You're Gonna Be Popular: Why They're Getting a Callback and You're Not

So, we got a 2-minute time check for we are now in theater seven. First presentation of the afternoon, it's going to be You're going to be popular. Why they're getting a callback and you're not. Just to make sure everyone's in the correct theater, we'll go in about a minute.

So, I didn't sign up for this. And I brought these all the way from Minneapolis, so they will be used. First off, I didn't know they were bringing bubbles. Oh, don't play it again. Hold on. This is your turn. No. Perfect.

Okay, you guys want to hear about the job market? Talk about this chaos. Okay, let's Are we good to start? Amazing. Um first off, thank you so much for coming. Um it's my first time presenting. It's uh Clea's first time presenting. Um I think a lot of this session came from some pretty hardcore events sessions, right? Like everyone's frustrated. Everyone's tired. We're like, "What in the hell is going on?" right? Um I will say like we don't have all the answers. I don't think anybody can say that for certain, right? Um so, what I really want mostly out of everything else those to give you some really good tools so that way you know how to get

through this. Um and just like to get introductions out of the way too. In case you don't know me, my name is Ruby Murphy. I'm a AVP with Hampton North. Super fancy title for just saying I do everything. Security engineering, appsec, DNR, talk to a lot of nitty-gritty folks, um which is my bread and butter. And I'm alongside the amazing Clea. Hi, everyone. Clea Assendorf, uh co-founder, CEO of Wolf Pack Security, boutique app sec. I I like to introduce myself as somebody who likes to cook, but I don't read recipes. So, what that means in real life is I can read between the lines and kind of see things that people are saying and then what that really means.

And this talk is just observations that we've seen. We went to We went to the masses and the cesspool that is LinkedIn and got some feedback on what people are feeling and seeing in the job market and we're here to talk about it. So, I'm talking about it from somebody who's actively hiring and you know, very active in this community and Ruby's talking at it from a recruiter who's seeing all the sides and let's get into it. It's a little doom and gloom and then some positive things at the end. So, at least the theme of my 2025 LinkedIn algorithm was everybody saying that hiring was broken, right? That was everybody's damn feed. And the truth is

it's not really that broken, but it's extremely far behind and it's struggling to catch up, right? So, the one thing that if you guys like have to leave, if you just get bored, fine. If you get one thing out of this presentation, do remind yourselves that hiring is broken not because of you. That's very critical to remember. The hiring the traditional hiring system was built for scale, speed and safety and that was it. But the last 2 years what we saw in particular was we left humanity at the door. If anybody saw the keynote this morning, that was the that is the essence that we're seeing in recruitment, right? So, honestly there's a lot of repeatable things from like

Keith Hudlet, from Anna this from yesterday and Katie from this morning, but so much of the good stuff in hiring is still human and that's still what you can leverage at the end of the day. I think at the end of it though, like I do want to have a little bit of vent session you guys know that you guys aren't crazy. So, Cleo is going to talk about some of the symptoms that you're going to be seeing, obviously, when you're job hunting through this market. Okay. Again, we went to the cesspool that is LinkedIn, but you know, it's it's very active and we we're seeing overall, if you can summarize it into three things,

you're I can't read that. I I pe- people are not getting feedback. They're putting resumes out into the abyss. They're highly technical, qualified people who have never in their lives had to look for a job. They always were recruited somewhere else. People were chasing them. Ruby was calling them all the time. And now there's crickets. And you question yourself, am I not good enough? Is it my resume? Is it Is it me? Is it Like has has the market moved on? You start to question, you know, is it the way I look? Is it my age? Is it where, you know, I'm located? Do I not have the right pedigree? And that's not really the case. It's just a broken

system that isn't keeping up with the people. And I mean, we also have to be transparent on that. There There has been a lot of layoffs, and so all of a sudden the market is flooded, and you kind of question like, am I a failure? Do I need to get out of tech? And we're not saying this. We're just saying We we hear you. You're not alone in feeling this. Here are some ways that we recommend or things that we've seen successful, and you know, take it or leave it. It's all take it with a grain of salt. So, a lot of those frustrations are valid, right? And I think there's not one in particular that's more important

