Breaking Through the Boundaries of Cyber Security Job Search Challenges

besides DC would like to thank all of our sponsors and a special thank you to all of our speakers volunteers and organizers thank you everyone for staying to the last talk of BCC and I really appreciate everyone's frustration with my presentation of course it waited until the last presentation that I'm giving this year to have my windows decided to go something different my name is Kathleen Smith I am the chief marketing officer of two job boards one is clear jobs net and the other is cyber sex jobs calm and I am most known in the community as someone who helps create the career tracks and hiring villages and such within the community to be able

to help people with their overall job search so what I noticed within the job search community is that a lot of people are having a lot of challenges and there's been a lot of ranting about how awful companies are and how bad recruiters are so I always go back to the data and the data really is what is happening on the job seekers side as far as trying to find a new job so we actually asked that question and a variety of surveys I also noticed in the community that there were several people who were volunteering in the community and they were actually advancing in their careers so they would start as someone at a reg desk or folding

t-shirts and the next year I would see them at a conference and they were actually the registration lead or I would see them advancing on to handling sponsorship where they were handling something that was much more management oriented and we were finding that those same people were also having parallel development in their own workplace so we felt that there's a lot of things that are being gathered and gained by volunteering in the community so we also did another study about hey what do people who are volunteering in the community really learn how do they use that how do they engage their employer and what is it really all about so that is what this talk is about we

talked about the employer side this morning and this afternoon we're going to talk about it from the job search standpoint and of course things are just going to be that way today so one of the questions that we asked was do you know how to find a job and of course a lot of people are not going to answer that they do know that they don't know how to find a job we don't like to admit that we don't know how to do something so I really think that this is underrepresented in the community we asked what were some of the top three ways that people found a job number one was ask friends ok now let's look at

that from a data set if you were trying to find a job and you constantly asked your same group of friends what kind of results are you going to get you're not going to get much of a difference in that result that is actually the definition of insanity when you keep doing something and you expect a different result so asking your friends is great but you need to be expanding your group of friends second was they would search for companies they know at this moment right now can you name at least 3 companies in your mind that you would want to apply for apply to can you think of them off the top of your head

so if you're just going by those companies that you know rather than spending the time researching the companies that are out there they're going higher skill set you again are narrowing your opportunities for finding a job and third with searching online job postings but what's fascinating is that many people do not realize that there are several different places that companies post their jobs maybe in LinkedIn maybe indeed maybe a job board and what's fascinating is that we're so good at finding different resources to pick locks or be able to you know win the CTF but is finding all of the various different resources that could help us in an overall job search we're not so good at that

so we asked what were some of the top reported ways that employers find candidates so we can find sort of that intersection between what people are doing to find a job and the way employers are trying to find their candidates so the number one way that companies are finding their candidates is through career sites and that is their own career page on their own site that is where they're going to post all their jobs if you've if they created an area where you can create a profile that's where they're going to look first the next is going to be job boards when you look at overall studies of the tools that companies use for finding their

candidates number two is always going to be job boards number three and this sometimes flips back and forth referrals are sometimes number one there's sometimes three referrals does everyone know what a referral system is yes No okay so you may have heard in the industry if I refer my friend into a job and they get hired for a job they actually get a bonus so this is what's interesting is a lot of people go that actually sounds like it's sort of you know unethical it sounds like something that you know there's someone's getting a kickback okay look at it differently look at from the standpoint that a company is trying to find really great talent and what they're doing is they're

making sure that the people who work inside their company the people who know the kind of work that they are doing that understand the culture of that company are the ones finding those people who might come in and work for that company because you are saving the recruiting staff and the talent acquisition staff time and money because you are pre-screening those people as far as their overall skills and if they're going to fit within the culture so it is actually one of the most effective and efficient ways for companies to find jobs so what does that mean for you you need to know people who are working in various different companies who can actually refer you in

do you know the employer is that your friends workout are they companies that you might want to go work out you need to start finding out who works at which companies and do they like working there and can they refer you in and is there a referral program within that company finally social media it's interesting social media around 10-15 years but it's now starting to creep up in a way that people are finding their talent a lot of the recruiters that we have been working with here who have been doing resume reviewing and career coaching have really said that they have reached down on social media if someone says that they're having a difficult time finding

