Challenged by Your Job Search? So Are We All! Learn Key Job Search Tips!

volunteering in the community also helps with your career development but the other survey that we did was people what were people's challenges when they were looking for a job you know obviously people I'll see the posts all the time I can't find a job I've been unemployed for six months and I'm like wait a minute it's not that hard let's see what's out there in the community so one of the first things that we saw technical difficulty one of the first things that we saw in the community were that more than 45% of the people in the community didn't know how to find a job I think this is an under-representation given how many tweets they see out there

and then how many angst messages I see on slack in social media that you know the stupid recruiter won't get back to me or you know someone you know I got lost in the black hole or you know I can't find a job I'm like I might not be using the right tools so we also asked what were some of the top ways that people were looking for a job and it was great to see that you know a lot of people asked their friends because when you look at studies that come from companies as far as how they find people it is always through referral referral is the number one way that you're going

to find a job but that relies on your network and if your network has only ten people and those same ten people keep referring you to certain jobs guess whose problem that is that's your problem because you're not getting the number of referrals that you need so you need to constantly be going out there and looking for new network connections to be able to help your you know job search the other was people always went to the companies that they know and that's interesting because I was talking to some of the people in the community earlier and they're like while I keep applying to this one company and they just never respond to me and I was like

okay that is sort of you know the definition of insanity you keep going after the same thing time and time again and expecting a different result you might want to expand to the number of companies that you're going to reach you know research and connect with like going and talking to each one of the sponsors here you may not like the company you may not know what they're all about you may not like the government agency that's there but give them a chance talk to them because one of the things that happens is recruiters do network with other recruiters and if you have a network of recruiters they may not have something for you but they can definitely push you

and connect you with other recruiters who might have the job that you're looking for the other which is interesting is search online postings but what I find fascinating is that a lot of people just stop at one job board or one job site maybe indeed or something like that but you have to remember that companies are paying for those job postings so they're not going to post on every single job board because it costs anywhere between three and four hundred dollars per job posting to post on a job board so when you're looking at job postings you're going to have to expand to the number of places that you're going to be searching for not just one place because I it's

interesting when people talk to me they say well yeah I looked at that one job board and I say you do know that there's several hundred of them out there you might want to look at a few others do any of these strategies sound familiar to you is anyone using all of them or just one of them how many are using all of them okay which one do you find to be the most successful for you shout out referrals okay great awesome so what's interesting is that yes networking is definitely one of the top ways that you know people are looking for a job I also found it interesting a lot of people were using

social media but when you look at data coming from recruiting marketing or from any of the recruiting sites they will tell you that they have a very very small percentage of their referrals coming through social media so the community is primarily using social media but the recruiters are not now believe me I am going out and telling my customers definitely use social media more but you have to remember if you're relying on social media to say hey I'm looking for a job it's not going to a large percentage of people who are doing the hiring it will hit people who may be able to refer you but it's not connecting you with the recruiters that

can offer you a job refers I found interesting that you know they were sort of down there low at 60% now does everyone understand employee referral programs okay really no okay you've got one side of the river saying yes the other say there I'm saying no that's great so referrals does anyone know what the referral is for a full scope Polly reverse engineer in San Antonio more than 20 grand okay so what's interesting is people like my god why am i companies spending so much money you know we're all like wow that's a waste of money okay hold on so employee referrals are you have been referred into a company by someone who works at that company and

what's interesting is that one of the biggest differences as to why people don't work at a specific company is what reason culture there's not a good culture fit so if you go into a company and you're not a good culture fit you're going to be unhappy and the company is going to be happy but if you refer it in by an employee they know that you're going to fit within the culture then they're also going to know that you have the skills that you say that you're going to help so they have already identified the fact that you're technically a bit able and that you're also going to fit within the culture of the company so then what