than the other. It's all colliding at the same time. That's the issue, right? So, there's four root things I think that we've seen that have just like they've clashed all together in the last, particularly, year and a half. Um there's a lot of like AI resumes fighting AI screeners. It's a bot talking to a bot, right? At the end of the day, that's how it feels like. Um there's a lot of issues around outdated processes where, uh you know, companies are looking for volume and data versus understanding of what the role actually is. Third, there's just straight-up higher expectations. The bar has been raised due to a lot of automation, right? And the last one, it truthfully there is a

lack of strategic leadership. Nobody Everyone saw it. Throw AI on to something, right? And then just like see what happens, and then everyone else is getting obviously, you know, the consequences of that. And I and I will say very honestly, a lot of this is also affected by the emotional and psychological warfare of everything going on in the world, right? You can't separate world events from hiring and the economy, right? We can't separate the two and pretend that those are different things. So, that's kind of where we wanted to address these four things in particular. So, let's start particularly with AI. Obviously no-brainer. The the reality of it though is quite simple is that the time to apply per

application per candidate is so much lower, right? It's so easy to create the perfect resume, but it very creates safe, very vanilla applications is the problem. And the ironic part with that is it makes you look fake, right? And so in the area of so much hiring fraud, it's which is really egregious right now, you're actually setting yourself up for failure, right? That's one of the main issues. And I can say for certain that posting remote roles, which is, you know, obviously like another hot topic on LinkedIn, it's pretty aggressive in terms of like how bad it is. When recruiters are are venting on LinkedIn and saying like hey, people don't meet minimum qualifications, they're not

talking about technical skills. They don't meet the visa requirements. They don't meet the location. Like things that recruiters and managers can't control. And the problem is that when you're the candidate in that pool, you're probably going to get missed, right? Because you're kind of battling against all these people using bots to randomly apply, right? That's what you're fighting against, and that's kind of where I think a lot of the traditional hiring pipeline has died. The last piece too is that, you know, I would say that this is actually not so different from the security programs and like what practitioners have been preaching for years now and I'm have obviously Clea can obviously speak better a little bit to that.

Okay, so if you think about the hiring environment, it feels broken. Um and I look at this and I kind of echo it in the same way that we feel broken about the amount of alerts and and firing of false positives and you know, massive lists of problems with no idea of how to remediate it. So if we if we bring the parallel, security teams are drowning in alerts. You know, you have your dashboards and you have these compliance checks and you don't really want to know you don't you don't even know where to begin. If we apply this in the same way we think about hiring, what did we do to start to make sense of all that noise in

the DAST SAST or you know, SOC worlds? We started to think about what matters to us as an organization, where is our risk, where do we need to focus? If something goes down, how are we going to fix it or what matters if something goes down? What is you know, break the glass, let's go. So, okay, take a take an example of a application security engineer. That means a lot of different things, but I might call Ruby up and say, "Hey, I need an AppSec engineer." And she says, "Great, I have a bunch of people I want to recommend." That's a very broad term. Let's let's break it down for what I would specifically need. I want somebody who

is a former developer who knows how to read and write code, can break applications, can help fix applications, who has pen tested across different environments and I need them to be customer facing. That is a very different role than saying, "Hey, I need somebody who understands Semgrep and knows how to tune different SAST tools." It's a different person, different skill set, different in general, yet it's the same title. So, if we are hiring or if we are going for jobs, where do you actually fit within these titles that are so generic? And starting to identify that is both going to help the hiring managers and also the people who are looking. So, I really I think obviously and I

hire a ton of appsec engineers and it's true I can put four of, you know, everyone with the name appsec engineer and they're going to be like, "No, no, no, I want that first person who has the software background." But we talked to other managers like, "I don't really care about that." Right? They're all same on paper though in theory, right? So, it's very important to be very very detailed about that. So, the other problem that we're seeing though is that there's just a general requiring more for less, right? And that's where you hear the term like, "Oh, I need a security generalist." And truthfully you're like, what does that even mean in terms of hey

