Panel: What Does It Take to Find a Job These Days

i would like to introduce our wonderful moderator kathleen smith she is our um chief outreach officer for clear jobs.net and cybersecurityjobs.com both veteran and owned companies she spearheads the community building and communications outreach initiatives catering to the both organizations many audiences including secure clear job seekers cyber security candidates and military personnel kathleen has presented at several security conferences on recruiting and job search within the cyber security world to include b sides las vegas b-sides tampa b-sides delaware and fed cyber so kathleen rachel lisa thank you so much for joining and being a part of our group thank you kim thank you peter thanks for everyone at b-side san antonio for just doing a phenomenal job of pivoting from

all of the offline events into this virtual event and i am so appreciative of my panelists joining us to sort of talk about why does it take so long to find a job these days so many people are you know one were frustrated with their job search before the pandemic started and now we actually have some new challenges with overall job search so first i want my wonderful panelists to introduce themselves sort of explain their background and what in particular they're hiring for so lisa this is your first recruiter panel and i'm so excited to have you join us would you tell our audience a little bit about your background thank you kathleen it's a pleasure to be

here and i am honored that you asked me to be on this panel um i am from san antonio texas i work for cps energy um for the talent acquisition team i'm the senior recruiter my background i have over 20 years of human resources um but my favorite spectrum in hr is recruiting i feel that i'm really good at match making people with their the right job because anybody can get a job but it has to be the right job and the career a career track um so that's what i and today we put a stop of this because of the covet 19 we stopped recruiting um we're looking at internally who we can promote within the company

and but i do have one director position a senior level c-suite position director of communication and transportation it is posted at our website cps and uh it'll be up until july 31st great thanks lisa rachel you and i have worked together on on panels before but not to this audience so tell a little bit about what you do and thank you again for joining us on your vacation absolutely rachel bozeman i get to help manage our talent acquisition team for centurylink so for those that may not be familiar with centurylink we are the second largest tele technology company in the u.s so at t and centurylink we're good friends and good competitors as well but i get to help manage that talent

acquisition program i do sit in louisiana so for my texas friends we can all be friends but i sit right next door over in louisiana i'm currently in alabama so we can all agree we're not big alabama fans but here we are at the beach enjoying that so excited to be here can't wait to tell you about all of the good stuff that we have going on we're currently hiring um pretty much across everywhere everything from finance to marketing hr we've got a lot of cyber security roles that we're looking to fill we are a federal contractor so a lot of different openings so certainly glad to tell you about all of them so great so

what's interesting in the conversations that i've had for over the last 20 years between job seekers and recruiters has really been you know they don't understand a typical day for a recruiter they you know there's a lot of memes and images out there that a recruiter just sits with their feet up on the desk and plays games and and maybe sneaks a beer every now and then when in actuality uh recruiters are some of the most hard-working people that i know so rachel you know just tell us sort of what is your typical day like who how many different people do you need to interact with you know do you have emergencies do you have down time

you know what's a difficult day for for rachel absolutely so for the typical recruiter we're going to carry a workbench anywhere between 10 to 80 openings at any time so that means 10 to 80 different hiring managers you take each of those wrecks and you're looking at anywhere from 100 to 400 applicants so just in that that's just your audience that you're working with on a day-in day-out basis and those come in terms of emails emails emails emails and then some more emails we get a lot of phone calls as well hey just wanted to follow up and see if you got my application then you have a hiring manager calling you the next beat saying

hey why haven't you sent me any applicants or why'd you send me too many applicants or hey where are the applicants um so really working with just a broad spectrum of different things i would say in an eight hour day you're probably working nine hours of that just communicating with different hiring managers and candidates alike so busy is an understatement lisa you were mentioning earlier that you know even though you're not hiring right now i know that in a typical day that you are doing a lot as far as cultivating candidates um following up on various different projects following up on different people that you've hired so what happened to cps energy behind the scenes for you

as far as developing your overall talent pipeline well with the covet um i actually i feel like we have come as our my team has come together even more we're not so much at our desk now in the office at our desk 24th we when we go to the office we're at our computer all the time we don't interact very much but because of this we meet every morning in webex and so i see my co-workers and my team and my managers more now than i did when i was in the office i also feel that um our communication with candidates is is more often now because now they're looking for employment what's the status

