Softskills for Hacking Your Way Into the Industry

[Music] well uh good day good good morning good good afternoon good good friends uh so uh last minute sort of impromptu talk no slides uh ultimately uh just wanted to introduce myself real quick i'm joe b aka the blind hacker um this talk is going to be uh kind of a soft skills for for hackers or hacking your way into the industry uh this kind of got brought up while uh so deadpixel is the organization that uh i uh i run uh for for the community um uh by day i'm a director at a company called on defend um so dead pixel though i we we have a booth here at uh at b-sides delaware besides de and uh

i was sitting at my booth just chatting with the general public as they came in and one of my uh moments that i was talking was so compelling to uh to management of besides delaware uh to to come chat with you guys so uh you know i personally have over 15 years of experience in the industry just 10 alone in infosec cyber security um you know uh personally i frequently uh crash pop prod after eating other people's code to it so that's uh fun times again more of an offensive person myself when it comes to cyber security um but uh you know again so i was sitting at the booth and just talking about offense and how i want to see the

soft skills for pen testers and then i was like oh i'd love to see these soft skills from um the sock and the security operations folks and just just these uh ideas on how to take those skills apply them to getting jobs and just either getting the job getting the interview getting those things and so uh you know i was telling them that's what dead pixel stands for dead pixel security uh as the founder i literally just started it a few years ago just kind of created a place for people to come to as i was doing my own streams uh such as the you know danny rando here i just would do my own streams but i

i did things a little bit more raw i did i would do hack the box and not pre a game anything i would do updates on my system i would develop uh vulnerable machines won't hub things there so as as i started to notice that the group started to grow i didn't you know it used to be about me as the blind hackers discord and i said this is actually a group now and i kind of just chose the name deadpixel set hey cause i am visually impaired legally blind and i thought it was kind of cool just to you know play on the cyber security technical element of a dead pixel in your monitor but you

know it kind of represents me and it represents the team and it was a name that we all kind of were able to come around uh i was just talking with a few people in a booth before i got up here we now are almost at 1900 members uh for dead pixel security which sounds like a lot but you know we get a lot of people in there who ask a few questions and then go away and ask a few questions and uh they come to about us later back on twitter and go hey you help me get these jobs because deadpixel specifically stands for sharing knowledge uh being kind one of our most important principles is when we

notice people not being kind we go hey what's wrong what's going on uh you know those kind of things like because we want to help you develop the same kind of soft skills and treat dead pixel as if that's the place you can get a job from because ultimately deadpixel has actually provided many opportunities i don't have the exact number of jobs that deadpixel itself has had the ability to offer but it's it's i mean we've literally made chances for people giving them uh the ability to get jobs giving them the ability to make the connections because i'm not the only director level person in there there are actually a lot and some people don't realize that so when you go in

there you know don't go in there like some person who thinks they're a hot shot even if you are a hot shot come in see the see the lay of land share your knowledge if you share your knowledge and you're in need of a job uh and you say hey guys uh you know i've shared a lot of knowledge uh i need a job people will take note of the things you've shared uh so when as you as as we built this community i realized that though because of that and the way that i mentioned that hey come in there and be nice be that person we've noticed that hackers do have that hard time with soft

skills so we occasionally run these workshops uh fireside chats workshops just resume reviews because in deadpixel we do free resume reviews we do free mock interviews i try to sit down with as many people as i can we have many of our root or core members also sit down and give resume reviews and free mock interviews and just all the stuff that you really can't get elsewhere a few places i've seen that i i do work with battleship academy um i highly suggest checking them out they have a couple soft skills how to hack your way into the interview use linkedin to get your to increase your chances of getting the interview in the first place

because what sometimes people don't understand is when you apply for a job if you see you're communicating with you know bob of hr go find bob of hr on linkedin add bob of hr on linkedin uh it's little things like that that you're like wait why why though bob at hr doesn't care bob at hr now has seen your name in his inbox bob at hr now sees your name on his linkedin bob at hr now sees that you are taking effort to scope out the company hr people are using linkedin just as much as social engineers and other people do so taking that technical skill you have and turning it into a this hard skill

you have turning into a soft skill is very important and a lot of people don't understand at times what soft skills mean so in in a business sense soft skills actually mean business level soft skills are usually like emotional intelligence what does that mean well it means being able to read a room essentially looking at what people are doing and being able to say now is the right time to strike now is the right time to do this x thing or y thing um you know being able to look at someone and really understand what they could be going through so you can cater to it from a sales perspective but also a soft skilled perspective from a

business aspect going hey i know it's a rough day for you let's sit down let's go outside we'll take 10 minutes together just decompress we're going to come back in and we're going to kick ass while we're at work because business is business and we need to get this business done um team player attitude being a team player as a standard business soft skill is huge um i kind of hate the way that we call some of our positions ics or these individual contributors because it makes you you're saying two words now individual contributor as opposed to team player while yes i've been in ic many times but you also need to be a team player

