This webcast was originally published on May 28, 2020.
In this video, Jason and John discuss the intricacies and challenges of job hunting in the cybersecurity field, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. They address the controversy surrounding their webcast, clarifying that their intention is to support Infosec professionals in finding new opportunities, not to encourage people to leave their current jobs without cause. The presentation offers practical advice on improving job search strategies, enhancing resumes, and effectively using LinkedIn to connect with potential employers.
- The webinar focuses on helping individuals who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19 or are concerned about job security.
- The initiative aims to provide techniques and insights for effective job hunting, particularly in the Infosec community.
- The webinar addresses the controversy surrounding its purpose, emphasizing that it’s meant to support, not undermine, companies.
Highlights
Full Video
Transcript
Jason Blanchard
This is sad. Plant’s last day.
John Strand
Why?
Jason Blanchard
He’s going outside.
John Strand
Oh, so he’s going to be happy plant.
Jason Blanchard
Yeah. That’s that time of the year where he gets to go outside again. I’m a little nervous. I’m used to just bailing at the, at the top of the.
John Strand
Yeah, you’re usually done. I get to I get to do a little song and dance at the beginning and then slough off until you’re done.
Do you want me to start this off, Jason?
Jason Blanchard
Yes, please. Yeah.
John Strand
Okay. Very good.
Jason Blanchard
So, Kent, if you could kill your cameras.
John Strand
m so here’s the deal with this webcast. Jason and I did not expect this webcast to be controversial. And if it is, we apologize. And I need to explain why it became controversial.
There have been a couple of people that have reached out to Bhis based on this webcast, and they have said this webcast is problematic. We are customers of bhis, and now youre going through and giving a webcast on how our employees can leave and find better jobs.
So I want to address a couple of things with that. First, I want to say that that is not our goal. Our goal in doing this was not trying to ruin a, company or get their employees to go other places.
The goal of this webcast was to help the people that are currently without jobs. Because currently with Covid-19 there’s a huge number of infosec professionals that are currently looking for homes. They are currently looking for places to work because they’ve either lost their jobs due to Covid-19 or they’re very, very concerned that they may lose their jobs for Covid-19 so at Bhis, I would hope that you would look at what we did with a positive light, that we are trying to help the community.
We are not trying to hurt your company with your employees. That was never our intent, and that is never the intention of Black Hills information security. However, that being said, if we have to come up with something that’s going to help those people, we’re absolutely going to do it, because that’s ultimately what our goal and objective is of Black Hills information security is helping people get better at their jobs and also get better at their lives.
So if you’re coming into this and you’re frustrated, I totally understand your frustrations, and I get that, but I really think that you should give it a chance, because the techniques and the things that Jason’s going to talk about here may not be directly applicable for you today.
You may be in that dream job and you may be very happy, but as we found out over the past few months, things can change very quickly. So with that, I’m going to hand it over to Jason. Jason, please take it away.
Jason Blanchard
Oh, hey, everybody. so, first of all, I was thinking about the thanks for being here part, and the issue with that is, if you’re here because you’re unemployed, I’m sorry.
That that’s why you’re here. If you’re here because you’re about to be unemployed, I’m sorry. That’s why you’re here. And hopefully today, we can just either cover things that you haven’t thought about, or we can give you encouragement, or we can give you some kind of a new way of looking at job hunting, where you leave today excited, and you start hunting for jobs like you never have before.
And within a period of time that’s not that far from now, you will have the job that you need, or at least that you want. So here we go.
I start with the bobs. because if anyone’s ever seen office space, and if you haven’t, check out office space. It’s one of the best movies from the nineties, is this could happen to any one of us.
Like, where one, all of a sudden, we get called in, and there’s these people who say, so, what would you say you do around here?
And that is something that can happen to each and every one of us. It could happen to me, it could happen to you, it could happen to any of us. And so at any time, someone could say, well, what do you do around here?
And they’re looking to see who they can lay off of furlough or who they can live, without at this time. Or maybe the company’s pivoting to something that they’ve never done before, and they’re deciding, well, since we’re doing this, then we don’t need that division.
And that division can either be sold off or it can be do this. And all of a sudden, you had this trajectory, you had this plan, you had this thing that you were preparing for, and it just suddenly changed.
And all you can do now is, for you, pivot and innovate. So all of us have this opportunity to one day meet the bobs, whoever they may be.
And so I say, be prepared. And that is what this webcast is about. That is what most of you are talking about in the discord channel. Be prepared.
And, I do encourage people to always be hunting, even though you’re not looking, always be hunting. But be prepared. And what that means is do not prepare to job hunt when you’ve lost your job.
Do not update your resume when you need to, like, start thinking about your job as a long term, your, career, as this long term thing that you, at any given time, at any given day, can choose to leave the organization you’re with or if you were laid off or furloughed, you go, okay, well, let me go ahead and do this.
And so I’m not encouraging you to leave, but what I’m saying is be prepared. I almost brought up the be prepared, so if that gift is available, that’s a good one, to be prepared.
And then I’m a job hunter, and I do a live stream twice a week on job hunting. I’m not a job seeker. I’m m not a job. I believe the word seeker is different than hunter.
When I looked up the definition of hunt, it says, search determinedly for someone or something. And that’s what we’re going to learn about today, to determinedly search for something. We’re going to job hunt differently.
There are people out there that say, well, I’m just going to put out my resume everywhere and see what happens. That is not what we’re doing today. We are hunting as if we were hunting for someone or something determinedly.
But before we get started, we got to talk about these three things. Now, these three things get in the way of all the other stuff I’m about to talk about, shyness. so if you are, raise your hand. If, you want to post a gift of someone raising a hand, if you’re shy, raise your hand.
And I am one of those people. I am shy. Leading up to this webcast today, I’m shy. Like, my heart’s racing right now. Public speaking is not a thing I’m excited about, but it is a thing that I do.
If you’re a person who’s shy, as I talk about some of the things in the rest of this webcast, you may look at that thing and go like, that’s great, but I can’t do that because I’m shy.
But, I want you to know that that’s a story that you tell yourself and that’s not exactly the truth. Like, you are shy because you choose to be shy. Now, if you’re like Jason, how can I just not be shy?
And so what I’m going to say is just not be shy. Not be shy and just do the things that we’re going to talk about.
And if you’re like, really? Yes, that’s it. I’m shy. But I chose to do the thing anyway. I have imposter syndrome. We’ll talk about that next. Imposter syndrome is where you don’t think you’re good enough to talk about the thing that you either do or to do the job that you actually do.
John said he was going to bring this up. We can talk about this at the end of the webcast. But I called him the other day and I said, john, my imposter syndrome is through the roof right now. I do not feel like I should be giving this, this webcast.
I do not feel like I should be talking about how to job hunt in the pandemic. I do not feel like this is something I’m capable of. And then he reassured me and told me some other things, and I was like, okay.
But this morning, as this was starting to ramp up, posture syndrome kicked in again, and it will kick in for each and every one of you as you start going through, and we’ll talk about how to fight that. And then walled castles.
The thing is that some of us think that the job that we want, if you’re unemployed right now, if you’re furloughed, if you’re still looking, if you’re hunting, you think that place that you want to get to is this walled castle with big guards and moats and like, a drawbridge and, an army protecting it.
And it’s possible that the place that you want to go to is walled, a big walled castle. But as a hacker or a pen tester or social engineer knows that just because it’s a walled castle doesn’t mean there’s not cracks.
It doesn’t mean there’s not someone that can walk you past the guard. It doesn’t mean that you can’t form relationships with the people inside the castle that come out and introduce you and bring you in with them.
You can’t go over or under. There’s all kinds of ways to get into a walled castle. And that’s what I love about the hacker mentality, is that I can do this.
You tell me I can’t get in. I will get in, and I will. And so that’s what I want you to think about today. And so I already touched on it. The hacker mentality is I’m going to get in.
So if you find this company out there, that’s your mentality is like, I’m going to work for this company. I’m going to find an ally. I’m going to find a crack. I’m going to make my way into this organization.
And does it work all the time? No, absolutely not. We’re going to talk about that, too. But if that didn’t work, well, let’s pivot to this. If that didn’t work, let’s pivot to this.