what's going on are y'all hiring contractors or reaching out so i think our communication has increased our more one-on-one has increased than it normally would have if we were in the office so what i do is a lot of outreach i go on linkedin i check my candidates that have applied and i look at those every day because it like i said that one position is up until july 31st so one thing i will say is that the candidates have we will have more time to look at their resumes than we normally would would y'all agree on that rachel that you have more time to do a second or third review of resumes because of this situation or

no not quite as much sometimes we do right now we're just seeing a large amount of applicants and i think a lot of that's due to the unemployment rate when it went shot up from single digit now to double digits the number of applicants we're getting is tremendous so i would almost say probably the opposite we're getting to spend a little less time on each resume just because where it may have been 50 applicants before now we're looking at 150 applicants from coast to coast and the other piece to that is before everything was very geographically based so we needed you to be in broomfield colorado or in monroe louisiana or wherever the case was and now it's we've realized you

can do work anywhere so it's opened up where folks were applying from so that's also increased our applicant pool so um i would say we've developed better relationships with candidates just because technology has changed so much that we're able to do things like this face-to-face interviews and things like that but for us i would say we probably even shorten that seven second window to probably five seconds of reviewing those resumes so rachel you you you uh rachel you you touched on something there which was you know my next question what are some of the tools like you know lisa was mentioning that there's much more face-to-face going on but what should be some of the tools due

to covid that job seekers really should get a handle on because we are doing a lot more virtual interviewing but also what about these events i mean i'm seeing a lot of career events and networking events so rachel what are some of the tools that the job seekers should really be focusing on i think before you even come to the events a great tool right now is to go out there and check those resumes there are so many free databases you can just google it google knows everything but there's so many different ways that you can enhance your resume just since we are in those really tightened resume review periods go out there make sure that you're

putting all of that relevant information first and there's tools out there that can help you do that and we've seen a lot of those really rise to the surface just because the need has become greater for people to create resumes and such so i would say that's step one the second piece is become very familiar with the different platforms we use microsoft teams an awful lot um and that's what we're doing for video interviewing we're using it for different ones zoom is another one go out there and download them now learn to play with them there's different backgrounds you can even use in there to make it a little bit more fun and show your personality

so become familiar with those platforms make sure you've you know tested out your technology before you're going to engage with any kind of recruiter or any kind of hiring manager there's nothing worse than sounding like charlie brown's teacher in the middle of an interview so make sure you've practiced it you've gone through it but really harness that so really make sure you're using the tools ahead of coming to there so that your resume can be selected to make it to the event and when you're doing events like this same kind of thing make sure you're actively engaged not very often do you get that face-to-face interaction even though we're not physically next to each other

you're getting that audience so take advantage of it you know it's not very often that happens so seize the moment carpe diem so lisa what are some of the what are the platforms the technical platforms that you're using to engage with candidates and also engage with your co-workers we use webex and microsoft team with my co-workers and we do our virtual interviews are with webex um because they can do calendar invites those are the platforms i use we use for our interviews and our our staff meetings yeah it's it's interesting because when we started with kovid everyone was saying oh everyone's going to be on zoom and then all of a sudden i realized that

we had people that were on go to webinar they were on zoom they were on microsoft teams they were on google hangouts they were on you know a whole variety of different platforms so this is something i would really say as far as as you're going through your job search be sure you ask in some of the initial conversations with the recruiter you know if we're going to go to the next step if we're going to go beyond the phone call please find out the platform that you're going to be on because i can't tell you how many times i've naturally assumed that there was going to be um you know everything was going to be on

zoom and i didn't check my calendar invite and all of a sudden it's in the go to webinar it's in the webex it's in the join me it's something so and realize that you do have to uh do a little bit more technical checkup i mean i know we're talking to an extremely technical audience here but so many of us have gotten tripped up at the last minute an update decides to come through right in the middle of an interview or something else happens on your computer that you didn't plan i mean you know there's there's always going to be you know something will happen so we just had a question come in from the audience and i

think it's one that we can we can expand on a little bit and i'm happy to answer this also in the um in the career channel later but in what ways do you think the job market will be different after the pandemic will it be more or less competitive before uh more or less competitive than before covet so rachel you were touching on that a little bit so you want to expand sure i think you know the major change is just going to be how and where work is done and you know we've talked about that and meetings across from our ceo down has just said the way we thought work could be done we've