you know jordan wasn't you know the goat uh some people come fight me now for that but jordan didn't become the goat because he alone was the best he had team and being a team player he allowed others to be become successful helped others become successful and you know the set team up between him and some of the greats was was phenomenal and that team player attitude um being able to really understand how do i become a team player even though i am the best i can't be the best alone if it was me versus all other six guys there's no way you could do it but now you have a team and the team allows you to be the best you

you can so finding that emotional intelligence to team player leads to a growth mindset growth mindset what does that mean a growth mindset is the ability to sit down and go with my emotional intelligence with my this and all my other soft skills um how do i become better and and you know one of the best ways to become better to grow um openness to feedback i have seen so many times come tell me even if i'm messing up and and i do as a as a director as a leader myself i love to come to people and go look you've been doing great but here's some faults here's some areas we can improve so here's critical feedback now that

doesn't mean i'm angry with you that doesn't mean this you told me to come give you this feedback now i need you to be open and willing to accept and understand the feedback because that level of understanding the feedback helps you with that emotional response that team player attitude that growth mindset how can i be better is being able to accept critical or even positive feedback you go yes i'm doing good you should feel good about it hey you're doing bad well hey at least they came and told me it didn't just uh fire me or whatever cool but you need to work at a place that's going to also give you capable and uh critical

feedback that is respectable at the same time i think that's very important along with that adaptability right so if you're not at a place you have to adapt to uh the things that are going to make it so you can do all your other initial business level soft skills so adaptability the ability to flip your hat on a dime can you be a lead can you be a someone who's taking feedback can you be someone who's giving feedback and again giving feedback in a critical positive clear and concise manner so that way as it's translated to the individual you're giving it to them the way that they need to emotionally see it the way they can grow the way that they

understand that this is coming from a team perspective and not that you're attacking them and along with that comes things like active listening as a manager and even as an employee active listening is such an important business level soft skill now this these all are quite the skills active listening and even like workplace ethic right are you going to work every day and giving it your best i didn't say all i said best because giving your all every day leaving every ounce of energy on the field that's not what our field is like you can't do that you but when you are activated when you are on a test when you are on uh incident response when you're on

those things that's where you can leave it all on the field and that's cool but every day your work ethic just needs to be did i give today my best i used to wake up every morning and get ready to commute to uh dc hour hour and 45 minutes each direction i'd wake up like hey honey i'm going to work you know kiss my wife and say have a good day at work and i always just you say i'll give it my best and honestly i at first i just started saying it but eventually became a mindset and and days that i would forget to say to like crap did i give today my best so it

became just a mantra to me so those are the kind of like basic business level um soft skills you can kind of align with just anything right those those are in a business sense now to the hacker part right so again running a community now full of of hackers i also run next-gen red team which is a curated um very curated discord for people who are specifically already offensive who are already pen testers and want to grow so we usually just do a little bit of technical stuff in there but we have had conversations again about these soft skills and one of the things that um i noticed for soft skills that that basic hacker soft skills uh is

still customer service ultimately when you are a customer facing role which every pen tester should be every operations analyst should be every blue team or red team or purple teamer devops if the client or customer comes to you and ask ridiculous things of you that go against any of your personal work ethics or listings are you going to do that no you need to now have a customer service customer service it's the ability to curate certain sets of words to a client and or customer now that is a very important basic hacker or or a cyber security capability um the soft skill there uh it literally means being able to service your customer right customer service service the

customer um along with that again you've got um in the in this case report writing customer part of part of i operations no matter what team you're on you got to be able to write reports and i suck at it i'm going to be i'm going to be fair uh i failed 10th grade english one and a half times i had to take it in summer school as a almost as a senior like i was going into my senior year and had to take 10th grade english second quarter again because i'm terrible with reading comprehension and i hit my mic apologize i am terrible with reading comprehension and what does reading operation mean i can read it comprehend what it says

but then this this writing thing then they start talking about well reading operation also encompasses this thing called grammar and grammar um is the most foreign thing to me i still write like i speak and i it has taken me so much effort to come up with a way to go i need to be articulate and and i love these words you'll hear me say them a lot clear and concise clarity and concision things that i can say and me that mean this is what happened this is the effect the effect of this caused this the this the the effect of this caused a a insert variable here variable here is also what led to the

you know being able to clearly put those into words is still something i struggle with 10 years in the industry 15 years professional experience high school taking that course so many times writing is tough um i've taken three technical writing courses one from the university two online and still every once in a while i catch myself just writing this when it comes to so this narrative in non-narrative places so when you're doing a pen test report or you're doing a report period people go oh well you wrote this like you speak i'm like well yeah because it's a narrative and and so now i've gotten to the point where i say hey this is the narrative

