Mock Interview 1 Q&A - Recruiter Matt Schwope by Matt Schwope

[Music] Peter yes sir can I get your water or anything no I am good I I appreciate so much you have taken the time out to give me an interview for this position I've done a lot of homework on your company and you guys are very impressive and I feel some of the skills that I've bring to the table and some of my previous experiences I could be a value added to you awesome well I want you to be comfortable this is going to be a conversation this is not an interrogation you know if you have you need me to repeat something make it more succinct or shorter I'm happy to help thank you and I'm here to you know just

have a be comfortable sure and if you need to think take a moment to think so okay start off simple you know can you tell me about a time when you had to manage a project under significant uncertainty you know ambiguous circumstances you know where you know your feet are really held to the fire and and uh you know there's changing regulations how how' you adapt your strategy how' you uh how'd you thrive well you want me to read your script we kind of just give you some hon things for okay so I've been in many different projects at different levels and uh one that kind of comes to mind is when I was in Japan and I was managing a full-blown

data center so I'm just getting there I'm the new guy but I'm the leader of the old guys and we had a outage at about 2:00 in the morning and we had from the military perspective he was a two-star general so it's kind of important so we had to really kind of get up to speed quickly to get him back online so one of the first questions I asked was new guy well we can just load our backups we'll be in great shape I thought and then the first backup didn't work second backup didn't work and I have phone calls coming in that he needs to check his email and all these other people are very wait excited

waiting on me to get this back up because they need to do their job so the bottom line was we had to go through about five backups to find and that was a huge issue because I had to manage the people above me looking for expectations of getting it completed quickly but also at the same time helping the people below me to get the task done so in the end we were able to accomplish it several hours later but we had success but the biggest part I learned from that was preparation because the way I operate is in a scenario like that is basically finding out well how often do we do these things when there's nothing wrong so I was able

to kind of put in place a program that allowed us to run our backups verify and validate the backups and then do a weekly restore of a random backup back up to verify that it worked oh wow and that saved us a lot of time and a lot of money and me a lot of sleep I would have lost so yeah it was a good good project for me excellent awesome so anyway yourself did you uh catch the situation like where was Peter when this happened so you kind of felt like I wonder if the Cherry glosses were happening you had some mental picture right of like what's going on in Japan like it felt like you were there like

the new guy having to boss around the seniors that probably weren't excited to get bossed around correct that can be a challenge and uh relatable for everybody kind of be in a situation so you can picture yourself there so it's an awesome example of how to describe a situation and then the next step Peter went into the action he took right and and he followed through and you're like okay I can see myself doing that and that's excellent you're following a linear progression and then the result of it worked yes which is awesome and then he went the extra mile which if you can do it of if he reflected on it and like hey maybe if we

did this step this won't happen again in the future you know that postmortem or or uh reflecting on on the day's events and and what you could do better or what you could do to prevent it so that's kind of going the extra mile uh phenomenal answer uh yeah great job all true though honestly true story that's awesome they uh so yeah anything you want to um I think the biggest thing is people want to know what is your value to my company what do you bring to the table pretty much and if you've done your homework previously you got a good an idea and again I I say LinkedIn is a great tool to build profiles from so

when I do cyber security on the hacking side that's my favorite tool LinkedIn because I can find everything out about you just from going there and people you associate with so what most people would do in this case he's already looked at me on link in and other socials to find out okay is this guy credible two is he someone I want to bring into my team and can I trust some of the actions he's been involved with so from me sharing what I shared he's already done his homework because most of the time you see a recruiter or whoever is interviewing you they already know the answer most times prior to you answering it or somewhere in the ballpark so you

don't have to lie you just be honest about it and if the situation came up I'm a new guy applying for this type of position never worked in it before I worked in a warehouse but I managed projects in the warehouse I wasn't an IT guy but I had to take care of the trucks coming in making sure they got unloaded making sure the stuff got on shelves that's project management you follow what I'm saying so I'm sharing that with you because the mere people M fact rather the people look at well I didn't do that but really you did do that you just didn't put it on your resume that you did that because

you thought what you did was less than what that was asking but you actually probably did more than what it was asking so that's what you have to sell yourself and it's on paper then you talk to them and share that with him face to face that way they get to know you as a person and get them War fuzzy of H might be a pretty good C yep no absolutely and another tip our second scenario is going to be a little bit different it's going to be PM roll for kind of a transitioning candidate right somebody that's maybe they were uh a school teacher or maybe they were just finished uh their Duty with the service right and

they're getting into the private sector that's kind of how we wrote the second question uh another thing I would encourage you to do when you're answering these questions is when you listen to the question try try to identify the core competency that they were looking for right like resilience or leadership communication uh you know in that first question Peter had to take a leadership he had to communicate with people that may have been challenging may have been abrasive like there's a lot of core competencies there and what you're trying to do is identify a core competency and in your head have that story of like oh we got to talk about leadership there's this time I was in

