Infosec Jobsearch Best Practices

here we are uh b-side san antonio i will tell you um real quick that when i started submitting for 2020 when i was submitting talks i specifically um had a talk with my boss i was like can i do a bunch of talks this year and they're like yeah we support you um and i chose all the locations that i really want to go to so i wish i was actually there as i'm sure all of you do as well uh however the forces of the universe have decided that today my air conditioning doesn't work so it's almost like i'm there because it's like 85 degrees in my office so yay um but anyway i when i submitted the talk i call the

best practices and then i'm saying but i still need a job because of everything that we're going through right now so

okay so we will go through a little bit um talking about um not just the challenges that we're facing right now but also um the just the fundamentals that i that i typically talk about so when i built the talk initially uh all of the crazy stuff that we're going through wasn't going on um and so i had to switch up my slides at the last you know um last few weeks i was like well let's let's change this up so that's relevant to what we're all going through now and then we'll go through some of the fundamentals as well to include searching networking uh interviewing and negotiating but also let's talk about what we're all

going through right now real quick who am i i am kirsten renner i am a krenner on twitter uh as mentioned i'm the director of recruiting at an analytics firm we also do full spectrum cyber security and have a growing office in san antonio 300 jobs open at the moment we pay referral bonuses that's my one and only plug um i'm a college dropout i started my career doing a little bit of help desk and tried developing wasn't super awesome at it um and then since 2000 i've been recruiting started off in telcom and i've been doing uh strictly cyber security information security since the early 2000s um you can see here some other talks i've spoken at

recently plus a handful of other b-sides a little random tidbit about me um i like to run ultramarathons you don't know an ultra marathon is anything longer than a marathon i've done 13 of them in 10 years um so i also love baseball and i love i have a weird love for murder tv so i have watched lots of murdery things um so i i've heard and you all if you've been in track 3 very much today you've heard a lot of different career based perspectives and opinions and advice that's all super valuable and all different perspectives um nothing is right or wrong um frank just said something amazing that i i feel like you took it right out

of my handbook because um i'm going to talk about how we can pivot and what you need to do to do that and if you didn't hear what he said it was amazing if it's being if it's being recorded you should go back and listen to it but it's about um identifying that just having a willingness and an ability to do something is the number one qualifier so i die on that hill um that was an amazing thing for him to say so that's me that's a little cartoon to me and it's just letting you know it's a little game board um i've i am a hiring manager i have been a recruiter and i've been a

candidate uh in the course of my career so i'm coming to you with how i uh view things from all of those perspectives so again things are a little bit crazy right now right we're all adjusting we're all adapting we're all dealing with it um i think that we can take this like any other challenge and we can um we can say well how can we use this to our advantage one thing you can do to use uh the current circumstances to your advantage is you can notice um how the prospective employers are are treating the candidates um how flexible are they how accommodating are they um and and ask yourself well in my day-to-day life um as

a human like every other human things come up you know things in my personal life things in my family happens right so how accommodating will this company be to me as an employee if they if they can't work with me to to make the interview work or uh to be flexible all throughout the candidate experience um one of the one my specific brand um wouldn't mind if they put this on my tombstone i i believe in the candidate experience i believe in the value of the way we treat people is really what matters right so every person that for the people who aren't candidates or who are candidates and potential employers listening to this every person you want to hire someone

else also wants to hire them so think about that uh through the candidate experience on how you're contributing to it how you're behaving in the interview how you're treating those people who have many other choices typically think about how they're being treated um so that can be very revealing to you at this time who's ahead of the curve who's doing the kind of things frank was talking about where they're willing to invest in people and train people and that sort of thing and notice that you know what um i don't have this or this or this experience but um but here's what i have done and here's the way i think and here's how i solve problems

and here's what i'm willing to do uh if you would give me the opportunity so before um so at the end of 2019 i started doing little mini surveys on twitter and i and i did them knowing that i had submitted talks and and that um and i wanted to go through these basic fundamentals uh in those talks and so i think i did three or four surveys and it's not scientific data because i think there's a certain number of people that have to respond to it before it's actually considered i don't think tens of thousands of people responded it was in the hundreds for sure but um i i was not surprised that most