this is what i did this is how i speak and then i have to turn around literally grab that hat and adapt i'm no longer you know joby blind hacker who is writing this narrative i did this awesome stuff to your network i need to now explain to them in clear concise terms how to resolve these issues even when i did operations work early on in my career i had to go this is what i saw this is how i saw it this is why i saw it i went looking i found it i investigated it um things like that so so having that level of basic writing capability to hack your way into a job so now when

you're writing emails you have to literally be i'm interested in your job what job i have 15 job openings i'm interested in being a pen tester for you i'm interested in being a operations analyst for you i want to be your director i want to be those things so literally being able to write that down is is extraordinarily important it it you know every single time you grow every time you adapt everything that does that every single hack and and everything else needs good writing and of course enthusiasm you could tell by just talking to me i've literally been sitting in places of where like i've been in the industry a long time and people come talk to me and

they're like they've been in it even longer they're they're older or they're like oh you know you're you're such a pup still you're i'm about to retire and you're this you're this kitten on the field still and but then they sit down and talk to me and they're like man your enthusiasm my enthusiasm is infectious it's literally the ability to it's your mindset enthusiasm can be a mindset are you happy to go to work every day well nobody's happy to go to work every day uh even brand new jobs some days you wake up oh man i don't wanna work today same job you've been at for five years you're like i don't wanna go to work today but guess

what if you have enthusiasm to do your job your skills will stay and improve and get better even if your job situation doesn't it's preparing you for the next role the role you deserve and that's where now again when you write me an email say blind as a director i want to work for you i see your enthusiasm i see your leadership capabilities i see your clarity conciseness i see that you'll come to me and tell me when i'm messing up i'll see you'll be transparent with me i see that you're a good leader having enthusiasm in your email or in your resume or something somewhere that tells me you want to do this is is insane

i can see that um again reading comprehension i've done it so many times now and i've put myself through so many workshops i can detect pacifism i can detect enthusiasm i can detect those things so it's things you're gonna wanna really take as a hacker to go how can i be enthusiastic about what i do i really like what i do how do i show it well i i can i can write blogs i can write a good resume i resume suck even if you don't have good resume show it to me in your blog show it to me in your youtube video show it to me in your twitch streams show it to me in your presentations

because when you do apply for a job with me you coming blind i want to work for you so bad i'm going to go see have you done these things and you know it's fine if you've never talked at a conference before it's okay if you've never done those things before it's okay all i ask is hey i want to see i want to see your enthusiasm show it to me in some way so there's there's another way to hack your way into a job create that youtube i don't care if you do the same boxes ipsec has done i give you the sandboxes blind hackers on i don't care if you quote my stream i don't care if you uh

detect pod the detection is podcast um good friends of mine do that i don't care if you go oh i read the tech i read detection i was watch i listened to detections podcast and i went and applied this in my own lab if you if i see you taking a piece from one piece of the the place and putting your pieces to it i go boom that's enthusiasm you have now shown me that you have the ability to understand you have the writing comprehensions you have the reading comprehension you have interpersonal skills you're doing teamwork whether they're on your physical team or not i see you grab somebody else's data you grab your data and went and we

overlap here and now we've got these things so showing those things is extraordinarily good uh interpersonal skills you know i i this is a this came up when i look copy and paste i was like what exactly i know what interpersonal skills mean to me but what does it really mean to other people and got a couple different definitions so i'm going to define interpersonal skills as not just the ability to be a team player not just the ability to one-on-one and talk with you and engage with you as an individual or engage with um a group of people interpersonal skills also needs to be how you treat yourself um are you going out there going hey uh

i'm enthusiastic today hey i'm feeling good today hey you did a good job today pat do pat yourself on the back you know um my teamwork allowed me to be collaborative today more than i was yesterday my adaptability um grew my ability to write a better statement because i read other people's statements who did reports before me went i like those words i want to use those words but i gotta i can't use the exact same words because they read them last year is there a way that i can or for pen testers they read them last year oh god they still haven't changed anything or oh god they have gotten better how do i clearly reflect that with

interpersonal capability with my teamwork capability my collaboration ability remember red teamers only exist because bluetooth needs blue team resulting is just because they're all bad guys ultimately it's more than that but simplifying it you go okay i need to work literally with the bad guy here now don't go knock on their door unless you can find them and knock on their door but don't go knocking the door like tell me how you did that like you have to now play in their mind how did they do this how can i reverse how can i forward this how can i get better at these stock these operations job these engineer jobs these security analyst jobs i need to take a look at data and

understand it take a look at what people did before you it is very key to find the history to things um uh and that has been such a tentative part of my job especially coming to a new organization myself right i was with a company prior for almost five years and i by the end of it i was miserable i i didn't know what i wanted to do anymore i didn't know where i wanted to go i honestly thought about quitting and going cooking noodles for a living uh not that cooking noodles for living is any less or more but stressful but boy did i just really want to cook noodles um and uh so there there i was at this