they're going to be able to do is refer you in you will jump ahead of the line if absolutely everyone who is applied for that job and you will get through the hiring process much faster but this then goes back to your network how big is your network so that you can be referred in to somebody and the reason why that bonus is so high is because when you think about it some of whom is not on the recruiting or HR Payroll has done the verification someone who is in another cost center has done the verification that you're a right fit and that you have the technology so you've actually saved them not having to post a

job not having to pay a recruiter salary not having to go through all of the hiring steps by having that person referred in so it is more efficient and more cost effective to have an employee referral program and then job boards what's interesting is that as I said many of the recruiting studies that are out there for the last 10 to 12 years the number one way that people companies hire is through employee referrals number two is job boards so yes they may have been around since 1994 they are still place that you're going to want to go and do your ground Intel find out who's hiring what they're hiring for but also creating profiles on different job

boards so that you can expand your network to other recruiters who are doing specific job boards so we also asked some of the areas where there were trouble you know understanding the job search process and what's interesting is there is not a lot of sort of explanation about where people have specific skills and which companies are hiring from them and I think one of the reasons for this is that we call different things different things so it's really on the onus on the job seeker to do a little bit more diving deeper into all of the job postings and sort of trying to find like the flag and the job posting to see if maybe that job hosting has some of the

skills that you're looking for and I am just going to apologize for every single the security services company that's out there that the job postings are awful they are and I I wish I could change it but I can tell you it is not just in this industry it is in absolutely every industry we try very hard at our company to talk to the recruiters and explain to them to change their job postings some of them will accept it some of them won't don't get mad at the company because they have a really shitty oops I did it again that they have a really bad job posting you know sometimes it's an HR department that is not only hiring

for the admin they're also hiring for a pen tester and they have absolutely no idea what a pen tester does they just take whatever is thrown at them put it in a job posting make sure they you know complies with EEOC and then post it and then try to do this screening this is an opportunity for you to do reverse education this is the time to sort of take a breath look at the job posting when you're on when you're on the telephone interview don't grill the person have a conversation do they truly understand what this job posting is about and what's great is if you have a really good conversation with that person that person is your ambassador

inside the company they are going to be your advocate because most recruiters are going to be your advocate to get inside the company and they're going to say not only is this person have the technical skills but they're also related to me as a person they actually helped me and I think that this person is going to be able to help us in our company and really get as movie for this they're determining the next step in the career this is this is across the board in our community I can't tell you how many times I was at Circle City last weekend doing resume reviews and people were sitting down and they had you know 10 12

years experience in the specific regulated industry and they decided to they wanted to jump out of it and move someplace else know it's like timeout you have worked with financial regulations or healthcare regulations or gaming regulations for the last 12 years and you think that you need to go do something else more technically challenged challenging do you know what it's like to have experience in a regulated industry and insecurity that's gold mine so you know really understand do the research go to several of the resources that are online to decide what the next path is for you don't be like what it was reported in the Department of Labor Statistics which is pretty much anyone in information security or

information technology changes jobs every 13 months we are a revolving door in most companies because we get burned out and we don't understand what our next step is your job is to decide what your next step is in your job that is not the job of the recruiter that is not the job of a resume reviewer that is your job if you need some resources there's cyber CQ org which is part of the the NIST standards that sort of does career pathing there are plenty of articles out there on how to devise you know your next career step you have many great mentors here in the room like Nicole who can sort of talk that through

with you but at the end of the day that is your responsibility it is not a company that's going to post out something like a McDonald's menu and say okay how do you want to get to the Big Mac you know that you know you have to hurry that I figured that out all myself without any coffee hey the big one is finding the recruiters to work with and what I find interesting is that everyone puts our recruiters into one lump place they're all bad no that is like saying all hackers are bad okay not so we have to understand that there are different kinds of recruiters out there there are different kinds of staffing firms there

are different kinds of headhunters so you have to understand that there does everyone understand the difference between a staffing firm a headhunter and a direct recruiter okay only a few yeses over here so first you have an executive headhunter and I might be covering this later in the talk but it's a good point that needs to be reiterated executive headhunters there are several of them out there they are hired with a fee a retention fee to go out and find sort of your executives your sisters your you know CFOs things like that and they're the ones that are going to be cultivating you for several years we also have staffing firms there are some really great ones in our community and

