Where to go next in your cybersecurity career? Advice for Transition Military Community Members.

uh we're going to talk a little bit about you know what it was like entering the military which most of us uh who are or veterans or if you're currently serving europeans lots of other companies this is a compare and contrast that to entering the private sector and then at the end i'm going to really focus on a term that i that i love to use called marinating in your industry and how important that is it's it's a term i use almost instead of networking that marinating is a better thing and we're going to talk about that now there's i also want to point out that there's other presentations going on today on this track and they're all

really really good i just sat through the um the the recruiter panel discussion that kathleen smith had with some some recruiters i know there's some other classes going on today that are going to focus on how to get a job in the cyber security world all of those things are great and this is not you know what i'm going to focus i'm going to take some of those same points but we're going to put a little twist on it to focus on the veteran aspect but if you sit through other other classes and you see things that are you know kind of overlapping because a few things will overlap you know that just means it's really

good advice you know there's a lot of great advice out there that you're going to want to have about about looking for your jobs and transitioning to your careers and building your network and stuff like that just the difference with this particular presentation is we're going to really try to focus on what it means from the from the veteran um the veteran outlook so let's start off by looking at the process uh you know the the process here when you come into the military the military version of attracting people is really to identify the right fit of people make sure that they can do the job and then put them out there you know the right fit basically if you're if

you're the right age you're in decent health you know that you that you and you can prove it you know you've got you can pass the physical you don't have any legal issues if you've got those things that's what you know the recruiter out there looks at you as basically being a you know you you're you're basically qualified those are your basic qualifications and so the recruiter wants to talk to you whether it's whether it's because you're coming out of high school and it's an enlisted recruiter or whether it's because you're coming out of college and you meet those things those recruiters want to talk to you and then they're going to give you a test they're going to give

you an asvab test or an officer-based test because what they want to do is at that point they want to hire for aptitude they want to know what you can do not what you do do because when they once they find out what you what they can do they're going to train you they're going to equip you they're going to get signed it might take months but they're going to basically send you to school give you the stuff that you need and then put you in a place to do those jobs and from there there's going to be a natural progression you know of things um they're really focused on what you can do you know eventually the focus here on

that type of recruiting is quantity and then quality if you think back to the time especially if you were an enlisted person who came through the service but even if you were an officer you know thinking back you go to the meps and what they want to do is they want to see what you qualify for but those recruiters and then there there's also a second person there they're looking at what you qualify for but also what's open you know and like i said officers have the same thing you get encouraged to basically apply for multiple programs to see what you qualify for and then at the end of that whatever you qualify for and is open

those recruiters are going to try to talk you into that job they're going to sell you on why it's so awesome to be a bosun's mate or why it's so often awesome to be a uh you know a surface warfare officer or an infantry platoon commander or something like that you know so so they're focused on the quantity and then the quality because they don't they know that there's a certain attrition rate they're going to hire lots of people most people in the military don't do more than one term but that's okay that's what they're focused on so that's how you got into the service the private sector is a little bit different it starts off with a company having a

specific need you know you have a specific need and what that means is that there's more work or there's more opportunity than that organization can handle and so that's affecting profits and basically the companies need to make money uh the recruiter then is going to recruit to find the right person they're going to spend some money to locate close with and then hire the right person and hopefully when all this does when this happens that need is filled and then the profits return or the profits increase but it's all kind of focused on you know money is a real aspect and the bottom line is is a real aspect you know time is money but also effort is money

you know so they want to do it quickly but they also want to do it efficiently but in the end it's all about the money so in this in this case it's quality and then quantity you know the goal for them is to for a private sector is to get it right the first time it costs so much money and so much time to recruit talent that if they hire someone and then six months later that person leaves for whatever reason because they got fired because they quit because they did something now they have to start that process all over again and that is really kind of the that's the worst case scenario so one of the things that we want to

think about as we move into this you know private sector world let's tie in some things that we know from the military you know no matter what branch of service you're in you get operational risk management shove down your throat all the time you know basically you know you want to you know anticipate and manage the risk and make decisions and only accept a risk when it outweighs the costs and don't accept unnecessary risks all those things think about the hiring process because the hiring process is essentially it is a risk decision that is based it's a risk decision from the from the company standpoint and you're the risk if it doesn't work out the company's gonna either have to