like trying to understand I want this person to basically do everything and you see that generally is like a first hire, right? It's like we kind of need them to tackle GRC and appsec and like, "Oh my god, there's just a lot of things going on." But the problem with that is that what does that look like on an actual job description, right? Cuz it's like is that 10 plus years? Is it this little kid who's just like, you know, five plus years in the field and they're just willing to put up with you, right? Is that a generalist, right? There's so many different layers of like what that could mean. The problem is that

everyone's looking for it and no one has a very clear definition of what that is. And that's been also driving a lot of that in particular. And in truthfully from companies it is a very safe decision to try and call that, right? Because there isn't necessarily defined requirements. And so for them they're just trying to assert very short-term certainty on someone solving their problems versus the long-term potential of the candidate, which is where a lot of people are getting frustrated, right? It's like no one's really seeing you for like what you can be. They're seeing you for what you've done and that's where you see a lot of the lateral moves, right? That's what we're seeing in

particular. However, hiring managers don't really have it that easy either and obviously as a hiring manager Clea is more qualified to talk about that. Yeah, we suck, you know, like I like I'm hiring people but I also I'm running a startup and like I forget about things and that's not an excuse. It's just that's just the ground and the reality. The The other thing is there's a fear of honest feedback because you don't want to get sued. And that also really sucks. We're in this environment where like I can't say like hey, you you know, you're just not experienced enough and somebody might read the between lines or like, hey, you have too much experience. Somebody's like, oh,

no, I'm now you're calling me old and like F this company, right? So there's it's it's a fine line and I think everyone can do I from a hiring manager side do a little bit better to have some more integrity and organization around it, but that's a learned skill. I don't think it's innate. So I'm not cutting anyone slack. I'm just saying this is a reality on the ground. Ways to get around it. Follow up. Hey, if you ping me and say, hey, thank you thank you for the conversation the interview and then you follow up a week later. Oh my gosh, I'm so sorry. This got ahead. Let's move on to the next level

or the next round. You know, it's on you as well to to reach out and keep the void alive. 100% and I will add to that too that um obviously we've gone through a lot of layoffs. You saw a lot of middle management get cut, right? You saw a lot of people managers in security get cut. The problem with that is that you lost a lot of that hiring education that they built over years and years, right? So now all the hiring got pushed on the technical managers that didn't really want it in the first place. Obviously hiring is very critical for them, but that now becomes a skill set in and of itself that they need to suddenly figure

out on the fly in addition to handling fires, right? I've had hiring managers all the time being like I need to hire for this person, but we've been dealing with this incident for four days, right? So like how do you find that balance? It's very difficult for them for sure. Okay, that was super depressing. So let's get into the good stuff. Um I really I I I would use this one Wicked reference in particular. So obviously no spoilers Wizard of Oz came out a thousand years ago. So no spoilers whatsoever on this one. Um but just like Elphaba, really really critical personality traits. You're very smart, you're objective, you can define your own path and you're probably a little

bit different, right? Security, we're all a little weird. That's okay. That's actually what you want to leverage, right? As we're talking about, you know, this morning in the keynote, that humanity is actually what's still going to drive you in your job hunt. The problem though with saying that is like a lot of you guys can know that. Um the problem is is that it's probably like, I would say 20% selling yourself and about 80% actual like working your ass off and like actual talent. The problem is though with that is that that losing that 20% even if you're a security weapon puts you got to be minus, right? If you're at 80% you're not getting

there and you're not getting high enough, right? To ultimately pass some of these records. Um so I do want to start with that. And and truthfully this is a little bit of a sales crash course on yourself. So bear with us here. Um let's start with the basics and obviously like how do you even know like where to pitch yourself, right? So let's start there. Okay. Who are you? Where do you fit? What are you optimizing for? So when we talk about this, there is a very distinct difference between somebody who thrives in a startup and somebody who thrives in an enterprise. Um yes, maybe some of the skills are different, but there's ways that you

