From Fast Food to Cybersecurity: Career Transition and Networking Strategies

I'm his mentor and I'm not from here. I'm from New York, by the way. So I literally flew in yesterday and came here. I actually work blue team as a cyber security analyst.

So my talk — I have to say I created a talk in my head. I actually spoke at BSides Romania, BSides New York, a couple of BSides. I'm a fan of BSides. I love BSides because it's a great way to network and talk to people and it's a great way to just put yourself out there.

So I want to talk about my experience working in fast food and then getting into cyber security, because I have a fast food background. So if you guys don't know about me, I did 12 years in restaurant and I did four years in the NYPD. So I actually worked for the NYPD. It was crazy, made no sense, because I was like, what the hell are you doing? They want to pay the end restaurant like, yeah. So I did pizzeria, Chinese restaurant, Chipotle, a lot of fast food experience, customer service. And believe it or not, people tell me, oh yeah, that's not relevant to IT, but it is relevant because you're working with customer service.

So if you have a really good customer service background, you're good at talking to people. If you're trying to get a job in IT, especially — and I know people don't like to hear this — if you're trying to get a job like help desk, like IT support where you're dealing with customers and you're dealing with people in general, having that background being in restaurant helps a lot. So literally, going from restaurant into IT was so much easier for me. You have no idea.

I got my first job working for the Department of Education. I did my CompTIA A+ and I got that certification, and I went from getting my A+ to getting my first job in IT for the Department of Education. And that job was very stressful, I'm not going to lie to you. But it wasn't so bad because I had that fast food background, so it was so much easier. I'm grateful for being in restaurant because I have that patience and I don't get mad like that. You don't get super angry at the customer, especially coming from working at, for example, Chipotle. It's like, oh, I'm not paying extra for that guacamole, you know, and they get angry and upset with you. But me, I was just like, all right, whatever. You didn't get mad at me, I don't get mad.

So you deal with crazy customers and you deal with a lot of dumb issues, not going to lie to you — like, oh, my printer is not working, or can you reset my password, or I have no internet for some reason. And I'm not even making this up.

So my first job, I work for the Department of Education, and I don't have a car, I don't drive, so I take the train. My first ticket took me an hour and a half literally just to go to that first ticket. I was a hardware technician and also a software repair guy, and I had like a memory, I had hard drives with me, I had like to fix the screens and everything. All that was in my book bag. So I'm traveling around as a field technician and this ticket comes in and I'm like, this ticket doesn't make any sense. It's like, my — what do you mean your internet is not working on the computer? Like his computer's all messed up. And I thought, sometimes with customers they exaggerate the issue and it's really an easy fix, literally.

So I went to this customer's computer and I looked at the issue, and their internet cable is plugged into the computer and then the other end is plugged into the printer, and it's like, I don't know why my internet's not working. I'm just staring at him like, okay. And I just plug it back into the wall. So you'll have issues like that when you get into IT. If you're doing IT support, you get dumb issues like, oh, my printer is not working.

And I had one guy one time I worked with, and this guy was really upset because his computer was super slow. So I'm like, why is it so slow? And I literally go to Task Manager and it has been up for like — sorry — it has been up for like 200 days and they haven't done any Windows updates. So I was like, okay, well this guy's going to have to wait two, maybe three hours because they haven't done Windows updates. And this is like when they had Windows 7. So I restart his computer and it says pending updates, 300 out of 300. I'm like, all right, I guess you should go get breakfast, because by the time you come back it'll be done.

Like literally, you really can't do much. You have to update your machine. When was the last time you restarted? Oh, it's been like 200 days. I'm like, how do you restart your computer? And it's like, oh, I go to the monitor screen and turn that off. I'm like, that's not how you restart a computer. So I had to show him how to restart a computer.

So I did IT support for a really long time. I worked at Blackstone Group — I'm not sure you guys know Blackstone Group — I worked at JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, a lot of big financial companies. You know, you deal with a lot of weird issues and funny issues at the same time. That's the thing with IT support or help desk: you deal with a lot of dumb issues. And I laugh about it. It's just funny to me because I get paid to fix the easy stuff, you know? It's not that hard.

So then I wanted to transition over to cyber security. I did TryHackMe, Hack The Box, learned about blue team, red teaming. I tried red teaming. I'm like, yeah, this is not for me. I don't like this. And then I tried blue teaming and I'm like, all right, I could see myself doing blue teaming.

And I work a lot with veterans. I'm a volunteer, so I work a lot with a company called Raices Cyber, where we help Latinos get into IT. And we're partners with Women in Cyber Security and we're partners with Blacks in Cyber Security. So I work with a lot of different companies, and literally I got help from the community teaching me about cyber security while I was working help desk or doing sysadmin stuff. And I'm like, oh okay, so that's what blue teaming is. And then I got hit with — and this is super random —

But I got hit with layoffs twice in a row while being in 19, and I was like, crap, this job market is all messed up, right? What am I supposed to do? And I got lucky because by networking, just by networking and being active on social media and being on LinkedIn, I ended up getting a job in cyber security.