weird crossroad where crap burned out how do i how do i get my next job i need to leave here so i took so i took my ability to to sell i took my ability to be so enthusiastic i took my adaptability and i turned around and said i'm gonna do something different this time for a few of these jobs i'm gonna go interview for them i'm going to see if i'm the right candidate for them and i called up a few friends and said friends i want to interview they said i'll get you the interview i get on i interview it came down every time i so many times good friends of mine were like dude it

was so tough it was you and one other person and we got to the point we flipped coins four of us slipped coins it was 50 50. we had to call a random employee have them flip a coin and unfortunately the other guy won out i'm like hey it's fine ah you know what i hope it works out well i'm i'm not mad hey you gave me an opportunity you gave me the chance um i tried to interview after a while i went i need to put on a new hat i have this much experience i can do this in this i'm not i'm gonna i went to my friends i went to dead pixel i was like

guys i don't want just a resume that says i can pen test i need a resume that says i can change your network i need a resume that says i can fix and do some badassery on your systems how secure would you feel after now having someone who oh yeah just append us versus i can change your network i can show you the weaknesses in your deep down darkest holes of your network i can find the bodies i can bring them up and go here's this body we're going to move it we're going to fix it we're just going to get rid of it we don't need to deal with this thing anymore let's let's

properly get rid of it let's properly fix these vulnerabilities let's stop these so i turned around and i had uh i went to my friends at deadpixel and i said guys i know i do all these resume reviews for people but i suck at it for myself i need your help so i literally had a a good friend of mine operations lead director manager of at a company i said write this for me here's here's here's my literal three page giant block word nasty resume because i haven't used it in years but here's this new template so i threw out the new template i threw them together they got merged they boom okay i like

this i like this it's a little better this is now me telling you i can find these things this is now i can sell this to other people i can literally go now to linkedin i can go to twitter i can go to uh discord and go here's the better way to do it stop interviewing what start selling yourself well blind i don't want an only fans account kind of do you want you want to stop um you really want to stop interviewing for the positions you really want now i get it when you're new to the industry it's tough you got to take all these skills you don't have that i've just thrown at you

but you again you can get notoriety by joining places like the discords you can get notoriety by joining rocket chat slacks uh you can help people be the person when you see an opportunity to help you help if you can't help because you don't know enough go do documentation go write things go blog things go teach people even though you don't know you're teaching them when you write a blog you inherently are putting knowledge out there that somebody who thinks like you who acts like you who might literally be you know your doppelganger from another universe who accidentally crossed over you could literally be helping that person you putting that knowledge out there allows them to do that so then you

go okay now i've got this note right i've got this knowledge out here i've got these categories um i'm feeling good i do it too i i've had to do that even with the level of experience i have and i went all right when this next job i'm not gonna interview for this job i'm gonna allow them to ask me a few questions and then i'm gonna grab the reins i'm going to this is a ballsy move this is a this is a this is where i'm really taking now my actual soft skills what are actual soft skills soft skills every human should have problem solving communication analytical style thinking collaboration thinking um hold on my notes got collaboration

and then um attention to detail those are um skills soft skills everyone has um so with those soft skills you gotta turn around and go okay i'm gonna i'm gonna use these skills those are basic skills everyone should but now i need to find a way to be clear and concise and overpower their problem solving their thinking i've got to grab the reins of an interview when they have all the power but i can't make it seem like i've just derailed this so you you get the few questions and you know they finally ask you uh oh well what was your last hack like what was your last incident response like whether it was your

uh you know whether it was um real life hack the box uh ctf whatever you did you go now that's them literally going here's some rains come grab them you have to take them and just just reach up one-handed cool and confident reach up second-hand or cool confidently go by the way here's what i can do for you i can be a security analyst who's enthusiastic about my job i could be a security analyst who's going to spend time outside of work thinking about these things i could be your security engineer who's going to design uh your security controls who's going to design your other tools i'm going to be the guy who sits down on linkedin i'm

going to add your uh people i'm going to take these soft skills and take these communication i'm going to write my emails and clarity and conciseness not just reply you know yeah yeah dude i got you no problem whatever no turn around and reply thank you for waiting i'm getting on this now hey thank you i'm i'm going to solve these problems i'm going to start working on these problems now i'll let you know when the result communicate self learn to communicate effectively in your emails in your linkedin uh in the communication with me show me the enthusiasm uh go to your uh go to your linkedin oh i've only got 12 people start finding

the recruiter start finding the groups of people start adding your peers because by the way as you build your resume your peers are going to be the best place for you to grab that data too like oh they do they do what i do but i like the way they wrote that pen test line i like the way they wrote that uh engineer line i like the way that uh that's this admin this net this net ops guy has these words that that makes sense that's very i know what he's doing and i could do that why why don't i why don't i take those words and make them mine and massage them a little bit