people are passive so understand that as you hear all the things in track three today and all the things from your peers and your mentors and all the advice and all the best-selling books and all of the experts that tell you you know how to be a good candidate how to find the perfect job um know that you will take those and you will you will use them in a toolbox that makes sense for you at your specific stage of candidacy um and that may be that you're actively looking let's face it most of us need a job you need a job because we'll be bored or we need a job to keep the lights on

um so you're going to look at your job search in different ways um another thing that frank mentioned i obviously really enjoyed his talk um was uh something with regard to was a statistic as to how long it actually takes to find a job um and it was very interesting um but obviously if you're always looking or at least open to hearing about uh positions while you're currently employed if you have that opportunity if you're fortunate enough to look in that situation it's more ideal um i can say that my last two jobs including my current job wasn't looking for a job um when i was made aware of the position um so it's a good a better

uh position to be in um so we're not all in the same stage at different points in the in our candidacy stuff happens like i said earlier and something out of your control might occur and then you find yourself looking for a job and you weren't expecting it or maybe you're just not loving what you're doing that's a good time to just start peeking around and talking to your peers and finding out what's out there um dork vader did say that i could quote him when he responded i believe this survey he he commented that uh no better time to be looking than it's just really good basic career hygiene to be always um at least leave the door

open so um here's the sorts of things that we're facing in the interviews um hopefully i provide halfway decent examples i'm definitely not following all the things on this list right now um but when you're doing your virtual interview uh there's a lot of challenges that you're going to be facing um it's really really important to test the tech i just happen to be the person who when we were testing all the speakers uh my camera wouldn't work i had a long story i had to run out and get some equipment but um so test it test it always test it test it with your friends test it with yourself invite yourself to a meeting do what you got to do make

sure that you can be seen and heard and then you can see in here as well um go ahead and put all of your um if you if you can make sure there'll be no outside distractions um i will be shocked if anybody wants to know the over under and put some money on it right now um my big giant floofer if you've ever seen any tweet i've ever done every other tweet is my dog um there's a good chance he'll bark at some point today um we just moved uh we still for 12 years to live down the country now we live in the neighborhood and he's uh very distracted all the time so he'll

probably bark for us today um that's okay that remember what i said about watching how the companies reveal things so if your kid rolls up or your dog starts doing something or something happens or the tech goes wrong or something if the employer reveals themselves to be very unflexible about you just being a normal human dealing with all the crap we're dealing with right now then they've just revealed something to you about about them about who they are um i'll tell you a really quick story um when i did the many hats club isolation con in january or february um i was testing out in the green room i was testing my tech and uh hope he doesn't mind the shout

out ray redacted is the person who was helping me and um when i say close all the things i'm serious um probably if you're anything like me you have many iterations of your browsers going at all times you know four or five at a time and and 20 different tabs on each on each browser and maybe even you have several documents open when i shared screens with him to show him my slides you know what came up on his screen my credit report my social security number my date of birth my credit score and he's a hacker so for sure close all the things um and if you know the dual core song hack all the things

now i just put that in your head so sing it to yourself all the things okay um so detractions are everywhere we talked about that um social media is more important now than ever and get it if you don't like it i get it if you don't enjoy it uh there's different um ones that we like or that we don't like uh regardless of what it is that you use um or don't use be aware of the digital footprint that you're putting out there i'm not saying don't be a human um but people are watching you probably more than ever you know now this is how we're connecting this is how we're networking this is

the only way we're seeing each other is out there on social media so be aware of even the things that you see you think no one else can see um just imagine that it's it's all being seen so just just be cognizant of what your footprint looks like um what you're talking about that can be very revealing too um i have seen before you know maybe if you just have a series of bad days over and over and over again and maybe it was your boss your boss is being a jerk whatever if you're putting out way too many things consciously or subconsciously either way the potential employers are looking at you too and maybe they're going to think