realized that it's been toppled and now we can do work a whole different way so i think just the landscape and the way we're doing work is going to feel different the way we collaborate feels different i feel like it's going to be more competitive and what we're looking for in the future there's different skills people that again where some of those geographies may have limited folks before now that it's open from coast to coast or even internationally it really it's going to be able to take in all of those different talents so before if we were only hiring in broomfield folks only from the broomfield area may have been willing to apply or would have

to relocate but now that we can consider folks from norcross for georgia i mean it completely changes so i believe the competitive landscape is also going to change just because there's talent now available from coast to coast and so rachel what you're really talking about are sort of the admin jobs and things like that but we also have a lot of people who have to go to client sites and they have to visit specific uh facilities and lisa this is you know i wanted you to address this question sort of from the standpoint that you have people that need to go into specific headquarters or specific facilities do you think the job market will be more competitive after covid or

less competitive i think it'd be more competitive i think that we have learned to work virtually remote you know we are located in san antonio texas and we've had we were we did have hi we hired some candidates that couldn't come to san antonio texas because of the covet um so they were working remote from illinois in fact we have one guy in illinois right now that's working for cps energy san antonio texas but he's in illinois right now um so we would we would have never done that so i think it's going to be more competitive and more geographical like rachel had stated that it's not necessarily you have to come into the office and work monday through

friday eight to five at a desk so i agree with rachel on that yes we would also say we have i'm sorry kathleen i was just gonna say even for roles that we have that do that maybe our customer facing or things like that where they're going into offices a lot of customers don't want folks coming into their house or maybe those businesses are closed so i think it's completely revolutionized the way that you're even able to engage with them so we now have technicians that are able to do installs from over we've got cyber security doing things from different locations so even the way the work is done has completely changed so outside of just

the normal you know eight to five you know paper pushers uh us and hr you know it really has changed the way our folks that are more engaged with customers or different businesses and um you know we're a federal contractor so even working with the department of interior it's different how we engage with them than it was pre-covet so it's been you know transformed not only our industry and every industry but our customers and their customers yeah i was really in um felt really great when i saw that the gsa which really sort of establishes guidelines for how government contractors and government agencies work and their workflow they had actually started uh under the leadership of casey coleman

um gosh 10 11 years ago they had already started doing more telework more hoteling more you know getting the workforce ready for being more remote because we were constantly being hit here in the washington dc area with very large snowstorms or things that would really impact people going into the offices so you know everything sort of has been building uh to this being more of a remote workforce i know that when kovid started i was part of a podcast with several people who were recruiters out of the silicon valley and several of them were startups and they were saying you know wow this has really opened our eyes because we were really concerned about how we

were going to compete with really good talent in the san francisco area and all of a sudden as you said they can talk to people in colorado utah so uh this is ever shifting so i i think that every three or four months we're going to see a different kind of job competitiveness but i think one thing what we will see is people who are more comfortable being independent and having their own initiative and being able to set boundaries those are going to be another set of the soft skills that many people are looking for because many of the managers are haven't been trained on how to manage through zoom but if you do want to learn

how to manage through zoom come back to this track our last talk of the day is with mike murray who is a founder of a healthcare security firm his second entrepreneurial venture and he is going to be talking about leading and managing teams through uh zoom so just a little advertisement for later on so i want to get back more into this sort of job search because job search pre-covered or deering kovid is some of the basic elements are still the same and we over the 20 years that i've been in the community i have seen the exact same problems the exact same challenges on the candidate side over and over and over again so you know lisa what is what are one or

two things that you have seen job seekers continually do that is a hindrance to their job search well i think the first you have to meet the minimum requirements look at the minimum requirements first before applying make sure that you can check the box i've done this i've done this and then could you if i'd ask you to give me example when you did this you you need to be able to come up with an answer that you actually did it so meet the minimum requirements and then we were talking earlier if you have any certifications put them on the top of the resume put them that that's the most important um in it positions i'm looking for