there some really bad ones and you just have to understand what they're motivated by they're motivated by their funds by the fee that they get by placing you as a button a seat they are the ones that are going to say if I got a job for you and they're going to say they pulled you know CISSP out of your LinkedIn and they keep spamming it their job is to get somebody in that seat for their company for their customer and hope that you stay in there for more than six months because after six months they then get your fee get there for you which is usually between twenty and thirty percent of your salary so they

are very motivated by money not by fit and then you have direct recruiters direct recruiters are the people who actually sit in the company who actually work for the company and actually know what's going on with the company as far as you know if they're hiring up if they're changing jaw if they're changing contracts those are the people that you really want to establish a connection with because recruiters their job is to make sure that you fit within the team they want to make sure they're not having to hire for your position again in six to eight months they want to make sure that you're there for the long term there were also as I said your advocate

within the company so anytime you have a telephone interview or you're at a career event and you have a really great conversation with a recruiter do me a favor connect with them on LinkedIn or on social media and keep up to date with them because what's interesting is that we have these networks of people that help us with you know a lot picking or that they help us find a really great vacation spot or a restaurant but when we have a career and we're looking for a job we don't have a network of recruiters who can help us as well because as I said recruiters also connect with other recruiters and if they have a job if they have a candidate

that they can't put in a job they'll definitely share it within their networks I'm part of many groups on social media and they'll say hey I have this really great candidate we just can't find a really good fit forum highly recommend him or her could you know someone want to talk to them so definitely be sure that you have a network of five to six maybe even ten recruiters that you touch base with on a regular basis every six months send yourself a calendar notice and say it's time to connect with that recruiter again just send them a message hey you know I'm getting my next certification I'm just did this great big project would love to just keep in touch with

you and they'll say hey great that's that's wonderful that is how you can make sure that if you all of a sudden get that wonderful pink notice or you decide that you're no longer happy at your job please don't flame out on the job but if you decide that you want to start looking at other opportunities sort of in a quiet way you can send a message to this group of recruiters and really sort of get their feedback what's the community like what's the industry like what's the going rate all questions that you're dying to ask and you now have your recruiter group that can help you on that so do you have the right

tools it's interesting that a lot of people don't sort of package selves as far as being out on a job search they just think that their persona is enough I'm sorry it's not because your persona is not going to go through the applicant tracking system which is what you're going to be submitting to when you submit your resume okay anyone know when an ATS is well she's here to heckle me so anyway it is is aka the black hole so the applicant tracking system is the place where when you submit your resume your resume is going to go in and its first going to be read by a computer so everyone when I was looking at the

resumes last week at Circle City a lot of people had these really fancy resumes that had grids and graphics and they had bold and italics okay if you don't know what the user interface is on the computer that's reading your resume what is it going to do to all of those graphics and those grids it's gone and you know what the recruiter is going to do another gobbledygook boom you've just ended up in the black hole because you wanted to make a resume look pretty because your buds had said hey isn't this look nice sorry you don't know what the computer is on the other end that's going to be reading your resume plain simple black white no build no nothing

and please you don't need to share your address I can't believe how many resumes I saw last week that had your physical address we're in security why would you be giving your physical address to a bunch of people that you don't even know okay so your email address and your phone number please they just need to know how to get in touch with you the top two inches location location location most resumes are going to be reviewed by a preview screen so having all of that information that's bold and pretty and stuff they're just going to see that they're looking to see your skills so please name email address phone number and then a summary of your skills be

able to say the top three things that you're really good at the things that you want to do and then customize your resume with an two bullet points that are what's customizable to that specific job that you're applying for that is what's going to show up in the preview screen and that is what's going to get you the next step the other thing is you're going to be talking about yourself in many different ways online and we all are really horrible at sort of our elevator speech our promo we don't want to be seen you know salesy that's slimy we don't want to do it you are your advocate you have to be able to talk