spend money or it's gonna have to lose more money so your job then as a person who is the job seeker is to identify the things in your resume and your skill sets that you know are either problematic or might even appear to be problematic so that you can either fix those problems or that you can mitigate those risks so that you can say look i'm a safe bet so where i want to go from here now is we want to look at the the the who's who in the zoo you know the landscape because there's different people involved in the process for making hiring decisions in the in the private sector and the way that you're going to

mitigate that risk might be a little bit different based upon who you're talking to and who you're dealing with so let's focus on kind of the main players that are in this process and what they do so you have sourcers recruiters and hiring managers sometimes now the sourcer is the person that searches for this hard to find talent they use lots of different things they use job boards they get on linkedin they go to job fairs sometimes but they're or they might just be scouring you know lists they're in some ways they're they're kind of like hackers you know that they might be just trying to dig up lists of you know if you're a smart

sourcer you might find the the attendee list for b-side san antonio to find out what kind of person does cyber security in that area type thing but they're basically they're they're looking hard to find the hard to find people and then their job is to reach out and make initial contact they just want to know do you are you basically qualified and you are you at all interested so a phone call that you might get from a sourcer is going to be not very deep but it might just be basically like hey do you really have the certification are you ever would you like to talk to somebody that's all their job is then you've got the recruiters the

recruiters are the ones who are going to engage those candidates with the their goal is to bring a what they call a slate to the hiring manager of a certain number of people who meet those qualifications and are ready for an interview and then finally in this thing you've got the hiring manager and this is this is one of the things i think a term that some people in the military don't really understand you you you might understand the idea of sourcers you know you might understand recruiters but the hiring manager is really just it's a program manager or project manager who's been given the authority to hire somebody but you got to remember they're also

very busy with what they what you might just consider regular work you know the reason they're hiring somebody is because they have a need they have too much work and not enough people so they're being tasked with this hiring process and it can sometimes be felt like an additional burden they just really want to get it over with you know so if we look at all of these people and we look at this this risk management thing the sourcers what they really want to do they really want to find lots of people the recruiters what they really want to do is they really want to get people that are quality people to that hiring manager and the hiring manager you know

what the hiring manager really wants to do the hiring manager really wants to make sure that shear he doesn't have to go through this process again anytime soon so those are the risk management things that they're looking at from their careers so what you want to do as you as you become to come as you begin to you know get out of the military you want to know your spot in the market you know there's different types of markets too there's an employer-driven market which means there's more talent than openings and in this case the hiring process you know it's really focused on waiting through applications you know because basically there's just so many people applying for these jobs that

they just want to find somebody and put them in the spot quickly think of it this way if they if the the company said look on a scale of zero to ten zero being this person's the worst person in the world that's going to cause my company to fail and tim is like this is a rock star person that's gonna be the best person ever if they looked at the zero to ten scale and they said well but you know what we could deal with the five we'd love to get a seven if they find a seven they'll put that seven in the spot they're not going to wait around to find somebody who scores

eight nine or ten you know because they've got so many people coming in now in a candidate driven market that's when there's more openings than there are people that can do those jobs so the hiring process then is really focused on finding that talent you know so they're they're really reaching out you know that they they will wait because they have to wait they can't find the five let alone the seven eight nine or ten you know but they're still not going to take a two so the candidates if you're a candidate if you're if you're somebody come out of the service you need to not just know how to have a good resume but you also know how

to be found from these things and i'll tell you if we go back i'm gonna go back one slide here we talk about these recruiters and hiring managers the biggest thing that makes for success from the private sector is the relationship between the recruiter and the hiring manager and i'm going to tell you a quick story here about that i just just talked to somebody just two weeks ago one of the best recruiters that i know she found a resume she knew what the requirements were she saw that this person's resume didn't exactly fit the requirements for a job based upon the resume but she knew that if the person took the pieces of their resume and kind of massaged it a

little bit that they had the right experiences they just didn't portray that in their in their uh in their their specific resume so she took it to the hiring manager and said listen i think this person could be a good fit if we do this if we highlight this she talked to the person helped him with the resume brought it to the hiring manager you know did all this work she was so proud because they hired this person who's now works for him this person has a very high level clearance of what they call a full scope poly level clearance you know doing some cyber work up in maryland but the point of the story is that the