ah this person's gonna go down a series of tweets about me one of these days you know something goes wrong so i'm not saying don't be human and don't use your voice and and all that i'm just saying again to just kind of be aware of what you're doing out there i mean um it it makes sense that if you've got i mean i got a lot going on in the background right now i didn't put up a digital and i didn't cover everything so there's a lot of you know a lot of business stuff going on back there uh that could be distracting as well um kind of i i believe in just being who

you are um but be reasonable uh if you show up like a slob if that's the message you want to put out there as your first impression um just think about you know the impression even though you're in your house hey listen you guys don't know if i have pants on right but i do have this amazing shirt um so do be um maybe don't show up exactly the way you would in the office if you were gonna wear a suit that's probably not necessary but put on a nice shirt i think um is made by you um the other person might have headphones on who is speaking to you so if you're doing kind of gross things like sniffling and

gulping on your drink and um typing all that sort of thing um that that can be very distracting as well if you're uh using your laptop um camera the way that i am right now because i couldn't find a webcam anywhere um and you slide things around um on on the desk that can also be very distracting um and obviously i don't have a mouse so i'm not a good example of all the evidence i'm giving right now um and again every once in a while make eye contact um just so you can kind of connect with people i'm obviously looking at my slides every once in a while i'm looking out that i try to

make it a point to look down at you as well okay so another survey that i did uh was asking people um when it comes to searching and networking and resume writing which actually got to tell you i thought that would be the main thing uh historically people seem to have trouble with their resumes but when i did this survey that wasn't what people were thinking about or that's not how they answered um so i tried to beat this up a little bit more on networking for that reason so as far as job searching goes everybody knows that we have job boards everybody knows who they all are i didn't list them all this is not a

specific um endorsement on my part i will make no specific endorsements of tools or i will not also dox anyone or anything as a tool other than to say um and someone did interrupt me at an in-person presentation of this to tell me that i was wrong but i personally don't think you need to pay as a candidate for anything as an employer you do as an employer you need to pay for all the things but some of these boards will tell you that you have to pay to get this enhanced um account or profile to be better seen or better found um i personally i don't agree i don't agree because i know that i'm

i'm the person paying a lot of money to find you um so and so that my my team can find you um i don't think you need to spend your money in that way i also think there's way too many volunteers my dms are open i'm happy to tell you who they are who will help you with your resume who will help you as a candidate um i don't think you should pay to have someone write your resume i went to i volunteered for the last several years at a veterans initiative something i'm just very passionate about and uh all of them had professional resumes resumes were put together for them and i got their attention when i said

put away your resumes they suck it's professionally prepared like it's mustn't suck it can't suck um but the professionally written resumes actually um were in a lot of cases doing a disservice specifically to veterans um they just weren't translating well to you know how their their mos can speak outside of the military um so again please don't pay uh if you're gonna uh also look um at what's out there there's so many things you can read right here on this slide take a screenshot of it there's so many things that are free indeed glassdoor link linked in the computer they're all free you don't need to pay for the enhanced profiles on those things either

um recruiters are out there paying zillions of dollars to find you if you are anywhere out there or if you ever have been even if you're not there anymore they're going to find where you used to be um they really will they're going to work on github they're going to look at your blogs they're going to look at your social they're going to find you hopefully um i i don't i don't want to i'm not not inclusive here but i i will say that that what i'm about to say is statistically often more relevant to females than males um for some reason just again statistically i'm not saying it's everyone may not be you uh but they're are less

likely to apply for a position if they don't feel like they check all the boxes in the requirements um i am sure that if we were in a room together and i asked everyone to please raise their hand if the majority of the job descriptions that you see or on a regular basis you see lots and lots of really bad job descriptions i think most of you would raise your hand um i get it i apologize on behalf of hiring companies everywhere um it stinks i don't know why it's happening i don't know why it happens uh we could talk about it for days and days and days and uh and actually actually do have a