If that didn’t work, then what about this? If that didn’t work, what about this? And so, if you have a place that you want to work, if you have a dream job in mind, if there is, if there’s something that you want to do, then have that hacker mentality of like, no, I’m going to get in.
And the social engineer mindset is the same. It’s like, I know there’s a vulnerability. I know there’s a weakness. I know there’s a way they get in. And this is going to come up while we’re doing the job hunt and we’re going to demo this.
Is that what you’re looking for? And I hate to say the word vulnerability, but is there a crack inside this castle, essentially, that you can make your way through?
So let’s get started. Who am I? That’s a terrible word or terrible question. I remember I was in counseling one time, and the counselor said, jason, who are you?
And I, was like, I’m, a dad. And she’s like, no, that’s something that you are. Who are you? I was like, wait, I don’t think I understand the question. I was like, I do marketing. She’s like, no, that’s something you do. Who are you?
And eventually I was like, I don’t know. And she’s like, cool, we can get started. Then I was like, okay, but when it comes to your LinkedIn profile, you, actually have to kind of add something. So let’s go ahead and talk about the who am I?
So who am I? I’m Jason Blanchard. But really, let’s talk about who you are, and what I’d like you to do is start thinking about what you do and what you do at your core.
Now, there’s things that you do at work, but really, there’s a core thing that you do at work, and the, activity is just based on that core. So what I’d like you to do is start thinking about your elevator pitch, about who you are and what you do.
My elevator pitch for me is I produce engaging content that earns people’s attention and use that to build genuine, thriving tribes. That is what I do at the core of what I do.
And if you’re like, Jason, are you any good at it? You are literally at the Discord channel that I built watching a webcast that I promoted.
This is what I do, and this is what I do each and every day. But I do it in all kinds of different ways. So this is my core of what I do. And I added this. Send me a message.
Let’s grab, some beer or decaf coffee and swap stories. But we’re going to figure out what to put in this about section while we do the job hunt.
And so you’re going to get a chance to see how you can build out your LinkedIn while you’re job hunting. And I think that’s cool. So back to the who am I? That’s something for you to decide.
Who am I at your core and then make that your hook. That is the first thing that you put as your belt. And you can put that as the about in your resume.
You can put that, whoa. Oh, God. Forgot that you all can do that. oh, man. That’s just going to keep happening. Yeah. All right, so back to the one sentence pitch, and here’s what I’d like.
If you’re not sure how to get started, think about this. When a business gives me money, what do I convert that into? So if a business pays me, if a company pays me, what do I do with that money?
Like I said, I produce engaging content that earns people’s attention and use that to build thriving, genuine, thriving tribes. That’s what happens when someone pays me, that’s what I do. So if you’re trying to figure out, well, what do you do?
Think about what people pay you to do. And then that is, at your core, your one sentence pitch. So if your core is I protect organizations from attack, that’s your core.
I break things to improve them. That’s your core. You find what your core is, what people give you money and what you convert that into.
That’s a tip. So let’s get started with the six steps to getting to your job. And that first step is your dream job requirements.
So here’s the thing. We’re going to start hunting for jobs here in a second, and all of them are going to have requirements or qualifications of what they’re looking for in an applicant. And that’s great.
it’s really nice for them to say, this is what we’re looking for. This is what we need. This is the kind of candidate that we want. But do you have that for them? Do you have a list of what you’re looking for from them?
And so the first step to figuring out what you want your dream job to be is to actually write it down. Now, this might mean less than 25% of, travel.
You want this as a salary, you want this 401k matching. You want a culture of people who give back. You want a highly ethical organization.
You want a place where you get to use the latest and greatest technology. You want supportive managerial staff. Whatever it is that you want, put it on your list.
Because when you start interviewing with an organization, and they do that famously, well, do you have any questions for us? You’re like, absolutely. Thank you so much for, okay, so here we go.
What’s the management style like around here? And they start telling you, cool, when it comes to vacation, like, how liberal is it? How conservative?
And they give you an answer. So you have a list. If you don’t have a list of what your dream job is, then how do if you actually find it? Now, the same thing with when you’re job hunting and you look at the qualifications and you go like, I only meet three out of these ten.
An organization may only meet three out of your ten requirements. And so that’s when you get to decide. To decide is like, is this enough of, my requirements? Because you rank them.
That’s the other part, is that you rank them and what’s important, and it may not be money for you. Money may not be the most important thing. The most important thing for you might be a ten minute commute or work from home or childcare services or tuition reimbursement.
That might be the most important thing for you. But if you don’t write it down, you don’t have it on your requirements list. Then when it’s time to start job hunting, you don’t know if you’ve actually found what your dream job is.
Now, here’s a great way to figure out everything that you want on your list is figure out all the things you don’t want on your list. You’re like, I remember at this one job, I had this. I remember this.
I remember I had a boss that was like this. I hated their travel policy. I hated this. I hated all, when you just write a list of all the things that you hate or hated at, previous employers or whatever it is, then what you’re left with is just do the reverse, the opposite of those, and that’s your dream job.
So if you’re trying to figure out all the things to put on your requirements, then figure out all the things you disliked, and that will help you. And then, let’s talk about enough salary.
So enough salary is a really strange thing. And I’m going to bring this up here. Let’s go ahead to here. And here’s what I like.
I like going to class door, and I like doing security. And I’ll list salary.
They go to glassdoor, and you’re like, I wonder how much normal people make. Like, wow. So, like, the average is $76,410. I want more than that.
And that’s a great way to get started on what your salary requirements are. Now, what is enough salary? So, enough is for you, is something for you to figure out.
And that means you may need to figure out your budget. You may need to figure out how much is enough every single month for you to live on and your future retirement and this and that and your whatever it is.
And so that might mean, like, starting and, doing a budget, and that’s not what we’re going to talk about today. But one of the most important things my wife and I did was put a budget together and literally figure out what enough was.
And, it was enough when things were good and enough when things were not good. And so we have the base minimum enough, and then we have enough if you want to do extra things and be generous and kind and charitable and things like that.
But enough. And so the cool thing about knowing what enough is for you is that when you sit down and have a conversation and they say, here’s what we can offer you, you will instantly know if that’s more than enough or less than enough.
But knowing what enough is is a great place to be when it comes to talking about salary. But we’re going to jump into your top ten companies. So back to your dream jobs.
Before you start hunting, or maybe while you’re hunting, I want you to start figuring out what are your top ten companies that you want to work for? And these could be charitable companies, nonprofit companies, these could be massive, huge companies.
Or a company that’s in your neighborhood. Whatever it is, make a list of your top ten companies. Because if you don’t know where you want to work, then what you start doing is just like, well, I’ll see what I can find.
It’s back to the. These are the walled castles. These ten companies are the walled castles that you imagine are walled castles. But if you put them on your list and you’re like, I’m going to go after that company, I’m going to go after that company.
I’m going to go after that company. And, the top ten companies that you want to go after, that’s a great place to get started. And so the two things that we’ve talked about so far are putting together a dream job requirements list, and now putting together what your top ten companies are.
Because if you’re not, if you don’t know where you want to work, then you’re just pretty much at the mercy of whoever’s posting and whatever in your town. All right, so here are the three types of hunt.
and we’re going to get ready to hunt here in a second. The three types of hunts are the top ten companies, discovery hunts, and internal hunts.
Because, like John started at the beginning. We don’t want you to leave your organization. That’s not the point of this talk today. It’s not for you to leave your organization. The thing is, but you might be unhappy in your organization, and it’s because you’re currently doing this when you would rather be doing that.
And so maybe the job hunt exists inside your own organization where you start putting together the list of requirements that you would like inside your own organization.
You start putting together where you would like to work inside your organization. And some of you work in these massive organizations where you can go from one division to another. And it may be that you haven’t done a job hunt inside your own organization in a while, where you could just go to your own organization’s website, go to the jobs for your own organization and find out.
I didn’t know that was available. Oh, who’s the hiring manager? I don’t know who that is. Let me see if I can find them in our own directory. Let me see if I can send them an email and say, hey, I, see that there’s a job available.
Could I have possibly applied for it? So we’re not saying leave. What we’re saying is there are three different types of hunts. There’s your top ten, there’s discovery, which we’ll talk about where you’re just like, what could I find if I didn’t know what I was looking for?