should start to kind of self-reflect. If you love the startup grind and you love that kind of scrappy everyone on the table, if you go to a large organization that is going to be slow and boring and tons of red tape. You are going to hate that job. Of course we can always be picky, but you know, start to start to form like where am I trying to go and start to optimize yourself for that. Okay? Um the other thing to think about is where the organization that you're applying for or looking to work at, where are they in their growth stage? You know, are they a series A and you're just trying to, you know, get to the

next level, maybe land some enterprise customers, that's a different story than if you are at an organization that has a whole laundry list of products they use and a mature si- si- tech stack and you're coming in and you have to fit into that space, it's it's a different environment Um and also a different kind of pitch on who you are and what you can do. So, just be realistic about, you know, where you fit. What What's your lane? Um and also, I mean, like when when you are talking to people, understand the road map and share share share stories of how you've helped similar organizations or uh if I'm going to be really really fast on

this, um if you've only worked at startups and you want to go to a FAANG, what can you bring to a FAANG organization or a large organization that they're not getting today? What can you bring and vice versa? If you've only done startups, you want to go enterprise, can you help bring a little organization and structure? That might be your your differentiator. That's a 20% piece that's going to make you stand out. And it's not also to say that you can't shoot your shot. I want to be very clear about that. You just have to understand where the company is coming from with it, right? And that's kind of where I tell people, "Hey, if you're like a

consultant and you want to go internal, right? That is a different job." So, you need to find friends in the industry that you that you know that are internal and mirror them, right? You just have to bring that skill set. You can't learn on the job anymore. That's the reality of it. They want Again, going back to what I said earlier, they're guaranteeing short-term certainty with you. They're not Very very few people are interested in long-term potential, right? They need to get problems solved now. So, once you know kind of like what your actual target is, what your pitch is, you have like everything down, where does anyone actually see you, which is the very critical point. Um but I will

say this, like yes, obviously LinkedIn isn't really having an option You need to have it. Like it's not an option anymore. This can also be a blog, a research Obviously, for privacy reasons, I don't blame you if you don't want to be on LinkedIn. Trust me, I don't have socials outside of LinkedIn either for that reason. Um the hard part though is that you need to figure out how you need to be head hunted because, as I mentioned earlier, the AI automation problem with applications creates an abyss, right? So, you can't keep pushing in that direction. You need to figure out how can people be, you know, how can you be reached out to? That's really,

really critical. Um, I would say though that there, again, there are others like security weapons, those like excellent types of folks that you know that are probably here, you'll never catch them online, right? So, 100% is possible, but they did that over years and years and years of hard work and networking, right? So, if you're out of a job, right, and you're like, "Well, I can't wait that long, right? Cuz I need to make money. This is capitalism. Welcome to this world." You need to become visible, right, very quickly, and LinkedIn generally is the easiest way to do that, I would say. Um, so, and practically speaking, um, I talked to two candidates who I was trying to help out

outside of my clients, they lost two offers because they didn't have a verified LinkedIn. They had manager references, they had everything. That manager was not willing to take a risk because he got screwed by a fake candidate 6 weeks earlier, right? So, you have to think about it from their head is like, "How many times can I go through this, right?" And it's not many. And it you have to think about the emotional balance with what these hiring managers are also going through as well. Um, and again, it is possible, it's just going to be harder, right, without that. So, assuming most of you already have a LinkedIn though, even if it's dormant, maybe you don't use it that often,

that's fine. I realized by talking to candidates that you guys have no idea how LinkedIn Recruiter actually looks on the back end because it's not the same as the LinkedIn that you see, not even LinkedIn Premium. Linked- LinkedIn Recruiter is a whole separate game for us. Um, and what's really interesting is that your resume is like an afterthought on LinkedIn, right? So, when I'm going to go headhunt somebody, right, I set up my Boolean, I set up my keyword searches, right? It's very simple tech, it's not that complicated, um, to go find a certain type of person, right? Um, that's what's going to show up on the left, and also shout out Chris Honda, if anyone knows Chris, he's