dream uh that i could somehow fix it you know make the companies do a better job someday all of them um but don't be afraid to apply for a job that you don't fit all the qualifications for because a lot of them are ridiculous and nobody fits those qualifications i know so many amazing brilliant engineers hackers people who don't have a degree don't have certs and some of them have written the languages that the job descriptions that are insane say they want you to understand right or the tools for that matter um so i'm not saying that all of the customers are are going to be flexible but where there's a will there's a way so

do your research look around i love twitter i don't have much use for the rest of it but some people do right they're out there so the companies are posting jobs in all those places uh so so be looking out there um do research when you're looking at companies that you're interested in um one thing i should say um is even though everyone knows about all these tools what they don't all realize and what i didn't realize um a few years ago is that every state has its own employment board they have to every single one so think about the state where you either live or would like to live and go look at their state employment

board all the jobs that are posted are there they're being scraped out of the applicant tracking systems even some of the ones that haven't been posted yet if they're in the applicant tracking system they're being scraped out and they're being put on the state employment board so if you're interested in maryland go to maryland's job board she said in texas go to texas job board they have one am i saying that those job boards are going to be super easy to use and intuitive and really you know they're not going to be great because they're a local government job right so it is what it is but while you're there if you find something that you didn't

even realize i had um i did an experiment at uh besides tampa and i said uh let's all whip out our phones and and look for the state employment job board um that you're in or the state that you're interested in and if you find a job um that you didn't even realize you know the company was in that state or that they were hiring there let's talk about it and there was two or three people who who could do that so um so take a look there and then when you find it if you can't navigate around in on that site very well because the site like i said probably isn't awesome uh that's okay too at least now

you know about the job and now you can start looking for it on these job boards that are listed here um especially the free ones um i know events aren't really happening right now in person um you know a lot of companies will do um happy hours and hiring events and things like that so hopefully we'll get back to normal soon in the meantime um some of the most innovative companies that are kind of ahead on this or responding very well to it are still doing a good job in that regard with regard to your resume [Music] i'm not shocked that people said one of the problems that the biggest problem was that they just didn't hear a

response i gotta tell you true story i'm confessing right now um if i were your your recruiter and um and i had i don't know i have 20 jobs open and you apply to one of my jobs there's a good chance depending on the applicant tracking system a lot of them are really really bad um they're so bad and the um there's there's nothing filtering out the the volume of people applying it's so time consuming you could end up spending the better part of your day just going through uh resumes um and and just never getting around to it right so um there's got to be a better way and we'll get to that too so

we'll talk about what do we do about them not responding about the recruiters not responding at any point um so please do an i am and i want to be statement only one or two sentences don't assume that uh the person reading your resume even initially depending on the size of the company they may have initial resume screeners and then the initial people that take those screening calls and then they're depending on the size of the company there could be so many layers that you have to get through before you get to somebody truly qualified to either make a hiring decision or understand your qualifications they're given a very specific set of instructions on what to

be looking for so do them a favor because they have fatigue they've looked at a million resumes today i really stink at reading resumes don't tell my boss um but um so don't do a lot of dissertations and things like that just get to the point right at the beginning and then you're gonna get right into the the keywords that they're looking for right you're gonna say i am a systems engineer looking to be a solutions architect and i love linux and so on and so forth um then you'll do your chronological and i'd be happy to send out examples of resumes to people i think i took that out of the presentation um if we were in person i'd give you a

handout um but if a clearance is required or uh or the company that does business with the government you should take the time to say whether or not you either have or have had or are eligible for and willing to get a clearance that doesn't mean say your citizenship that's not a thing that they should ask but just say eligible for willing to get something to that effect because that's important um it used to be in the olden days that pdfs didn't work the intake mechanisms couldn't read them and now they can so that's okay it used to be that people got in their heads that there had to be a certain length of a resume