And then there’s the internal. Now, here’s really important. This is super important. So I’m gonna, I’m gonna take a breath for a second. Document as you go.
Like any good pen tester, document as you go is that you are, as you are finding things as you’re hunting, as you’re discovering.
Keep track of it, because what we’re about to find out is that you can go down a rabbit trail super fast and all of a sudden, when you’re down this rabbit trail, you’re like, how did I get here?
And do I remember the 19 opportunities that I passed on the way here to get here? Hornet. Okay. And then here’s another tip before we start hunting.
And I love this one. I talk about this a lot on my live streams, so I do those twice a week. Create your resume while hunting. there’s a lot of people that are like, well, I gotta get my resume together before I can start hunting.
No, no, no, no. Create your resume while you’re hunting. Because then you can actually create a resume that goes along with the hunt and what you’re discovering and what you’re finding.
Create your resume while you’re hunting. And then there are two types of resumes and we’ll talk about that. There’s the catch all resume that has. And this could be multiple pages.
It could be massive. It’s got all your accolades. It’s got all, all your work experience. It’s got every company you’ve ever worked for. It’s got your volunteer experience. It’s got, like if you got a medal at some point about something, if you earned a challenge coin, if you won the net worth tournament champions, whatever it is, you just add it.
And the thing about this catch all is that you update this consistently and constantly and that you’re adding to your catch all resume.
And we’ll talk about CJ.
CJ Cox
Hey, here’s a good plot, question for the presenter. How is relocation new location to be considered for a new role? Higher pay or better title versus sting?
Jason Blanchard
So when it comes to relocation, like if relocation can be added to the job search, like under your job requirements that you want, relocation either helped help you move, help you relocate, that they put you in an apartment for 60 days that you can settle.
Like, those are things that can go on your job requirements list. Now that’s all up to you. Like if you want to be in that city, if you want to make the move, if that move is good for you and your family, then I’m all for relocating.
I mean, right now a lot of things are remote, but at some point it won’t be. But when it comes to relocation and you’re interviewing, can you add that to your job requirements?
Can you negotiate for more during the relocation to help compensate? So when we relocated from Florida to Maryland, we lost 15% of our income because of state income tax.
So during the negotiation you can ask for can I get a difference in my salary to compensate for the move? John?
John Strand
And the other thing, whenever you’re talking about salary is just an example. Whenever I was working in Denver like 19 years ago, they wanted me to move out to Washington, DC.
Well, I was at Anderson consulting, accenture to work on the security team out there. And they were like, yeah, we’re going to kick your salary up to $100,000. And at the time I think I was making, I don’t know, I think it was like $40,000.
And we actually did a salary comparison of if I were to move to where they wanted me to go, I was actually making less money. When you factored in the cost of housing, whenever you factored in how much time I was going to spend on the road, commuting every single day.
So its actually a lot more complicated than just, hey, its more money because you can be making like $200,000 and you can be making that in Silicon Valley or New York City and that doesnt come close to a good salary of like 100,000 in Kansas City, Denver or South Dakota as well.
CJ Cox
Preston, I know that when I moved to Denver, I took like a 13% pay cut. And I think the things you’re talking about, jason, just being clear on what it is you want, having all these factors in place, because everything is a trade off, right?
And you’re trading off when you’re taking a job with a, you’re going to negotiate salary, you’re going to look for these kinds of benefits in these. Are you really going to get the dream job in terms of perfection? Probably not.
But the clearer you are about what’s important and understanding your numbers and what’s enough and all that, that’s going to be critical to how happy you’re going to end up being. So good stuff.
Jason Blanchard
All right, so let’s do some hunts. So I asked Bo and Kent prior to this, I said, hey, what company do you think is doing really well right now in the world that we live in?
And Bo mentioned Zoom, and I was like, zoom? heck yeah, Zoom. So let’s go to the zoom. So what are we doing? Zoom is on my list of companies, but guess what?
Zoom is at the very bottom of my list of companies. So here’s the tip, here’s the insight, here’s the thing that I want you to remember. Start at the bottom of your top ten company list.
And the reason why is because it’s less pressure. It’s the last one. It’s the one that if you actually got a company, you’re, like, it’s like the bottom of my list.
And the other thing about it, too, is that as you start at the bottom of your list and you start doing this and emailing people and contacting and doing interviews and whatever the case may be, your message will get better, you will get more confident, you will get just, you’re going to improve through the process.
I go to zoom. I’m on LinkedIn right now, and I’m a huge LinkedIn fan because, LinkedIn puts the people and the jobs in the same place. And that’s important to what we’re going to do as the hacker social engineering mindset.
If I go down here, I’m zoom m staffing. No, that’s not what I want. I want jobs. Here we go. So I have an online events consultant.
business. All right, so right now I’m at let’s go to zoom, the page itself, and let’s go to jobs in zoom itself, and let’s do a search for.
I just hit the search button. There’s 62 jobs. There’s 62 jobs available right now. There’s a, marketing campaigns manager. so I’m in marketing.
so I’m going to click on this for a second just to show you something. All right, here we go. Zoom is an award winning workplace. We have been recognized by. Okay.
The marketing manager will be responsible for driving Zoom’s campaign strategy and leading a team of, product focused campaign leads. That’s very well written. So here’s what I’m going to do.
I’m going to copy this, I’m going to go back to my own profile. I’m going to go down to my own about section, and I’m going to go into here and I can change.
John Strand
This, ladies and gentlemen, is how bhis lost Jason in the middle of a webcam.
Jason Blanchard
I have been responsible for driving x company campaign strategy and leading a time. So this is what I’m talking about, is while you’re hunting, you will start seeing what you can put your resume together.
So these are what people are looking for. And so I think I pivoted wrong. So let’s go back to it. Okay. So you go through here, and you’re like, the position entails partnering with sales teams.
And, like, I know how to do that. Copy and paste. What am I doing? I am looking for what people are looking for. And if I know how to do that, then I’m adjusting my own resume and my own LinkedIn profile to match what people are looking for.
Am I, what’s the word? Plagiarizing? No, I’m being inspired. And when I do campaigns, when I come up with things, I look for something that’s worked and then I tweak it to be my own thing.
Now, let’s go through here. Lead campaign strategy, build programs and drive measurable results. That’s the thing I know how to do. So when you’re doing these, when you’re job hunting and you come across any bullet that how to do, you copy and paste that to your catch all document, your catch all resume, and you put it underneath the job where you’ve done that in the past.
You go like, I know how to do that. You get here, you’re like partner with product marketing on marketing approach and messaging. Yeah, I know how to do that. Create, process the catalog and leverage customer testimonials and case studies.
Effectively drive sales. what? I’m not very good at this. I am not. I’m not going to put that on my list. Comfortable in video and presenting and webinars. Oh, my goodness.
Absolutely. so anything that you do as you’re doing the job hunt, you put it on your list. Now, if you’re going to apply for this job, would you then copy and paste all the same things that they’ve already asked for and then just apply with the exact same copy and paste that they’ve done?
No, you would not. You would slightly make adjustments to match what, they’re looking for. Now back to this, provide, evaluate.
This is one of the best job thing posts I’ve seen in a while where they’re not embellishing the words. And what I mean by that is they’re doing a good job of saying, just provide, evaluate, analyze.
You’re like, cool, I know how to do that. The problem comes in when you see the words proven strong. like when you look at the, responsibilities and all of a sudden your imposter syndrome kicks in.
Because here’s the thing about all of us effectively manage and mentor team members. Now, when you see that, and when I see that, we almost imagine there’s somebody applying for this that does that better than we do, so we might as well not apply.
That is where that imposter syndrome kicks in. That is where that the feeling of like, I’m not good enough for this, that’s where all that kicks in. When you start looking at someone else’s job post.
And then you go up here and you say, 157 applicants. How could I possibly stand out when there’s 157 other applicants?
Well, I’m glad you asked. So here’s what we’re going to do. What you’re looking for now is an internal advocate at Zoom. So here’s what we do.
So let’s say that most of you are in information security. I’m in marketing. So you go to Zoom’s page itself and you click on all filters. So we’re going to go like, I want to live in the United States.