certifications so i'm looking at minimum requirements and i'm looking at certifications and if you're new to the i.t arena or you want to break into the it arena you need to go find out what search you need in the area of i.t that you want to work in and start working on those right now um so those are those two two items that i would look at first yes it's i've been doing some resume review in my spare time over on discord on several other servers and i can tell you that there is just this trend and has been a trend for 10 years with tech resumes to make it look pretty and i'm sorry please stop making your

tech resume look pretty keep it very simple i don't need boxes i don't need shading i don't need graphs i don't need anything please realize that it is going to be sent through an applicant tracking system and that applicant tracking system is going to pull data and if it can't pull data cleanly it is going to pull something else and you're never going to know the user interface of the applicant tracking system that the recruiter is using there are several applicant tracking systems out there and you're never going to know what is the applicant tracking system that the recruiter is using so please keep it as simple as possible now another advertisement we will be doing

resume review today at one to three over in the career channel so you'll have an opportunity to have your resume reviewed by two tech recruiters and myself so rachel what are one or two things that you see candidates constantly doing that you wish they wouldn't do i would say resumes are not one size fits all so you may have a resume for one role and there's nothing more disheartening than reading a resume that says applying for a you know medical receptionist and you're like but you applied for a scrub master i don't understand so make sure you know anything you have in there is relevant to what you're applying for that you're not just having

those relevant things up front but that it all matches think about those different skills that relate to the job so it does take time looking for a job is a job and it shouldn't be something that just takes three seconds to apply it is work so make sure that those match and the other piece that i would add to that that um i know i've had many conversations with candidates throughout is if there's an assessment or there's a video interview required for the role take it and take it as soon as you apply we have folks that will sit on it and wait till the end of the cycle well then they miss out on the opportunity to be

considered and will write back and say well how dare you and it's like well friend you had 14 days make sure you take it so take it take it off and take them seriously it's not just a personality quiz like you'd be taken out of a magazine it's really to assess your fit for that role so take it seriously take it timely and make sure your resume matches for what you're applying for and we we had sort of a question from the audience as far as you know we're we're talking about minimum requirements and i'm always uh sort of intrigued when i see studies in the community that women will only apply if they believe they meet 95

of what the job asks and most men will apply if they meet 50 so so i'm just letting you know there are minimum requirements you know college degree certain certifications those are the minimum requirements and being able to have a certain amount of three to five years jobs experience then start delving deeper into what the job is asking for but you know as if if you're a barista and you're applying to be a pen tester i think you know you you might want to really check those uh those minimum requirements so there are many different stages of the job search process and there are many different stages where someone can sort of mess up and i'm just wondering

rachel do you is there one place that you see job seekers tending to sort of like mess up they don't get it what they need to do next you pointed went out earlier doing all of the tests but what are some of the other areas where uh job seekers sort of miss the the step that they need a little bit yeah i would say communication um is probably a big one where we see a lot of stumbling going on and a lot of time it's it's you know we want to assume positive intent that it really is you're just so excited about the role you want to find out where you are in the process um but you

then it becomes almost on the verge of a little stalkerish uh when you're getting 15 to 20 calls a day hey just checking in with you how's my resume looking um you know have that understanding that there are many people that are also interested in the same role so give a little bit of grace and a little bit of understanding to the recruiter and when you are communicating know that we're not robots um as much as you know artificial intelligence exists a recruiter is a recruiter and we have feelings too uh so when you write emails that are snarky or you know well if you would sit around and do your job know that we really

are and we have the best interest at heart we really do just like lisa alluded to it's matchmaking it's trying to find the best talent for the best role and the other piece that we know we also know the hiring manager so we know the the wants and the desires of that hiring manager so it's really putting together this master forum to try to find the right candidates we want to make the best use of your time just like we want to make the best use of you know of our team's time as well so it's making sure resources are aligned appropriately so just communicate appropriately if you don't get an immediate phone call return

or you don't get an immediate email don't take it personally please know that we love you all you're all beautiful and wonderful and talented however you know it's usually one recruiter to a thousand people um so if you just look at those ratios it's very hard to make sure that you're communicating we really want to do our best i had an interesting engagement with a gentleman who it was related to an assessment and he wrote back and was not very kind um he had some things to say about my mom and everything in between um but you know it was able to respond and say you know i appreciate that you responded back and his immediate response back was you know