now now they are mine because i i took them and made them mine and now i've i've massaged them i've manipulated them so they are mine and you do that with the aspects of your career these these soft skills the the ability to do these littler things and you go okay now i'm feeling better now i'm feeling enthusiastic so so how do i hack my way into a job how do i how do i do that well firstly again you have this thing called a resume a lot of people don't do cover letters anymore which is fine i've i've done it very infrequently but you know the benefit of a cover letter um there's a pro and a kind of a cover

letter right uh the the pros of it is i see the enthusiasm you're giving me extra sentences to read well i'll tell you now as a director i need your cover letter to be very short very clear because i don't need a literal letter heading to whom it may concern um paragraph paragraph paragraph paragraph why the who the what the when the where no no no i need a hey joe i want to work for you because i've seen your talks i've seen your enthusiasts or hey joe your company has a position as a pen tester as a security operations person and i see the job here you know paisley and although i'm not qualified

enough or i am qualified enough i have these additional skills that i think will make me a valuable asset please see my resume for the rest of my skills thank you for the opportunity oh that was short sweet i can what's this rest of me say okay i can see they want to do this job i see the enthusiasm i see that they can do these things i'm going to interview you i'm going to talk to you now during the interview you got to sit down and say hey i know i might not be as qualified as some of these other candidates or i might be overqualified uh i have 35 years of pen dusting

experience why are you trying to work for me i don't have that many years well because you do have different skills you have other skills you know uh i want i want to come in and learn from you well i'm going to be like well you know uh what if i learned from you you know and and keep in mind learning is always a two-way street uh in you know just because i run dead pixel uh as a founder or as as this individual contributor or as this team these things now ultimately again i'm still a team player i still want to i want to know what you have to say because i guarantee you your

approaches are always going to be different than mine i guarantee you your writing is going to be different mine i guarantee you your process can be different minds so when you get on that interview you get your resume lined up i see that you did these things i see i have a summary telling me what you want to do why you want to do it and i know that's so hard to choose when you're early on in your career so for those of you early in your career oh man i get that a lot i don't know what i want to do yet well i tell you to know that i wanted to be a director on a red team

okay i've i didn't even know that that was the thing that i could do but i found a thing i liked i i liked a little bit of the operation stuff i like being on a my first uh job was a cyber threat unit they don't really have those anymore but that was the original purple team um i had a few guys that we all were responsible for logging we all were responsible for compliance we all were responsible for uh vulnerability scanning we're all responsible for testing vulnerabilities we all were responsible for the security onions the logs and resolving things and really what it fell to is the newest person on the team had to kind of do all the

grunt work i had to go through these things those things move these things re re-engineer hey but by the way i'm an engineer i can redo our nexus so that way it has better levels of access oh we've got these let's do this let's go here let's put these up let's get these vms provisioned so i used the engineer brain i built these things i did this and i went they accepted my proposal they let me build it they we did all this awesome you know cool well turn around next job comes around i'm like you know uh sequestration came around i needed to find another job fast because i was hearing the rumors last in first

out like i was here six months he's been here four years he's been here two years he's been here eight years six months oh shoot that's me so again early on in my career i had to go how can i tell people that i do like really awesome stuff i'm going to ask for a letter of recommendation so i went to the cisso of a government organization and said hey you really liked what i did can you give me a letter of recommendation because i'm hearing the rumors and i know i'm going to be out the door and i was very clear concise and and i didn't want to butter anybody up i didn't want to lie i didn't want to do

these things i said i just need to know that if i leave here you actually appreciated my work but sequestration is coming and i'm not gonna be able to work here much longer the budget cuts are coming it's not your choice he literally handed me the letter uh recommendation i already had like almost like looked like he had it already and i was like that's interesting well because of the things i did while i was there he literally had it and unfortunately i was on the chopping block turns out that i was supposed to be cut almost a month sooner but because i was over engineering the solution for all these things i was able to maintain

my job there and then i delivered notice and they said hey by the way we know you just deliver notice but literally wednesday next week is the last week of the month of the quarter actually and the way we pay bills is the quarterly would you mind that being your last day oh crap what do i do again you seen clarity clarity conciseness and other things the company that i got the job i called them up said can i start a week early sure so wednesday to friday i had off started that monday so you just need to ask for those things right so when you're when you are negotiating when you are going out to the company you actually

have a lot more power than you think um you got to take all those soft skills we talked about and then you got to go shoot i'm a hacker how can i i want to abuse them but i need to misuse them in some cases again how do i sell myself to the next company and that's that's the mindset now this many years of experience i want you guys to adopt as you're looking for jobs or as you're looking for the industry or if you're looking to become a streamer a blogger a youtuber you have skills that you need to go how can i use these to [Music] get uh to the point where i'm