Now there’s marketing and advertising. I’m going to click on this one just because that’s where I was. But we’re going to go back to that. Information security. Head of product marketing, Catalina, brand marketing manager, strategic events, lead international partner marketing.
So if I go back to the job itself, what was the job? Marketing manager, marketing campaigns. So you take a look at this and you’re like, well, let’s see. Out of all the people that are here, who would I reach out to?
Advertising specialist, marketing, marketing operations manager, Alicia, I’m so sorry that you’re about to become a part of this recorded webcast. It was for educational purposes.
Here we go. So we click on this. And once we get to Alicia’s, one, of the first things I do is I click on contact information. Sometimes you see a Twitter account, sometimes you don’t.
Sometimes you see an email address, sometimes you don’t. But we’re here. And the other thing is that when I go to someone’s profile, first thing I click on is contact. The next thing I click on is activity.
Because if they’re not active on LinkedIn, then that’s not a person that I want to use LinkedIn to reach out to. So out of here. LinkedIn is the biggest tattletale of all social media platforms.
It tells every time you make a comment, every time you like something, every like. It’s just a huge tattletale and it’s a great way to get to know somebody and potentially get to work for them.
So what did I do? I went here to her post, and when I looked at her post, she has this post. here we go. There we go.
So one of the things that people inside companies like to do is they like to share job posts inside the company. Now, Jocelyn shared this. Zoom is looking for a rockstar, events manager to join our team.
Now, if that’s not you, then this doesn’t matter. But who’s Jocelyn to be handing out jobs like that. So let’s go over and take a look at jocelyn. So we go over here, we click on contact.
Nope, nothing there. And then we go over to activity, and we see that she is active as of, two weeks ago. So now we go back over here. Let’s go back to Alicia.
I’m going to show you one other thing about Alicia’s post, is if you look over here on the right hand side, just like any pen tester or hacker, once they get into an organization, they like doing something called pivoting, going from one place to another.
And over here on the right hand side, these are other people you can pivot to, people inside the organization that you can start to get to know. Now, why do you want to get to know these people?
Here’s the reason why. There’s 157 other applicants, and what you are, doing is trying to introduce yourself and get to be known inside that list of 158 applicants, which is what it’s about to be.
And so what you’re going to do is, is contact the actual human beings that work in that environment. They work in that department, they work in that city, they work in that place.
They’re the humans that you most likely will work with in the future. Now, what you can do. And this doesn’t work in canada. So, my fellow canadians, I’m sorry, and I’m not sure if this works overseas because of GDPR, but in the United States, you can use an inmail.
And so what an inmail does, it’s a guaranteed delivery with inside LinkedIn’s infrastructure. so you can go to a LinkedIn, you, can send an email. It does cost money.
And the reason why it costs money is because it’s guaranteed to be delivered. Now, if alicia. If, you send this email to alicia and she doesn’t respond within seven days, you get your money back. So it’s okay.
So what is your email going to say? The email is going to say, and we’ll talk about this in a few minutes. I’m going to give you a. Just a breakdown of how to do it. Hi. I’m reaching out to you, because I see that you work at zoom, and I’d like ten minutes of your time to find out about corporate structure, corporate environment.
my name is. You say who I am, and then you give a little bit of. I looked at the stuff that Zoom is doing, and it’s impressive, and I see that it’s growing, and I want to be a part of a growing organization.
And then lastly, I’m just looking for ten minutes of your time. That’s it. You’re not looking for a job. You’re looking for ten minutes of a person’s time.
And that ten minutes is going to be what’s called an informal interview. It’s not a job interview. There’s no job on the line. It’s just alicia. I’d like to learn more about Zoom.
I’d like to learn more about the culture. I’d like to learn more about the job requirements. I’d just like to know more. And I’d also like to introduce myself. That is what you do.
What we’re looking for is I started with a company on my top ten list, zoom. At the very bottom of that list, I went to Zoom’s page, I looked for jobs, I looked under the jobs, and there are a bunch of other jobs here.
There’s data jobs, there’s IT support analyst jobs, there’s network administrator jobs, there’s data scientist jobs, senior data scientists, IT analysts. There’s a ton of jobs at Zoom. Then what I did is I went to Zoom’s page and then filtered down by departments.
So if you wanted to go to information technology and services, this would show you the 843 people. we have the head of global solutions engineering at Zoom. We have the chief marketing officer.
We have information security officer at Zoom. And what you can do is you can reach out to these people. Now, there’s one more person I want to introduce you to, and I don’t know if they exist, but I’m going to go down here to industries.
I’m going to type in recruiter staffing and recruiting. These are the greatest human beings on the face of the planet.
I’m a huge fan of recruiters. I call them magical job fairies. TJ, you got a question real quick?
CJ Cox
Is all this on the premium offering of LinkedIn or available at the regular LinkedIn, too?
Jason Blanchard
This is available to regular LinkedIn. I don’t use the premium account. So that way, the search that I’m doing right now, the search that any of us could be doing. All right, so recruiters, we got senior lead recruiter sales enablement.
Okay, well, maybe he’s not the right person, but let’s go to Greg and let’s go to Greg and let’s pivot off of Craig. We have senior recruiter at Zoom.
So there we go. And we have Elizabeth. Once again, this is for educational purposes. Zoom. hopefully you don’t mind, but we have Zoom here.
And what you can do is reach out now, we also have all the other recruiters that you can go out to. And why do I call recruiters magical job fairies? It’s because their sole purpose in life is to fill positions.
They want to fill positions. Right now, I think there’s some of you right now, like, I want to get a job at Zoom, and they’re about to get an influx of human beings that want to work at Zoom.
And some of you are like, well, someone else is more qualified than me.
John Strand
Stop it.
Jason Blanchard
Why? All right, so we covered a bunch of things real quick, and I want to just go back and say that we just did a top ten company hunt.
So this was a specific company that we chose to hunt for. And what we did was we started the bottom of the list. We go to the job boards. Now, you could go to Zoom’s website itself and look at careers on Zoom.
You can go to any company’s website and look at the careers that are on Zoom. But I went to LinkedIn. I went to LinkedIn and I just saw what jobs are posted. You can pivot and escalate from one person to another, and what you’re looking for is access, and access is done by sending messages.
Recruiters or magical job fairies. These people’s sole purpose are to find and fill positions. And then what you’re doing is looking for internal advocates back to, there’s 157 applicants.
I don’t like those odds. Don’t like those odds. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to reach out to the people who actually work at the company. I’m going to introduce myself. So that way, if I do become an applicant in that list, that when they’re flipping through and they’re like 15, 1617, and generally these are all nameless, faceless people, but all of a sudden they see Jason Blanchard or they say your name and they go, oh, I spoke to this person on LinkedIn.
Let’s put them on the short list. And that’s how. I don’t want to say that’s how easy it is, but that’s how human beings are. When you see a name you recognize and you’re familiar with it, all of a sudden you’re like, that’s like a friend.
Let’s put them over here in the friend category. So I’m sure there’s lots of questions and we’ll get to them soon. And then last, lastly about this is that people hire people, is that.
I was trying to think of the best way to say this, and, I just have the analogy of like it. And this is going to sound bad. Let’s say somebody wants to kill you, and all of a sudden you’re like, my name is Jason Blanchard, and I have a wife and I have a daughter, and we’re like real people.
And you’re like a real person. that’s the thing about job hunting, is, like, become a real person. Not just a resume, not just a cover letter, but a real person to another person.
And because people hire people. All right? And I am running out of time. So here we go. So what do you do that’s different? So, the only thing I’m going to do with discovery is this. Let’s go back to LinkedIn.
So there’s a difference. So there’s the, I have my top ten companies that I want to hunt for, but now this is the. I don’t know what I want to look for. I’m just looking for anything that’s available. So you type in information security, and then you just hit enter.
That’s it. You just hit information security. You hit enter, hit jobs, and then it opens up another box over here. In this box you like, I work in Texas.
Okay. Texas. It’s now going to show you every single information security job in Texas. And then let’s say, let’s filter that down. Let’s go to the past week. The reason why I like the last week is because those people who posted that understand the world we live in and still chose to post job, post that we say past week and hit apply.