Japan and there's your leadership story and you got to ready and you can have one story that covers five different core competencies correct so and I'm happy to share some of this I I made a list there about 15 core competencies that are common in interview questions and and uh Peter did a phenomenal job but just try and listen for it in the second question what could be the core competency um so Peter uh tell us the time that you had a successful IT project that you had managed you know what was your role um what made the project a success well I'll tell you a recent project that I was involved with I was asked to come in and do an

assessment of an organization here in Tampa that needed to qualify to get business with the government and really I was kind of coming in cold I had a great background in general but I didn't know specific pieces of what they needed so I had to do my homework but then the first thing I really did after that was I went to the site and started talking to the people first I met with with whoever the shareholder was in this case the senior person who requested this and kind of got a feel of what they did and what they're looking for then I took the time to go to each person and talk to them about what they do because I need to

build up my list of people I can work with when I needed something so I was kind of you know greasing the skids as we say in the military so I can have success on what I was trying to do at least to some degree and that was really big because when I went through and I did the assessment I had created a relationship and the relationship that I created because I took that time to go to the site pay big dividends for me because now they saw me as a person and I see them as people rather than oh here comes a guy to assess us and see what our risk looks like nobody wants to get

assessed I promise you that right not a fun thing but if you share them with them rather here's the benefits of it and here's what you can do after you get it done it's kind of like people want to return on investment so if I'm going to pay this much money for something what am I getting for it you're selling the same thing even when you're helping someone with the project they're putting you in charge of it so that basically you can say I can do this from what I've done previously but I want to find out what are you looking for so you have a basic skills I had a basic skill coming into

that particular situation I understood project management I understood dead Lance budgets I understand all those things but I didn't know exactly what they wanted and the last thing I wanted to do was push what I think I know they want rather than hear what exactly what they wanted and that helped me tremendously what do you think that core competence is I honestly I think it's important to you know understand you know all those things absolutely I completely agree rather than like projecting you know what you think you know you know they want it's I think it's important to like really kind of you know put some feelers out there to really you can get understanding of what their take on what

what project management means to them correct it could mean something completely different for yes you know and then making sure those expectations like a lot match and what makes good communication was he listening he was listening right that's an awesome core competency it's a key to communication and you know he demonstrated that he communicated well and and no you're 100% correct well done so and what we can do after the interview maybe I I brought a couple extra questions instead of answering it we'll just go through it like hey identify what they're trying to get out of this kind of like a rapid fire at the very end uh but yeah know 100% you know problem solving core

competency you know he problem solved the situation communicated uh you know these are all great core competencies so that one story could serve those five core competencies or six core competency so yeah excellent job it's a fantastic answer Peter well done it's almost like you've done this before sir and and you notice how since that was a a transition C you notice how that question was significantly easier than that first question where you're putting somebody on the spot of like tell me when the building was on fire right why'd you pour gas on it and you're like I didn't I didn't where that easier question is along the lines of hey tell me a time

you found some success that's much friendlier it's a much easier question for transitioning candidat to answer so whatever role you're at expect a a question at your level and if you're senior and you're going for that director position there's going to be some tell me sometimes the gases on the building questions and when you're just getting into the game it's it's more of you know hey tell me a time that you you were challenged how'd you overcome it so third question that Peter's going to answer the scenario he's a senior candidate and rather than a big firm he said a startup firm which is wearing many hats uh they might not be sure what they want

they just know maybe they'll figure it out in the conversation and right flying by the Sea of their PS plane and flight yeah that's what we call yeah flap your arms as you fall so question is Peter yes share a time that you had to lead a project without sign sufficient resources you didn't have enough budget you didn't have enough people you just didn't have whatever it was you didn't have enough of it corre and uh what was your strategy for handling that adversity so yes I've encountered that more than once unfortunately um and the reason why I say it because most people are tight on resources be it people money things those are pretty much what

makes it up so there's always going to be a short fall somewhere so you go in with the expectation it's a possibility right and in most cases you'll be writing so in this situation um we basically needed some equipment for a network that we were doing some testing on and this test was supposed to take the equipment after it was tested and moved into the production sound great okay pretty simple but as we started going through the tests we started realizing there was issues with the hardware itself so we had a warranty with it but it was only a borrowed piece of Hardware it wasn't ours the vendor let us borrow it to kind of take it for a test ride

see how I like it so we did and once we started playing with it we realized that this doesn't do everything we want or everything they thought it was going to do we needed additional Hardware to do that of course most vendors if if you guys are in it business and any any other business Pharmacy it doesn't matter they're all about hey take a few samples or try this out for a little while because they figure once you get your hands on you start playing with it you like it they're going to buy it most time that actually happens in most cases in this case we couldn't because we didn't have the money but at the same time we had the

stakeholders the sea level expecting it to take place so in this situation we literally had to break down the piece of what was going on with the project show them what we were able to do but what we weren't able to do to get it to this end state that everyone expected to put these appliances on the network now and we're good it's filtering information for us and somewh the riverbed devices which basically increase the speed of transactions between the router and the switch so um we held on T it for a while but then the reality came in place that we don't have Mone buy this so what we end up doing we created I kind of call it workaround fix