amazing. Um, this is all that you see, right? That's your audition when I try to go find somebody, right? It's literally like your profile picture, your headline, your title, and your education. That's it, right? It's so simple, right? And when you think about like how much time you put into your LinkedIn, you're like, "Wow, you can see none of that, right?" You're like, "That's lame." And then, if I'm like, "Cool, Chris looks great for whatever job I'm looking for, blah blah blah." This is what you see, and you notice I think you can hopefully see the blue highlight on some of those terms. So, you can see that. That's how it shows up, right? So, when

people are like, "Oh, a recruiter looks at your resume for 7 seconds." That's what they're looking at, right? They're seeing when, where, and how those keywords are coming up in your profile, right? So, when I tell people that their resume and their LinkedIn doesn't look the same, this is why, right? Cuz they're trying to make sure everything matches up. And it's very simple, right? It almost feels like to me in some ways it feels a little archaic and a little simple, right? To go and find these people. But, it is how a lot of people are get do get found, right? And I will say this very directly, too. For instance, where people can get lost

is like I I I knew a recruiter who thankfully is not in the industry anymore, who was trying to find someone with Terraform experience, but didn't know that Terraform wasn't infrastructure as code tool. So, they were just trying to find Terraform people, but I'm like, "Hey, there's a bunch of other people that could do this job. They just say infrastructure as code on their LinkedIn, right?" But, depending on how the keyword search is done, you may get either or, and you may not come up in the search, right? So, you need to optimize for somebody potentially who is non-technical, right? Say you're you're trying to apply for a startup. They have one recruiter hiring for HR, for finance, for security.

They don't know that, right? So, I do say all the time to people, you kind of have to treat your LinkedIn and your resume like you're talking to a 2-year-old, and like really start from scratch, okay? That's one of the biggest things that I see. And that's kind of where I think like actually being visible like this is where you should be putting in the most work. Um, so, this is This is my friend Tommy. He's amazing. These And as I talk through this, like I think what's fun about being visible, whether again research LinkedIn blog the critical point of this is that you need to figure out how to show your emotional intelligence, right? It's more than just

about the technical skill sets. Um so, if you read this this is an introduction on his LinkedIn. Tommy is a cloud-slinging, Terraform-wielding spider-swatting infrastructure wizard. And if that is the first line on your LinkedIn, you want to read more, right? I think everyone in the room can agree with that. Like, that's fun. It doesn't sound too much like AI, right? You're like, cool, that like feels real and it feels like you're a little bit fun person. That I makes me want to talk to them, right? That goes for hiring managers, that goes for you know, fellow engineers, that goes for a lot of different types of people. Um so, that's what I would say to people is like, your

personality and your authenticity doesn't have to be so formal, right? Obviously, know your audience. If you work at massive Fortune 100 companies, they may need you to play a little bit different. If you're working for startups and that's your game, great. Have a little bit of fun with it, right? That's how people remember you. Um and I would say too, like you can have so much better of a 1-second hook, right? It's not it it it's that simple, right? Um I think for I hate calling myself out here, but it's true. People know me because of this title, because of a tech recruiter that doesn't suck. That's really how people know me. And as much as people hate recruiters,

people take a second look at my profile just because of this, right? So, that does its job in and of itself. And you and that's what shows up even, right? If somebody's looking for a recruiter like myself, right? That's going to be what they see and that's the hook. So, you can accomplish that much sooner, obviously, than that. Um on the other side of it though, it is security. Your persona is permanent. I'm totally fine with strong opinions, totally fine with you being just a little bit bold and out there. Remember that anything negative, shameful, anything like that, it will be followed, okay? I want to be very clear about that. So, I've had a ton of people