Now it’s down to. That is not right, but we’re still in Texas. So let’s go to Austin. And now it’s the 272 jobs that have information security in it in Austin, Texas.
So you can go through here and just do exactly what we did last time. If you see this job right here, you go to Amazon. You tried to look for internal advocates in Austin in information security.
So you would filter down the people who work at Amazon down to those roles, and you would reach out to those people. This is what discovery looks like. You didn’t know these jobs existed, and now you’re just seeing if you can discover them.
So, you didn’t know. And that’s the thing, is that you have your top ten list, and maybe you don’t get any traction on your top ten list or you don’t even know what companies to, put on your top ten list.
And so you just start here with the discovery. Now, here’s one more secret about LinkedIn. All right. So I’m going to go back to the very beginning. If you type in your cert, if you have a certification and you type it in, it will show you every single job that is currently looking for that certification.
So there are 1467 jobs currently on LinkedIn posted in the last week for the United States that is looking for SEC. And this works for GCI, this works for G Pen, it works for CISSP, it works for whatever certification you have.
And you can just post it and you will find all the jobs that have been posted in the last seven days that have the certification, that you’re looking for. So I’m running out of time. So I want to get back to this.
All right, b sides and cons. All right, so here’s a cool thing. If you go to Twitter, which is what I’m about to do, the nice thing about what Bsides did is it localized information security.
So for, if you’re not in information security and you’re watching this webcast, look for the local meetups or the local groups, the local trade organizations in your area, for your industry, and you’re going to go to their Twitter account, you’re going to go to their websites, go to their Twitter and that stuff, and go to who they follow.
This is the magic, Twitter. If you go to who someone follows and you go down to the very beginning, generally the first ten to 25 people that an organization chooses to follow on Twitter are the people within that organization.
And I know that Tony Turner is a person who is a part or was a part of Bsides Orlando. Now, when I got into the information security industry, what I did is I took a look at all the b sites, and I wanted to get to know who people were, and I wanted to start networking.
I wanted to introduce myself as someone who was a part of this industry. And the first person I reached out to was Tony Turner. And Tony Turner, it’s hard to say out loud. Tony Turner took a phone call with me and just gave me like a rundown of how all the b sides work, how they’re organized, how this works, who runs this, who does that, and he’s just a nice person.
There are a ton of nice people out there that could potentially become mentors for you or connectors for you. And so if you’re like, hey, I’d like to get involved b sides Orlando. I’d like to get involved b sides this or b sides.
I want to volunteer. I want to support my local trade groups. I want to support my local associations. If you ask to like, can I get involved?
They will bring you in. And so we got, geek evolved. We got. And so by going to a Twitter account on LinkedIn, I’m sorry, Twitter accounts on Twitter, you can see who they choose to follow.
And this is the way to start introducing yourself to the local community. Now, the other thing is, if you go to an account now, normally b sides will do this where they will post their sponsors.
I didn’t look at this beforehand, so I’m just kind of scrolling through, and you get to a point where they say, thank our sponsors. let’s thank our sponsors. Sponsors, sponsors, sponsors not there yet.
Sponsors still not there. This is the part of the hunting that kind of takes a little while sometimes. Ian might be here right now, and he’s like, jason, what are you doing?
This is a great way also to learn more about your local organization is just to go through and see, who they follow and what they do. But guess what? You can do this with people.
You can do this with people. You can go to who their first followers are, and you can use that to start building out your network and seeing who to, to meet and who to know. And you can do this to start reaching out to, say, would it be possible to get a ten minute phone call with you to talk about a possible mentorship?
Because I’m new to this industry and I’d like to get to know more people. So that is that now, I didn’t get a chance to go into. If an organization chooses to sponsor a b sides, go to that organization’s website and take a look at their careers.
Because one of the two reasons why, people choose to the Sponsor B sides is either they’re looking for talent or they’re looking to build brand recognition about their own company. So do that.
And then along with that is, if you have never presented at a conference, a b sides is a great place, or your local trade organization, or whatever it is that you’re a part of is present.
Share your knowledge. And I have another webcast on how to share your knowledge. I have a talk on how to give talks. And so if you’ve never done this before, get up. share your knowledge. Because it is a fantastic way to network.
Because there’s a thing about what happens when you. When you’re up on stage, when you’re doing something like this. When you’re done, it automatically gives everyone who listens permission to meet you.
Now, when we’re just, like, networking, or if we, if you and I were in the same discord channel or something like that, and we’d never met before. It is incredibly awkward to walk up to a stranger and say, I, I am also a stranger.
Let’s meet each other. None of us like that because we’re shy and we have imposter syndrome and all those other things. But what about when someone got done being on stage and you were like, I actually like that.
I liked what you, I liked what you said. And afterwards you come up saying, hey, I just want to introduce myself. I really like what you said. So imagine the flip side of that. Being up on stage, introducing yourself to all these people by sharing your knowledge and saying, this is something I’m passionate about.
And all of a sudden, these people now have permission to meet you, just like all of you have permission to meet me. And it’s not going to be as weird as it would have been if you just reached out before today.
And then when it comes to networking, is try to kill that shyness. And you’re like, but I’m shy. I have a saying that, I live by when it’s time to network.
And I, because I hate networking. Really, I do, because, But I have the saying that I’m going to import to you, and I want you to take this with you and just keep it with you.
Never deny someone finding out how awesome you are. Never deny someone finding out how awesome you are. Because there’s a thing that happens when you’re networking where you see somebody you would like to talk to, but internally, like, they wouldn’t want to talk to me.
No, they wouldn’t want to talk to me. And that same thing happens when you’re thinking about emailing people through LinkedIn. That same thing happens when you’re thinking about dming somebody through Twitter. That same feeling happens.
It says, why would they want to talk to me? Why? You got to push past that? So never deny someone the opportunity to find out how awesome you are.
All right, so a, tip is I just covered a bunch of tactics. What if you did that internally?
CJ Cox
CJ, sorry, I’m not going to interrupt you here. I’ve just got a bunch of stuff. When you’re ready.
Jason Blanchard
Okay, cool. All right, so how can you apply these concepts to an internal hunt? So, my wife has been with the same organization for a very, very long time.
She essentially posted her resume on Monster in the year 2003. She got a phone call two minutes later. It didn’t feel right how fast it was.
She posted on Monster. Two minutes later, she got a phone call and said, hey, would you like to come work at this organization? And she has been there since 2003, but that doesn’t mean she’s been in the same job, in the same division, in the same department with the same title.
She has pivoted and innovated for the last 17 years inside the same organization. And that is something that you can do, too. Just because what you’re currently doing today isn’t the thing that you want to be doing doesn’t mean you can’t network with people in other departments, other places.
It doesn’t mean you can’t apply to do a different job inside your organization. The problem about that is your organization loves you doing the thing that you do because you’re so good at, and so they don’t want you to leave.
So it’s going to take some serious conversations. It’s going to take potentially, the choosing, to leave and maybe come back before you can make that switch, because organizations love for you to be where you’re at.
And that’s not a terrible thing. It’s just a fact that why would they want you to leave when you’re so good at the thing that they’ve either trained you to do or they’ve invested so much time in you to do?
But you’re sitting there like, I just don’t feel, I don’t like doing this anymore. So maybe it’s time to have that talk with the person that you work with and say, I love this organization, but I don’t love what I’m doing at this organization, and I do something different.
All right, so after all these things, we talked about the, how you do the hunt, how you do, that your top ten companies, the discovery, and I’m blowing through some of these things faster because I need to cover it all.
But making contact. So when you’re making contact, you’re looking for two things. I briefly touched on it. You’re looking for two things, either an informal interview or a mentor. Now, if you’re like a mentor, like who?
Why should I get a mentor? I highly recommend it. My wife has three mentors, and this is really cool. My wife has three different mentors for three different aspects of her life. One is a technical mentor, one is a political mentor, and one is a business mentor.
And that political mentor is really a, relationship mentor. She has three different mentors for three different things that she wants to get better at. She has a technical mentor, a relationship mentor, and a business mentor.
And they each give her different advice. Now, when it comes to a mentor relationship, you can reach out to someone that you respect and ask them to mentor you. Now, how do you find them? So, by going to local conferences, by attending virtual conferences and seeing the people who are presenting, seeing the people inside discord, learning about what people are sharing online.