temporarily at least showing some progression towards what they desired because in the end I don't write checks they had to write the check and in a lot of cases when it comes to money and even people because money creates people for positions if the budget hasn't been budgeted for either one of those things it probably won't happen but the expectation that they still want it and need it is that doesn't change so you get creative and so we got creative as much as we could try to increase the bandwidth on on the routers and kind of get things move a little bit faster and that helped a little bit but at the same time we also told them the bad part of

the story we said okay here's what we need here's what we have and here's what we're able to do with it here's what you're not going to get now I'll never tell you we can't do this we you can only do it when you're ready to purchase the items that we need to be successful with it for you not for me and that kind of helped because somehow money just kind of came out of somewhere and we got the stuff hooked it up and off we going to the story nice no it's uh that's awesome so what do you uh maybe somebody in the back what do you think that core confiden he was that he

was discussing communication what uh what about maybe a accountability you know he had to deliver some tough news U how many words that he's not allowed to say in a corporate environment you think we're going through his head at that moment right like creative communication absolutely yeah and and 100% communication mean you're 100% correct and like I said there's a lot of uh you know on those questions there's multiple answers that are correct right and and you don't have to feel like oh I said communication and he meant accountability no they're they're both correct so when you get in that and you're listening to that question it's going to be a few different options for you choose the one

that has the most engaging story because I want to ask 10 different followup questions about how this went down what what what' you do I mean you know like what kind of Frankenstein colossal Contraption did he make right if I was a hiring manager and he was following up with Engineers as a project manager right and and delivering news to the stakeholders of like oh this cost a million dollar and you've got $40 like that's a difficult conversation because at the end of the day he that customer wants to be happy and uh no awesome I mean excellent work uh anybody have any questions about any of that you know this how he identified the

situation or the problem or when into the action or describe the result you kind of saw how he went linear through that one of the things in a situation like this and you will encounter it at one time or another in your career you don't always have the answers or you don't have the resources to get the answer and you can't be afraid to say I'm sorry we can't right now but also tag that with but we could if but the if isn't on you it's on the people who are requesting it that puts the priorities back in their play because in the end most of us will be hired is other manager but you're only

managing certain pieces not the whole picture right project manager engineer you're engineering a solution for something or you're basically maintaining what's already out there operational wise so if you're requested to do a certain thing and you've done your best you've done your homework documented what you've done because that's the key as long as you can show you did your due diligence as we call it in cyber and then I tried my best I looked here here tried to find a cheaper product there this is the best I can come up with okay then you can't complain stakeholder to me that I didn't do my job I did my job to the best of my ability with what I had but at the same

time I had no problem telling them we can't get this done right now and some people are so afraid I've seen it so many times in the military outside the military to say we can't do something or afraid to share bad news this is not going to work right now what do you mean it's not well here here's the reason why have a seat but you got to have your ducks in order as we say to be able to have that conversation because you're going to get troubleshooting on those things well as always well why can't we well what do we need well I'm glad you asked because this is all the things that we need so

when do you recommend to I can tell with my team that we'll have these things I'm always playing tennis you Vol to me about you got a problem I'll do my homework and figure out what it is then I'm going to Vol right back because in the end I don't pay people I don't have a paycheck I can't hire people if you're not going to get a budget for it so your expectation management really and that's what it all comes down to and all of us are going to have to do this regards to where you work manage expectation of the people above you because when you're in a job interview as well they want to

find out how are you able to manage their expectation of what they wanted or what they're expecting and you weren't able to provide it then you do your homework and just tell the truth because in the end if you don't tell them the truth and you try to say oh well we can get it done I hate that because you really can't you kind of become what I call a yes butter yeah but but we can take it that no just say we can't and hold your head up and keep rolling out document everything you said and you'll be fine if you can share that with someone in an interview that's a struggle that you got Beyond

to the best of your abilities that's all they're looking for okay I got someone who's going to take initiative they're going to do their due diligence and do their homework and research and then they're gonna be transparent which is huge to me about can they or can't they but if they just come out the bat and say no we can't do that okay I'm gonna ask you why not tell me a reason so I already know you don't ask me to tell you a reason so I'll just tell you before you ask me that make sense so that's what you're looking for and that's who I'm hiring H ing I've had many people I've hired over

the years that did not meet the qualifications for the job out of the five six things that we needed they maybe met two or three but after I spoke with them I got a good feeling for the person and some of the questions like Matt's talking about we kind of went through some of those questions and they gave honest feedback and then some things they said you know honestly I've never worked in that area so I'm not really knowledgeable enough on it but I'm a very hungry person for knowledge and putting in the right position giving the tools that I already have and with the tools that you can give me I can definitely contribute to helping me get

it done point it back always point it back get it off of you you'll feel better too no and then you know usually most interviews at this point the roles slightly reversed right the candidate gets a few moments to ask about the companies this is when I'd say Peter you have any questions for us I did have a few I I read an article about you all had gotten hit with a ransom attack uh I think about two years ago and I'm curious how did you all handle that well see now I'm I'm out of this I'm like this okay come on talk to me right because I don't know anything about it but he's inside so I'm G see is