other than not doing a dissertation and not making it impossible for me to get to the point um don't be afraid to give a lot of details don't feel like you have to be on one or two pages it's okay it's not that big of a deal again no one's responding you just applied so you replied you applied to my company and you haven't heard anything back where you got the initial message but then you still didn't hear anything back what are you gonna do about that so probably um if you have a linkedin account that's where i would start and again that's not me saying uh anything about linkedin other than most recruiters are there um so you're

going to go there it may or may not be the recruiter for that position and most of them have their direct messages open you're going to go in and you're going to say hey it's me i applied for this specific job and i look forward to hearing back from you you're going to give them one day to get back to you that doesn't work do a little bit of research and look at who might be the operational head of the division where that job is you're not going to have the full breakdown of the org chart but you can say hmm vp of such and thus that looks like where this job would fall probably maybe

ibp of such and thus i applied for session that's a job and i can't wait to hear back let me know if you need anything and then if that doesn't work i want you to send me a direct message on twitter and tell me it didn't work i'll be shocked i will seriously be shocked so do that um and and you're doing that to remind them because maybe they forgot or maybe they lost track or they have 20 other jobs and 50 other candidates per job something like that just do them that polite favor of sending them a little message um don't be afraid to and please take a moment to when appropriate uh especially as you

go go further in further in your career um you are going to have a lot of different mix of skills take a moment to go through the job description and customize even with just your opening statement about what you want to be so they aren't confused about i see so many things going on in this resume i i'm not sure what in the world they want right and also be aware that um the best recruiters hopefully every single person that works for me um but the best recruiters are going to make the initial conversation with you about you not just your match to that specific position but what you enjoy doing what you don't enjoy doing what you want

to do next because they're going to be aware of things that aren't even on the job boards right so um make this about about you so that's the perfect transition into the interview stage you're doing research on the company you're finding out about the people in that company you're looking at some of the key players there if you do you research on social and you find out maybe where they're talking maybe you're gonna run through the speaker list for san antonio b-sides today and you're going to notice um where people work and if it's a company that you're interested in now you have kind of that someone that you can make a connection to either through social or in this case

through this event that is happening today where this is the way that we're networking now since we can't walk around and talk to each other in the hallways and trade badges and stuff um so you're gonna do the research you're gonna find out who's speaking there huh i wonder who they follow on social and who followed them what are they talking about are they talking about anything that is relevant to me that i can that i can contribute to and that i can participate in and start having those conversations right that's the new way to network um so you're gonna do that a little bit of research you know going into the interview if you have the opportunity try to

answer as many questions as you can in the forum of a story and then does your resume support these stories and don't be afraid to if you if you can talk about something that you either failed at or struggled with and then that's gonna and give you the opportunity to show the people that you're talking to how you solve that problem what you learn from that problem and then please this is the best part and this is the part where hiring manager should be listening to um start when they say at the end that proverbial you have new questions for me you say look at them as a person whether it's a panel or not and give them a chance to

say how long have you been here um what what have you learned lately what's the top thing you learned this year that's my favorite question when you catch the interviewer off guard with something like that um they're going to become a person and not an interviewer and they're going to start telling you stories this can be very revealing to you the candidate about the company um heck if they haven't learned anything this year that's something to think about really um ask them what challenges they had and how that turned out right maybe they'll say well no now that you mention it uh or what hesitation did you have coming into this job this is you the candidate asking the

interviewer a question like that did you have any hesitation did you have other options why did you choose this are you glad you chose it you're going to start interviewing them and they're going to tell you so much right it's going to be great for you and them actually um this is their chance to tell you you know what as a matter of fact i was really nervous about this job because i don't know i i it said you had to if you had you know metasploit and i don't know that um but i was given the opportunity to go to a workshop or go to a conference or uh get set up in a mentoring

situation with one of my coworkers and now i know it now i teach it to people right so that's a cool story um it's going to be good for you and them um so remember to do that and then hopefully if you get them thinking about what challenges they had what consultations they had coming into the position of the company and then they give you the opportunity or they give the opportunity to say how it turned out then you know what to expect in terms of um how some of your challenges will be faced there as well so i really really want you to be yourself as much as possible um when i actually when i interviewed

