Job Hunt Like A Hacker

all right hi everybody my name is jason blanchard it's five o'clock so i'm gonna get started i'm going to stay to the podium and this hurts me i have a hard time just standing still so i'm going to do the best i can my name is jason blanchard like i said and since 2020 well it's weird to say it like that since 2020 of march when the pandemic started i started a live stream on twitch where i helped people job hunt since then 207 people have found jobs and i got really good at it and helping 207 people find jobs spent i had to figure out how to help 207 people find jobs which meant i got really

really good at helping people find jobs so if i ever need a job i'm good i'm good okay so what i'm going to do today is just give you a real quick crash course 30 minute style and like how to job hunt like a hacker some of the people earlier today who came to the hiring village and said hi to me i see some of you here so welcome back it's good to see you and i'm going to try to cover all the most pertinent information in 30 minutes because this is 11 hours of content in 30 minutes so if you ever want to see the other 10 hours 10 and a half hours it's on

youtube just do a search for jason blanchard and have a job hunt like a hacker all right so i know you can't see this very well and that's okay because i'm going to describe it as well as i can if you want to get closer feel free to do so but what we have here is linkedin prior to march 2020 linkedin was like okay you know i checked and some people checked linkedin like oh that's right i have a linkedin profile you know like you barely remembered your linkedin profile but all of a sudden on like march 2020 when they laid off you know hundreds and thousands of people then people really found linkedin and so during that

period of time people like took it more seriously they built their linkedins and stuff and if you're like why does this have anything to do with job hunting like a hacker i will get there okay so linkedin became like the thing that people went to and so since it's the thing that people go to ha ha that's fine all right that's fine i'm hot spotting if anyone else is using my hot spot right now thank you yeah all right it's not showing up uh besides guest jackie how do i fix that real quick besides guest jacqueline jacqueline blanchard

oh it did it okay well done brittany okay okay so there's a bunch of things that you can do to your linkedin profile but let's get into like how to actually build a resume what i'm going to do right now is go to this page right here and i'm going to see the most important thing i'm going to see today and it's this all right i'm going to type it real big okay so here we go i'm gonna type it on the screen because i'm i'm used to being a live streamer and i'm not used to seeing the humans watching me do this so here we go humans there we go suck at describing that's fine themselves

they are much better at finding something that describes themselves so i don't know about you but if you've ever if someone's like hey now that you've been unemployed why don't you just build a resume if anyone ever uses the words just when they ask you to do something it means they have no idea how hard it is to do the thing that they've just asked you to do they're like just make a resume and you're like okay so this is typically what human beings would do you're unemployed and since you're unemployed you're upset and since you're upset that's the best time to ever write a resume and so you're sitting here looking at a blank

sheet of paper and all of a sudden you have to figure out a way to describe who you are in a way that gets you a job that will feed you and house you and make sure that you don't die or something like you it's healthcare and all these like and so you're like

and then it falls apart from there and at this point you're like uh do i put my phone maybe do i put an email i think what about a link linkedin what about my linkedin account all right so at this point and then you start like should it should i make this bold and like this is what you accomplish on day one and at this point you like fall apart you're like that was enough today and so the next day you have to then give yourself a title and it might be do i put aspiring do i like it's always a question like aspiring junior sock analyst pen tester like at this point you don't

know what to put i don't know does this happen to anybody you just like you look at this okay okay all right and and then you're like do i put in about me section to put an executive summary do i put this do i put that what do i put here i don't know how to describe myself this sucks i hate all of us and then it's like well what skills do i have do i have like bow hunting skills do i have like you know liger drawing skills and so if you've ever looked at a blank page and tried to figure out what the heck to put on this i get it it sucks

now the other way you could do this is go to your document and then they're like would you like to make a like a template let's go from a template gallery and you're like okay i don't know about you but a template is only as good until you actually use it the moment you put words in a template the whole thing falls apart so here i look all right jason blanchard crap now what do i put my address do i put my phone and then look at this part for skills how many of you can put all your skills you have in this section that makes no sense and then you get down here and it says three companies

and some of you are like i haven't worked at three companies i'm getting ready to graduate i'm getting ready to do this well i worked at the same company for 15 years do i put the company that i worked at 15 years ago like before like does that make any sense and then i only get room for two bullet points 15 years two bullet points and then like this other company helped out for six months also two bullet points like it doesn't make any sense to do a template like this and then school education where do i put my search awards i never got an award oh god i never got an award so i don't