a job they actually do reach out to that person and provide them with assistance and support a lot of people who have been exhibiting at this conference actually have hired people off of social media so what I would say to you on that are you connecting with recruiters on social media the other aspect is are you watching what you're saying on social media because remember it's going to stay there and someone is actually going to look at what you're posting on social media before they contact you for a job I'm not one that would talk about HR law but there are several online reputation reports that are out there and they constantly ask the question does a

recruiter check out social media before they call a candidate for an interview and they say yes they do so what are some of the top ways that job seekers from this survey were finding jobs so one was networking which is great but they not really quite sure you know who are they networking with it's probably that same small group of friends social media but are you following the companies that you want to go work for are you keeping an eye on them referrals this is really low I mean 60 percent of the community is using referrals when it's actually the most effective and efficient way for companies to be able to hire people and the fourth job boards making sure that

when you're looking at a job board that it is not just one that you're looking at because you have to realize that a company has to pay to provide their jobs on a job board so you're going to want to have four or five different job boards in your resource toolkit and it's fascinating because a lot of people think well I'm I'm just on this one well not all the jobs are going to be posted they're not all the companies that you're interested in are going to be there so you really need to make sure that you're including several of them within your toolkit what was fascinating was we sort of asked what are your your

job search problems what are your challenges that you're running into and interesting is that people are not finding the companies that are going to hire for their specific skill set and this is going to take something on your part to do a lot of research just because you know a company sponsored a happy hour or they gave away really great t-shirts at the conference it's not necessarily an indication that they're the same kind of company that's going to be able to hire for your skill set and sometimes this also might require that you do some reverse education we do reverse engineering in this community but doing some reverse education if a recruiter reaches out to

you and starts talking about a specific technology but you understand that they may not fully comprehend it please don't be like most of the community and ridicule them take a moment and ask them do they do do they understand the technology that they're talking about most of the recruiters I work with are very happy to have you provide them the education like look I don't think you're using this in the right way and you're confusing Java with JavaScript and please don't do that because that's insulting everybody what's fascinating is a lot of people are frustrated with their career because they haven't spent the time understanding what is the next step in their career I can't tell you

how many times people will reach out to me and go like I just I just need a job I'm like okay wait a minute time out what do you want it to next well I like this but I wanted to know you know you you put into your GPS system the address of where you're going next why are you not putting an address on where you want to go next for your career that is not the recruiters job that is your job that is your job to present to them done ten years of this three years of this I really like doing this and this is where I see myself next so you really need to focus on where you want to go

next in your career and a lot of times people are overlooking the opportunities that are right there in front of them specifically if you're at a company right now and you really like the company it's really short on traffic there are other things you can do you need to be saying is there somewhere else in the company I can go yes I may have been doing pen testing or may been doing crypto or something but there's something else I want to do with this company I like the people I work with and that is on you to create that next step that is not the job of your manager and that is not the job of a recruiter

it's a recruiters job to educate you on the opportunities at their company and how it is the next step in your career but you need to find out okay I eventually want to get two or three down years down the road I want to do this what is the next step and if you don't know what that next step is that's where you find a mentor that's where you talk to a recruiter and you ask them I want to get to this next step in my career do you have that opportunity or do you know of a company that will have that opportunity and finally a lot of people don't know the recruiters in the

community to connect with there are lots of really great recruiters that were here at the con all weekend but did you network with them usually we see a recruiter in a room when we run for the door rather than saying this is somebody who can actually help me with my career and it's fascinating to me that we have people who will give us recommendations on travel or a great sushi restaurant or you know where to go on vacation but there's one thing that's really important to our day-to-day life we don't have a network of people who can recommend the next step can recommend companies why are we not networking with recruiters there are plenty of them out

there that want to talk to us if there's a recruiter in the room do you want to raise your hand I knew there was one so I told you I wouldn't call you out but yeah I lied so the other thing is understanding the tools that you have a lot of us sort of throw a bunch of things onto a resume and believe that that is that's going to do it that's going to be the spaghetti against the wall that's going to stick and we're going to get the job that we want sorry that's not the way it is anymore you really need to make sure that your resume is an advertisement for you it is

not giving you the job it is getting you the phone call and please whoever is in the community telling you to put a grid in the middle of your resume would you please tell them to stop because you actually do not know how that resume is going to be read it is going to be read on a computer but you don't know the user interface you do not know the applicant tracking system and you do not know if they're reading it on a desktop or if they're reading it on their mobile phone you need to keep it as simple as possible I can't tell you how many resumes we saw for resume review for the

