where you guys come in and help out with that process because like i mean hiring is no joke and that's why their entire industry is around what you do um so let's get to the meeting some things um you your job is to find candidates look at a ton of resumes weed out the good and the bad what's the first thing you look for on a candidate's resume i think that every resume is different in the resume like the hardest thing for resume to me is is to put personality in a resume you know it's this like how do i make myself sound a certain way of from an accomplishment standpoint and then um be able to actually seem like a human now resumes though when i'm looking can i scan and pick up all the information quickly that's the first thing i want to look at because we all will have a first impression if you open up a resume and it is a it is stacked with words top to bottom you're instantly like okay you know let me let me get ready for this and let me dive into this um whereas if i can flow over and scan that resume within 10 seconds then i can go back and spend the real time in diving into the content and whatnot but i want to be able to pick up what is this person's story what what is their kind of background what what was a word that i could use to label them if i wanted to but just something that helps me to understand is it relevant or is it irrelevant and i'm willing to always go deep into resumes i mean someone puts a lot of words on a paper and puts that time in it is worth more than 10 seconds of my time to me we're talking about someone's career but that is the first reaction not just for me i think for every recruiter out there is all right i've got eight seconds can i scan this and understand what they're doing and then i'll go back if not that might not eliminate them but it may be lowered on the stack of ones that you're going to dive into not for a good reason that's just nature by recruiters i think many recruiters even hiring managers you know they just want to get through it pretty quickly so i just want to be able to scan it and get a good flow quickly so does um so i mean we we all know the standard microsoft word uh resume template that people use do you still see a lot of that or do you see more and more like whoa that's a new one i haven't seen that yeah i do see plenty of new ones and sometimes i'll actually respond to people and say hey i love the the unique you know nature of your resume but to be honest so it's very distracted you've got a picture on here that can totally get you judged by somebody get rid of that just like don't open yourself up um like little tips like that sometimes might come out um to where i will just respond even if they're not a good fit for my role i might just say hey i'm gonna guess that you're not getting a lot of responses to this resume just based on what i'm seeing here's a couple tips um but yeah i see all kinds of templates the problem with the fancy templates is when you put them into the tracking systems for these bigger companies a lot of content it can get it can jumble like what actually gets processed going through certain uh certain like um you know fillable um content within your database you know it should populate it should auto auto populate and like when i put resumes into my database sometimes for example first name will say security you know or whatnot or it'll be blank because there's an icon so sometimes i think uh people will overkill their resumes with color and style that actually shoots them in the foot when they're applying so that's that's a that's a hard place to be in because on one hand we're trying to get you to stop and look at us for eight seconds right on the other hand i have to make sure a computer can read it with no problem that's hard yeah and they don't know the tracking systems and recruiters like myself we don't know all the the the problems either you know like we're giving advice based on our own windows of experience my clients my ats's you know and of course questions that i ask from people but it's still a limited window so unless you're talking to a lot of recruiters or watching a lot of videos you know and collecting information from all kinds of places you're going to have a limited view and you're going to make your choices based on that which might even be yeah i'll pay a thousand dollars for somebody to do my resume never do that ever like it's just there's just all kinds of advice coming from all sorts of places so i tell people to take what i say even with a grain of salt and go research some other tips that and i even say hey share them with me if you find anything that's valuable i'm trying to always learn and give some new info too awesome so when you look at a resume what like what's one that's maybe stood out to you like whoa that was that that's a good resume like you you you're three seconds in you're like dang that this is a good one yeah i think that you know there's certain people that don't need a recruiter right they're going to get a job they're going to get a call back and even if their resume is formatted and not the best way you can just tell the the um you know the experience is really good but i'll tell you that the most resumes i get are people that are kind of on their way up you know they're trying to break in or they're in there for a couple years and they're still trying to be creative with telling their story and something that resonates especially if they don't have experience so i'm looking for what are you doing outside of work like that to me is a hook alone and i've contacted many people and said hey before you get too excited you're not a fit for this job and i don't have any jobs for you because i don't get asked for your level but i love what you're doing like 20 21 holy smokes how did you do all that let's let's chat and see if maybe we can maybe i can answer a question or two that helps you know steer you in the right direction but when i see true dedication i just know the grit that comes with being a successful security person you cannot just wake up and and be great at your job by just showing up and i don't think that you should be able to just wake up and go get into security and i think this tough journey for people is really preparing them well for the real career for a lot of them but if they're