figuring out my next job so take those skills well i you do know what you want to do by the way everybody who says they don't oh there's so many different areas you got to pick one uh especially in cyber security uh pick just pick a direction doesn't matter north east southwest offensive defensive uh blue team purple team devops find the direction you're most comfortable with and start going that direction first if you eventually go i don't actually like to be a red team here's the benefit you can eat the transition to any other job once you know terminology methodology [Music] terminology methodology capability uh understanding verbage understanding those rudimentary basic instincts of a cyber person

should put you in a position to transition to any other portion in the industry dfir oh well a hack happened this way so i i have instant response capability stock capability and red team capability well that attack happened this way you take the right team capability that's the coming down oh well blue team i found this found this found this found this oh but why is this here that that doesn't follow my red team methodology oh okay well now i've learned something that there's a different way to do this so when they came in the entry point was entirely different than any other way so i found a new variant you found these things and

being astute being understanding and just being curious um that's actually a soft skill i haven't talked about uh curiosity right boy is that a tough one turning around and interviewing for interviewing people for positions at companies throughout the years being director level i have found people that come to me and tell me they're these badasses but when i ask them about certain things like curio just being curious about things just they tail off or i can tell that they like maybe they're just in there for the money which is fine this is a great lucrative industry you can make money here but you're gonna do better when you also have that curiosity why did that work

you're going to go home you're going to look it up you're going to research it now i'm not saying 24x7 which most of us unfortunately end up doing but uh it's gonna definitely be one of those factors that helps you out uh long term so so now you've got we've built a resume we've built your reputation we've built your notoriety well what are some other clarity conciseness we've talked about report writing we've talked about writing emails well now how do you get the job again the the most important thing to getting a job the resume getting in front of someone so other things you could do linkedin hack linkedin uh again battleship academy put out a fantastic

course on hacking linkedin um i'm sure there's other things out there uh banjo crashling uh um jason blanchard uh puts out all these awesome videos of like how to do this how to do oh sint on the company you want to before i have a cat playing with my foot dude hi hi um uh puts out these fantastic oh cent you're a future employer do that absolutely um hey it helps your osun skills be just putting your name in front of people having them see it in different mediums and different places i cannot stress how many jobs i've probably gotten just by being the one guy who actually showed up to an interview dressed up enthusiastic

ready to go resume sucked there's no way i should have been a systems engineer for my second job there's just no way but i showed up i was dressed well i spoke well i i tried my best i really wanted this job i was young i was affordable i was way underpaid um but i came in with this number i came with these things and i did a lot of these things and fortunately the company and it's this this is a thing that your companies need to learn to do to do those things they rewarded me that was the thing that kept me there i was at their company for a long time this company i spent the

most time with i left and even went back and the only reason i ended up leaving the first time was hey i've got a ceh i've got a cissp i've got all these stop that um i have all these things and i want to make this much money now i'm being told i can make this much money well we can't do it we literally can't the position you're in doesn't allow us to so i was like i'm gonna go look for another position and they said awesome we're sorry it's not with us we just don't have a position for you right now i got it was there for a year and a half right back i they finally got positions

they opened up cyber security for this company they called me said we need someone with like just your your big brain and go there because i could show them through enthusiasm oh sent in getting the job there showing up knowing what the you know asking the questions to the hr people so hr so here's a big big misunderstood thing recruiters are part hr their goal is to get you the job if they like you if they think you can do the job they want you to get the job most of the time recruiters are actually paid for bringing people in so they want you to be the right fit so turning around and hitting up the

recruiter and going hey uh how should i dress for this interview totally fine they'll be like hey business casual full suit you know asking those questions another way to use all your soft skills all these crazy things we've talked about so far literally just asking them hey i was just wondering is this a formal affair is this a business affair or can i open you know the khakis and a t-shirt or is khakis and a polo right you know uh pull the jig from state farm all the way to you know harvey spencer if you guys uh know who that is uh full you know three thousand dollar suit kind of a lawyer uh uh hopefully you don't ever have to

get that kind of interview but some places uh i know that will hire you because you showed up in a 3 000 suit because they want those kind of people in the door every day well if you don't want to be the guy showing up in the door every day totally fine dress for the job you want but you can also get dressed for the job you get um so showing up and and understanding asking that recruiter asking that hr person like hey is this the way i show up looking on google uh glassdoor a couple other places too and then ocean on the company going other people said this this this this okay hey

ask other people who worked hey when you interviewed how did you dress uh asking but again the recruiter's response should be hey i'm gonna show so i'm gonna show up at this time is it okay if i'm 15 minutes early uh or hey it's 20 20 i'm doing this over bloody zoom um find a quiet well-lit space light coming down in front of you not light to your back i did an interview from my kitchen uh after i first moved in uh and the light behind me i i i tested it in the morning was great sun was over here afternoon crap the lights behind me um had to or quickly readjust have the light coming in the right way