If you see someone that’s building a tool that you’re like, oh, my God, how did you build that tool? Reach out to them and say, would it be possible to get 30 minutes of your time once a month, to just learn how to do more of what you’re doing in your very first contact?
Do not ask for a job. You can say, I see that a job is available. You can see, I’d like to learn more about the organization. You say, I’d like to know more about the culture. I’d like to know more about how you got to where you got to, but do not ask for a job on first contact.
Just think about that. Imagine meeting somebody and saying, there’s a lot of things I could say right now that are just completely out of, like, what normal human beings would say.
And I think you can imagine them. Imagine meeting someone for the very first time and then asking them to do, and you fill in the blank. It’s just not the right time. You need to start building a relationship, and then, if that is what you would like to do, is ask for a job at some point.
Establish a relationship, and then ask for what you want to ask for. And is that misleading?
John Strand
I’m also going to say, whenever you talk to that person, it’s important to ask questions from that person. Don’t immediately lead in and try to show people how smart you are, how awesome you are.
Don’t, ask questions about them and what work is like and what they’re actually doing. Ask questions. Don’t try to shine right off the bat.
Jason Blanchard
Yeah. All right, so here’s just a simple formula for what you write. The hook. I always follow the five steps of storytelling. There’s a hook, a beginning, a middle, climax, and end.
And so the hook is why I’m messaging. The beginning is who I am. The middle is why you should care. And that’s the, I love your company. I watched this video that you did. Whatever it is, here’s why you should care.
It’s because of why I care. Do you have ten minutes? And thank you for your time. So, real simple, five sentences at the most. Please don’t write a paragraph if you just keep it real.
Real simple. And what about the interview? That’s not really what we’re here for today. we’re here for job hunting and job hunting, tactics. But the interview, guess what you can do? You can research and recon.
You can find out who you’re going to interview with and you can learn about them. Now, is there a step where this becomes creepy? Absolutely there is a step where this becomes creepy. Like if you learn where their running route is and you choose to go to their running route and you choose to introduce yourself along their running route and you choose to like do it within that 6ft, not wearing a mask, that’s crossing line.
But if like don’t mail things to their house, like, there is a line you can cross in your research and recon. Now, learning more about somebody, learning about their past, learning about where they’ve been, that’s totally fine.
Because here’s what you want to do. You want to become more comfortable in your interview. And the more about the organization, the more about the person that’s going to interview you, the more comfortable you will feel.
Now, what happens if you get rejected? Cool. Let’s talk about that. I have taught people for a very long time how to job hunt. And the main point of it is that you will come across 99 no’s for every 100 things that you try to accomplish, 99 failures, 99 setbacks, 99 pieces of rejection that is going to happen.
And I want you to understand that you’re going to face 99 types of rejection prior to getting your one success. But the most important thing is that the one success is coming is that when you get that first feedback or that first rejection, I want you to go 99.
And when you get the second one, you’re like, oh, 98. And the next 1979-6959-4939-2919 and you start getting closer and closer and closer to the success.
And you just anticipate it and you expect it. Because if you do not prepare for a rejection, it’s going to be difficult. Then the next step is to decide, like do they meet your criteria?
You have a list of job things, that you wanted, do they meet your requirements? And that’s up to you. Like did they meet three of your requirements? Did they meet all of them? Do you have to relocate like we talked about?
Like you have to make a decision. And like we said at the beginning, you might. Through all of this job hunting, all of the searching, all these tracking people down, doing the interviews, doing all this stuff.
At the end of the day, you might go see, I really like the job I have. But it wasn’t until you went searching that you finally decided that this is the job I like.
And what I love about that is that you start treating your current job better because you’ve looked at what’s available out there, and all of a sudden you go, the grass is not greener.
The grass is greener where I decide to water the grass, and it is right here. And I’m going to look at this job differently, and I’m going to love it in a way that I hadn’t loved it before.
There we go. Counter offers. Multiple offers. I have never job hunted and not gotten multiple offers. And that is a living nightmare.
Where you’ve been job hunting and company eight and company six and company one and this one that you discovered have all given you offers, and you’re like, which one do I choose?
Which one do I choose? Flip a coin. I don’t know. Does it really matter? Flip a coin. I mean, that’s where you sit down with your significant other or trusted person in your family or someone, and you say, which one should I choose?
And the flip a coin thing that I love about flipping a coin is if you say, heads this job, tails, this job. And as soon as you flip a coin and you look at it, if you’re excited, that’s the one you wanted.
If you’re unhappy, yeah, that’s not the one you wanted to take the other one. So, in conclusion, be prepared, because you never know when the bobs are coming. You never know when that organization is going to pivot.
And so be prepared. And tip. One of the last tips is update your resume on a set schedule. This is something my wife does. She works inside an organization every three months.
Every six months. And every once a year, she updates her resume. So essentially, every three months she updates her resume. And the reason why she updates her resume every three months, even though she has a job, is because you don’t want to be out of a job.
And trying to remember the things that you did for the last six years, you don’t want to. Like, what did I do six years ago? So what you do is you take your quarterly performance reviews or your annual performance reviews, and you just work that into your actual resume.
And with that, we have the six steps, again, are make your dream job requirements your top ten companies hunt, make contact, interview, and then decide.
And I’m going to leave you with this because I got, like, a lot of questions and I just ran out of all my time. But happy hunting, because this is going to be exciting. Happy hunting. If you’ve never read the book the dip, I highly recommend it.
And if someone could post a link to Amazon for the dip inside discord, it’s the best book I’ve ever read on. Should you stay or should you go? Should you quit? Should you not? And I do weekly twitch live streams at, twitch tv, banjo crashland.
We do it on Tuesday nights from seven to nine and Fridays from one to three. So if you want to come tomorrow, Friday, one to three, we’ll be doing live job hunts.
CJ Cox
Good job, Jason. Here’s, here’s step seven for your slide, though, okay? Don’t quit. You only fail when you quit.
And if you’re not being successful, you might be doing something wrong, but just do not quit. Talk to people. Find another way. Interview.
There’s a way. a lot of people were talking about LinkedIn finding jobs in other countries. Look, we can’t answer all those questions. You’ve got to investigate and dig.
You showed one approach. I think a lot of what you’re showing applies to a lot of other ways.
Jason Blanchard
Hey, Kathleen joined us, so if you don’t know, I asked Kathleen to join us. She’s a recruiter, not a recruiter. What is your actual title, Kathleen? I always get this.
Kathleen
I’m just like you. I’m a, community supporter, outreach person. But I actually have very sore fingers from typing in discord for the last hour.
You guys did tell me I would have to work out for this.
CJ Cox
Isn’t it stressful? It’s an amazing workout.
Jason Blanchard
All right, so, I’m going to kill the recording, and then we’re going to answer a bunch of requests, answer, a bunch of questions, or should we keep the recording going and then just make the recording going?
John Strand
I think that we just make webcasts longer. One of the things I wanted to talk about Jason was our conversation yesterday about imposter syndrome. And I want to talk about Bhis as well because I think, it’s relevant.
So Jason was very worried about this, and Jason was very worried about imposter syndrome and why you should be giving advice on any of these different things.
And I feel very comfortable with Jason, and I wouldn’t give this question to, like, an intern or somebody that’s new, but I went to Jason, I said, go find me somebody that’s better than you like.
Is there anybody, in this community that does what you do and go find me someone that does it better? And it was funny because he paused for a couple seconds and he’s like, I’m feeling a little better now.
That’s absolutely true. But we also do things fundamentally different here. The idea of content community. Jason kept on talking about marketing. We cringe whenever people are like, well, what’s the marketing?
It’s building content and it’s building a community is basically what Jason brought to the table at Bhis. And that’s what we wanted here. But that’s a cultural thing. If Jason was going to a lot of other firms and trying to explain to them, as he did with me in Washington, DC, outside, in the cold, outside of a hotel, saying, here’s what I want to do.
I want to do this thing where we’re, we’re not trying to sell stuff. No. We’re trying to build communities and sand castles in the sky. I, got it. And most companies would look at them and be like, okay, Jason, that’s great, but how are we going to get more emails at conferences?