i'm so sorry i have gotten not a lot of response from different companies and i forget that you're a human on the other end and he said you've completely changed my perspective just by responding so know that we really really do want to respond but use your communication use it wisely and my mama's a very nice person so please no more mama jokes i'd love to be a fly on the wall listening reading your emails but i get the same i do i i get a lot of people who don't understand that i'm not a recruiter that i'm not a head hunter that i'm not a staff person and they'll send me a message saying look at my linkedin profile and

find me a job and i'll be like that's not my job that's your job and your job is to read my profile to find out if i am someone who can help you so uh realize that that uh finding the right person to communicate with really does help so lisa what are some of the areas where you have seen job seekers sort of miss the boat on uh their overall engagement with you i i really i can't think of anything other than the virtual interviews now that's a new thing so what we do what we've done before the covet is we would set up the interviews and then before the recruiter such as myself i would

do a practice run the day before just to make sure you're ready to go and most of them haven't even opened their inbox and haven't downloaded the the software or you know whatever it was microsoft team or webex they hadn't even done that yet so it takes a little bit of effort on the recruiter's side just to make sure that all the check and balances are done before the actual interview and practice the interview and get your background i think someone had a had it out in their garage so make sure even though it's at home you're still doing a professional interview so dress up and show up and make sure your background isn't your

garage or your closet you know something like that and just practice practice your ques you know get used to seeing yourself on the screen and just do a practice run a dry run um that's really it today is that and then rachel hit on something we are human beings and please remember that we know the hr manager we talk to them they've told us what they really want it may not be on the job posting but we really know what the hr man we know his personality we know the culture um and so we are the matchmaker so let us do our job and then rachel and kathleen how much how often should a candidate check in with you

on a job what would be the grace period so i i usually say first and foremost be sure you've sent a thank you note after any virtual interview or any phone screening or anything like that and then use the thank you note as a time to add in another selling point as to why you're good for that job or something that was part of the conversation sort of like yes i went to alabama or you know it was great to talk to you about i know rachel i had to throw that one in you know it was great to talk to you about how we're missing the football season or something like that so personalize the thank you note and also

realize that the thank you note is a time where you can add in information that you sort of forgot because we all tend to freeze up during interviews and there's like that one really great story or that really great tidbit that really shares why you're great for that position well you add that into the thank you note and then as you're doing your last conversation with the recruiter ask them what is the follow-up timeline you know should i call you next week should i call you tomorrow get an idea from them on the timeline rachel anything you want to add to that you took the words out of mouth i was going to say you know kind of be the

master right there and ask that question and say hey you know so what do next steps look like what does that timeline look like i think it also puts the recruiter in a state of accountability as well so if you say if they say hey you know we expect to have a decision the next week and a half or something like that hold them accountable as well because things do happen so make sure you ask ask you know what is a good time should i follow up how can i follow up things like that i think the thank you notes are fantastic i think sometimes where candidates again sometimes stumble and and i i completely empathize because sometimes

it does feel like you're putting your application into a dark hole and are you ever going to hear anything back so i understand that that lack of certainty of did they even receive my application so find out if there is some kind of usually you know i know we have an automated service that you can send an email to and just say i want to make sure my application was received and we have a team that can look at that just to you know give you that level of comfort that it is being received and i will tell you something that we're striving for and trying to do and i'm sure lisa is doing the same and

across the board in all industries is the thing we hear most often is i never heard anything back i've applied and i've never heard anything back so something i know i do with my team is i'll go in and audit and make sure emails have been sent um that we are doing those things so we are really trying to shore up that gap because i think we do own the fact that sometimes communication isn't as timely so my apologies for the entire industry we're going to do better uh but just know that we do want to communicate with you we are looking for ways but i think the advice kathleen gave is 100 spot-on ask at the end of that interview you

know what is a good time how often and how can i do it and you know we'll be glad to make sure we align with that sounds great so it's it's interesting that one thing that i noticed that a lot of job seekers don't understand is that if they don't get the job they actually should continue networking with you correct so um and you know even though i know a lot of people would really love to get sort of that feedback and that download as we talked earlier it's just not going to be possible but realize that keeping a relationship with a recruiter is definitely one part of your overall career success because we look at our network of people