i know it sounds like this these are cheesy things but all of this leads to the quality of your character my headset seems it's a decent headset wireless uh it's a gamer level headset should have a decent mic make sure you have a decent mic if you've got to do it over your phone or earbuds make sure that you know as it's dangling it's the mic isn't facing you so as you're moving it's little things right so that that's you're now you're on the interview once you make it past the hr person you've got this glowing resume you've oh sent to the company you're in front of them on linkedin you're in front of them on their email

um you know don't send them like corny jokes but try to coordinate with them often get your name in front of them often because the recruiter is going to be the one who keeps pushing hey did you guys talk to joe again uh he just hit me up no you guys really should talk to him i like joe so recruiters carry that weight um okay cool okay hey joe we see you reach back out to the recruiter you're doing great or hey you know what joe the recruiter goes i i spoke to them they weren't interested cool now you can move on um especially if it's one of those jobs you're like oh i really want this job

and then the recruiter's like then you can move on um hopefully you guys are getting something out of this so now you've got the resume you've got in front of the job you know the next things are again follow-up not saying every person who's followed up with me i've hired but most of the time i get busy as i'm a working director i might my full-time job isn't to run the team i also am always in the field i am doing pen tests too i am doing security engineering i am writing code um and while i'm writing code yes those things are in the back of my mind but i need to focus on getting my jobs done

because i still am billable i need to make sure my company's successful especially working at small startups smaller companies like i have throughout the last 10 years of my career um so when when you go cool i want to do that those are things okay so i followed up i did everything right blind i still didn't get a job it's okay sucks it hurts failure is always an option always and it's okay to fail let's spend the next few minutes talking about that um i've i've definitely i've definitely failed massively i've felt upward i felt downward um it's okay to fail it really is failure is the best teaching tool i love to fail now

um it took me i guess somewhere in my 30s to go i was in my 20s and i was like oh yeah failure cool now i would do better but now i go that's that's a learning move that's it's i need to not just be get motivated by failure i need to and not just learn a little bit from feeling i need to look at the reason that didn't happen and go how can i do better that's why i said hey i was looking for this job this year i said all right i didn't get two jobs that i was really interested in with two friends that i would love to work at their company

i need to stop interviewing i just need stopping i need to start selling me because i have a skill set yeah cool 15 years experience uh you can do sd landway and stuff you can bring pen testing to a remote capability but what can you do i want to know what you could do to put tell me in the interview you know what i really love digging down in the logs a lot of people be like log i'll use a tool to parse that i want to know hey you know what i want to know if you can write the total parse it can you i i'm i might hire you just on that alone

i want to know that you've taken the time to do these weird little nuances that are you um so so cool well i didn't get the job again blind that sucks reach out to that recruiter i want you to ask them why i've had people do that and they go oh it's i was just under qualified hey hey but you're not you're playing with your upper ends playing with your boundaries and failing is totally [ __ ] cool period like if you're like hey i'm down here but i'm up here and i'm i'm not getting the job [ __ ] yeah probably not supposed to i'm down here and i did get the job up

here oh even better you played with your upper limits you played with your boundaries now you've got to succeed now you've got to take all these things blind i i was playing with my limits and i and i was here and i got the job here i got the job here i got the job where i'm at austin now that you've got the job all these soft skills we've talked about i want you to um grab them and go cool i succeeded pat yourself on the back all right how do i keep the job how do i take these soft skills and be clear concise articulate smart enthusiastic how do i get on a call with a client or customer every day

and serve their needs well that's those are things that you should be doing because you have those soft skills now we've we've built this entire last uh 50 minutes now over helping you think about these soft skills google the soft skills come to me let's talk about the soft skills i'll do mock interviews with you that's the most important thing you can do especially if you are i'm here but i want to play here here here here here or here um you've got to take the skills you've got refine them juice them ferment them drink it get better refine it again juice it drink it firm it juice it and it's going to be this constant process even 15

years in the industry like i said this year i said i wanted a new job and i needed to just get it handed i i went through a lot of companies i am glad i was provided the opportunity to apply at some of these companies because i've got the user experience because i've got the notoriety because i have a name there's no reason that these companies should offer me a job really but they did because i worked hard because i did this soft skills hacking thing myself so that's why i'm trying to bring it to you guys um got a few more minutes left um i'm gonna see uh if you guys are watching live and you want to drop any

questions excellent okay now people can hear me okay uh first this one's from pony lover um how do you like your noodles uh al dente steamy a little it's still pliable a little thing still pliable but what i actually like to do now i actually let it soak up more of the water um especially uh dealing with like ramen or japanese style noodles um i used to love more broth but now i've gotten to the point where i'm like i'm in the i'm in the middle if there's a little broth left in the bottom in the end great but i don't want it swimming unless it is actual like uh i say like udon lower water ramen