last two days and they all looked really pretty you don't need a pretty resume you need a content-rich resume that tells your skills and tells the value that you are going to bring to the company it is not a cut and paste of your last 10 jobs it is the value and difference that you made at that company and what you did to save the money to bring the project in on time the conflict resolution you need to present that in a business sense and a lot of us are really big on this long flowing paragraph at the beginning please stop a recruiter is not they're going to get tired by sentence to have five

objectives at the top of your resume the first three are going to be those objectives those skills that you do really well and that you want to continue doing please don't put something in a skill set that says is it that is something you don't want to do please don't continue going down the route of I'm really good at axe skill and people keep hiring me for that but I keep doing it don't do it put in the skills that you really enjoy doing and that you're going to be successful for the last two bullet points really want you to customize those to the job that you're applying for because that is where you're really going to start

telling them these are the things I'm going to do for your company with my specific skills a lot of the resumes that I see have bold underline italics a lot of fancy stuff in the first two inches realize that most recruiters are going to be reviewing your resume and a preview pane they're not going to look at the entire resume they're going to look at the top two inches if those two top two inches are as filled with bold and italic and underline and how they can get in touch with you you've you've missed the opportunity to tell them all of the great skills that you're going to bring name email address maybe cell phone number and then go

right into the top skills so that you're seen in that preview screen understand that you are going to have to talk about yourself in many different ways and your agate you've already agonized over putting together a resume but you're going to have to talk about yourself on LinkedIn you're going to have to talk about yourself in an application so you should have other ready-made content available rather than going through that writer's block every time you have to fill out an application you don't know how to talk about yourself and finally as I said before be careful about your social media I I've had to coach a lot of people on the fact that they're they're ranting about one thing or

another there's enough things out there in the world to rant about but that is also showing a different side of you that you really don't want the recruiters or the HR people looking at so make sure that what you're putting out there is in a positive light if you want to do something negative make sure that you're finding a private channel that you can share that on in this community we have many different kinds of people who help with talent acquisition most are the direct recruiters and these are the recruiters who actually sit at the company are paid by the company their job is to make sure that they're finding the right talent to work at that team to make sure that

they're meeting their overall business objectives then we have the headhunters and the staffing firms and you have to realize that the headhunters and staffing firms have a different objective they are not necessarily looking to make sure that the culture fit is there and the business objective is being met they're there so that they can get their commission because they put a button a seat there are also really great recruiters in the community that are part of staffing firms but overall you need to make sure that when you're talking to someone you ask who do they work for which company do they work for what kind of recruiter are they and how are they incentivized to make sure

you're in that spot and you will find that there's a big difference between those who actually work for the company and those who are working for a staffing firm or headhunter so I just went over with you know what the different changes are or the different types this goes back to we don't have a network of recruiters and I'm really surprised if someone was asked do you know can anyone in the room say they know more than that one recruiter that's in the room okay Nicole can a few people and it's it's fascinating that people don't keep in touch we keep in touch with our family we keep in touch with our friends but we

don't keep in touch with recruiters who actually can make a difference in our career and our day to day job and how do you network with these recruiters most often and not you'll meet them either here at a con or if somebody calls you for an interview and it doesn't quite work out that you're going to move to the next step but you actually had a really great conversation with them continue networking with them ask them if you can connect with them on LinkedIn or a social media ask them if you check back with them on a regular basis every six months send set yourself a calendar notice to connect with your recruiters hi are you doing happy

holidays I just finished this certification and that certification this is kind of project I'm working on what are you working on and that's about it it's not going to take more than a half hour but what it's going to mean is that that next time you need your resume reviewed the next time you need a little coaching through a typical work situation or you're thinking about making a jump you already have five to seven people who are in your corner five to seven people who can actually say okay this person might be ready for this position but you also have to understand that recruiters do change jobs and they may have interviewed you for one come

one position in one company and all of a sudden they've gone to a new company and you're the perfect fit but they don't know if you're interested they don't know any connection details but they may have that great job for you also recruiters network with other recruiters 90 percent of the recruiters that I work with take the time to make sure that if they found someone who is a great candidate who knocked at all the park but the hiring manager didn't really like them or it didn't quite fit for there they make sure they share that resume with their network of recruiters because you have invested in that relationship with the recruiter that recruiter is going to be an advocate for