about yourself so in addition to your resume which I know is just a painstaking process that no one likes to do not even me you also have to have some content that you talk about yourself so that if you haven't about me calm or you have any kind of website that's out there that's talking about yourself do you have a paragraph that really speaks to who you are your skills which are good at and your community involvement that's what you should have in some kind of ready-made profile information to put out there because you're also going to have that possibly in the application process you're going to have to write about yourself in a small abstract and say this is why I'm

really great for this company and do look at your social media there are many savvy recruiters out there who are scanning the social media out there before they even look at a candidate I am NOT an expert in HR law so I can't tell you if that's legal or not but I can tell you that they do do that there are reports out there that say more than 80% of the recruiters who are online who do know social media they will look at your social media before they contact you for an interview so if you're someone who has very strong opinions about certain things you might want to put that more in a private chat rather

than all over social media so we also asked who do the recruit job seekers like to really work with and I very you know heartened I see that more people like to work drunk with recruiters I think the challenge is is that we don't have enough networks out there on who the recruiters are one thing you also have to understand if a recruiter is at one company they more than likely are going to be there for a few years but then they're probably going to move on to someplace else and that's not a bad thing for you that's actually a good thing for you because they're moving on to a place with more opportunities and if you have cultivated

them and moved on to a new job they have moved on to a new job they may have a whole new wealth of opportunities that they can share with you and you've done the groundwork you've kept in touch with them so as I said you know these are the different kinds of recruiters that are out there the corporate recruiter who is the direct recruiter the person who works inside the staffing firm who is sort of their illness is to make sure they get their money because they're all paid on commission they get maybe a very small flat salary and then the rest of the money that they get to pay their bills comes through their commission so

they want you in the seats and then they had hunters who are definitely looking for the high-end sort of this is Otis and things like that I really believe that you have to have at least five to seven solid direct recruiters in your network and these are definitely people that you've talked to you've met with and they understand what your skills are and that you feel you can keep up to date with them I mean the challenge with people say they don't have time for this that is ridiculous this is maybe an hour to a month of networking with people just to make sure that you know all of a sudden if you need a job like I can't

tell you how many times people call me and they're like I need a job yesterday I'm like that's not my problem I'm sorry it's not you know if you decided to flame out on a job and you didn't do the resume building and you didn't build the recruiters I'm sorry go back and do that work and then you can come talk to me so we also learnt looked at sort of you know what are the certifications and out there and there are plenty out there I find it fascinating that we have this conversation in the industry do you get an education do you get a BA a BS or do you get the certifications I think you

need to have both that's just my personal opinion I know a lot of people in the room will have you know different opinion I was actually speaking to some folks last week who actually they had tuition reimbursement but they decided not to complete their degree and I was like why you know you're getting a free degree why are you not getting it I know that a lot of us don't like to go to school I love going to school have five degrees but that's just me and the way I was raised there are many ways that you can get your BA or a BS online you can definitely do it for free Marcus Carey you know wonderful guy he's got some

great online resources out there all free on how to get your degree and how to get certifications but if you don't have your basic degree you're sort of limiting yourself on opportunities especially in San Antonio which is such a government City that most of the government jobs be them cleared or not will have the basic requirement of having some kind of degree so if you're in that position where you don't have a degree please go ahead do what you need to do online to get it and then start doing some of the research as far as what sort of certifications you want to do the one thing that I love to point out is that this is a community that

loves to learn and when I talk to a lot of the recruiters they are fine with the fact that you know someone might not have all of the the certifications they might not have all of the technical knowledge but being able to show that you have initiative that you want to learn that you're inquisitive that is really great that is what everyone in this industry really wants they can't teach that they can't teach you to have the thirst for knowledge and being able to get out there and show that you have that thirst of knowledge is definitely something want to highlight in any of your outreach to recruiters or anytime you're in an interview is really talk about the