regular like ramen noodles that we usually do here in america lower water but now if i order faux or like ramen from a place i love it oh man now i gotta get ramen for dinner goddamn you uh all right so let's see oh there was a bot in here earlier that asked if you want to buy ten thousand followers for five dollars actually five dots yeah right on yeah too bad i banned them iron beagle says ooh could we get a story time channel on dps storytime sure i said well i mean we're thinking and nobody has heard me talk this whole this whole conference but i love blind so much i'm just gonna talk to him

um because i i even said fails everybody loves a good fail story success stories are boring oh right i will give you a quick fail story um i was on a dhs tiger team this was before we called them red teams tiger teams were the actual culmination of a multitude of issos information systems security officers people who wrote compliance paperwork of technical people of vulnerability standards of penetration testers and of people helping set up boundaries in the government i was on a dhs out-of-band tiger team so i was literally deployed to areas around the us and the world um to go these systems are this i'm now going so i get this paperwork from my uh

my systems guys they went hey here's this boundary i'd go test that boundary and come back well um i love doing it so much that uh another company i was noticing was replacing some of my teammates here and there and i was like so i applied for that company um well they gave me the job because i was already doing the job well this is a this is a weird up fail story or downfall story so here i am i'm working at one place and i'm like hey i went to the new place they said i was like i want to make this much and they're like cool uh you seem you we we've heard the

feedback from our teammates you're doing it so they offered me the job i go to my company they're like hey but can you like put in one week notice so we can actually deploy on the next one because you guys won't be deployed i was like huh turns out i get uh this was i i was gone so many days and back for like i was literally gone uh 16 days back for five gone for 16 back for five um i turned around and was like in that five days i was like no i can't do that i'll give two weeks out properly so i went in friday delivered two weeks oh boy so government

had a employee there who didn't like some of us that were already on the tiger team she went to the company that was there told them that i actually wasn't nearly as good as i thought i was or said i was um just trash talked me they called me up and said hey we actually can't hire you we've been told that we we just can't i'm like first of all you're a private company doing stuff for the government what do you mean you can't by by by whom i knew who it was i couldn't get them to say it so i couldn't go sue people whatever that was terrible idea but then turn around by the end of the

day i had lost both jobs and this was literally one year after my wedding anniversary uh by the end of the day i lost both jobs and no prospects for the future no clue what i was gonna do um turned around and was like i was begging the prior company to hire me i was begging the other company you guys can you guys put me anywhere else nobody could do it right now that was their big bread and butter job for both of those people um and the reason it hurt so much was because i made that brash decision to i was blinded by i want to keep traveling and then money and and so that you were blinded by it

uh but but literally literally i was like oh what you guys want to pay me that much more i was only making this these guys these guys almost want to give me a 20 bone uh pay raise just be on their travel team yeah i said yeah i'll do it without even like hey can i you know i literally interviewed and they offered me like the interview was like on a tuesday and they like by the end of that tuesday they were offering me the job right like it cascaded so quickly i should have said hey let me take this phone let me talk to my wife let me talk about this and i didn't i said yes right then and

there and it was a good story of now why i fully listen to my wife listen to your significant other's people uh they are your partner in these decisions um go from there by the end of the day not having a job not having any prospects uh like i said i owned a house just a year out of being married ah no what did i do um the only logical thing i could do uh when sold drugs no um went back to old companies went back to old companies and this is this was the story i literally like i said i spent a couple years at one place uh i left i mentioned that well this was me going

i went back to them because of that i was like you know what i don't want to call these guys because i know they'll offer me the job but i need to and so i did and it worked out all right any other questions i got many more failed stories uh again uh applying for jobs with friends uh who i thought was kind of more or less guaranteed and even this year and they were like hey we love you but you know i got good feedback it literally had nothing to do with the interview the other person was just that one percent better it was literally coin flips in some cases hey i'm okay i'm okay i learned that

it's okay to fail and uh it's okay to bring down pride on day one of your job it's okay to do those things and hopefully you work for a company that's understanding and do those things it's totally okay to not get a job in finance and then go sell cocaine to the same people because they're in finance and that's what they live on there you go don't do trucks um i don't see any more there's a lot of of requests for story time channel and dps so i mean that might be something you need to get on all right so by the way if you're not part of dps it's discord dot gg slash dead pixel sec

um come join us uh we would love to have everybody there the more the merrier knowledge uh sharing is our key all these things uh soft skills hard skills that's been our uh kind of bread and butter to help uh breed a better community and we uh we act locally and discord and we think globally how can we uh return to the community and uh this is the way we do it awesome i mean again i i haven't bited in this whole time but uh dps as far as hacker crews go there are like a few that i will always sing praises of 801 of uh set kc and and dps so hit their discord they're

awesome but uh yeah i don't see any more but we do have a track one chat q a so blind might head over in there if he's not busy if you have questions for him in there and quadling will be up in just a couple of minutes all right guys you