not doing something outside of work it's not just that they are not as attractive compared to other candidates but like that's less of an incentive for me to pitch you like hey this guy's been going for his oscp for three years he's really dedicated like no it sounds like he's actually not dedicated whatsoever so like i want to see i want to be able to see that and if i see that that carries a lot of weight with me and i actually think that that's becoming more of a staple in the market and in you know awareness with hiring companies like hey look out for home lab look out for some of these platforms you know that they are doing because that to me is what i want i want that i want to give somebody a problem and they're going to go tinker that's all i'm looking for so so you're the second person i've interviewed and that's the second time i've heard that is i want to see someone who tinkers in that mindset i want to see their home lab that's that's that's what's happening now now um i want to dive deeper into that but i have one side question on that uh where on the resume do you want to see that actually that's a great question too because i think it does depend on how much experience you have if you don't have very much experience whatsoever i would want to make sure that that's on the front page like if you are a deli meat you know slicer at uh publix or something right now own that great but don't put that before your home lab and your hack the box or whatever it is you're training because then you know like i said eight seconds somebody might not even make it to the second page they might just see delhi meet person and go well that's not fit when really that second page is just dripping with upside and like that's the gold so make sure that no matter what if you don't have experience that the other stuff you're doing is the first and you can label it all kinds of ways you can call it per you can call it just experience if you want and you can put that at the top of of your job if you want to hide it in there or you could just say you know personal training professional development you can say professional training and search whatever you want to do to combine it but also making it kind of fit and flow you don't want to have like all this stuff that's not easy to scan you like i said you want to keep that sharp to where it's all right hit it education whatever um if you don't have any of that stuff you know there's different ways you can do it but you really are you're limiting yourself in your upside so you need to have something but um there's a lot of different ways i do it and i i don't have like one way i do it um it depends on the person's experience if they have one cert for example i'm not going to have a certifications section i'm going to have a professional development and training or education and certification put it together but i'm trying to pack space free up space and so i'll do it a little differently really for everybody that's interesting i've never heard that before so you've got one cert you may be proud of it but don't give it a whole section because that's just a waste of space yeah yeah or if your education is like coursework at a college but it is also irrelevant general studies like don't make an education section to pop that out don't hide from it you know some of my family members and best friends never graduated high school and they're the smartest people i know don't hide from it but uh don't make it the spotlighted area if it's not one of your strengths right right so highlight the strengths yeah don't highlight the deli meat if that's what you're doing own it but put the more relevant things that will make you shine up the top awesome exactly quick side quest how many pages for your resume that one is the one that i am a little prideful on because i hear a lot of people saying you got to have two pages and i think for someone that's got 10 to 15 years of experience to ask them to summarize 10 to 15 years of experience in two pages that's stressful i mean yeah most people are not naturally resume writers but then having all these rules so what i would recommend is get as close to two if you can and then if you really really want to go for two ping a couple recruiters you know and just say hey i know that i know you don't know me or maybe you do know them you know but just say hey if you have a chance do you have any quick tips on how to get this down to two pages i might be able to fix that thing in a minute you know and this guy's sitting there for hours just trying to stress over margins um or i might just look at it and say hey this is totally fine at two and a half pages great resume only thing i would recommend is that stuff you at the very end on page three move that to the top of page one you know and we'll shrink it down or whatnot but um if you have less than five years of experience you should be able to get it onto two pages easy if you're at one to two years of experience you probably can get it on the one page but like i would never tell somebody to limit their resume to one page when they could have put awesome extra good relevant stuff on a second page or on the first page that made it bleed into two honestly recruiters need to uh recruiters need to recognize that these are people waking up every day trying to find new careers and that their resume is worth more than five to ten seconds you know um and that's that's really on us to own that part and give that the time but i really don't want to hear people always saying you have to have a two-page resume max like who came up with that rule i don't want to see eight but three you know three it's fine yeah now is is one page a red flag no no i mean i've seen some great one pages and honestly you can be an amazing candidate with 10 years of experience and still put it on one page because you're an amazing candidate and you should get some calls back you know like you don't need to go tell your whole story like especially if you're working with a recruiter your resume is so much less important in my opinion when you're working with a recruiter that has great relationships with the clients i am not just sending your resume to the abyss if i work within my clients i have a great story that i'm telling them about you that i might be able