he gonna be transparent with me because I already got the answer I already read it do your homework right so good I'll let them tell me yeah and and this is where you know you you may kind of give some inside to the the company like hey you know that was above my pay grade you know I'm just director program manage it I'm more of managing the solution once the decision upstairs has been made and what they decided to do or what I was told was that we weren't going to pay the ransomware we contacted our VAR that was responsible for that endpoint and you know they collaborated and and we back traced that Bitcoin address and and

you know contacted the exchange that where that money would land and and told them to expect the payment and we teased a fake payment and we're trying to draw them out and we had our instant Response Team ready and we also had our backup team getting ready for business continuity plan and you know you kind of go on that that thing but so I'm I'm getting all this great information because now I'm collecting data on them they've already been collecting data on me but then the thing I'm hitting with next is well how how much of that was your team involved with and what were some of the obstacles they came across I'm interviewing him so I'm nervous in the beginning

because I'm like I don't know he going to ask but he's nervous too to some degree because he don't know what I'm going to ask and in the end this may not be a match and that is okay but what did it do for me I just sharpened my skills he he was a stone I can sharpen my knife on that's it because in the end it wasn't meant for me to be here in the first place but if we get to another interview it may be different yeah no I me that on correct and and you listen to some of those answers like oh you did have a business continuity plan what that entail yeah you got a

follow-up question you're like okay you're diagnosing is this a fledgling program that's one person wearing 17 hats and faking it you know did the the you know AV person setup uh uh you know their endpoint protection as well and and you know you're trying to figure that out and then same time we're like oh no we had this whole team we had an audit from deoe and this is the plan that they set up and we execute you're like oh wow they're they're spending money they're serious about their security because as a manager you're trying to figure out how serious do they take cyber security right the biggest complaint you hear at of cesos is I

don't get the support right you have one getting sued into Oblivion you know what's this company doing about it right your Chief scapegoat officer you know are you going to have the support and the Buy in from your your sea levels or not and you listen for those answers of hey these are the steps they have taken have not taken it's also an for the right person an opportunity for like you know what this is exactly what I want to do I want to build a continuity plan from scratch correct and I am just foaming at the mouth to get my hands on the non-existent or the one sheet of paper that's crumpled up in the back of

a file cabinet somewhere and and if you get into a situation where you have the conversation as you listen you also hear some things that you may be really good at that never even came up in the conversation like he talked about a disaster recovery plan well if you built one from scratch from your previous company now he's giving you a brand new road to go down to talk about you because again I'm a Salesman I'm selling me is he buying or not I got to do everything I can to see if he's going to buy but at the same time if he comes back and says well you know we we only really have two people

in the shop and uh what you're going to be doing cuz I'm going to ask so so what are your what are your expectations of me in this role or you're going to be managing those two people and you may get hit about two or three different things at the same time because a very robust environment and we operate at very fast speed and I'm in my head I'm like okay that means I'm not off on weekends because I I'm entitled to my choices too right so I'm I'm taking note of everything he's saying and then we'll continue on I say okay well it's been great do you think we're going to move on to the next interview because in most

cases depending on the company it could be two maybe three interviews before you even get a job could be even more right so it just depends on the job itself now we've had this great conversation we've hit it off more or less as people and understand that okay I can kind of help you you can help me but that's not the technical interview because the next one may be a technical interiew view if they're bringing me on to be a network administrator for example then now I'm going to talk to the network engineer or administrator already on site they're going to ask me about the difference between TCP model and OSI model and at what layer The OSI model does the N

Network layer operate and what operates there Ian so they're going to get a little more in detail now how do you set up a VLAN on switch and I'm just using that as example right I can't be afraid of that now if I don't know some of that just say you don't know it honestly I've never had to do that but I have done this this and this and I feel with what I understand from that aspect of it it should be more easy for me to kind of pick it up so what you saying is don't always uh don't always say oh I don't know how to do that but also come back with else Bingo saying hey but I do know

this corre I could probably learn that real quick that's exactly because that excites them that you now it's not like well I'm sorry I don't know that okay you got any more else anything else to put with that you just always come that's like like the scenario I said we didn't have enough money to get what we needed done but I gave an option of what could be done and what also will be done if they provide the funds so I'm giving Alternatives even to something I don't know I can say honestly I don't know that I've never really worked with it but I am familiar with other things that kind of tie into it and I feel if I do a little more

research and study up on it I should be able to pick it up a little B more and kind of pick that area up to support you in what you need I'm still selling but I didn't say I just don't know I heard that you could uh a real thing is like uh what can I do for you basically uh someone told me that like when you're interviewing you as them what can I do you make this a little bit smoother or something like that or um in like an interview process yeah you have an example of when you picked up a new technology ever in your life well you mean like any technology yeah like a game system anything yeah