recruiter said she was so happy that she had a hiring manager that allowed her at the time to do that so that's a story that happens but it's a story that doesn't happen very often you know so you as a job seeker have to be prepared for both situations so we get back to our employer driven market versus our candidate driven market you know when you get out of the service most of the transition classes are are kind of focused on that employer-driven market they're going to help you do things you know that when you go to tap class or tgps or acap or whatever they're going to call it nowadays you know it's going to focus on like hey

let's build your resume let's practice your elevator speech here's how to apply for a job they also are going to spend days talking about your veteran benefits and you're going to talk about the special programs and all that kind of stuff it's not bad information but it truly is kind of focused you know for the the masses you know when i used to when i taught this class i remember i remember classes where i would have in the same class i would have a you know a physician who already had a job as a you know cardiovascular surgeon when he got out but he had to go through the class and i also had a you know private first

class who was getting adsept you know for drug use but he had to go through the class too and the vast people in between there so you when you teach a large class it's tough you know but in a candidate driven market you know this is why you come to a place like b-sides this is why we're going to do you know this little presentation here because we can really kind of drill down a little bit more and focus on what it's like to be transitioning out of the military focusing on a cyber security world that's that that being said still can't cover everything this is a class we've got you know it's a little presentation for an hour a

little bit less there's going to be a lot more to learn a lot more questions to ask but this is a great step so let's go ahead and get ready to move forward on how to do this

so when it comes to transition look it's more than just applying for a job you know um i just pulled a couple screenshots from some of the job boards that i work with uh the one you know the cybersec jobs one is our job board for non-cleared cyber security worldwide jobs and and that's got almost you know over 21 000 openings listed on it you know the clear job site which focuses just on security clearances when you search that by cyber type positions almost 5 000 jobs but when you look at just job postings there's a few things to know look number one not all jobs that are posted are always open you know some of them are contingent

some of them are just people gathering information um you know so that's one of the reasons that we tell people look only spend about 10 percent of your time applying for jobs you know when i when i say 10 of your time that's 10 of your time looking and posting and things like that now job can be great for uh sorry about that job postings can be great for career intelligence because you can look through here and you can see you know what kind of what companies are doing what what companies are looking for things you can look at job descriptions so they're great for career intelligence but transition is not just applying for jobs

this is why one of the biggest uh i guess frustrations i have is when i talk to veterans the first question that they might ask is well when should i start applying for a job well if you wanted to ask a question of like when should you put an application and expect a uh an actual response i would say about 90 days before you get out of the service would be an appropriate time but even then that's not where you want to put all your eggs in your basket you start transitioning really you should start transitioning as soon as you get in the military because you should be laying the groundwork for for what it's going to

take to get out i mean it's a law you can't stay in forever so you know that being said if you if you haven't already started start right now what if you've got one day left or if you've got you know two years left start preparing right now and you do this by building your professional network you know and we're we're going to talk about this you hear this a lot i'm going to kind of focus just a little bit on uh most both both the veteran community and the cyber community first of all why do you build your professional network it helps you find opportunities it helps you to learn about the industry you know the the

industry is more than just what you see in your skiff or it's more than just what you see on base or anything like that you want you're going to learn about the different job fields there are things that we do in the cert in the military that don't don't happen on the on the outside sometimes we're really proud of that too as a veteran we might say things like oh it's so people don't know how hard it is to you know to set up a network in afghanistan or they don't know how hard it is to work you know to order supplies on a ship or things like that yeah that's true people don't know how unique and how

hard it is to do those things in the service but the flip side of that is we don't always know how unique or hard it is to do things in the private sector with those with those requirements and those you know um uh you know rules and regulations when you build your professional network when you when you get to know people you can also learn about job titles and the requirements for those titles you know what what we call something in the service they might have a whole different name for it whether that's a job title or whether that's a tool all of that stuff is going to help you to learn about what's going on the

outside and you're going to also learn about the companies you know i work primarily on the job board side you know selling to government contractors and i remember you know five or six years ago yeah i could name booz allen general dynamics lockheed martin you know um but i i couldn't name all of the the smaller you know companies that were out there and some of the ones that i would think well this is a small company but then you do the investigating and you find out that wow it's you know it's got um you know you know 200 employees you know i never heard of that company before you might also find out that there's