where I'm like, why are you commenting that? Because everyone that you're connected with can see it, right? So, I'd be very, very, very careful about what that is. Um and the last thing that I'll say is that, you know, a humor is definitely like an underrated weapon in hiring, right? Every security is a rough job if we're being super honest, right? There are some 2:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., 4:00 a.m. nights sometimes you're like deep in it. Same for hiring, right? Same for a lot of people. Again, the psychological warfare. If you can get someone to laugh, that makes their day, right? They will remember you, right? Obviously, you don't have to be the jokester, you don't have to like push

it. But think about that way, right? You don't have to be so formal and be like, "What's your LinkedIn?" Like try figure out what makes them laugh, right? That's so much better of an introduction than I would say anything else. Um and again, all of these points that I'm talking about comes down to emotional intelligence. That's what people are looking for, that culture fit, right? Um that's what I think what is most important as well. And if you don't know where to begin, there's this tool called ChatGPT. Just put yourself in and say, "Tell me about myself in a fun way." And you'll you'll find something different. >> it be a skeleton, not your soul. That's

the very critical piece of how I define it. Okay. So, um we've we've harped on this, but I'm going to keep going because I think it's really critical. Networking is the only reliable path whether or not we like it. Now, networking could be the people in the room, it could be on LinkedIn, it could be on Signal, it could be in a Discord channel. There's many ways to do this. Um for myself, I'm on LinkedIn way too much. Uh and it's sort of this moment of like, "Uh you know me in my real life and then you know me on my LinkedIn persona." It's sort of cringey in in in my world, but you know what? It is what it is and

you know, we kind of have to take that with a grain of salt. Um so, a few a few kind of, you know, words words of the wise, right? When you're connecting with people, have some intention on why you're connecting. Hey, um amazing career track. I'd love to learn more from you or I'd love to follow you or hey, you're in this space. I just wrote a blog or I did some research on this, you might find it interesting, right? Like try and stand out. Anyone who's just doing the blind like connect, why are you connecting with me? I mean, maybe maybe we have mutual friends, but like find an intention behind it um and

then follow up. Um no one really wants to be a salesperson, but in this market you kind of have to sell yourself um and there's ways you can do it without losing your soul or feeling like tacky and a salesy. So, you know, take some, you know, grains of salt from here um moments to to think about when you're uh using these platforms. 100% and if I get messages that say I'm interested, period, I'm not responding to you. But the amount of people that do send them still shocks me every day. So, don't be that person. That'd be awesome. Thank you so much. That's my TED Talk. Um so, um I guess I can start on this

one if that's okay. Okay, so this is another one of my friends who's um stunning. Um I think what's really critical to note is how they structure the resume because even though we're talking about digital presidents and voice and all these things, you can still lose at the resume stage 100%, right? Um this is a very I'm going to say very simple format. You don't need anything super fancy. Please God, don't put your profile on there. Don't put your full address. This is security. Don't do that. That's a huge red flag, okay? Um I think the biggest thing though on resumes that separates this one from most is that you'll notice that every bullet pretty much has a

result at the end of it, right? Um if anyone went to Keith Hudley's earlier or know of Keith Hudley and a lot of these awesome mentors in the space, a lot of these folks when they're hiring are looking for outcomes, right? They're not looking for what you touched, they're looking for what you changed. What did you drive, right? That's really what we're concerned about. Um I think with a lot of people, at least the best people that I know and the people that you want to work for are agnostic really in the uh technical skills that you're doing, right? Because like truthfully, everyone wants a Kubernetes expert, but if you know Docker, I got you can probably

figure it out if I'm being honest, right? There's certain levels of that that I think are fine, but I think results and outcomes are really what driving resumes, right? And that's where you can lose out, because if you're just saying, "Hey, like I just managed these endpoints." You're like, "Cool. How many? Like, what style? Like, what what?" You know what I mean? Like, it gives me almost everything and nothing all at once, right? It's the biggest thing. And I would say, "Yes to all that, Ruby, and then I would look at this and be like, 'Looks like you were really hands-on technical in one role, and then you moved into more of a leadership position. What are you