for the job i have now uh four years ago i had blue hair and i remember thinking was half blue and i remember thinking should i like i'm going to meet all that i'm going to meet like yo all the executives should i like fun or what should i do and i was like this is me do they like me or do they not like me um be honest be exactly who you are when i say that i liken it to dating i i actually don't really i don't have any actual dating experience um for very very little but i imagine that if you showed up for a date and you sat down and you were like

yes yes i do i love kids i love to travel i do go to church i don't contri if you aren't yourself in that first date and the relationship turns into a relationship i suspect that um you have you have made it certain that it's not going to end well right so don't go to the interview saying i love solving problems i love working on a team i love being all by myself uh don't be afraid to tell exactly what it is because more than likely there's more than one opportunity in the company and while you're selling them exactly who you are they're gonna say you know what there's not an exact match for you with the job

you apply for but there's this or i expect that soon there will be this this is how you can pave the way for where you end up to be closer to what is best and ideal for you when i say it's okay to pivot what do i mean um what i mean is actually in the company where i am uh one of the vps of one of the cyber divisions used to work in contracts one of the senior help desk technicians used to work in hr one of my recruiters keeps getting aws certs and stuff like that one of my recruiters became a scrum master uh this is the type of situation where you can look around you and change what

you're doing i mentioned at the beginning that i used to be a software developer i used to run a help desk to build help desks and now i run a recruiting department so that's okay it's okay to pivot as many times as you need to when you are negotiating please never ever tell them how much you make if they stay on the on the application fill in your current salary the application probably hasn't been updated in the last five years it's not okay you do not have to put it you don't have to tell them your salary frankly the amount of money money that you currently make has literally nothing to do with the amount of money that you

should be making based on your quantified occupational qualifications and your skills in your education and your clearance level and the geographical location where you're living those are the things that should determine uh how much money you're making so please don't tell anybody how much money you're making um when the recruiter starts and listen uh it's going to be at different levels um it may be from the very first phone call and i get that it's awkward when they say how much money do you want to make this is where you can speak in ranges if you need to and you can say well i'm looking at this or i'm seeing offers in this area or in this range you can speak in ranges

and then think about other things that matter to you incentive comp plans stock options the ability to work remotely the ability to go to conferences and travel and educational benefits 401k there's a million things that you need to think about including as your total comp what really super duper matters to you um so don't be afraid to say those things as well so you know what i really am looking for a situation where i can take off four weeks a year twice a year whatever the case may be right so think about what is ideal for you and remember i said at the beginning that depending on where you are in your candidacy you're going to be more or

less flexible uh based on the things that you ask for but think about what matters to you the most whip out a piece of paper draw a line down the middle make columns about the things that are the most important to you and try to get those boxes checked uh when you are negotiating and think about talking to um your peers or anyone that you trust in either the hiring managers community or recruiting community who can also help you and coach you in that area and you don't have to give exact answers when you get to offer stage always think about it always always sleep on it and then run it by somebody says you

know especially if you have someone in the recruiting field that you can talk to you can say hey do you mind if i let you know what i was offered and and what do you think of this does this sound about right is this what i should be expecting at this point um you know i had uh i had a person recently fairly recently uh who she just graduated from her master's program and it took it took two or three it took two or three uh go-arounds before everything matched up but frankly um there was not just the professional experience through internships and then obviously the education getting the masters but there's value in and especially in our community i

would say probably everybody um hearing this and everybody visiting here there's a lot of value in what you do in our community i could talk for a whole entire day i'm trying to look a clock about um are you doing ctfs are you speaking at conferences are you writing blog posts what sort of things are you doing um within the community um so when you're negotiating think about think about those things too right that there's value in those things that you were a community volunteer or that you participated or that you um designed and delivered workshops uh to teach people um that you mentored people in school or at work those things are cool don't