How are we going to sell more product? And that wasn’t at all what he was talking about. The other thing is we had a lot of people, Jason, while you were presenting, they’re like, and Jason’s gone.
I would expect that people at Bhis are looking for other jobs and looking at things, but there’s a couple of other things. I would hope that before they left that they would come to me and they would say, look, I want to make my job better.
I’m unhappy in these ways. And we’ve had employees, especially on the pen testing side. They’re like, I wanted to be a pen tester my whole life, and now I’ve been a pen tester for two months.
And I’m going to tell you right now, this is not what I wanted to do. And we’ve worked with those people to transition them into other jobs as well. So it has to be an open bit of communication between your company and the employees.
And that’s how you keep happy employees. And the final kind of jaded point, if you’re a company and you’re offended by this webcast, I think that says more about your company than it says about this webcast.
If you’re in this webcast, you’re like, well, this is horrible. He’s helping other people find jobs in other places. That says a lot about how you view your company. And maybe m, you have to find a way to start watering the grass in your company so people are happy staying there.
So that’s my monologue.
CJ Cox
Aren’t they also helping people find their company. Right now, there’s probably people out there. Oh, yeah, your company is a perfect fit. That’s the beauty of capitalism, even if we suck at it.
John Strand
So, Kathleen, you’re an invited guest. Kathleen, please, please, please enlighten us.
Kathleen
So, John, applause for being able to say to your employees, come to me, talk to me about career mapping, career pathing, because I think one of the challenges is we’re taught how sometimes to write a resume, or we’re taught how to find a job or what we get a degree in, but we’re never taught how to do.
As Jason said, what is our dream job in 510 years? We tend to just jump from one job to the next because we want to go to greener Grass or we’re tired, but we end up doing the same job.
So the onus is also on the job seeker to say, hey, I want to challenge myself a little bit more. I want to get more certs and how to have that conversation, with their manager to sort of say, I want to stay here and I want to move on.
I also loved a lot of the questions. I want to give a shout out to several people who were frustrated with spam recruiters that were reaching out to them and some people talking about HR firewalls and things like that.
There are good recruiters, there are bad recruiters, there are great pen testers. There are bad pen testers. Treat everyone the same. If you find a recruiter, if you find a direct recruiter that works at a company that you really had a great conversation with, but they just didn’t have the right opportunity at that time, still network with them.
I mean, this is a community of, networking and people connecting to make a difference. So if you had a really great conversation with a recruiter, keep in touch with them because their job requirements are going to constantly change.
Keep in touch with them because they might move to a new company and all of a sudden have the job that’s perfect for you. So don’t just put everyone in the spam folder because they happen to say they’re a recruiter.
CJ Cox
Don’t take that short term focus.
John Strand
I also think whenever you’re looking at a company, Jason started out with a slide of what is enough. And I think that a lot of people, they try to correlate their salary with happiness.
And if that’s your goal, and I’m going to warn you right now, you’re never going to be happy. That is a very difficult thing to ride. But let’s stick on that enough point? And let’s stick on that salary point for a couple of seconds.
When you’re looking to join a company, how do the executives of that company present themselves? If you look at the executives in a company and it’s all about yachts and fast cars and bling and all those things, then that’s what that executive in that company values.
It is not necessarily the people that work for that company. if you look at somebody, and I’m just going to pick on some people that I know very, very, very well, Dave Kennedy and trusted tech Dave Kennedy values his employees and barbecue and smoking ribs, you need to look at how does that.
How do the executive leadership handle themselves? And if there are a bunch of mbas from various business schools, and that is the only thing that they know, they don’t understand the industry.
They don’t understand things about all we’re doing, and you do research on these people, and they’re like, here’s my new Ferrari, here’s my new car. Here’s my new yacht. You probably aren’t going to a company where you’re going to be valued as a person.
You’re probably going to be looked at as a full time expenditure.
Kathleen
Yeah, I think that I love one of the questions that came up. How do you find your dream job? And I know that I’ve had four different careers. Jason and I have chatted sort of, about the, wild and crazy career paths that we’ve taken to all of a sudden be in the right position right now to be community activists, community supporters.
Sometimes finding the dream job is, what is going to be good for the next six months, what is going to be good for the next year, just so that you start to get comfortable with, what are you doing that you’re happy doing?
One of the, questions or one of the slides that I do in some of my presentations are the Dharma questions, which is, what do you do well and makes you happy? What do you do well that doesn’t make you happy.
What do you don’t do well that you love to do, and what do you do well that you, hate doing? I hate doing events, but I do them really well.
And I had to really make sure that I was not associating my name or my value with what I did well. It didn’t make me happy doing it.
It was too stressful. So I think another challenge that I run into a lot of times is people don’t know what makes them happy. They think it’s really cool tools at work and salary and being able to go to the conferences someday, hopefully.
When in actuality, is it the accomplishments that you got a customer to understand the technical vulnerabilities? What did you get out of finishing that project?
I’ve been doing a lot of resume reviewing over the last few days on this channel, and I’m always amazed when I read somebody’s resume and they sort of slide in there that they did customer service or they managed people or something.
And I just asked them, I said, it looks like you really like managing people, but all you’re talking about is you’re technical. Why can’t you talk about both your motivating workforce?
Why can’t you talk about customer service? Those things it that obviously make you happy because they’re buried there in your resume and go and find the job that has that rather than making sure that you’re applying for a job that’s going to use all of your certifications.
John Strand
The happiness thing is another kind of asset test for us. This is something that I think a lot of people that interview don’t know is if you talk to me at a conference and you’re like, man, I’m looking for a new job.
I hate my job. I hate where I’m, I hate all the people. I hate what I do. I hate my cat, I hate my wife. I hate my kids. I’m not hiring you. I love whenever I talk to people and I’m like, hey, I’d like you to come join bhis.
I’m like, I don’t know. I’m really happy with where I’m at. I’m like, great, I’m going to steal you because people bring their happiness or unhappiness with them.
I know of no one that was unhappy in, like, one job, and then they went to another job, and things are magic. Unless it was like a huge career change. Like, you’re washing dishes and miserable, and then finally you graduate from college and then you get your job in your career field.
I generally see people, if they’re miserable with where they’re at, they’re going to be miserable with where they’re going. So you really have to learn to try to make your own job a happy job, find joy in what you’re doing before you try to look for someplace else.
CJ Cox
Kathleen, I love what you said about the happiness thing and how difficult that is and how it could change, right? But one of the cool things, though, is being in a job and finding out what it is you don’t want to do.
My kid just started off from college as a petroleum engineer, and he’s taking a job, and sometimes it’s just figuring out, oh, this isn’t what I want to do, so I need to go a slightly different direction.
That’s so valuable what you take with you, though. I mean, you should always be developing something positive out of what you’re doing. God, John and I came from the worst place on the planet.
Northrop.
John Strand
Yeah, but that job. But, dude, that job, like, with you, me and Josh. And Josh, we’ll pour out a 40 because he was with us for a while and he moved back into the intelligence community.
But it was really, really tough and it was miserable in a lot of ways, but it was joyful. Like, people would come down to our area where the essos were at just to hang out.
We had like bean bags and stuff. And people like, this place is awesome. This is like my sanctuary, and I want to be surrounded by happy people who love kind of doing what they’re doing. I like the comments. People are like, john, I’m so happy in my job right now.
I am so completely sick of my job.
CJ Cox
But Northrop Grove at the same time.
Kathleen
You laid that out.
John Strand
I did.
Jason Blanchard
I did.
John Strand
I don’t want you to hire me because I don’t want to leave. But here’s my resume, which I’ll never leave my company.
CJ Cox
So look, I bad mouth Northrop. I badmouth Northrop. And Don Bucareli’s out there. I had some of the greatest people I ever worked with. I honed some of my best skills.
I took fantastic things away from there. It’s not a hellhole. It was actually fantastic.
John Strand
But there were times, dude, where the jobs that we would work on and what they would ask us to do whenever the travel and yeah, there were some really crappy things, but I think the people we worked with just made it amazing.
CJ Cox
John, that same stuff happens here on certain days. It just happens.
Kathleen
And it just. It happens in any company. And if you have people like, pivoting over the last, was it ten weeks? Now I have a team.