looking for? Because you you if you clearly you can do both, what's going to be a better fit for you? What does my team need?' And I would question that. 100%. Cool. Okay, so now that we covered digital presence, we've covered outreach, we covered your style. I think the biggest thing is that you guys all know this, and yet you won't do it. Okay? That is the hardest part. You can have myself, you can have Clea yelling at you to network, and you won't do it, right? But I will tell you that with the market shifting, right? With all these problems that I'm talking about, if you don't do these things, you will not be able to

find a job in 2 years. I will absolutely guarantee that. And I, if you guys anyone know my style, I'm very brutally honest, right? I I'm not going to lie to you and tell you that it's going to get easier, right? I think it's actually going to get harder. If you start now, though, that's I think where you're going to have an easier time than the rest of the market, right? You're already doing so much better than everybody else by showing up to B-Sides in the first place, right? This is where iron sharpens iron, right? That's very critical. So, the first one I want to hit on, you need to interview year-round every quarter if you can do it. The

amount of people I talk to who didn't interview in the last 5 years cuz they were happy with their job, and all of a sudden they showed up this year, and they were like, "What happened?" I'm like, "Well, you haven't interviewed in 5 years. What happened, right? Like, a lot changed." So, especially if you are um even if you're happy in your job, the problem with like interviewing when you're not in a job is that you have obviously like the desperation for money clouding your ability to take that feedback as to why you were rejected to heart, right? If you get rejected while you're employed, you can take that growth and actually do something with it

without having to worry about, "Hey, can I pay my bills? Can I support my family?" Right? That's a very different attitude, I would say. Second, fall in love with the process and drive your outcomes. This is your research. This is your blog. This is your visibility. I think that is so important. Certifications that people ask about all the time is now the baseline, right? So, what are you doing differently, right? Your process is your research, what you love about. That's going to be the most important thing. Third, I would get a mentor. You can find one here. Those are the shortcuts to your dream job. And not just somebody who's like a technical peer who you just like love their work.

Somebody ideally who's hiring. Somebody who is actually going to drive you and push you and tell you to work harder and tell you it's not good enough. That's a good mentor. Nobody who's patting you on the back, right? That's the reality of it. Fourth, build a relationship with someone in hiring. I'm not just saying this as a recruiter. I just need you to know that if you have somebody in hiring that you can go to, uh they that is worth way more than 50 applications, right? Because if you just ask somebody, "How's the market?" I I again, I'm not going to answer that. I get that 50 DMs of that a day, right? But if you have a recruiter, like I have

friends here just be like, "Hey, like what do you think? Like where should I go?" Right? I'm happy to talk to them. That's the difference in the approach, for sure. Okay I Ruby is brutally honest and I like activities. So, uh look around the room, maybe the person sitting next to you, and introduce yourself. And that is your that is your takeaway for today. And if if if you don't even if you don't even know how to do it >> doing it. I'm so proud. Yay! Okay. Um this is what somebody This was an icebreaker that somebody said to me yesterday to start start interacting. They said, "Hello, friend. I am here to introduce myself. So, be weird and connect. Okay,

now stop. Okay, the last thing that I will say out of all of this, obviously AI is obviously the question out of it. The big thing from the job front that you're not seeing in these sessions is you need to communicate your AI fluency, right? It will replace you if you're saying you're vibe coding. 100% it will replace you. How are you actually using it with like, "Hey, like I want it to build, I don't know, like a threat model and I want to go break it, right?" That's the kind of stuff. How are you using it to challenge you is the biggest differentiator, okay? So, remember that as you go through this, it's not

something that will replace you if you let it. That's the very critical piece. If you live in fear, that's where I think a lot of the downfall is going to be. Um and if you have any questions or anything, we're at the end, so please come up to me. Obviously, I'm wearing a dumb witch's hat and she's in a crown, so come find us. We're happy to answer any questions. That's it. Thank you, guys.