that's your rebuttal like no I'm not familiar with that but at this point you know I didn't understand how to FTP or how to you know close ports and configure ports so what I did is I did this this this and this and now I'm knowledgeable about ports which ones I need to really manage and which ones you know and and then you show an example of you in a similar situation of not knowing and how you found the knowledge you know like when I was in fifth grade you know and I wanted to know something like Mom what's this she be like look it up yeah right how many how many parents said look it

up true yeah so in the end none of us know everything you never will so don't even hurt yourself be honest about what you do know but also Express how you're open and willing to learn what you don't because most people want to know are you going to take an initiative to do the research because everybody knows Google still works because that's exactly what they just did so you can go ahead this may be I don't know if this is something that's normal or maybe it's unusual what if they ask you something that relating like that wasn't necessarily in the job description okay like you're you're interviewing for a security anal which is traditionally blue team blue team

responsibilities that and they ask you uh do you know penet do you know how to do penetration testing you know and it's like just like you said like if that's not my wheelhouse but I'm familiar with this technology would that be like a good example sure it could be I mean because for example um you you're not an ethical hacker right you don't do pen testing but you do security because you've been a network administrator and you had to lock down servers administer user accounts put Group Policy objects in place so you kind of understand what they're trying to prevent someone from getting access to so you just being honest I also have a follow-up question for you have you

ever spent like a Saturday at a cyber security conference gaining more knowledge and information there you go you're here right now right and this is your example of hey you know what I wanted to learn more about penetration testing and I saw bsides had four different presentations hug you know uh I know Jeremy over at aboc code really literally competing with us at one o'clock was doing a uh black hat AI presentation and that really fascinated me I wanted to learn about it and I knew he was a leader so I went there and that's what I spent my Saturday doing yeah and you literally just did that you're here right now go ahead um so I had a question so when um

when at the end when you had uh they ask you do you have any questions for me it would it be all right like let's say I wasn't for sure if I answered a question earlier right but asked the same question to them to see uh how they like a scenario question just to see how they would have answered it well two things do you at that point when you're wanted to see how that answered do you have a better answer than your first answer maybe after they would have explained to me why they would do it their way because I was thinking maybe they're doing it the way they're they're uh job told them how to do it and maybe

I would have got insight into how the uh business works it because like I had one time when someone asked me uh someone has a problem with a password someone uh VIP has a problem with something another and then a business is not working properly what which one which uh which one would you do in order and I said well tell the truth I don't know if you guys take uh VIPs more serious since they are the VIPs or so depending on the situation I would probably do the last one first because it's more dire because if you can't run something that more okay and then I would say VIP because I don't know if you guys would have cared

for that and it seemed like a simple problem yeah no 100% you gave your justification to the answer but you can always revisit something because the interview's not over until you're in your car driving away Y and even then you still have and this is where I guess a lot of people may miss an opportunity and it's a great opportunity say you get home and like a lot of us we lay in bed we ruminate we're watching the ceiling fan go in circles right and we're like I should have said this well the next day when you send your hey thank you for taking the time to meet with me letter like hey upon further reflection I

thought about that question and this is actually what I think I'd really would have done and that thank you letter is always an opportunity to clarify something you were vague about right nobody likes vag answer or give a better answer if you said I don't know I'd have to look that up you know your followup um it's not over till forever until they say p no even then because six months later they might have a different need they might be like hey you know what somebody had to try out against Michael Jordan right and somebody got cut because when they're at North Carolina Jordan was there and right that's unfortunate for that person uh but you

know next season when when he graduates they're like oh get in here like we need you so it's never ever over uh you know continue to talk uh they're not their adversary your adversary because they didn't hire you at that moment right uh their business will evolve it'll grow it'll pivot like two years ago AI wasn't what it is now right and business needs have changed true so again something else is going to come up down the line and business needs are going to change again and you might be right there just in time so if you follow up with that person every couple of months if they did reject you that's okay just be

polite you know obviously a let little cool down time but keep in mind it's never over so the thank you letter you get another opportunity to fix a mistake you know two months later you get an opportunity to fix the mistake uh so you completely didn't know about the difference between TCP and UDP and then two months later you're like hey you know that question inspired me to go do more research and now I have a home lab and my home lab has XYZ on it and I really appreciate you pointing out that gap of my knowledge and who knows what stone that'll in turn right you just always are looking for a thing and and I

actually I progress in my career because during an interview somebody pointed out a gap that I had and I'm like oh I do need to tighten up on that and now I'm 10 times better at it because I put a lot of I didn't want that to ever happen again yeah you got to chip on my shoulder about it you know I'm like I'm never going to let that embarrass me again and you fix it so there's a few different ways you can tackle it yeah does anybody else have any other questions yes okay question give me an

example

Okay so so I would not but you still can now let me explain answer the question how you feel you want to answer it then follow up with what you just said because you satisfied the requirement the requirement was I asked you this I need you to answer that not give me another question but you still had a question that's a valid question but you've done what they asked you to do but now you're setting something back on their side and trying to get more information and that may bring on a brand new conversation who knows yep anybody else all right guys it's been wonderful thank you so much we appreciate you guys hanging here we're