forget to uh to to tell those things and to pat yourself on the back form because they're valuable it does not ever hurt to ask um think about if it really matters right if you're gonna ask for eight weeks of vacation i'm gonna wonder how often you work what the heck you're doing for eight weeks personally but if that matters to you uh there's no there's no harm it is a lot harder i will say this is 100 true it's a lot harder to jump from where you are in a company unfortunately to where you want to be or need to be if you didn't negotiate right off the bat if you uh didn't do well but you love the company

but you think they're underpaying you it's just harder i don't know why sometimes you have to leave get more money um thanks i often i personally when the current company counter offers people i often say to myself if i was worth that why wasn't i always making it right so if i make you an offer your company finds out about it and the first thing they say is where are you going and what they offer you and you tell them and they're like oh we can match it really well you know what i think i think then you should have already been paying me that and you're gonna be looking to get rid of me

next don't want me to leave right now because you don't want to have to replace me but that's just my personal opinion about that um so think about what the market is paying what clearances are worth what specific specific locations are worth based on cost of living stuff like that and you can do some research on those things as well a lot of websites out there for that and we made it all the way to questions and answers if we have any i can see the red thing kirsten we do have a couple of questions that are originating from the breakout uh um first question can you talk more about internal mobility to starting off in the

right place ask the question again can you talk more about the internal mobility to starting off in the right place i'm not sure i understand the question but i i do i i if they're saying what i think they're saying people are always wondering about um like when i said starting off in the right place and pivoting around stuff like that if that's what they mean um people are always wondering how to break in uh see these conversations talk all the time about how to get into cyber security um every company is going to be different i think um it helps again depending on the size of the company it helps to be looking at

what else is happening there look at your own company's job board is the company advertising for a position that you would like to fill you're not 100 sure you're qualified for it or you'd like to be qualified for it i would challenge you to to work through hr or through your operations manager really they should be able to do this they should be able to find a way to make this happen work through your manager and find out how can i fill that position for you or how can i get on a track or a path to become qualified for that position i do see kim stevens question i think how did how did i get the survey

information all of the surveys that that i put in my slides i those are just twitter surveys so they're not scientific surveys um i didn't grab them off of a website or anything crazy like that i just i just posted them on twitter and um took screen grabs at them that's where that came from and i have it written down somewhere but there was maybe i don't know maybe 500 people responded not a lot okay we have another question that uh stems from the breakout um can you provide your thoughts on uh the saying that you should never accept the uh this individual says i've always heard to never accept the counter offer once you make known that you're looking

uh you could be looked at as dead weight heard this many times from those who accept the counter then get the raise and get passed up for promotion set to decide etc what are your thoughts on that so i don't want the companies that are countering people that they truly value and that they intend to keep to to be upset that i said it but um if my advice to people is usually not to take it simply because i feel like if if you if they wanted to give you what they're offering to you now you never would have been looking and they would have already given it to you maybe if you want to give them a little

slack because you never bothered to mention that you were unhappy um then the conversation can open up it's gonna come down to communication frankly and if you trust them and you feel valued by them thank you i thought you i thought the question was going to be never accept the first offer i will tell you i will tell you um if you look at my twitter feed today uh it was is this uh i was in a um like one of those mega threads and i said yeah but i don't do it that way because i'm weird i don't care about your degree or your search because i'm weird i also never low ball people never have

and i never will maybe all the hiring managers i've ever worked for are like really thanks for costing me all that money but i just don't see the point right if i know what i can do for you um i always i'm gonna do the very best for you and recruiters should do that they should do the very best for you does that mean that if they didn't they come at you with an offer if i say that i'm doing the best i can for you than i am does that mean that there's no wiggle room well maybe there is because i don't i'm not the p l holder right so if you said person said this was the best she could

do but i need more so i'm not going to talk to kirsten anymore um i'm still going to fight for you or my recruiters are going to fight for you um so again it's going to come down to them wanting you valuing you and caring about you

you