you and you don't want to miss out on that opportunity I'm asked time and time and time again I have all these certifications in education why can't I get a job and I'm going to tell you it's experience of our education I appreciate that we have some really great universities in this area that have some really great programs out there but by and large it's experience over education and the first thing you're going to say to me is I don't know how to get it you know experience your home lab are you building something at home are you satisfying your curiosity on how to set up a knock by building one at home are you doing things to make sure that

you're constantly keeping sharp with your skills competitions how many of you in the room have been part of any competition in the last month great how many of you do more than six or seven competitions a year okay now have you ever considered that a competition is work experience it is a short-term goal it is working with people you've never worked with before you have an adversary or a challenge you've never seen before and you have a deadline what does that sound like it sounds like crisis management at any employer so why are you not taking your competitions and creating them to be used as experience the number one thing that I recommend with this is any time you come out of a

competition I know you want a high five I know you want to go get a beer go write down what happened at the competition what was the challenge what were the parameters who dropped the ball who picked up the ball who did you work with and what did you fail at and what did you learn because there's always going to be that question in an interview that's going to say tell me something you failed that and you learned it was like not one of us is going to say well back at my other job you know the NOC fell down well you know fell apart while I was no you don't want to say that you want to say well it was

part of this competition and I didn't do this and I learned something be sure that you're keeping track of the competitions that you're part of because there are many recruiters who are actually looking at competitions as a way of finding new talent but most importantly when you're at a competition if you enjoyed working with somebody why aren't you networking with them yes it's really great that you know their Twitter handle but connect with them on LinkedIn ask them where they work ask them if they like working there and if they're hiring and if they would refer you in if you've had this really great experience and you're not leveraging it to support your career you have just

thrown all that experience out the door a lot of people are overlooking military reserves there are several people I know in the community who have leveraged this really well so looking at the military reserves is a way to say you have a two to three year commitment you go in and you work for a weekend a month and then once a year for several about two or three weeks but you're getting real life work experience and if you're interested to getting into the security cleared market you can also be on a track to get your security clearance approval so this is a great way yes you have to make a two or three-year commitment but if you're

really looking for the experience on some of the challenging issues one thing is to look at military reserves I'm fascinated that a lot of people are not willing to look at new industries at different levels so I'll talk to someone who's been in the services industry for a long time and they'll be you know contacted by health care finance energy any of these areas which is growing with opportunities and it's the Wild West because a lot of people have not been in that industry to set regulations or standards a lot more growing opportunities for your career if you go into a new industry and say you know what I may know a lot more but I'm going

to take that Junior position because it's going to give me an opportunity to understand what's going on in this industry what's going on in this company and I can create a better path and finally working on your technical and non-technical skills it is really great to have all of the certifications and it's really great to be able to say that you know how to work crypto or something like that but it's also just as important to work on your non-technical skills communication presentation writing I know it sounds like boring stuff but we are being asked more and more in the security community to explain why things are risky we're being asked to explain how to mitigate risk

but we're also needing to work on our non-technical skills through the interviews I can't tell you how many times people have come up to me and say I get to this one specific stage then the interviewing process and I freeze take the time to practice take the time if you know that the technical interview is coming up today at 3:00 be sure you're working with your buds at six o'clock eight o'clock and 9 o'clock that morning to go through technical interviews so that you know how to answer those questions that you warm up same thing if you're going in for a face-to-face interview if you tend to freeze up in social situations really take the time to prepare check out your

wardrobe the day before maybe do a go map where you're going to go drive figure out the traffic patterns figure out if you're going to run into some congestion so that you're not nervous going into that interview and then make sure that one or two people can work with you that morning before you go in and just get you warmed up talking about yourself talking through scenarios getting you comfortable and finding specific topics that you can talk about without getting nervous we were talking about this earlier about you know video games or sports or something making sure that you have that you know sort of chat fodder in your head because all of us get nervous thinking that they're going

to ask us one specific set of questions they want to get to know you they want to get to know what drives you what is your passion so maybe run through some of those questions ahead of time and have some topics that you can talk about rather than getting nervous and freezing up in the interview another way that I really sort of did some data on how people were advancing in their careers is doing a survey on community volunteering and people who were volunteering in the community a lot and asking them how that helped them with their overall career so one way was volunteering organizing like this conference the speaker Wranglers it's a really great way to work on