so we'll have someone who we go to for movie recommendations and we'll have someone who'll go to for restaurant recommendations and we'll have someone to go to for vacation recommendations but our job is a key component of our overall life but how many recruiters do you have in your overall network so my recommendation is if you've had a really good conversation with a recruiter if someone has treated you very well you got along on in the interview but all of a sudden you weren't the right fit still thank that recruiter for their time and still keep up to date with them you know make sure you've connected on linkedin and then if something has happened like

if you've gotten a new certification if you've gotten a promotion or something like that just take a few moments to reach out to the recruiters in your network and say hey you know just wanted to say hi hope you're doing well are you staying safe during covid just want to let you know i just passed my cissp would love to keep in touch with you if there are any other opportunities come down your way because i know recruiters specifically in the communities i'm in they have candidates that they keep in touch with for three to six years because they know that there is going to be at one point that they're going to have the right job

for that person so i'm i'm going to sort of switch gears here just a little bit and i'm going to touch on two specific segments of the community that really sort of always ask questions so the first and i'm going to throw this to lisa because i know this is one of her favorite topics if we have some folks in the audience who are transitioning military what are one or two things that you would recommend that they do to help their job search moving into the civilian world the first thing is take a personality test because and why i say that is because a lot especially if they've done their 20 years or even 10 years

they think that they need to find a job that they did in the military in the civilian world but they have to remember the military chose them for that job right based on their test scores so this time around let's find a job that matches you um so there's several personality tests that you can take and it'll kind of tell you where um i think the brixmeyer myers-briggs i always get those that's a really good one because it'll tell you what kind of job you'd be a good fit for and when you take the test it's it should only take a less than one or two minutes to take the test and don't think about it so the military

will think about it what should i do as a leader in this situation you take the test to take it very quickly don't think about it and that way we can pinpoint where your next job should be what area um the second thing is you've already been told this well actually the second thing is network you don't know how to network because you've been wearing that uniform for so long you walk into the room i know your name i know your rank um so you don't have to introduce yourself so practice your elevator pitch start networking start getting used to these virtual career fairs linkedin's a very good one start networking on linkedin and don't put

your military picture on linkedin go get a professional headshot done wearing a as a suit don't and take all military off your linkedin account don't say retired command sergeant major it doesn't matter i'm sorry thank you for your service thank you for your service but in order to transition to the civilian world we've got to civilianize you now um and with that said i do believe our military leaders are needed out in the civilian sector especially in the corporations we do need your leadership we just need to help you transition that into the civilian sector so thank you again thank you for your service for all those that are listening um we we greatly appreciate you and your

service and your family yes well as a military spouse thank you for saying that i really appreciate it um another pitch at 10 o'clock we have sailor dock who is a retired navy captain and had spent the last three years before he uh retired as a recruiter bob wheeler and uh he is someone that rachel knows quite well but bob is also well known in the community for writing about transitioning military and the things that they need to do to be successful in their career and bob will be floating around in the career uh track today answering any questions for transitioning million uh military folks so rachel anything to add for our transitioning military folks

i would just say look at your skill set holistically and while that may have been your assignment or that particular job that you held think of those different relatable skills and how they could fit into other roles so i think lisa hit the nail on the head you know just kind of talking about those different assessments and what is it that you want to do but also give yourself some understanding that you are bringing so much talent to the table and just make sure that you're collecting that and that you're using that and ask the question say hey this is what i did how would this fit in and ask those questions find somebody in a similar

role and say what what does your day look like um and you'll find amazing ways that those are those just cross over one another and you're the perfect person for the role and you didn't give yourself enough credit to assume that you were the right person for the role so the other segment of the community that we tend to get some challenges with and it's not that they're challenging it's just they have unique needs as far as their job search is concerned so we get a lot of students who come into besides great place to start your networking great place to start learning best practices and skills uh it's really uh very interesting that people don't

understand that all of the experience that you have being part of the capture of the flags or volunteering for the virtual cons any of that all of that is technical and soft skills that you are developing and it's getting you experience so be sure you're getting that experience so i'm just wanting to touch over to lisa and rachel what are some things you can recommend for our students who are looking to get into information security or cyber security lisa so i would look at your local community try to join you know become a member of geekdom we have geekdom here just kind of look around to see what um membership you can join to start your