not going to have the second mock interview uh the person who was doing it had to take off for emergency situation so not a problem but we're going to be here you guys have any other questions please feel free to ask here's one I want to share with you guys I didn't get a chance to get into with the the panel money asking for salar is scariest thing for most people going for a job and I I just want to share that because been there got that t-shirt but you learn over the years every company has a set salary is a window right you have no clue what that is they do because they know well whoever manages the budget

what they budgeted for that guy or that g that's going to be in that position they're going to play you low in just like the guys were're talking about here earlier in the panel because if they can get you low so so let's just say they're looking for a network engineer and they have set aside for this position between 90 and $120,000 okay but here's the if you did do your homework and here's the if you didn't do your homework so if you didn't do your homework you're like oh man I'm at 65 right now I can get up to 90 oh that's a huge increase true story it isn't huge increase but there could be more of an

increase if you ask the right questions sometimes and you may not get the answer but you play the game so when they ask you so so what do you feel you would like to get for this type of job they toy with the questions I always ask them well what have you budgeted for the position I play tennis or ping pong volley back then they'll come back well um we have probably can do pretty well do you have a range oh yeah I got a range but I'm GNA put a range to where I'm always gonna get what I want but I'll take if you give me more so let's just say Playing devil's avoc could have gone

out on salaries.com or wherever grabbed information on someone in this type of position with the general idea would be on their pay and a lot of that's Regional depending on where they are people here in Tampa don't get paid what DC in New York gets entirely different persistance right so you got to keep that in mind but I'll say Okay um I could probably do somewhere and if I'm looking for 120 to let's say 80 because I'm at 65 and one of the things I've always learned over the years is is work for me I always add 10 to $20,000 more to the next job I'm going to I don't need a lateral I can stay

right where I'm at if I'm making 50 $60,000 a year why I another 50 $60,000 year job why I introduce risk yeah that's wasting my time I want to get something out the deal so yeah and they said well you know we haven't got enough that far said okay well how close can you get because you gave me a window I W between 90 and $120,000 I said W that's that's kind of high I don't know if we have it in the budget well how close can you get from your budget throw it right back I said well maybe we can do this this we can bring you in at 90 and kind of maybe look at some things

as time progresses but I can say well that'll be great but how about a $5,000 signing bonus let's play why I got nothing to lose anyway I don't have a job or the one I'm in I don't really like but I still got a job so all you going to do in the end is say yes or no period you got a 5050 shot if you don't play the game you're 100% loss because they're don't to get what they want rather than you getting what you want um so I just came out of school long ago I can do that too or anybody can do it remember this guys I kind of call it you

Inc and I say that to each one of you guys you are your own company they're hiring your company because you have something that they want or don't have you have to conduct your as if you are your company you never sell yourself short cuz they're automatically going to do that anyway for you don't give the opportunity you sell yourself for your value and then see where there's flexibility and wiggle room to get close like they were talking about earlier well maybe you can give me some extra PTO which is paid time off okay that kind of helps and rather than everyone else gets a week uh every six months I'll get two weeks every six

months always go for continued education like get or you knowy I want to get my whatever name your shirt and get it you got to get something out the deal but if possible I never say never but if possible try not to ever do a lateral from the same paycheck to the same paycheck because all you did was probably add more stress and less money unless it's less stress and then the same that could be again everyone's different places in their life right now and I say that to be honest because for some people they may need $140,000 to maintain two kids their home College lifestyle right that's fine but then you take someone that's kind of

been in the business for a while and has pretty much gotten to a place where they're manageable no kids they're empty nesters and they're not looking to go up the ladder they've already been there they're coming down the ladder as in responsibility strength working hard they're trying to now start enjoying life so that guy may say you know what give me $50,000 year because that's my play money I already have all this other stuff going on back here so I'm not really pressed for your dollars but I can't use an extra trip to Cancun or something every now and then so $50,000 is good and and maybe you throw in signning Bon well heck I just saved that guy a whole lot

of money because I'm not in it for the money at that time I'm in a different place in life I know everyone say it's always V it is but it also goes back to where you've been and what you've already been able to accomplish compared to someone like yourself that's you're hungry you're trying to get in the game and progress and you should compared to somebody like me I've been in a game for a long time almost 50 years and I'm tired of the game so I'm kind of rolling off into the sunset soon but it's okay cuz you're going to be here one day as well that's it's just the way it works I'm not a rocket scientist I just

figured out how it works um could you because I heard talk that um that possibly like instead of five day week people are W try to do a four day week could you ask for that instead say hey I work this many hours day and then I only work but I first would check the culture of the company first because if the company's on a 8 hour day 40h hour week in the office I really doubt you're gonna get what you're asking for so don't set yourself up for failure if you already know well what uh are you trying to get a sock roll or or what is your target well like I said I just came

out of school so really anything so I'll give you a secret and this is hopefully it'll it feels like uh too easy of advice but I swear to some of the most valuable advice I've ever bumped into the more specific you get the easier search will be so while you're like oh you know I'll take anything you're trying to like boil the whole ocean but if you're like you know what I love uh gaming now you're like I want to do cyber security for a gaming company and you know you can now you can make a list and Google how gaming companies and then gaming companies with security department and start connect in with those people but