companies that are doing things you know that in spaces that you never thought of you know um the the previous uh panel discussion had you know rachel from centurylink and you know a lot of people didn't know that centurylink was a company that worked in government spaces you know so there's going to be companies out there that do things or operate in spaces that maybe you didn't know and by building that professional network you're going to be able to learn those things you know but it also helps opportunities find you you know because when you look at this you know cyber recruiters they're they're hunters they're not trappers the people who are looking for the talent that you have

they're not just sitting back waiting for applications to roll in they're going to places like you know b-side san antonio they're going to defcon they are going to you know they're participating in group discussions that's what the good recruiters are doing you know some of the better ones are not they're not just hunters they're also farmers they might they might see you at a place you know if you're still in the service and you've got two or three years left you know they might recognize you to be a really a really solid person but they're going to also help you to understand that the what you need to succeed because they know that when you become available they

want you to have a good relationship with them um you know so you need to be where they're looking you need to be at b-sides like you are i mean heck you're right you're at b-sides even when it's virtual so so kudos to you on that um you know so so be in those places but don't just attend you need to engage you know and engaging can be it's two ways there's there's engagement which means let me tell you what i know but don't be afraid to engage by asking questions you you can let people know about how smart you are by the questions you ask sometimes more so than by the answers that you give

so when you're parts of an organization whether it's whether it's a a conference whether it's a community be engaged and when i talk about that this is a this is a phrase that i've started to use years ago is you need to marinate in your industry you know because you can't learn this stuff in a hurry you don't just throw the sauce on the ribs and then stick it on the barbecue grill you know you marinate it you smoke the ribs you you takes time to slowly absorb all that you need to know about things so there's some ways that you can you can marinate in the cyber security industry even if you're still in the service even if

you've got five years left even if you've got two years left even if you're gonna get out tomorrow you know i'm gonna go over a few of these ways um you know one of which that i think not enough people really get a under understanding of is things like podcasts um there's so many things out there podcast wise that can really help you focus on what's going on in the outside world one of the podcasts i know about is called cyber wire and it's you know it's a daily podcast the episodes are 10 or 15 minutes so when you're driving to work you know when you're listening to these types of things it keeps you informed into what's

going on on the outside world and it can really help to expand your your your world view or your professional view of what's going on uh it also means that when you do come to things like b-sides or when you do go to other events you know what's important on the outside so you can ask those questions you can it's conversation starters you know the the idea here is to say what is it that i don't know um there's another podcast called unsupervised learning i'm not sure if you've ever heard of this one but this is another you know basically it's a daily podcast 15 to 30 minute episodes but what's neat about this is when you look at the guy

that runs it daniel messler you know you can find him on linkedin but when you scroll all the way down because he lists all of his experiences you scroll all the way down and look where do you start off with infantryman in the us army you know uh if you know some of the stuff that he's written you know will actually focus on will bring in military specific uh you know correspondence of what he's writing about things and stuff like that there's a lot of people out there that have been in the same situation that you are you know there's people out there that were what they might have been cyber security officers in the military who are now

doing stuff on the outside they might have been infantrymen you know that that transition completely into uh cyber security and had to kind of go the long way around you know they were they had to get on the on the ground floor of cyber on the outside so that marinating and that networking you do the homework to find out what's going on but but podcasts are a great way to do things another thing that i think everybody probably knows about but maybe doesn't use it as well things like linkedin you know speaking of the tap class when you go to tap class they're going to teach you how to make your linkedin profile but a lot of questions come up

especially in terms of if you if you're a cyber person or especially if you've got you know a security clearance and you're worried about social media you know so some things that happen out there like you know should you list your transition date i would say yes absolutely you should list you know i'm going to be getting out of the service in september of 2020. that helps people who are searching for you to know you know what's going on with you should you list your clearance well the technical answer is no do a lot of people do it absolutely you can look on you know through you know tssci polygraph whatever people do put it on there does it matter

to an employer it depends i know we recently did a um a survey and this was just a small survey so this is not a like a political margin of error type survey but we recently did a survey of of recruiters and said if you saw people putting their clearance specific clearance level on their linkedin profile would that be a red flag for you and you know about 20 of the people recruiters and hiring managers said yes it would be which means 80 said it wouldn't be but you know you you really don't know who those 20 are but um so listing your clearance technically no a lot of people do it you know it's it's kind of up to you but

what else helps when it comes to creating your your linkedin profile definitely your certs because when people search for things and you can see i ran a search for just cissp that's an easy way for a recruiter to search for things is by certifications also listing the tools that you've used you know the ones that you can talk about you know don't talk about you know cleared things but you know when you start listing things like languages programming experiences things like that you know that's another think about how those hunters are going to be hunting they're going to be looking for those types of keywords and then also on your linkedin profile and on your resume