some of our clients we don't need resumes we can call them and say hey got a guy for you next thursday like he's coming in do you have any time he's free next thursday and they will trust us enough now that doesn't go for everybody but that's a benefit of working with the recruiters your resume shouldn't have to be so perfect then we feel supposed to fill in the gaps okay cool so at that point it's like they need to work on getting the resume to a point where you notice it and then they need to get to a point where they impress you because at that point you you have a relationship with the hiring manager hopefully and they trust what you're going to say so that's a good point um yeah i always like that no i i i've worked with a few in the past and it's it's it's been hard now as far as degrees we talked about that education people without high school degrees smart people i don't have a college degree i i think i'm doing okay do degrees matter they do uh according to hr i think it's like 60 something percent still of job descriptions are requiring it now i always tell people to take it with a grain of salt the requirements part because there are a lot of times it's written on there but they really it's not a requirement i definitely personally don't care um and i also don't think that it's i don't think that this topic is going to stay the same either i mean there is a way we are encouraging people right now to start learning cyber security in middle school and then train through high school i know oscp and osce he's 17 years old i am not going to tell him to go get his degree in information assurance from western governors not not on any like no offense to the and he may want to go back to that but if he's ready to hit that ground going great i think a degree is oftentimes just in the world itself it is a pause before you go become an adult and then the master's degree is when you went through those four years and you don't know what you want to do so you're just like well i guess i'll just keep going to school for now like that happens a lot i hear people talking all the time they're thinking about doing that i'm like hey you'd be much better off pausing your life for a couple months spending a bunch of time on these trainings in certs then you were going to get that degree and i think that a lot of companies are recognizing that i mean i cannot remember one hiring manager in the last like two years that said yeah i need a degree for this person wow um so yeah it should change i i fully expect it to change i think people in the recruiting or are complaining about it i can't find oh i got you a candidate but they don't have a degree like what it what a what a hurdle for such technical work you're not going to come out of any degree program as of today there's no program out there for cyber that is going to effectively prepare someone for their cyber career fully you're going to get more experience in the first six months than you are four years of training for that just like i did when i was i used to be a teacher i did student teaching first month i was like i didn't learn a darn thing apparently in these first five years you know with grad school and everything like one month in i was completely disheveled you know so interesting long-winded answer but yeah it's changing no that works and you already pretty much answer the next question which i'm assuming this is the answer um our certification is more valuable than agrees to most people that they're they're trying to hire somebody i think so the only problem is that um there's so many recruiters and hr people that are unaware of these certs and there's not really a download and you know i've actually even thought about like trying to make like a like a trifold pamphlet but like a pdf or something that literally just lists and it's for recruiters you know and it's just spelling out like hey if you're working this kind of role look for all these certs like these are all relevant and we i've seen all these great charts that have everything listed but it's not necessarily user friendly um it's just the lack of understanding and awareness uh of what's valuable out there if somebody comes through you know and they have a gxpn you know a recruiter has no idea like anything about security like i don't know but if they see degree in cyber they're going to be like oh okay that's great this guy knows security whereas you know what i mean so it's it's not like the starts are better or necessarily always going to be more valuable they they just with hiring managers i think that you can be more niche you can really tell what someone zoned in on as opposed to this conceptual landscape of jargon that you can study and remember and you know go get your i degree so to down a degree but the cert programs usually can tell the story better about who you're trying to be and what you're trying to do and what you're capable of as well some of them you you certainly can't fake or you know they're not multiple choice you really have to to know your stuff so right and also they're more relevant it's much harder to upgrade a degree program to make it relevant uh than upgrade a certification program um now i want to get to this and i'm with knowing that you you like your resumes format it a certain way because you have to scan them real quick you have to put in them into you know machines to have that scan it what value is there for personal websites i think that you can shoot yourself in the foot with a personal website if you do it poorly i've actually seen some websites and i've gone on there and be like uh this is a director level role and writing skills are extremely important for this role they're gonna be emailing all day and i read six typos in the first paragraph of this person's personal website um on the flip side a resume like we said earlier you can't really tell your story you can't be like hey i love these things and this is kind of my dna of who i am as a professional it's more like list all the great things i've done in my life or what i was responsible for a website can help offset that and in many ways i think a website has replaced a cover letter because cover letters are not really required by people really ever i can't remember last time i actually had somebody require a cover letter i've