ways that you go out and you try to you know go for that there's that knowledge realize that especially in this industry if you want to get into the cleared community you are also going to have to go through a whole other level of certifications most of those are paid by the government if you work for them but you know realize that it is a very certification heavy industry I wish it wasn't but it is there are also many different ways to be able to get the certifications but you have to realize you know what you're interested in I mentioned earlier cyber seek org that really gives you a lot of sort of pathways and the certifications that

you're looking for a lot of students will come to me and sort of say well I need you know I want to get a job but I need the experience but I don't have the experience to get the job so the old chicken and the egg program and yes a lot of the companies that I talked to they really say hey it's great because we have specific requirements we ask for those certifications but we really want to know what you do to get out into the community and teach yourself so if you have a home lab be sure that you're talking about that in your job search and if you don't have you know if you

have your home lab in your HUD but you don't have it written down someplace you might do yourself the favor to sort of like you know did you do a barrel of cluster or what did you do or what are the different things that you do with your home lab because you're definitely going to want to talk about it in your interviews both in written written and also verbally competitions competitions have been around 20 30 years now yet a lot of people aren't looking at them as work experience so what is a competition you show up someplace you have a goal you have a shortage of time you have a shortage of resources you're working

with people you've never worked with before and you're working against Navis oh you've never worked against before that's unfamiliar that's a work experience so be sure that anytime that you're part of a competition after you've completed it after you've gotten yourself the beer and you high-fived take about 10 to 15 minutes sit off in the corner and write down what happened what the goal was what was the infrastructure that you had what did you fail at and learn because that's always going to be a question in an interview process what did you fail at and what did you learn and you really don't want to say well I failed at work and all the servers went down you want to say hey I

fail that you know this in this competition and this is what I learned you also want to you know talk about hey did you learn any of your non-technical skills did you become the leader or the follower did someone drop their pack in the middle of the competition and you had to pick it up and how did you deal with that conflict and that frustration all in that point did you like you know swear a lot or did you like okay I can process through that these are all those non-technical skills that every employer is looking for and you have a perfect microcosm to be able to share when you use those specific skills so really look

at doing as competitions as array learn skills but it is also something that you can add to your resume to your social media profile our job board you actually can list it on your profile the competitions that you're part of I know a lot of the recruiters out there are being told by their program managers I want someone who's done a DEFCON CTF I want someone who's done a wireless CTF those are the things that the program managers are starting to look for I'm looking at other opportunities in different industries because I find it fascinating that we sometimes stay within this swimlane of services and we only jump from services company to services company when in actuality our

entire sort of proficiency is something that is used in hospitals and banks and casinos and a variety of different industries so really looking at can you take your skills and go someplace else I know you know heb here has you know some phenomenal positions they're open they I can't say that I would really say look at different industries that you can if you have a skill set and you think that you can apply it someplace else I mean Jack Daniel Jack Daniel started in security at an automotive group you know he was the person who put together as sort of the computer and then the computer for two dealerships and then the computers for four dealerships and

lo and behold he taught himself all of this great stuff and now he's you know what would you call Jack our father our dad our hero our dad yeah so hi jack so we look at other industries because that might open up a whole new level of experiences for you but also sort of open up a whole new career path I was really excited when I was talking to someone last week at Circle City Khan who had been in the gaming industry for 13 years and it had some interesting challenges that he had had to overcome I can't speak about them but he interfaced with a lot of different people within the community and he was really excited

about it and I said then why are you thinking about getting out of the gaming industry when most that more than half of the states are now legalizing gaming and you have a whole different career path and he had not thought about that so look at other industries show up in the community this is a really big one as I said our community is so volunteer-driven that those were fools that we are looking for those that networking that we are looking for some of the great ways that you can do that is through volunteering and really looking at the fact that volunteering is getting us out of our swimlane this is getting us out of our shell we're all