yeah list your soft skills when you're coming out of the service you know when you prepping for this little presentation you know as i'm doing the most latest and greatest stats you're still seeing some of the things that people are complaining about is that you know hard to find skills in the cyber world are are things like leadership and communication skills and organization skills and things like that so if the military taught you those things and if the military especially if the military gave you the opportunity you know to exercise those things you definitely want to list them but don't lead with them you know don't don't lead with those things just make sure that you kind of

include those and they're really going to show up in the interview stage but some other things that you can do in linkedin even if you don't want to create a whole entire profile and you feel like yourself like i don't want to be too far out there on the social media things that you can do is you can you can follow up on what's going on that you know uh find out about job fairs like uh i know that we've we've got one going on a virtual cyber security job fair in san antonio uh just coming up next month you know you can follow those types of things there's also organizations and groups that i think that are great to

join some of which are very specific for like cyber security you know so you can join those groups if you want to participate which i think that you should if you can that's great but even if you don't even if you're still a little bit you know shy about being on social media you can follow along what's going on and see what kind of conversations are happening and see what kind of issues are being brought up which is another way to marinate in the industry so these things here that we're talking about are very industry specific you know but there's also don't don't neglect some of these veteran specific things as well you know this this particular group here veteran

mentor network is it's one of my favorites uh i joined this group in 2000 and probably 2012 two years before i transitioned out of the service and so at the time i was a person needing mentorship made some great connections some of the connections i've made not only do i still connect with they've actually become customers of mine which is kind of crazy um but veteran mentor network is a terrific one and when you get into something like this like a veteran mentor network that's kind of a all over the place get in there and hit that little um search button and throw in a word like cyber you know or something like that just to kind of

filter it down to see what's going on you know i mean i was just in there just last week you know even prepping for this i was like hey i want to make sure that i'm keeping up with my veteran community you know so i asked them you know what kind of topics are on their mind give me some tips give me some things that you're seeing that you're hearing you know and those types of things so don't forget to use those veterans those veteran specific groups as well uh other things in the world of of uh social media twitter if you're if you're if you're currently in the service you may not be on twitter and i would say that for most

people when they come out of the military being on twitter is probably not i would not recommend it you know super highly if you're just a infantryman coming out of the marine corps or if you're a logistician coming out of the army yeah whatever be on twitter if you want to but you know but one of the things that i'll tell you it kind of shocked me when i started getting into dealing with the cyber world after i got out was how much cyber security stuff is on twitter uh so it's it's one community that if you're i would definitely suggest if you're in the service and you're in cyber security create yourself at least a very basic

twitter profile you don't have to tell everybody who you are but and again not so much that you have to engage with people but following things you know this is a cop this is a on the left-hand side there you see the b-side san antonio you know lead page but when i went over to look at um you know who the followers are of uh of or who who b-side san antonio is following lots of other organizations lots of other companies this is another way to marinate in the industry so as you create this you don't have to necessarily be telling people who you are but you can certainly follow along to what's going on see what conversations

are happening see what people are talking about see what kind of other organizations and people are hiring all that kind of stuff so it twitter is something that is way more useful useful for cyber security than for lots of other things so do not neglect that at all so now we're getting to the point where you've been a successful person in the in the military you're ready to move on some of the common mistakes people make is thinking that that i was so successful successful in the navy or the air force or whatever that i was so successful that i'm just going to keep doing what i'm doing but you know a great phrase is what got

you here won't get you there you know let's think of some things that you do know you do know your job you know you do know cutting edge technology you do know how to handle a budget you do have leadership skills but you know some things you may not know you may not know what your job is really called on the outside what other what other words are used what other phrases are used you know you might know cutting edge technology but you also might not know cutting edge technology there's a lot of things that happen in the service that don't happen on the outside and there's a lot of things that happen on the outside that don't happen on the

inside you know when you think about from a cyber security world you're protecting networks and it's a lot in some ways it might be a lot easier to protect the network like on inside nmci or other kind of dod networks you know where profit is not the driving factor where all of a sudden on the outside you have to find ways to protect the network and also balance out but we have to make sure our customers have easy access to it you know so you might know cutting-edge technology but there's a lot of cutting-edge technology you don't know you might know how to handle a budget but in the service we don't handle profit and loss