know about you but that part sucks too so i get back over here and i'm like well how do i build a resume like how do i do this and so it was about three months into the live stream when all of a sudden i was helping someone with a job hunt and it was like oh damn it i wish i would have known this three months ago i would have helped a lot of other people so here's what you do here's how to build a here's how to build a resume here's how to put this together so what you do is do a search for the job that you want you do a search for the job that you

want so if you want to be a stock analyst i'm not saying you do you go over here to sock analyst and then you click on jobs the reason why i use linkedin is because i like linkedin because everything's in linkedin the jobs are in linkedin the people are in linkedin the recruiters are in linkedin everyone's on linkedin glassdoor monster i don't care like linkedin is just the place that i like to go so if i go here to sock analyst and then it's the united states and i hit refresh because for some reason it never comes up with all the jobs available there are currently 17 020 jobs available in the united states for stock analyst now

those of you who have been job hunting or you will job hunt how many of you have gone to the like you look for entry-level jobs and then you just get pissed off like you entry-level stock analyst jobs and then like immediately like i hate this all right so instead of doing that there's a simple little trick where you just type in the words minus senior and minus sr that's the abbreviation for senior and senior as soon as you do that and then you hit search it will get rid of all the senior level jobs and senior jobs and so what you're left with is 12 492 stock jobs available in the united states the reason why you don't do a

search here if i go over here to filters and it's like i'm looking for an internship where i'm looking for entry level never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever click these buttons and the reason why is because the person who uploaded it didn't care enough to click the right button they didn't why would they want to limit the amount of people who see the job posting and the way that they do their job is the more people who see it then people fill those positions and so why would they want to limit the amount of people who see their job postings so they don't care enough to click the right button and so if you're

like really yes really so don't ever ever ever ever ever click these just put in mind a senior minus ssr and then if you want to get a job uh up here do a search for the past week past week not all time not last 24 hours just the past week and then if you want to know why you can come up to talk to me later on because i don't have the time and if you want to work remotely then you click the remote button and then you hit search all right so there were 642 results of remote stock analyst work that are not senior level jobs in the united states posted in the last week that you can apply for

now if i go over here i see three applicants and then if i go over here i see 50 applicants which sounds made up and then if i go over here i see two applicants three days ago this is where you start looking for what you should apply for now how many of you raise your hand are you the kind of person who finds a job description immediately jumps down to the bullet points here looks for the one that you can't do and then you quit applying for that job you find the job description you're interested in it you then scroll through all the bullet points you find the one that you can't do and you said well i guess i can't do

this job any of you anybody anyone okay stop uh raise your hand if you think you need to have a hundred percent of the bullet points in order to apply raise your hand if you think you need to have 90 percent of the bullet points to apply raise your hand if you think it's 80 percent 70 percent 50 you know what i love all of you gave like different answers and that is the exact answer who knows who knows and so what i'm going to encourage you to do today is this uh so the the main takeaway from today the other main takeaway besides human soccer describing themselves they're much better finding something describes themselves as this

don't say no on behalf of someone else here's what that means is that you will come across a job description and you will you'll look at it and go like yeah i want to do that and then internally like but they'll probably say no or you find another one you're like oh that's awesome i want to play now they'll probably say no oh that looks like a really awesome job but it's a microsoft and they would never hire someone like me like i don't know about you but the problem with job hunting is that your self-confidence sucks and your self-doubt is super through the roof and that's not the like time to make decisions especially for somebody else and so

whenever you're job hunting if you see something that you want please don't say no on behalf of somebody else at least apply and let them say no on behalf of themselves instead of you saying no on behalf of them that make sense so if you're job hunting and all of a sudden you come across something you're like that looks really cool i will apply for it and they may say no but let them say no okay so now that you've found this job over here and you're like oh look at all this stuff that i should be able to know but i don't know all those things i wish i knew all those things well let's stop

let's stop let's stop job hunting for a second and let's put your resume together so what i want to talk about right now is called a catch-all resume a catch-all resume and it's just a term that i call that i didn't know what else to call it so i called it a catch-all resume and here's what it is it's you scrolling through every linkedin job post you can possibly find and then just harvest anything that is true about you as you scroll through linkedin and you go from job post to job post you just harvest every bullet point you find that is true about you so what that looks like is we're over here right now