networking um example uh i know we have i mentioned geektem and then this form here you could meet someone that could help you in the future that's what i would do just start start getting out there and networking with people that could possibly help you the other thing is it's easier to find a job or get your application looked at if you know somebody in the company if you know that that's why networking is so important because you're competing for one job and there could be over 100 applications so if you know someone buy them through a membership you can say hey i applied for this position is there anything you can help me with or can you assist

so that's why networking and joining your clubs and memberships in the field that you want to get to is so important rachel how about you i think those are both amazing examples and finding a mentor that's going to give you honest constructive feedback um i would take it just that one next layer up just because you want you know we all assume we're the best at everything but having someone offer that constructive feedback really helps you better craft your you know your skills and your talents and and be more prepared so uh you know find that good mentor that's in that field or related field and i think that's just one additional step but i think you know

networking is fantastic so um i'm gonna throw you a question that we haven't prepared for because i like doing that every now and then so what's interesting is a lot of people go through all of this sort of like help to get a job and they sweat it out and they finally get the job and then they rest on their laurels like oh god i finally got the job however i was told over 30 years ago the most important time in your job is the first six months so what are some recommendations that you want to give people to say what they would do in the first six months of their job to make sure that

they're successful so rachel i think it goes back to that interview when you're asking the questions what should what does success look like at 30 60 in 90 days ask that hiring manager what you know how can i be successful go ahead and map out what does your success look like set goals set objectives and reach those goals don't like you said just sit back and be like oh i got this uh you really need to go ahead and make sure you're investing continue with that continued education um most companies have different databases that you're able to get into um and do additional learning so if you want to get a certification in this or certification in that or just want to

you know sharpen up some skills there's all sorts of things so take it as you know be aggressive get out there and learn but i think the first step is really understanding how does that hiring manager measure success you already know the game plan so then you just execute that game plan lisa knowledge is power knowledge is power so rachel i agree continue your education i i'm continuing my education i'm always learning so learn on the job ask questions know the system know what goes on behind the scene i'm i'm process oriented so i want to know what happens before it comes to my desk and then what happens afterwards the onboarding i had to like

how do you do your onboarding because we're not part of that so i wanted to learn behind the scenes comes to my desk and what happens afterwards and then certification education learning is very important you can it never stops you need to be fresh and knowledge is power is all that i can say just continue educating yourself there's never there's never a finish line when it comes to learning never um knowledge is power that's all i can say just remember that knowledge is power great well i'm getting um the sort of the the high sign that we're we're approaching the end and i just want to give a little bit of uh kudos to rachel and lisa for their time today i

want to let everyone know that so this entire track today is focused on careers so i know that there are many other important things that are being shared and discussed throughout the eastside san antonio if you want to focus on your career definitely join us here in track three in the thick of it um i mentioned that we also do have resume review going on 1300 to 1500 we have three resume reviewers and uh it's going to be the first time we're doing this on discord so please be patient with us as we as we work with that um also realize that you can go into career general and look at and just ask questions

there'll be several of us who will be in there and happy to point you in the direction of you know do i need to have a college degree to go into cyber security or anything like that a lot of some new questions have been popping in and um i'm being told that i might have chance to answer one or two questions okay

okay so we're going to approach this one and look at this is a an overall dilemma within the cyber security community and one that everyone has a different opinion because they operate from different employment cycles or not employment perspectives so rachel i'm going to ask you and i know that lisa will more than likely because she doesn't work in the federal contract space might have a slightly different answer so we're having a lot of people ask do they need to have a college degree to get into cyber security and is it possible to break into the industry without going to college so rachel from your perspective what is your answer i think as an industry overall we're

seeing a shift in the education where before it was a non-negotiable you had to have the paper in order to get that interview what we're seeing now i mean i think you can look at across all planes that there's those relatable skills and relevant experience that are going to be transferable so most of our most if not all of our job descriptions say bachelor's degree or related experience um so we really are looking for that experience you you can't put a price on that when someone comes with that knowledge they know how to do things 100 outside of you know medicine or law or things like that that definitely require that certain level of education