different skills but it's also a really great way to get work experience that you talked about in your interviews and on your resumes but it's also a way to expand your network because you're getting mixed in with another group of people who are in the commune who are technically as skilled as you are and they work for different companies that you may not have heard of I went over competing definitely if you're you're into competitions really look at keeping a log of all of the different competitions that you've been part of and all of the different ways that that has benefit your technical skill development presenting a lot of people think that you know presenters

are hand-picked and they're not in this community which is absolutely fabulous all of us when we're thinking about presenting at a conference have to think about the timeline of when the conference is going on and when the call of proposals is available that is talking about you know organizing and planning it's also when you go in and fill out the call for proposals you have to do a short abstract a long abstract and the key takeaways these are things that can actually help you learn how to write better learn how to convey your ideas and thoughts in writing to other people so that they can understand what you're presenting we're not given much opportunity to work on our written

skills within the workplace so submitting it as part of a proposal is a really great way to start working on those skills most conferences if they don't accept your proposal they're more than happy to give you feedback on why you didn't get accepted and many of them will have two rounds of acceptances two rounds of deadlines if you didn't make it for the first but you got feedback and you were able to incorporate that back into your proposal you then send it in more than likely you're going to be selected but it's getting your peers to give you feedback on your writing are you truly conveying the idea is that you should be conveying to the new audience

clips when we did the survey on community volunteering and I want you to understand that you don't have to put in like hours and hours of work most of the volunteers only gave about eight hours of their time each month and what's fascinating is a lot of us will like well you know that's too much time we're talking about your career we're talking about your next job opportunity you might want to give up that TV show you might want to give up just one thing and sliding in volunteering a different way the other thing is a lot of people don't understand that 90 percent of the organizing for a conference is done online and phone calls so it's not like

you have to drive somewhere and meet it is you just have to log into slack once or twice a week and then you have to be on an uber conference that's it yes you have to be here the day of or the day before but that doesn't mean you know the volunteering is primarily remote primarily all online and phone calls when we did a survey of what the non-technical skills were it was really fascinating it was teamwork organization planning and communication as everyone heard of LinkedIn yeah nope and what's fascinating is that they put out a LinkedIn talents or a study every year and they always list what are the top non-technical or soft skills that

employers are looking for those are them organization planning communication so if you're getting those non-technical skills and volunteering and is the top four things and non-technical skills that employers are looking for you have a ready-made way of gaining those we went a little bit deeper and really sort of you know okay where these top or were they really top and yes 81% teamwork so many times when we're at work we're told to work with two or three people and it's more getting over the I don't want to work with that person again versus come into a conference environment like this and we're creating new learning patterns because we're interacting with people that we don't see on a day-to-day

regular basis and it really challenges us to learn better skills I'm playing nicely in the sandbox but communication we can all think about the conversations that we have with our family members our friends and in the workplace conversations usually go down the exact same pattern every single time we are not challenged with being able to explain to someone what we really mean in communication and that requires a lot of exercise so that is where sometimes it can be really draining within volunteering work because you're explaining yourself all the time but at least you're learning those new neural pathways on how to communicate with someone who is not from your same workplace or your family ninety-five

percent of the participants said that volunteering improved their networking and social skills so we talked about networking as being a number one way of being able to find a job but we need to constantly be expanding and working on our network going into a conference going into an organization within your community is a really great way to build your network and I'm not talking about you're going from 10 people to 200 overnight we're talking about one or two people and then maybe the next time one or two people more I've been in the community eight years and this is probably the first con I've been out that I knew more than three people and it was really nice so this is something

you're going to have to give yourself time with it is not like pouring water and you have an instant Network it is something that you're going to have to work on and social skills we in the community are not really good at our social skills a lot of us are introverts that's me I'll have my downtime later but we really need to work on our social skills and having a very safe haven within the cons is a great way to work on the social skills and if you thought that you didn't have the eight hours a day or eight hours a month to be able to contribute most of the people 41% said they got all of

these same benefits just being volunteering that day of the con they expanded their networks they worked on their non-technical skills they were able to gain experience so don't think that you need to do this all the time maybe pick two or three Khan's next year that you're going to answer the call of volunteers and start that process going we did really delve into stress from volunteering I don't know if you saw the people in the staff shirts I don't think that they really looked like they were having a great time they were a little stressed a lot of the stress we found was anxiety depression physical stress neck back pain you know we're not really