So my first job that I ever got in cyber security was me being active on LinkedIn, literally posting, "Oh, I'm looking for a job right now." People know me because I have a YouTube channel. People know me on social media. I don't know what's going on right now with this job market, but I need a job right now. If you guys could hook me up, I would greatly appreciate it.

So I volunteer a lot and everyone was reposting my stuff and sharing my stuff, commenting, trying to get myself out there a little bit, literally. And I was jobless. I could not find a job for the dear life of me. So I was like, "Shit, this is really bad right now." Not to curse or anything, but I kept applying and just looking for stuff out there.

And then I got reached out to from BSides Romania. The guy that actually hosts the BSides Romania stuff, he's like, "Oh, do you want to be a speaker at Romania?" And I'm like, "Man, I don't have a job right now. You sure you want me to go over there?" He said, "Yeah, I got you, Kevin." So I ended up going to Romania, and then, grateful to God, by the time I came back I ended up finding a job in cyber security. I literally did a job interview while being at Romania, and I got my first job in cyber security while being in Romania, after being let go, after being out of work for almost 10 months.

So for anyone here that's sitting here thinking they can't find a job — you could find a job. Networking is important. Trying to get a job is very involved. I hate answering the question about getting jobs in general because sometimes it's not what you know, it's who you know, a lot of times basically. So if you know someone, you're basically able to get a job, but the job market is wonky right now, but you should still be able to get a job. That's the thing you should think about.

And also, try to diversify your resume in a way that makes you stand out. By that I mean make sure you have good projects on your resume relevant to whatever you're trying to do. So for example, if you're doing blue team, how do you create a simulation using SIEM solutions? How do you create stuff on Microsoft Defender? I'm really big on home labs. I got two or three of my jobs in IT support because of home labs.

So, a job was asking for Active Directory experience — just giving you a hypothetical example. I wanted to get Active Directory experience, so I was like, "All right, let me just download Server 2022, put that on a VM, put that on VMware or VirtualBox, and then install Active Directory and learn from scratch how to do it." And then you can learn about group policy, you can learn about server manager, you can learn about all these things for free. You don't even have to pay anything.

And for the job posting asking for Office 365 experience, you could just Google "Office 365 admin" — they give you a trial for 30 days, and you can learn about Intune, you can learn about Entra ID, and then you can learn about Office 365 admin, learn about mailboxes, distribution groups. You learn about all these things there. It's actually free. You don't have to pay anything.

And it's like, okay, so how do I get experience learning about patch management? NinjaOne is free for 15 days. So you get a trial of NinjaOne and learn about patch management. A lot of these things that the job market asks for, you could actually get relevant experience. You literally just have to go online and research it. And that's what I did. That's literally what I did for some of the jobs that I got.

And it's like, "Kev, I have no ticketing experience. How do I get experience with ticketing systems?" Well, Jira is free. ServiceNow is free. Salesforce is free. So you can get experience using those ticketing systems. Same thing with MFA, multifactor authentication — Okta is free. You get Okta for free for a couple of days and learn about Okta and learn about SSO integration. Same thing with Duo. Duo is free for MFA. And then, how do I get mobile device management experience? MOS 360 is also free. So you could get MOS 360, get a trial for that, and then learn about setting up your phone, mobile devices, how it connects to the Wi-Fi, how the certificates work, and things like that.

So a lot of these things you could literally learn and put on your resume, and it's going to make you stand out. That's my advice for anyone that is brand new to IT or trying to get into it — try to get relevant experience and try putting that on your resume, and that's going to make you stand out. Also, be active on LinkedIn. Make sure you have relevant certifications.

Some certifications are not really needed. Like, some people — I don't want to sound really messed up — but some people have a lot of certifications, and if you're brand new to it, it doesn't help you at all. Why do you have so many certs if you don't even have a job yet? It kind of doesn't help you at all. So you want to make sure that you have relevant certifications. If you're applying for help desk, for example, obviously A+ makes sense. If you're applying for a security job, blue teaming specifically, obviously CYSA+ makes sense, or Security+ makes sense. If you're applying for a network admin job, obviously Network+ and CCNA make sense. Those certifications are important. You have to think about what cert is relevant to what job you're applying for.

So the things to keep in mind are the resume, the certs, and your LinkedIn profile. How is your LinkedIn profile set up? You want to make sure your LinkedIn profile is relevant and professional. Obviously you don't want to have a selfie photo of you having a drink or whatever on LinkedIn. Doesn't make any sense. So keep that very relevant. And yeah, that's pretty much it for my talk. I don't want to make it too long, but that's it.