um i think again and i don't i think this was happening even pre-covet there's really just been a change in the appetite and the way things are done where we're realizing some of those skills are better obtained through the school of hard knocks so absolutely 100 not a requirement it is going to be something that we're going to look for um as there are great things that come along with it but we equally recognize that there is talent and skills that come outside of the the formal education process now rachel i'm i'm going to put you on the spot for that for just a moment if you're looking for a job that is with a government contractor or for

an agency do we still have the requirement for those jobs that you have a college degree it varies so we're going to have some that do it just depends on that the requirements of those contracts so um most of them though we're really seeing that that shift where we're realizing there's different things that are coming up so i would say it's there's gonna be a smaller percentage that are gonna have a you know steadfast yes has to be where we're seeing the larger majority is starting to move to that related skills and lisa what are you seeing i think rachel's right that's what i'm seeing too um it was college degree absolutely had to have a degree

but i've had conversations with um our ith our managers and saying you know what they didn't go to school they were already working on their computers they're you know already doing that um the hard knocks they were already working in the industry and did they focus on getting certifications instead of a a college education and that's what we really need we need um up to date i t people that are that are current i mean those individuals may not have ever gone to college or maybe they tried and they just weren't college ready um so yeah i think we're starting to open the doors a little bit wider we're going back to um not not education we rather have

hands-on experience than the degree and i think we're gonna see more of that that sounds great so one thing that we should then address is to make sure that if you do have a home lab that you put that on your resume if you do are if you're part of a competition like any of the ctfs today it's not necessarily we need to know that you want a black badge we need to know that you did compete in the competition and how many of the competitions you did and what's interesting when we look at competitions a lot of people go into the competition they play it and then they go have a beer and do high fives

take a few moments after any competition and write down in a journal or a notepad or something and say okay this is what the challenge was this was the time frame this was the resources i have these are the things um that we will do you know in the competition were you the leader were you the follower what kind of relationships did you build during that time and then use those whenever you go into an interview because you may not have the experience the work experience to say that you knew how to do this but i want to know that um you have seen this situation and a lot of people don't look at competitions as work

experience but we're talking about a short time frame an urgent need people you've never worked with before and you have a goal to accomplish within a six to eight hour period if that doesn't sound like work experience i don't know what does so yeah there's that but be sure you're listing your competitions on your resume your home labs any of your community experience that you've done if you've set up a sock or a knock for a competition if or for a conference you know definitely know that but be sure you know how to present that in business terms not necessarily that you know i got the black badge at defcon that's not going to mean much to a

recruiter you need to explain what that is so um we just had another question how can a person break the experience barrier if they're just starting out in it for an entry level mid-level jobs i think i just covered that by saying you know you're going to have the work experience but what are some of the other things that you're doing in the community are you doing any hacker boxes are you there are so many online competitions that you can be part of um tons of nonprofits need a lot of it support and help you can offer to be a volunteer so there are many different ways that you can build that experience but it is also as lisa was saying

earlier your network you know it's um really important to make sure that you leverage your network to make sure that you're understanding the needs that they know about and that they can share with you and with that i know we have a few more questions but what i'm going to do is i'm going to jump into the career channel later and answer those questions because rachel would like to get back to her vacation and i know lisa would like to get back to her day and and i know that i've got a few people who would love me to review their resume so lisa thank you so much for joining us for your first recruiter panel i think

you did a great job thank you and lisa lisa is from cps energy be sure to connect with her on linkedin check out their positions and rachel thank you for joining us from alabama we really appreciate you taking time from your uh your vacation to be with us rachel is with centurylink definitely look at their jobs and definitely connect with rachel on linkedin so any last words lisa rachel you want to share thank you all so much for just the time on a saturday it's definitely been a lot of fun definitely it's always fun to share and i look forward to connecting with you all soon sounds great lisa thank you thank you for allowing me to join this panel

and just one thought i always tell everyone if you don't get this job that's because there's another job waiting for you right that's and it's true and it always happens so keep plugging along um and you'll land the job by your networking continuing education and remember knowledge is power thank you have a great saturday wonderful well thank you everyone this is kathleen smith chief outreach officer for clearjobs.net and cybersec jobs.com we're so thankful to be able to curate this career track again for b-side san antonio come check us out in our cybersec jobs channel come in for resume review this afternoon 1300 to 1500 and we do have a virtual job fair on august 11th focused on san antonio

take care bye-bye thank you kathleen

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