good at taking care of ourselves but the bottom was fascinating ninety-eight percent said that they found volunteering fulfilling and it is not the job of your employer or a recruiter or me or your parents to make sure that you're fulfilled in your job that's your job so finding a place that you can get fulfillment without looking to someone else to provide it to you a lot of people think I'm you know I'm just not happy in my job I'm sorry you're not supposed to be happy you're supposed to be you know contributing you're you know yes it's great some of us are really happy with our jobs but find someplace else that you can get

fulfillment if you're thinking you're going to get it just at your job then you have some other bigger questions to look at you really need to find what do you want to do with your life not constantly be blaming your employer because you're not happy what I loved is this state excuse me statistic 94% of the respondents felt that they had a positive impact on the industry okay we are in an industry that talks about breaches attacks we talk about suicide depression burnout we talk about everything that is negative out there there's no other industry I know that can say that volunteering is having a positive impact on the overall industry so if you want to make a

difference a lot of us do want to make a difference you can say I made a difference because I volunteered I got out of my shell I got into the community and I actually connected with at least one other person and that one other person was the person that actually said hey my company is hiring I think you'd be a great fit and then you kept volunteering and you kept learning more skills but realize that just you showing up and being at a conference or an organization you're having an overall positive impact on the community we also asked how did they engage their employers and this is something you can take back to your employer and say you

know people who volunteer in the community they are supported by their employer to do for doing community volunteering because the employers saw that this was a way to build the non technical skills this is a way for you to be an employer brand advocate for the company and it was also because they had that conversation with their employer about volunteering and how important it was to them your employer is not a mind-reader they are not going to know what you do on the weekends why you have these calls you need to go to them and say I like to volunteer I'm giving back in my community which is going to tell them wow this person is taking

initiative this person actually has leadership ability but I volunteer in the community because it makes a difference I expand my network I'm learning on my skills and then you have to start the conversation of okay are you going to be able to support me in my volunteering sometimes they'll have the money in the budget to do sometimes they won't if they don't you might want to take the survey to them and say look employers in the community are supporting people who are volunteering you can also take this statistic to them 60% of the people in the survey said they stayed with their current employer because the employer was supporting their volunteering efforts and the way they were supporting

their volunteer efforts was a wide breadth of different ways the first was paid time off to volunteering at the conference or organization if they were presenting sometimes they paid for their airfare in their hotel if they were part of an organizing committee for a specific conference they also provided sponsorship but this is the communication you have to have with your management this is what you have to go to your HR department in your training department and say I think this is a value to me in my career development and I would like to see your support on this if they don't you can tell them this that over 97 percent of people said they would move to a new company that did

support their volunteering efforts so it is fascinating people are taking the time to research who supports volunteering efforts there are a lot of companies that some that are in the community can name six or seven but I don't want to you know give special preference but they already figured this out there are a lot of companies in our community that pay sponsorship pay for travel pay for travel to be able to present and it's the conversation that you need to start having with your management is this something that you can provide me if not when can we start talking about it if not you might want to start talking to other companies that do support volunteering but be sure

you're keeping the these questions in your overall interview process you know don't just ask about the benefits and do they pay for training and do they have good vacation leave what do you guys do in the community do you show up in the community do you support people being in the community that is going to tell you the kind of overall company culture and if that is some kind of company you want to go to or if you're just going to be an automat on within that company if you would like to find this survey it is on our SlideShare account slideshare.net on the cyber SEC Jobs comm page so as some of you probably saw I have these two Star

Wars Pez dispensers and I asked lost knowledge what was the best way to distribute these and his answer so you can blame him is one of these goes to the two most interesting questions I am asked that that is pertain to my presentation ready go yes

you hire a headhunter who works for you or like what what what we change it your if you're at that point you're everywhere you wanna make that step good question so I would only go to a headhunter if you knew someone else who had used them and you are able to follow their track record of what other people they place and headhunters tend to be on retainer by a company and so they're really looking for those top people like the top two or three positions and it sounds like you're more asking for a question that's more management upper management going there before so that is where I like to say virtual mentorship and we talk about mentorship a lot in

the community and finding the right mentors is it's very interesting but if you can find people who have the job that you want in three or four years start connecting with them start seeing where they speaking start you know they'll talk about what they're reading and you're sort of shadowing them not stalking shadowing them and every now and then maybe reach out to them and ask them for their advice now I can't tell you how many times people reach out to me and then the question is do you have a job for me I'm like I don't know who you are what you do what you want to do anything like that so be very specific