introvert - I'm an introvert it takes me a lot to get up here but volunteering in the community is a way for us to get out and connect and start talking to people in the different places that they've worked at and the referrals that they can do this is amazing opportunities project management skills as Nicole said it's interesting when you're organizing a conference you know planning for this conference happened last year at this exact same time when they did a hot wash and they sort of said what went right what went wrong we walked around and we sort of said hey why are we in three different buildings why don't we be in one building so yeah we're in one building

but it is project management its timeline management these are all business skills that you're going to be able to take to other parts of your career as I said competing competing is a really great way to be able to say I have work experience there are things that I can bring to the table I may not have the experience that you're looking for in this particular job but I actually did that exam pentesting or that same red teaming when I was part of a competition at DEFCON or you know even here at besides presenting it is not easy getting up here I will tell you that nicole has gotten up here too it's not easy but what's interesting is that

presenting offers you a variety of opportunities the first is really getting to know your subject matter very very well you can't get up here and talk about a specific topic without being able to poke the holes and your presentation but - you also have to know that you want to talk about this six to nine months ahead of time because most of the CFPs that are out there you know I mean we're right now submitting proposals for talks next spring you have to understand timeline management when you're going to be presenting at a conference you also have to learn how to write about your what you're going to talk about it is not only writing it in a short abstract it

is also in an a long abstract it is also an outline and it is also the key takeaways from the presentation does that sound very familiar to a management memo so that is the exact same thing if you're looking at going on in your career you're going to learn have to learn how to write and how to write to people who don't know all of the technical acronyms and background that you have and you have to convey your ideas you have to convey this is the security risk this is the business opportunity or the business risk and these are the three or four things that I think we need to do to move forward you also have to be able to understand

that we all get rejected I can tell you you know of the 10 or 12 proposals that I submit only about half of them get selected and that's fine but dealing with that rejection dealing with the fact that hey I may not have conveyed my idea in the correct way that is when you go back and you ask for feedback most of the conference's other than the two largest professional conferences that are out there will give you feedback and you have to be understanding why you know you got that specific feedback you also have to understand within presenting who are you representing are you representing yourself or you're representing your company and there are pros and cons for both there's a lot of

discussion right now on Twitter about a lot of folks out on the speaking circuit but they're all paying their own way and a lot of us do pay our own way and you have to understand you know it's it's between five hundred and two thousand dollars every time we get out and speak and there aren't a lot of companies that are paying for that well the reason why they're not paying for that is that the people who are speaking have not done the time management to go to their company and actually go through the approval process you have to give them time to understand what you're going to be talking about what the audience is and how they're going to

take care of that in their budget that might mean that you plan a year in advance that you want to present at DEFCON next year or that you want to present it beside San Antonio next year you have to have your abstract done now you have to have the idea done now you then have to go into your company and say I have this technical vulnerability that I'm you know really excited about presenting it is something that I found on my own time I found out for work I want to present it at a local technical conference will you support me in doing this now they might say no because they don't understand it and that again is

where your job is to explain to them look we have 700 people who are going to be listening to my presentation it is part of talking about our identity within the community it is also a part of me helping recruit because I am telling people what a great job it is I have that I'm able to go out into the community and that person is also going to bring in employee referrals because if someone is up here presenting about their really great idea everyone in the room is going to get energized and they're going to want to come work at that company so if you're interested in presenting really look at it from different perspectives the business

perspective your career development perspective a lot of us in the community sometimes don't present under our community our company flag but you have to decide which one you're going to do cousin Titan so it is you know I've said this over and over and over again in the presentation leveraging your community there is something out there you know you're always selling remember you're always networking and you have to understand your audience there's a lot of times when I will go Las Vegas something like that and people will be having a little bit too good at the time and they didn't realize who was in the room and so understand your audience's understanding that when you're out in

the community there may be some things that you don't want your future employer to know so be sure that you're in a great state not in inebriation or swearing stripping naked on stage will blacklist you from future jobs so you know be careful don't do that we have a lot of fun in our community and I'm not saying don't have fun in the community just realize that there are going to be instances where doing shots with people may not be you know helpful to your career it's helpful to mine every now and then but hey also understand that giving out face to face as much as possible is really very helpful to again that employee referral that networking a