it gets you focused and it starts allowing you to identify opportunities because the most difficult part of that entry level role is identifying opportunities right because when you're first trying to get your first role you go to the obvious targets right Coke Nike all the big brands that you see like when you go down the aisles of Target or where or you apply to Target right you know they had a bleach breach they know the value of cyber security money and so you go there but there's opportunities that present themselves if you go towards a specific Niche the more specific you get the easier it gets and uh you know if you're looking for odd

schedules like some of these companies have security offerings as a product like manage detection response manage blah blah blah manage Fillin the blank they're 247 so they're going to have those night shifts they're going to have those 4 day weeks uh in the military they have a few different schedules that like Panama and Panama is the most bizarre schedule you'll see it's like on what a 3-we calendar yeah it's the Calendar's that complex that it lasts three weeks before it starts over again and you get you know four day weekends and you work two days and then a three-day weekend it's most convoluted thing but when you have 10 people on a Panama it's one of the most effective

schedules so when as Peter said you research that those manag companies that offer managed services are going to be able to offer you that augmented schedule or that non I call it non-standard right N9 to-5 is what most people because you got to get the kids to school you know blah blah blah got Hobbies got the weekend uh that's what a lot of people look for but you will have an easier time if you're willing to work weird hours uh in Tampa reliaquest always looking for people to work that great definitely are you want to work at 1:00 a.m. and and manage Sim logs at 1:00 a.m. there's like at least four companies in Tampa deepwatch

they'll they're happy to have you and and you'll get a job much faster the barrier to entry is lower the interview is going to be easier uh because they don't have a lot of options for that 1 a. person true so there two ways you make money right doing something somebody can't do right or doing what nobody wants to do yeah yes sir than oh of course yeah [Music]

okay can I ask what certifications you have right

now okay okay have have you looked at the roles that you are trying to go to in the requirements form what do they say a lot of times

ask yeah okay so have you got any interviews for what you're trying to get to okay

okay sure yeah from my perspective one you got a job which is always good um and from there like I said that's why I asked a question about your Sears and have you had any other um conversation about it with any recruiters or anything and the reason why because you want to know if that's where I want to be okay what are they requiring are they looking for uh compa Sissa which is a security analyst certification are are they looking for a cisp because they want me to manage these people so what do they want and you need to look at about four or five to kind of get a general idea language may change but in the end most are going

to ask for kind of exactly what they want five years experience okay so you don't have five years experience have you gone to college okay that's four years of experience you follow because all College says is did four years you started something and four years you finished something whatever you did in between doesn't really matter it doesn't matter because you never know it's all about timing this whole game and you guys know that y'all been in business for a little while had jobs today they like I said today there's nothing there for that company but tomorrow they may be because two people just left because they had new management to come in and they don't like them

I'll give you another thing yeah that gentleman that was sitting in the second row in the middle he just sold his startup to threat locker and like you just never know who you're sitting next to he had a t-shirt on just hanging that's huge they just sold his startup to a big company that and and if you go on you can look up companies on different websites on on how many people they've hired and let go in like the last six months 12 months and 24 months threat Locker increased in size 70% in the last 24 months in the last six months they've increased by 18% yeah so that company's growing like wildfire they're going to be the next billion

dollar unicorn in Florida um and he was right there yeah you could have you know you just don't know who's in the room so but that's what you get from this yeah threat Locker so does that kind of help a little bit okay I just want to make sure I answer what you were asking yes sir

I pardon me I missed the second word oh feedback well it's all on the person honestly they don't have to give you any feedback some are just like okay thank you we appreciate your time out you go and and everybody's so quick to trash somebody on social media it's getting harder because everybody's a little nervous of like what if I give you bad feedback are going to come you know Lo the car tires or you know yeah well and you can ask the question honestly you can phrase it different there's no guarantee they're going to say something but the good ones will probably say well you did really well but it just sounds like you need to

tighten up on your your scripting a little bit more because you didn't really have a background in python or one of the languages that we use so I think if you do that you're probably in pretty good shape for your next interview okay cool I'm good now I know something I can start digging into but that's still all opinionated right but if you kind of can see well yeah he did hit a spot that I'm not that strong okay then now you can start watching some YouTube videos on python pull down a virtual machine from virtual box set up a server start playing with python I have a followup question for you like you just sat here

at this presentation there's a lot of good information right right so if I had to rate it maybe a 6 out of 10 is there anything that you'd give us to make it maybe an 8 out of 10 and I'm not trying to be perfect on my next one but eight out of 10 would definitely be an approv no but you see how I phrased it in a friendly way of getting feedback like hey I understand I didn't get the roll I'm a six out of 10 what would make me an eight out of 10 like ask it in a very friendly way that's not combative always positive right and like hey I just want to be eight out of 10 I'm not