and understanding profit and loss is a big jump when you get to the outside because everything comes down to keeping that that company running it has to make money you know and so you can't spend ungodly amounts of of money to to secure the network you know because that's that could be money coming out of the marketing budget that could be money coming out of the operating budget you know um you might have great leadership skills because you can get people to to do what you need to get done but you know in the military we don't have wage and hour laws you know if you if you want to make somebody work extra you can make them work extra i mean heck

you can put them in jail if they don't show up to work you know and this in the outside if you treat people bad they can just there's you know employment it will they can just stop coming to work we don't have that happening in the military so those types of things are things we have to consider and you'll hear those things talked about all the time when it comes to just general business sense but all of those things profit and loss and wage and hour laws they still affect you in the cyber world in the information security world so how are we going to get some of this experience now there's a lot of this is

again this is a lot of great programs that are out there and i just i bring this up just so you don't discount the fact that they can be very useful even in infosec you know whether it's you know american corporate partners to get a mentor great program you know um uh the this onward to opportunity thing this is a great program because you know what this does is it also can help you get certifications like you see you know cissp or ceh or you know sex plus anything you know that's a it's a program that you've got to have at least a year left i think in the service but you want to get on there now and check it out

because they'll pay for your certifications and i know as i talk to people you know i i really get the sense too that some of the officers coming out of the service have a harder time getting their certification i mean the military is is we're really famous both officer enlisted to say look you don't need the cert just do the job we've trained you you know we don't care about the certification but then when you get out of the service you really need those so that onward opportunity is a really good thing for getting some certifications um hiring our heroes is a fellowship program that you can take advantage of where you can get out and the

lord the deloitte core leadership program similar you can get out of your bubble and you can understand the business sense of what's going on because remember in the world of information security you're protecting the information to protect the business to protect and so you need to understand how you fit into all of those things and then four block is a is another one checking out again all of these things are great there's even more these are just some i just grabbed they've all come you know very highly recommended but this is not the end-all be-all list the point here is don't just focus on the cyber world that you're getting out also focus on the business world because

in cyber you're in business you know um this is a little conversation i had with a guy named chase watson i actually connected with him through that veteran mentor network group and uh it was really interesting what he had said here you know the second paragraph he had talked about look there's many aspects of the cyber realm sock vulnerability management data loss prevention stuff like that you know he was basically saying that a lot of cyber vets don't actually know what comprises the world of cyber outside of military life and when we talked on the phone for a while and he was like you know saying that you work in cyber is kind of like saying you

work in business yeah that's fine but what part you know so the part of going out there to try to figure out what's going on in business is a huge thing and by the way chase he he did the the fellowship programs we talked about the fellowship programs that he did ended up working with those programs to land a position at a bank he's a vp of cyber threat and out intelligence which he said was something he never thought of when he was in the service but you know now that's what he's doing and he just got out of the navy uh back in january so you know what eight months ago nine months ago

not even so it definitely works this is what we mentioned with with uh with chase as well is that there's so many different domains you know that are out there that are you know that sometimes some of these things you may know some of these things you may have done in the service but there's going to be other things that you either maybe you've never done or maybe you just never really were exposed to and so getting out there to figure these things out is going to really help you figure out where you fit in and what your passion is like i said chase was a great example he'd never done cyber threat intelligence before completely loves it

you know he was exposed to it through the internship didn't even know it existed three years ago as well i mean even if he knew it existed he maybe didn't really know what it was or what how it really operated he certainly didn't know that was going to be his passion but when he was exposed to it it became his passion and he's doing great stuff um so as we kind of begin to close things down here towards the end and take some questions if we have any you know it kind of comes down to you know how do i figure out how to get from point a to point b i'm going to also just recommend another

website you know called cyberseek they have a great little interactive map where you can go on and you can say you know talks about feeder roles entry level mid-level type thing to kind of figure out if i want to be here you know if i want to be there how do i get from here to there you know and if i'm already here what are my options so playing around with this is going to also help you to to know what kind of questions to ask too and to try to find out from somebody and say hey if you were a you know if you did penetration and vulnerability testing you know how did you get to that point