lot of us don't like going to new things that's me I you know I get stage fright I'm not comfortable in new audiences especially when it's 900 people I've never seen before but get out there try at least one or two new ones a year I'm not saying one or two new ones a week one or two new ones a year this you're always going to have a career you're always going to be evolving in your careers you're always going to be wanting to network so some of the things that you know came out from the survey and just sort of been wrapping up I just wanted to share some of this data just in case you work

for a company that might want to see some of this so we did ask what were some of the things that companies could do to better recruit professionals in the community and of course it's no surprise that the number one thing was to provide more remote work you know it is it has been something that this industry has wanted this community has wanted for a very very long time and slowly but surely companies are coming through with more and more remote work but realize not every company is going to have remote work you may have to do the working on-site for a long time and then build your reputation and then maybe start negotiating with your

management like you know hey I've got a hellish commute is there any chance we can you know look at maybe one or two days I work from home or something like that the other thing was making the recruiting program more a transparent and this is a challenge not only within this industry but across the board a lot of companies will really lay it out on their career site this is the process that you're going to go through Capital One does an excellent job with this so does Lockheed Martin lucky Martin will actually do chats with you so you know if you're checking out their career page and someone will chat with you and sort of describe their

process so understand that that information may be available on the website if it is not available on the website that first telephone interview you have with someone that should be one of your questions because remember you're interviewing them as much as they are interviewing you you want to ask them what is the process what are the different steps that I'm going to go through you know when am I going to do the panel interview when am I going to do the whiteboard what am I going to have my Tech interview and be sure if you're doing a Tech interview don't Google everything for the tech interview you know if you have to Linux if you if you haven't touched it

in a while you might want to go and do sort of the tutorial again because we all know when we know on it a phone call and we hear and you're you know you're you're googling the answer so please don't do that but definitely one of your questions throughout the entire process is what is the next step what should I be expecting next how long is this going to take because it's surprising sometimes that can take anywhere four to six weeks I have a colleague who went through an 18-month process for a job interview she finally got it she actually took another job in the 18 months between it but there are processes that do take some

time some of the things that are important to job seekers is definitely the pay but a close second is work-life balance so don't be afraid to ask about this in your interview you've got kids you've you know you've got school situations whether the work-life balance we're not all meant to be Chipmunks running around our hamsters running around in the wheels we are meant to also have a life outside of work so definitely ask for that and then also you know working in a good environment the stories we hear of people in their work environments is just it's just appalling so don't stay there if it's a horrible work environment your life is way too important definitely find

someplace that has a really good work-life balance but at the end it's your responsibility and is not the recruiters responsibility it is not the hiring managers responsibility what your job is so a ha moment for me about 19 years ago was the Dharma questions and I always get these wrong so you can you can read them what do you do well but hate to do what do you do well but love to do what do you not do well but love to do and what do you do not what do you not do well and not love to do it's interesting we sometimes have something that we're really really good at but we eat it but

everyone identifies us with that particular thing for me events everyone thought I was the event person and I don't like doing events it stresses me out I I get back pain I get migraines I get all of it but I do them really well my first job at well all I found they just handed me six note books on events and I just threw them in the trash and I said I'm not here to do events we've got to rework this so realize those questions for yourself and then once you do that understand that your career is your responsibility it is not mine it is not anyone else in the room you have to do the work and that's the hard

part you have to do the work so that you are not challenged by your job search if you would like to share this information with anyone if you would like to share it with your boss you know or something we do have them on our SlideShare page so we have the job search and recruiting and then we also have the community volunteering survey as well really great data there if you need to go to your boss and say look this is what the community says thank you any questions any any questions before we get ready for a recruiter panel okay well they have bill Branstetter he'll start at 10 o'clock til you resume review