with the question not how do I get to the next stage of my career more of you know being very very specific so that they can hand you know people want to help other people it's just when they're these big on you know these open-ended questions that you know can be answered in a dissertation have very very specific questions and then maybe if they're like I can't answer that well can I have answer this other question again people want to help you but they can't answer you know what am I going to do with my life kind of questions makes sense okay oh boy now we've got yeah bring them okay I guess I broke the rules I was supposed

to wait so yeah okay we got one down I know so I meet people at conferences and things like that every so often but it's hard I feel it I find it hard to you know get in touch with these people and start the process of networking do you have any tips on lowering lowering the barrier to entry well Nicole is sharing with you her name badge I'm gonna I'm gonna hold back on if you want or not I'm going to do the other two questions and then between the three of you you can fight it out we'll have the battle you know cage battle networking is hard it's it's getting out of your comfort

zone I would say at each conference each event your goal is one person you will talk to several people but your goal is one person and don't run into the conference like you're my one person wait yeah people are gonna be running out of the doors take the time throughout the day if there's one person that you keep seeing and you keep having conversations with by the third conversation you've had with someone that is the time to say can we connect can we follow on Twitter can we connect with LinkedIn and some people will sit there and say you know I'm I'm uncomfortable with that others will probably have a fake email address that they give you which is fine but

realize don't set your goal to have ten new friends by the end of besides DC be sure you have just one person but I would say have it be two people have it be one person that you met in the conference and one person you met at the exhibit tables how many of you you don't have to raise your hand how many of you went to the exhibit tables just to pick up schwag okay how many of you actually had a good conversation with an exhibitor and asked to connect with them okay goldstar wish I had more Pez to give out that's that's it one person from an exhibit table and one person who is a participant that

should be your goal is that helpful okay okay this young lady's next that microphone so when you're in an organization you like working there and you you're not necessarily looking to be promoted but let's say your own Department is going through a lot of change and you are looking at another department thinking wow I really want to get over there and you've got the skill set and you're trying you're networking with people there but nothing's really coming of it like what are some tips or things that you can do to better market yourself internally if you already like the company you're at so the best way to create your brand within your own company is to be the person that takes

on the most difficult project that no one else wants to take on I mean it's putting yourself out there and saying you know no one wants to take that one project I'll be on it but if there's not that I would say show yourself that you have leadership and you have the community the company's interests at heart creating a tuk-tuk brown-bag creating some way that you're creating community within your organization because if they see that you're pulling together people from different departments rather than trying to play one department over another they're seeing you as a leader and teamwork versus someone who's just going to stay in their swimlane and that's going to be a way to create your

your identity the gentleman over here you mentioned home lab how would you present that on a resume or is that in a different context so home labs definitely come up through a conversation they're definitely something that you want to create the talking points so that you present it in your phone interview is something that you put you constantly talk about throughout the interview it is also something that I wouldn't put it in the bullet points but I would definitely put it at the bottom of the resume as far as community interests so that's where you would list your various different volunteer opportunities and when when you list your volunteering just list the conference unless you're part of the

board and you want to say board member a lot of times people will list out you know I folded 600 t-shirts and I did this and I did that so please don't do that just list the conference that you do so I would put it there have had home lab have built such and such things like that any other questions I was given okay I was told five minutes which I know I'm down to three minutes okay yeah yeah yet my current company I've been there 15 years and I'm about a decade away from retirement but I've wound up being gone into a technical track that's not where I planned on being the first place I'm a

senior web developer and I've said sent a email to my boss and my boss's boss saying that I want to get into cyber SEC and tell them about the volunteering stuff I'm doing like this con that I'm working on a paper for another con next year and stuff like that does this sound like I'm going in the right direction or it sound it it does sound like you're going in the right direction I think that I would challenge yourself more in the volunteering community in getting more of a leadership job because if you're trying if you have 15 years experience out of specific company you should be looked at more from a senior manager leader role so you need to show

in the community that you've had a leadership role that you've handled the workforce issues that you've handled the budgeting you've handled all of those issues and you can go to them and say I already have the leadership experience okay they're going to throw me off stage the networking question one sorry to call sorry sorry so this is my last presentation of 2019 thank you so much for making it wonderful [Applause]