looking at past week remote jobs you know senior minus sorry don't do that we're just going to go over here and say anytime and we're going to say any job all right so we're going to say any job so what this looks like is i'm going to look at all 12 471 jobs that are not senior level stock analyst jobs i'm going to click on the first one here and as i scroll through and it says review i'm going to zoom in a little bit review and develop metrics related to the operation and maturity of the jsp sock now you would just remove jsp because i don't know what the heck that stands for but it would say something

like review and develop metrics related to the operation mature maturation of the sock if this is a true thing about you then copy it you copy it you go over to a brand new sheet you then hit new document and then you paste it any true bullet point about you becomes something that you harvest from job descriptions which were written by hr professionals and recruiters so it's written in this knowledge and speak that they speak to each other and so if you like work with large cyber security operations data sense and implement error checking data quality assessments and queries if this is a true thing about you then you would copy this and then you'd go over to your

document and then you paste it for some reason i don't know why both bullet points aren't in the same damn place but for some reason it isn't and that's fine okay so if it's true about you here's the thing about this i would never in a million years sit down at a blank sheet of paper and say what is true about me you know what i work with large cyber security operations data sets and implement error checking data quality assessments and queries i just wouldn't i wouldn't and so when you go through and you harvest the bullet points that are true about you they're true you just found them it's like all right i'm a virgo

so i'm just going to type in virgo up here and then i'm going to go over here to images and then [Music] let's click on this one i don't know what that is natural born detectives always give people the benefit of the doubt tends to suffer in silence and keep to themselves we'll always have your back does not like to be told what to do super high standards nailed it nailed it so when it comes to job hunting i would never sit down and say now you're born detective i always give people the it's true but i would never write it and so when i went through and harvested every single bullet point i could find about me

through job descriptions of things that i'm capable of i found things like this strong analytical chops able to still it all down for your grandma i don't know what that means but i was like sure it makes sense adapted simplifying communicating complex ideas to broad audiences nailed it i like this one i found it on the job description that says i have big ideas and big ambitions true but if i was sitting down to a blank sheet of paper i would have never written that i would have never thought to write i have big ideas and big ambitions one of my favorites is mainly sedentary in an offensive environment yeah accurate now one of the other things that i do

recommend is there are two types of job description there's the narrative job description or the narrative resume that says here's who i am as a human being right because as a human being i can accomplish anything that you ask me to do but then i have skills so there's the narrative here's who i am as a human but then there's also the skills and abilities that i have so i have this section that's called who am i and that's where i find any of the things like excellent excellent critical thinking and passion for creative problem solving like sure okay but then when you get actually down to the skills where it says manage client customers brands internal

partners for planning creation all right so that's skills so you'll when you go through job descriptions you'll find things that are like who am i as a human being then who what skills do i have and so just sort those through however you want to sort those through one of my favorite things to do how many of you here have ever had a job raise your hand okay did you take the job description that you use to apply for and save it yeah because that's great the moment you take on a new job at any company just take the job description that you you applied for copy that thing and just drop it into linkedin for the job that

you're now doing you know change some of the tents change some of the wording around to make sure that it's you not like the job description part but that's you that's the job that you're doing like you don't have to like fill in the blank and then eight years goes by and then all of a sudden you have to job hunt again you're like oh what do i do at my job i can't think of it i can't think of what i do all day and so i uh i used to work at sands my old boss is out there right now we're right across from each other it's not weird and so we have

sans marketing where i just went in and i found the job description and i was like yep that's what i did those are the things i did and i just harvested my old job description and then i made it 100 true about me because how many of you have ever gotten a job and then you start doing the job and you're like that's not what the job description said that's fine it's a little different now you have that little part at the bottom says duties as assigned you got me you got me all right so now that you have this okay so all of you here you will then you know take two hours of your time set a timer because

if not you'll get like super distracted like i'm starting to apply for jobs no that's not what this time is for you just take two hours and you go through and you harvest all the bullet points you can find that are true about you make sure that in the proper tense before all job resumes should have each bullet point start with an action verb in the proper tense hopefully that just made sense when you build out a resume the first word in your here's what i can do is an action verb in the proper tense so if it's something you're doing it's in the present tense if it's something that you did it's in the past tense

and if you don't know what action verbs are that's fine i had to look it up too uh 185 action verbs for job hunting so 185 action verbs that will make your resume shine cool if you let a project you chaired controlled coordinated executed damn it stop operated orchestrated organized oversaw plan produce and program so you want to use those action verbs at the beginning of each and every bullet point of here's my skills and abilities that make sense cool all right so if i go back over here to jason's catch-all resume well what do you do with it now what do you do once you've like gathered and harvested all these bullet points thanks for asking you go back over to