you know what where did you go on those steps because it's it's not as simple as it was in the service where we can just say well you're gonna you know you go from being a sergeant to a staff sergeant to a gunnery sergeant or you go from being a you know a captain to a major to a lieutenant colonel you know uh department level to directorate level so many different things out there and if you don't really know what it is that you're looking for or what your possibilities are you're not going to know what questions to ask so check out that cyberseek as well and i know that at the end i think we

if you need some things we can always help you out but i'm going to leave you with some final thoughts you know um first look getting into the military was easy you know getting out you know can also be easy you know but landing is landing where you want that's the hard part you know anybody can get in you know you know you're going to get out but what are you going to do when you get there and you want to start thinking about that ahead of time so how do you do that you have to marinate in your industry you have to determine everything that you don't know and you want to you want to marinate and you want to

learn about not just cyber stuff but also about the business environment you know and also i want to leave you be cautious with the with social media platforms but don't be afraid of them you know engage in the right places in the right times make those connections you know reach out to other people don't be afraid to ask questions of people you know like i said on linkedin a connection request that says hey you know my name is joe i'm i do this i'm in the army i get out in three years it looks like you know you may have done something love to connect we we all know that veterans like to help each other that's

that's why i'm sitting here on a saturday it's why you're doing this on a saturday you know and you're gonna be helping people once you get to the other side so don't be afraid to ask for that help um and you know that being said here's me you find me on linkedin um bob wheeler you know hit me up you can see on the right hand side there's my my links you know my email address you know find me on twitter sailordoc is my my twitter handle you know but if you have any questions at all just hit me up if you want copies of this presentation you know so you can see those slides and some of those other

those things reach out to me via email i'm happy to send it to you so really with that being said i guess i'm kind of wrapping stuff up i don't know if there's any other questions or anything um great bob it's kim um i don't have any questions in the in the in the que the query area but i was i have a question because i've had experience talking to veterans transitioning out that's a huge big deal for me and i think the big thing is have you seen a lot of companies that actually have a buddy system set up where they help people when they hire vets on how do they help them be successful at

corporations have you have you seen that happen a lot yeah i have that's a great question kim uh and i see it happen formally at big at big companies um you know uh the the the huge companies have got a very formal program where they'll have like a veteran you know they might even have a whole department you know some of the medium-sized companies will have a a semi-formal where they know who the veterans are and they connect them that that gentleman chase that i mentioned that i spoke with um you know he's part of that program at the bank that he works for you know it's a they're not a government contractor he's in atlanta so there's

not a huge number of veterans but the ones they do have they they they do connect that buddy system uh and then there's a lot of companies that are just so small that it just naturally happens um but it does definitely happen to varying degrees and it's the kind of thing that job seekers coming out of the service would definitely want to number one ask about if they don't see it and if they do see it absolutely take advantage of it i think that's great too i think during all of my conversations personally with people transitioning out i think the biggest fear is just leaving the military and transitioning and going into the private sector and how do they

act because there's a very uh different approach to business um in the private sector and you know how do you behave how do you communicate and also just the uh just just especially if you're working in a dot matrix organization where you have many people that you're reporting to instead of just a black and white um very clear picture i i think that's one of the things that um folks that are transitioning out really don't fully understand and also understanding the tools so i think it'd be great as people transition out is to find someone even on linkedin or in the local networks to really mentor mentor them or at least provide some guidance too so

yeah that's that's so true you know as a and um you know i tried to when i was putting this particular presentation together i know that there are some other um you know i've got other presentations i do that are just specifically for veterans of all stripes you know of all of all industries and i get into a little bit more about how that just the business part of it and we touched on it a little bit here but you're right about understanding the the the way organization is set up it's not as hierarchical all the time um you know that you you know we've talked about and i've talked about to veterans when they're coming out to

not focus so much on how many people they've led on your resume like you don't say that you know well i was the battalion commander so i let it you know i had a thousand direct reports you know you didn't you know a direct report somebody works directly for you you know so you have you manage other managers in the military is what you really do and when you get out of the service you're going to be a product manager a program manager possibly and you're managing another small group of people i've talked to folks who say you know i have more trouble managing a group of 10 people than i had managing a group of

500 people because there's less middle managers in between there you know and you're dealing with all kinds of things so so those pieces can be tough and that's the other part that goes back to the what got you here won't get you there you know you can't just show up and just bark orders at people you know you can't just you know you've got to have some some of those personal skills to kind of get people to do things and it can be different on the outside

definitely

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