Saruni Maina : BSides Nairobi Conference 2022

and our next speaker will be sarunni maina ceremony awesome so brief about ceremony siren is a developer relations executive at chipakash he's passionate about creating products and services that seamlessly adapt to customers lives welcome the purpose of my talk today is just to something that because you have actually brought up and that's networking self-branding those kinds of stuff right and I want to give you a story a personal story and this is just to show you that we all go through this so let me just do a proper introduction to myself my name is Sarah maina I work for cheaper cash which is a fintech I'm not in infosec in anyway the match I know about school for security is vpns I don't know if that even Falls without category and anything else I know about data premacy is accepting terms and conditions so um I'm a developer relations executive which um just basically means developers are my customers and I work to make sure that developers are able to integrate our product well and how I got here is an interesting story because I started off in Media I used to be a blogger and if you accidentally find me somewhere on YouTube I'm very sorry for what you're going to go through I remember this one time someone tweeted that watching my videos made them sleep and it had to be at that time but I was putting myself out there right I was creating content that's about your part of me right now um but like I said I said a lot in media and I'm pretty good at writing I would like it um even now I do have a personal blog on medium but so back to the story that I was telling you so set it out in media once in a company called checklist for two years and then went to another company called that is Africa also in media so basically what I was doing is I was doing reviews and writing about news that is happening around the country the continent talking to experienced professionals giving their stories startups and all of that sounds fun sounds interesting but how can I do I was broke I will not lie to you um because I was doing reviews um and why I've mentioned the broke part is I will get funds for free see all those nice phones I see iPhone 14 has come out I'll get that phone for free I'll probably have an iPhone 14 on my phone on my right side and on my left side I probably have the latest Samsung Galaxy full phone or whatever that all downloads I'll be using a Macbook or an Asus session also was given for free so all this sounds really exciting you're like wow you get to use all this depth uh you get to experience all of these things you get to travel and go for all these events but imagine doing all that and already customer number one color so that to me was my wake-up call I realized that hey I need help passion for what I was doing but it was not paying me it was making me happy until traditional Bill and then I'll be like [Music] and it's not long ago this was back in when did I quit my job 2020 one that is it and it's because during coffee I took a 50 painted from already something small so yeah I can tell some people here you're probably your allowances were higher than whatever but now back to the topic part so I started job hunting and as everyone was come here since I joined us talking about how difficult and how job hunting is and probably those of you already doing it kind of test to it you know so exactly the easiest thing to do um and this is the part where I realized how important Twitter is when they were thinking of depressing bro and later okay I'm going to use this very general chance but imagine going to LinkedIn and all your friends have joined Microsoft in easy you cannot even write congratulations Without Tears In Your Eyes not because you are happy but it's because you're there asking God when you need to be my chance yeah everyone who went to school with right is there someone that just joins safaricom the other one has joined AWS someone has coached a job in Ireland the other one has been butched from Google to go to I don't know the UK now you have the latest iPhone 14 15. um anyway back to the story so I'm talking I'm just going to talk about stranger specifically because this is how it worked for me class and I usually voice my opinion on everything and by everything alone in politics everything in Tech so if the government goes and says oh we want to introduce certification for techies I don't know what will hear me but I'll go voice my opinion and talk to myself on three times to take better future birthday guys for anyone who's not on Twitter space Therapeutics yeah you go talk to yourself now eventually and like one of my friends here in front of us they start paying attention to you someone retweets someone responds and you you realize that you actually building an audience and this could be maybe not the audience that you probably want initially but one very important thing about being very outspoken is you never know the day you will Trend and but please make sure whatever you do not check for the wrong reasons please just saying that but now back to my story so I've quit my job and I'm like I need I need to get into proper Tech I was in tech media which is trash and I need to get into proper Tech and get this money and um so I start applying to jobs and I was laughing actually because all these things were being told me about the mistakes people were making you know music White severeign we're mentioning about our Hobbies and how you like climbing trees over the weekend and all those things you're still doing it you're still pretty much in your CV but again I'll also say some of my business should tell you how to do your CV from my experience finding a lot for me I had to customize these CVS to the role itself and again I had to lie I hope my courses will never see this but yeah you know sometimes you lie like oh my gosh I finished this course but on your CV you finished but so I started applying to all these jobs and that's how I ended up okay I actually really brought so many rejections I think Microsoft rejected me for three different tools right anyway I I really did have a lot of guts um I got rejections from Google from even the smaller startups in the safaricom and all of that and I finally got an interview at Chipotle and this interview the only reason I got it was because I went on Twitter found the person who was to be my boss and I tweeted at them and told them that hey I applied for this role and if you don't give me that job I believe it will be your loss very good thing and I have no idea how that worked or maybe the guy felt threatened because after I joined three months later he quit and he went to another road so I'm just saying that that for me got me the interview and the most interesting thing is all of you here are superb at what you do that's the truth right um I have like I said I have no knowledge on infosec so I won't try to stuff but you are amazing at what you do and all you need is one step from the door trust me it's like that one person to listen to you and say okay let's give this person an interview to scare what they want to say let's let's just look at them beyond their CV let's see who this person is so for me after I got that um I was hired amazingly and then six months down the line I got bored why because I was getting into this role which was a product design role by the way I was getting into this road because