never made one of my career i've never had one ever yeah no it's it's like it's a thing that if people are not willing to spend more than 10 seconds on a resume why would we read an extra document that has paragraphs and that's not the way i feel but that's just i would i think that's probably voicing the the mass of the market but a website can be a great way to to be a cover letter and show also some extra you know time that you're spending on things but if you're not like if you have a github for example and you have one activity in there and it was six months ago i would not recommend putting that on your resume that just shows you're not very active so if it's up to date if you blog yes absolutely like share content content matters these days uh for for people and it can help i mean you never know you could have somebody that you know is looking for a network engineer but they're like we really need to educate the rest of the teams on what we're trying to do and embedding ourselves in their security processes their threat management and this person right here is writing a blog about threat management within that like now i've got somebody where that might not come up on a resume so i like it oh but i don't think everybody needs to have it where should a website i'm assuming you put the website top like next to your contact information like that's where you put it would that make sense yeah uh oh if you have for example though a section that's pretty robust for like professional training and development or something and it's showing that you're participating in meetups and whatnot you could put it in there just so that it's not skipped because i don't think a lot of people always gravitate towards what city and phone number and address does this person have and so if it is in that section it could get skipped over and missed so um just making sure that if you're proud of it make sure it does stand out and that you don't just throw it in there for the sake of formatting and if you have a pretty robust section for training and that can be one of the very first things that you put you can put your linkedin and then just horizontal tab tab put your website tab tab github or whatever and then start listing some trainings and things like that but it really smacks you in the face as soon as you open the resume um okay cool cool and then as far as like uh i know written content blogs amazing do you think it's helpful to make a video cause like at the end of the day like they're hiring people and they want to see like communication skills is a really big thing for people um would a video go a long way assuming it's a good video i think so because i think that the audience of the world today is more driven towards watching videos than reading articles i think the mass of people we spend our time on platforms more so for videos than reading or it's like live dialogue with people too so it's not reading i mean i know i have a lot of tabs open that are still content that i need to go read the video ones i can play those in the background and listen to them while i am actually formatting a resume or something and still absorb information so i just think that yes like i wouldn't want to put my face on a video every day uh it's not like a natural thing for me but at the same time some people they don't have experience they don't have a lot to offer on paper they have a lot to offer as a voice for people just like them and that can resonate with so many people more so than a writing style that just might not click with somebody who doesn't want to read okay cool cool sounds good now this is an oddball question i just thought of it earlier but putting a qr code for your website on your resume would that play well would that make you look at it uh so in security i say no um but also it's kind of funny with the super bowl thing though so it's kind of like a does it get your attention there's kind of jokes going around and kind of those steady content about people being like careful with your qr codes yeah i've seen people even put it up on linkedin as a joke like hey click this real quick you know scan this real quick um at the same time you know it's something that i don't know would would populate properly in the tracking system right right i don't know i don't i have no idea my guess is that a link is going to populate better than a qr code i don't i haven't seen any kind of receptor for that um so that would be another reason not to do it and and also now i have to get my phone out you know and so as opposed to just clicking on the device i'm already at tap it with my finger click with the mouse where's my phone you know so i think that you're limiting your ability to probably have uh have that go well more more risk than reward in my opinion so two more questions i know we've we've gone a long time so thank you so much for taking the time totally good um for like so let's say you find a candidate right and you like them and you're trying to explain to your client like hey this this guy's a good fit would it be helpful if they had like a website you could point them to say hey you know what don't take my word for it go look at them they got a website they got a couple videos on there they got a blog post they got a github look at what they're doing would that be like what would that be awesome for them oh i'll lead off my story and just say hey normally this is the part where i tell you how great this person is but i just want you to click this instead and then here's a summary of their experience but i don't even need to tell you like you'll this is the person that i i've gotten to know and they showed their true colors in this content um but it's an extra excuse for me to show why i'm excited about somebody to actually feel like i'm introducing them to a person so i love it i love doing that and if anybody has that kind of content and i think it's good i'll usually highlight it right off the bat um because it makes me feel good also that i'm it makes me feel confident that i'm pitching this person accurately when like i've got evidence right here to back it up so i do like it a lot when when i can provide that excellent excellent now i this is the last question and you kind of already hit it with that 17 year old who has their oscp and oscp