even trying to be perfect right you see how it's just more approachable and and that's kind of in that situation a technique there's a bunch of them right as time more time passes the more likely they are to give you feedback but in the same regard the more time that passes the less they're going to remember about it so you try to like you know you can always look up who got the job compare your resume see oh they had five more searchs than me okay you know again Somebody went up against Michael Jordan yeah but he b a very a point about the crazy shifts that nobody really wants because sometimes you got to

sacrifice to get a game right and that may be exactly the scenario you know you see some things out there but it says like for third shift so you're in there from 12: to 800 in the morning you're like man I don't want to do that I don't get no weekends I can't go to the club at night Ian you all these things are running in your head but you staying at your mom's house H so is that really that important not really because like I said earlier every job is temporary none are ever permanent even the government jobs they're never permanent either you go or they kick you out one or two so it's going to happen

so I say that for the perspective of offer yourself up for the stuff that nobody wants to do so if you see something like that send out your resume but then on LinkedIn or wherever contact whoever's hiring for that position so you know I'm really interested and I'm kind of a night owl so I would really love to be able to get in on that evening shift and I think I can definitely support you guys on that and hopefully kind of grow with your company ah Marge we got a guy who wants to get on the evening shift because they looked at like 20 other people every already said nope I ain't doing it you now are

the golden ticket also there's job that a lot of people don't want because they feel they feel like it's they get paid not a lot compared to what they think they deserve because so because like uh I had it for back in like December when I was about to graduate uh that um there was this job uh that was only paying 13 an hour help this position I was like should I really take this I I know like in the long run it probably be helpful because I get the experience and maybe because uh my teacher was like oh my son's a weatherman but uh before that he was getting a job he was working a job that

paid him nothing but once he got that experience trying a whole bunch of different things because it was such a small company he he went and tried to do a year later got a new job I was paying him double the triple amount that it happens so yeah small sacrifice for long-term game I mean honestly that's where I go to the mentality of if you don't have a job get a job with benefits so now you can go to the doctor if something happens for you but that doesn't mean you stop looking for what you really want you don't have to just put your tent up there and camp out you want to be as mobile as possible because

you're not planning on staying that long so even it's $3 $15 an hour I got it not a lot of money can you survive on that maybe not you maybe I have to get a roommate and y'all going together but that's all temporary as long as you're in the hunt getting more education getting more certifications looking at more opportunities you not g to stay there but that's they got you in yeah also I wasn't here at the very beginning um I didn't catch your Nam I'm Peter Bagley this is Matt schro Matt schy you a lot social engineered our way into this room um you're not going to believe it but we were at the bar yeah said let's

go over here and see what these people all about uh no i u myself I've been a cyber security recruiter for about a decade I mostly help uh security bars manage service providers resellers uh do big implementations breaches remediations that that's kind of my specialty me I've been around for a few minutes um I did 21 years in the Army and retired as a first sergeant and um became a defense contractor shortly after that started grad school as soon as I finished the Army and uh been working as a defense contractor for almost 20 years been a college professor for almost 18 years and uh been running my own business for probably about 15 years so

I do a few things um to bring up the point what you said earlier that um why is a diploma consider experience and I went to a techn and I didn't geta because they don't that yeah why is that not con so the game is changing and this is honest truth it's changing because employers are starting to understand okay I can look for this guy or gal who has this four-year degree and something says science okay great but they can't do the job because really in college they never taught them that thing that I need but I had this G gal over here there never even been to college straight out of high school but

they have like four shirts and they've showed me how they can do certain things who am I going to hire I'm hiring those guys and that's what industry St to understand it ain't even about the degree anymore now yes as you start getting into some of the executive level positions and and higher managing positions it's probably going to be a degree degree requirement along with certifications or something depending on what you're doing but you don't have to have that I've had honest honest story I've had people who never went to college working for me but they were smart as hell in in Microsoft and windows and he was my lead system engineer he got his shirts he got his

hands on time and he had the college degree people working for him so that's what say it really doesn't hold as much as it used to it's kind of more of a balanced playing field now and same thing I told that person right there the that I was like what did you do with your Saturday so yeah I don't have a degree but the second you start making sacrifices of having doing responsibility instead of fun like I'm sure we'd all much rather be watching basketball drinking some beer right now but we're here learning growing our Network growing our knowledge growing our skill set like that's your rebuttal for oh this is a Dre thing well you know

this is what I did these are the sacrifices I made this is when I was handson you know I was Hands-On introduced ing myself to Folks at East sides you know I went to capture the flag and I did this capture the flag and I was successful you're just trying to point out your successes your highlights right because that's what they're looking for they want you to tell you that they would have booted you out of the building if they didn't want to hear your rebuttal so they're waiting for you to tell them the as Peter says the yeah butter yeah but I was Saturday as at bsides yeah but next week I want to be

at this conference and yeah but I just got this sht that and that's how you want to look at it whatever you don't have what's your yah but yeah I just stole that from him literally he said it 40 minutes ago take it it's not mine I borrow from somebody else a long time ago all right guys thanks so much we appreciate you [Music]

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