my passion for it was money like yeah I need to be rich I need to get some choose so let me do this and I'm I'm a good designer by the way which I was learning while doing the interviews and never designed before like miracles to happen um so after six months I got bored because I realized that this is not my passion yeah I was there um designing stuff but then not feeling like I own anything so what did I do um I went and Twitter again and this time there's a guy called Luisa I don't know if those were on Twitter he was he's actually an alumni of usiu um he's the VP of global developer relations at chipakash so you can see the irony I'm going to Twitter to talk to someone who I work with not because I couldn't just directly talk to him through slack or whatever means we use but because he followed me on Twitter was like at least we have a rapport you know like a good start with means reply to his drinks Upper Valley and then finally it's like the DM and be like hey boys by the way you know I also work and cheaper and I'm bored with what I do so can I come to your side of things it's what literally I didn't even do an interview then he was like oh actually yeah we've been looking to hire some more developer relations guys so and it looks like you know what you're doing so hey yeah come join me and that's how I got in and excuse me now as I try to wrap up because I also don't want to talk to I've given you a story how Twitter changed my career and profession for me but I had to actively do it so we've been told that one of the ways for you to put yourself out there is to network I can tell you this for sure networking for me is one of the hardest things that you can do especially face to face I'm a keyboard Warrior teachers but face to face I can hardly talk to anyone so now you can imagine you've attended these conferences maybe this is even your 50th conference in a year but you've never left with saying hi to anyone I totally understand you I get you and this is where I'm here to challenge both organizers the senior people in the profession and even enjoy yourself so today organizers and the senior people the ball is really in your court I remember this time I actually just pull up my future page because there's this street I said that brought white the startup um and basically say take events in Kenya are not friendly to newbies so there was two groups of people there was newbies who are like yes tell them yeah they're not friendly and then there was organizers who are like we can't do everything for you we can't do fruits we feed you but you see organizers are looking at it from this perspective of we've organized this event we've brought all these amazing and talented people it's up to you to go talk to them I told you sure it happens most times in this event after the panels after all the sessions are done people in the group according to who they know so you'll hang out with their friends right you're gonna say to the only people you know so imagine you're alone and you came from nakuru to attend this conference with no one you know no one and you're gonna live the same way because there's always just that fear of how do I go talk to a group of people and you know the funny thing even as a guy it's very different because here is a professional setting you're trying to go sell yourself to try to go talk to someone who will probably change your life in the future so here's my proposal to the organizers and the senior people in the profession how about we change things a bit instead of always having conferences that have things of hey let's come talk about how to get a job let's come talk about what is infosec let's come talk about this new thing that is happening with Cloud Technologies and all that which they are good and they should not stop but how about we add more of social events within Czech whereby the main purpose of the event itself is not to come to teach or tell people about a sponsor's products but it's basically to come and hang out just think about that you coming everyone gets a chance to introduce themselves say what they do where they are acting life and the way back they are looking for a mentor or they are they can't be a mentor you know what that does that brings the barium of the one person who doesn't know anyone in the room now they know who they can approach now they know okay so person X does ABCD and that's what I love to do so why not I go talk to them and because it's a social event we we bring up activities that intentionally make people think of it as team building you know the way we do it in building and we have action events where people get to each other if you've ever done anything really realize that sometimes you live there talking to people you are not talking to when you arrive so that's just the challenge and for you as an individual who doesn't know how to network let's say for example this kind of events never come to fruition at all is use social media to your advantage it's honestly one of the easiest way to overcome the fear that you may have of approaching someone and a group of people that they know in an event the best way would be finding someone if it's a speaker a bit someone who was in a panel getting a social media LinkedIn Twitter and then just start interacting with their content whenever they post something interesting that you like starting Garage in large content and you never know maybe one day they will respond I know I know but someone mentioned that are you going to give up has happened to me when I was looking for a mentor I thought I LinkedIn caution as I hate that platform you can clearly see someone red and they didn't respond but no one owes you understand by the way or what would you do that's the time yeah you move on and start talking to different other people so what I'm saying is as I conclude now foreign is that do not be afraid to use social media to your advantage and as a techie the biggest biggest thing you can do for yourself is to use your social media not for one time but for your work that whenever someone Googles your name your Twitter pops up your LinkedIn WhatsApp whatever you have a website a Blog that pops up and that be able to see and you never know who you run into that and another thing that has been coming up I actually do run a Twitter spaces once a month and I do talk to professionals in different spaces in Tech and there's always these people who within the space itself they ask questions and we're able to link them up with a speaker so social media has become the New Frontier where we are able to meet and talk to people and possibly get connections and just Network because the truth is without networking chances are the job you're applying for will just be overlooked because someone else you I just mentioned very clearly here that people love working with their friends and it's true there's good organizations especially if you practice I know by Department within our company our whole department were poached why because the manager came and they were like oh I need to hire people I know five five it's very good one let me show you so challenge uh just make an effort to actually Network and you can't do it in person reaching social media um yeah that's all I can say and lunch is my talk for today in case there's any questions I don't know if there will be any questions in times since I just basically plumbered for 20 minutes or so