which is insane he's brilliant but for someone who's like okay i don't have a degree i don't have anything maybe i'm a plumber right now no matter what the age i want to get inside cyber security what can i do now to start gaining skills and putting these things in my resume to make someone like you or an hr manager notice me i think the first and foremost thing and i don't think i'm alone at all in saying this but networking um is it's not a natural thing for everybody and there's no one formula for the way you're supposed to network something that is very comfortable to send a note to a stranger hey i'm introducing myself that could be like the scariest thing in the world for somebody else to do so there's no recipe for the right way to network but figuring out what you're comfortable with and then putting yourself out there in a way that introduces yourself and owning that what you just said someone wrote me last night they were a fireman i think and then moved into it and now they want to move into security and kind of spelled it out for me i was like all right you're not afraid of challenges that that's my first takeaway i'm interested in talking to somebody that at least i feel uh could have the you know the grit that we're gonna need and the way i'm looking at it is i've been in doing this five years i'm not planning on going anywhere everybody i'm talking to right now that is not in the industry could be a hiring manager for me in 15 years 10 years from now i want to be involved in the beginning of their journey if i think that they're dedicated and they're going to go somewhere because i not only get to be valuable but i get to learn more about what they're getting contacted about what kind of jobs are people other people thinking they're a fit for what are they hearing about how much money are they getting here i get so much information out of people that don't have jobs right now um and i'm i'm you know so uh but i think networking is the only surefire way to improve your chances right off the bat and giving yourself some little daily goals but today i'm gonna make five new network connections with security recruiters around the country and i'm gonna send them each a note and i'm gonna hope i get two responses that's my goal for today and you can go to bed that night and go well i only got one you only need one recruiter to get you one job that changes the trajectory of your life and build a good relationship and rapport with that person you never know what could come out of it so networking is the only thing you can really control and then asking questions about people that are like get in get on a discord channel get on a reddit if you want to get on linkedin and just even put yourself out there hey i'm new to linkedin i don't really know how to get started here's what i'm looking for and then put some hashtags of you know cyber security and looking for job or whatever you're gonna get all kinds of people coming out of the woodworks with links and tips and you're just organically building a pipeline of people that you can go to and ask questions and go well i was thinking i wanted to go into a sock but sounds like those guys are really stressed and i don't like scrolling through logs all day maybe i'll just go you know this other route and so um but learning from other people is the only way you're gonna probably you know build up a natural momentum you know towards towards the direction that you want to go as opposed to just trying to figure it out on your own or reading things or whatnot excellent that's fantastic advice well joe that's all the questions i had for you today i don't want to keep you too long i know we went pretty long here um thanks again i appreciate it this is so cool yeah perfect yeah so gene harmon i actually work for a company called 6gen and we do offensive security uh my title is program manager but i'm also a senior offensive operator so super cool title we do like that so we hack things i mean that's that's what we do we hack things mostly probably for the government is our biggest client but we do commercial work as well and we large companies so i've been in the industry probably about 15 years now it would take wow so i think it's safe to say to call you an expert go and go with it i try not to because if i'm the expert in the room i sometimes feel like i'm in trouble but uh yeah i know a few things to get get me get me in trouble so i mean that's what the job entails right so anyways let's talk about getting other people jobs here so sounds good um i imagine you're in a position to hire people and you probably see your resumes come across your uh your desk you you put out job requisitions when you get a resume for someone what is the first thing you look for and this could be any position from entry level to advanced to whatever what are you looking for yeah so my my first thing i'm looking for is you know what experience have they grabbed just either in the field or or if they're they're in their role i'm trying to see where their where their career path take it took them and if it's a if it's tech awesome i want to see that that trail you know building up to our level which i i do think most pen testing and red teaming is more advanced but i want to see that that trail up you know if they're a uh insurance salesman great you know how'd that path go from insurance salesman into to our our uh our realm of offensive operations you kind of want to see that story of like okay find their plumber or whatever but how did you get to here and they got to design that out there yeah so i think a resume that really flows and tells me that right away is going to catch my eye because some of my best hires have not been the traditional path right it's been that that guy who really put in the work after hours from a sales job to to whatnot to pentester right and those uh while they're hard to weed out because they're they're kind of diamonds of the rough finding but if they can tell that story in some way on that resume that's going to catch my eye excellent so we will talk more about how we can how people can tell that stories i know a lot of people kind of have that story they want to they want to switch jobs they want to jump into this so how can they start to tell a story in the resume we'll get there