your linkedin profile here and then you click on your linkedin profile and then you make it look nice this is where you put all the things just double there you go okay cool and so if we go down here you'll see that you know i have i could create experience one more thing experience is not what you got paid to do i want to be very clear before i move on experience is not what you got paid to do experience is experience if you have hacked the box or if you have a home lab or if you have things that you do you can put it in the experience section if you're a volunteer somewhere you can put it in the

experience section experience is experience it's not because you got paid or told what to do so make sure that you're not like neglecting things that you've done because someone didn't pay you to do them all right so if i go down here let me show you what the finished the turkey looks like after i've cooked it for five and a half hours is that it looks like this do you see that each section starts with a bullet point please for the love of god put bullet points in your linkedin profile the reason why is because human beings are okay with bullet points they if they see a big block of text they're like no i will not read

so if you have bullet points here the human goes i'll read a couple so produced creative valuable created led developed oversaw engaged attended do you know why there's spaces in between just to make it easy for you to read that's it there's spaces in between to make it easy for you read because here's here's how human beings have become over the last couple years we like tweets and facebook posts tweets and facebook posts and so this is like tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet tweet 280 characters don't go over that all right then down here i got some stuff i you know added anyway so why is this important because you're going to apply for jobs

you're going to create custom tailored resumes you're going to do stuff like that but then recruiters these magical job fairies will come along like let's say fireeye which is now called like trellis or something i don't know what it's called right now it's like there it is trellix we are in hell trunks thank you fire right all right so if i go over here to people and if you didn't know this was a function inside uh linkedin you do now if you type in recruiter there's six of them hi kelly peter dixon lishba i think what you could do is here is a university recruiter at fireeye if any of you right now are in college you

could essentially reach out to kelly here on linkedin and she has her messages locked doesn't mean you can't send a message you totally can if you have a premium linkedin account you can send a message to anybody in linkedin world you can do that but here's the work around to that is if you look at someone's activity feed on linkedin and you see if they have anything kelly doesn't use linkedin so we're gonna move on from kelly kelly was a terrible example all right so let's go over here to microsoft okay thank you thank you thank you all right so we get a microsoft and then that's a computer company apparently and then if you go over here to people and then we

type in recruiter they got 225 000 people that work there and there we go i'm going to increase my odds alright so we have 2 000 493 magical job fairies that work here we got jessica global talent acquisition recruiter we got a senior talent source or recruiter at microsoft we got a recruiter here jamal let's go ahead and click here messages locked that's fine that's okay i know boo thank you all right so we go down here to look at his activity nailed it all right good so as a five days ago if you ever see a linkedin profile it will show you the post date so this was posted five days ago but jamal interacted with if you didn't know

linkedin is the world's biggest tattletale on social media they will tell you exactly what you've been doing what you commented on what's shared what all that stuff and so i scrolled down through here and i see that jamal's used like two weeks ago well who's this person i started doing some crazy oceans on recruiters i will find out everything about them i will [ __ ] just send that letter okay so when you look through here sometimes what you'll find is they'll actually post jobs or they'll post friends or they'll post this or they'll post that now whenever they post a job one of the things that you can do is add on to the message like hey i see that

you posted this job for such and such position would it be possible to reach out and talk to you for 10 to 15 minutes to find out more about the role and to introduce myself to the company you can totally do that and what this recruiter is going to do in response is like who are you yes and they will click on your profile and you've just fleshed it out you made it look nice you filled in all those different categories of all the things that you can do because you harvested from other bullet points and when someone gets to your profile they're like solid that looks good in fact we're hiring for a position very similar to that

i have seen this i have seen this work at least 207 times the main takeaways from today is this resumes suck that's the main takeaway but the thing is that we suck at describing ourselves we're much better finding something to describe to ourselves so go harvest every single job description you can possibly find to find things that are true about you this includes the job that you want and jobs that you've had in the past because you can go through and find jobs you've had in the past and and really fill out all the things that you're capable of once you do that then fill out your linkedin profile and then after that anywhere that you want to work you find a job

description that you want to apply for you will then apply for that job and then find the recruiters at that company to introduce yourself to and then say hi my name is would it be possible to talk about this job for a few minutes and not every one of them will respond that is not what this is about but don't say no on behalf of somebody else when you reach out to that person you are not expecting a response in return but do not say no on behalf of them send the message and let them say no but sometimes they say yes and that's how you get your next job and that's it all right

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