first i want to jump right into it what's a red flag on a resume like when you see you're like this dude's not working here that's stupid don't put that there what is it so there's a few red flags and some of them are are uh kind of subjective but the the one is is job hopping too often so well a lot of people say that you know to move around two years in this industry is the norm we see a lot of people happen every two years but if you're gonna do one year or less uh you really have to explain that um and multiple three-month positions is a major red flag so the flip side from an employer side of things you know you're spending a lot of money getting these people up to speed you're on boarding them everything and if they're going to leave in 90 days that's kind of rough two years i can live with two years one year i can live with that as well but if there's a lot of job hopping the the next thing is listing too many tools yeah so like the entire kali linux tool set yeah yeah listing too many tools that that's kind of a red flag for us because we're saying we know you're you should be somewhat of a subject matter expert in a certain field we know you know how to use nmap we're pretty sure bash scripting yeah we know you probably can can dabble together some bash but we don't need to know every single tool you've ever touched sometimes that can be a red flag when there's you know 100 tools on the resume yeah i could see that like they just put dash h and all the switches and stuff what are you guys doing um so i want to get to how they can they can properly demonstrate that but that's that's coming i wanted a few things first um now do you when you're hiring people is it most the time going to be like intermediate people or are you looking for entry level folks i mean you mentioned like a a was a salesman or something do they need experience at that point or are you just looking for someone who's been putting in the time behind the scenes yeah so for the government it's a it's a slippery slope so we have something called a an lcat a labor category where we have to check off certain boxes okay we'll probably touch some of this and like when we talk about certifications but there's certain things you have to check off in the the labor category for the government that said i i hire the gamut i i go from entry level to principal engineer to even even beyond that um and really it depends on and what i have openings for but i i try to balance my teams out so for every for every one or one or two entry level hires i have to have a mid to a senior guy to train him right so as much as i'd love to give every entry-level person there their shot the the real challenge is how am i going to use him while he's still learning um so so i definitely have to um get those entry guys in love hiring them but then i also need those those super skilled seniors which are unicorns know why they're unicorns right now um but when they're on the team and they can take you know four or five of these juniors to mids under their wing and really season them up they progress so fast especially that real motivated guy that that that loves that grind they progress super fast and we love those guys so entry level folks what are you looking for um what's like do they need a degree do they need certifications what's what is your minimum qualification also you got the government situation too so what what's the minimum qualifications you're looking for so minimum qualification especially on the contract i hire most for we're looking at uh an industry cert offensive we're looking at oscp g pen that that level of entry level offensive cert um i i have feelings about certs but that's just a requirement right so that's uh that's definitely something that gets you past that gate gateway to get into an interview uh the next thing we're looking at is uh you know education is nice and it can be you it used as uh as a replacement of experience especially on the government side we can take you know one year or excuse me one year of experience equals a bachelor's degree or however they compute that in their their labor category okay so so that is useful in that sense and i think if you have the opportunity to go get your traditional schooling at a way or the aptitude that could be a good path to go not an nlb although i don't immediately scroll down to the resume and like what school did you go to um that's not something i'm really too worried about if they went to a prestigious school like west point or something like that it's kind of interesting it's a conversation piece something we're going to talk about on the the the interview but it's not going to be a deal breaker if you know they only have a high school diploma oh yeah so if you scroll down there and you see like whatever high school and that's it that doesn't turn you off it doesn't turn us off um because what we're really gonna at the end of the day talk about is the skill set that they possess and um though the resume piece is just to get over that hr hurdle and get filtered out to get to the tech interview because if you wow us on the tech interview well now there's a conversation that to start having there so you know whether you go the college route whether you go the cert route really what do you know is is really where these these entry-level guys are going to come and shine and when they when they get on the call with one of our one of our technical interviewers who's a pen tester there'll be a red team or pen tester they're going to speak your language and that's the time where you you kind of blow them away you show you prepared and it's okay to say i don't know in the technical interview and a lot of people kind of miss that that beat but that's really where we're gonna that's where that entry level guy shines and that guy that that comes in and he's you know he was the insurance salesman and he put in that time and i use that that example because i actually just hired someone just like this who is a total rock star that's amazing what was his did he did he have a transition job like help desk or something or was it straight insurance salesman too he did not he was a um you know he he worked his butt off got they got the certification necessary to pass that hr filter um and you know his resume reads kind of patch li