And yeah, we’re all, like, stressed and not happy as far as what’s going on, but I’m happy working with the people that I’m working with to solve the problems.
Like, I know they’ve got my back and I know that my creative ideas are going to go out there and they’re going to say that one sucks, that one’s okay. So it may not be happy, but it can be stressful.
And you like working together I.
Jason Blanchard
Have a question from discord I want to address real quick. The trophy wife, Kara Nevin. Do handwritten letters still get attention? It goes back to the.
There’s 157 other applicants. I am firm believer of, how do I not become 158? And if, for me, that means sending a letter, or if that means reaching out or if that means me taking.
I didn’t get a chance to do this today, but I talk about on, the live streams, if I was to take out an ad targeting the company I want to work for, targeting the job title of the hiring manager, then I will do that.
So that way, whenever they’re on Facebook, whenever they’re on Twitter, whenever they’re on LinkedIn, they’re going to see an ad that, like, says, hey, hire Jason Blanchard. Like, I will do whatever it takes to not be applicant 158.
John Strand
I will say, I don’t recommend starting leading off with a handwritten letter that’s a bit too strong. But if you have an interview and you send a thank you letter and it’s handwritten, I think it shows that you have good handwriting.
No, I think it shows a level of care and, like, a personal touch that those other 157 applicants, none of them will do that. But, don’t get too long to where it’s weird.
Kathleen
Yeah. If I can just put a qualifier on that. If it’s a smaller company, I would say definitely a handwritten note or if you met with the CEO. As far as the process, if it’s a large company, Fortune 50 company, that large let that handwritten letter might get lost in the mail room and you put all that effort into it.
But definitely send an email, because I think that, we all know that we freeze up in an interview. So sending an email and saying, hey, it was great.
We talked about this, this, and you asked this one question, and I sort of forgot about, this one bit of experience, and it’s just another way to stand out and sell yourself and show that you’re excited about the position.
But I can talk to ten recruiters, and they can all count on one hand how many thank you notes they got. So we’re not just saying this is something. This is something that truly will have you stand out.
John Strand
And, it’s funny, you talk about the standing out. When I interviewed for Anderson consulting back in 99, I went, into the interview room, and there was a bunch of standard crap interview questions that they asked.
Is there anything in your past that you regret? Well, one time, I didn’t take my dog for a walk and made my mom really mad. And I felt bad about that. I remember I was talking to the recruiter from accenture, and I said, yeah, I was busted smoking marijuana with my wife, in college, and he almost inhaled his pen.
He had his pen in his mouth. He went. And it kind of went back in his throat. And he goes, excuse me. And I’m like, yeah, I was busted. It’s going to show up whenever you do a background investigation on me. And I thought it was going to be a disqualifier, and I wanted to actually get it out there.
And he goes, yeah, but you regret it, and you would have never have done it, right? And I’m like, no, I would have absolutely have done it again. And the reason why is it fundamentally changed my life. If you look at my life before I got busted, I had very bad grades.
And after that, I had a 4.0, I got a job. I found the woman that I married. It was a fundamentally changing event for me, and I wouldn’t have changed that for anything. Out of all the 150 applicants, he was like, okay, this kid, he just said something that was weird, and it actually put me at the top of the resume stack just to be that much different.
I’m not saying smoke pot and go to, your interviews. That’s not what I’m saying. But what is going to be different about you that they’re going to remember you were authentic.
Kathleen
Well, you didn’t put on your coat to cover your imposter syndrome. You said, truly, this is who I am. And Jason, good on you.
You and I both. Imposter syndrome. My God, I’ve been sitting here stressing all day just because I’m going to be in discord, and I’m just not good at that yet. I’m getting there.
CJ Cox
You’re so unique, Kathleen. There were no other people with imposter syndrome on the entire cord, anywhere. No one else has it. So outlaw.
Kathleen
I think everyone should really take sort of solace in that, that we all have this. We’re all bouncing around in, our imposter syndrome bubbles to the point that we’re sealing ourselves off from experiences in life in general.
So just realize that the person that you’re talking to probably has imposter syndrome as well.
CJ Cox
John has it.
John Strand
Don’t tell anybody John has it.
Jason Blanchard
Do you have any questions or just want to jump in here? So I had a comment.
John Strand
One of the comments in the webinar was that all the presenters seem like they’re happy. And, I think that says what? that’s good, John. That’s a bhis corporate policy.
I make us all forces all to be happy at all times. I think it’s more of a reflection, yeah, it’s more reflection on the culture that John’s built at bhis that, kind of aligns for that.
And if, and also if we weren’t happy, you’d be looking, but we are happy and it’s awesome.
Jason Blanchard
And I think that really goes to show.
John Strand
Go ahead. John Kent also works in Rapid City, South Dakota. He has no place else to go. Well, there’s, there’s that, but,
Jason Blanchard
And he loves it here.
John Strand
I know, it’s beautiful. And it didn’t snow today, so we’re good. There you go.
Kathleen
You won’t go cicadas.
John Strand
Yeah, but I want to go back to the thing once again. This was not the goal of this webcast was not to get people to leave their jobs, but it was really to help the people that need help. And we had, what, over 1200 people show up, which shows that things are not awesome out there right now.
And anything we can do to help out is what we’re trying to focus on.
CJ Cox
We have dozens of friends who’ve reached out to us that have lost their jobs in the past few weeks and, that’s one of the inspirations for this.
Jason Blanchard
Absolutely. I had a lot of friends that got laid off and then I knew people in the information security industry that out of all the people, like, when I heard they got laid off, I was like, well, if they got laid off, then no one is safe.
John Strand
That’s true.
Kathleen
yeah.
Jason Blanchard
And so that is the emphasis. What is that word? The emphasis? It’s the reason we did the webcast.
John Strand
It’s the impetus.
Kathleen
Impetus, impetus.
John Strand
There we go. Impetus.
Jason Blanchard
Someone in discord is going to find it.
John Strand
Correct me, I mispronounce things all the time.
Jason Blanchard
One, of my lights died. Was there anything that I didn’t address that, like I really need to before we wrap up today?
CJ Cox
you covered it really well, Jason. A lot of people have specific case things. And again, my thing is just don’t give up. Reach out to people. One thing was on mentoring.
Like somebody said, hey, can John be my mentor? I’m like picking a good mentor. Find someone emotionally connected to you somehow.
John Strand
Yeah, I’m gonna say I’m happy to be your mentor if you’re willing to join our webcast, because there’s literally like 50 some thousand people that Bhis is currently mentoring at the moment, we’re doing an inspiration.
I am sorry I have to do it at scale at this point. I apologize profusely. If I can mentor each of you individually, I would, but I’m a horrible mentor. Just ask Dale.
Kathleen
I realize that a lot of people think that a mentor relationship is like a contract. In the beginning of my career, there were very few women who were in any kind of executive or senior management position, and there was no way I could call up a CTO, being a low level person, and say, would you mentor virtual mentored?
I followed them on social media. If they recommended an article, I read it, if they presented somewhere. So you can. You can still sort of shadow somebody.
Not stalk them, but shadow them and sort of follow what they do as sort of maybe some guidance. Because I can tell you anytime we’ve done the career mentoring at, b sites, Las Vegas, or any of the b sites that I help out with, the first question is, well, what do I do next?
It’s like, well, that’s not going to be the answer. You need to have a little bit more ownership into that equation and sort of say, what are the things that look exciting to you?
What piques your interest? Let’s go next. I really like that there was, a few questions in there about security clearances and jobs with clearances, and I just wanted to touch base on that since that, that’s the other community that I’m involved in.
Jason Blanchard
I wanted to say one thing on mentorship, and then I’ll turn it back over to you. The sole purpose my live stream exists is because my mentor said, by the next time you show up to do a mentorship meeting, I want you to have this going, and I want you to be a Twitch affiliate.
And I did it because my mentor, I had not done it for the three years prior to that. And so he was like, you got to get this done. This is what you want to do, and do it before we meet again. And if you don’t, then this mentorship is over.
John Strand
I was like, ouch.
Jason Blanchard
Okay, all right. Ouch. And that’s why the security clearance, stop guessing.
Kathleen
So there were two sort of points. One was that jobs, that require security clearance aren’t remote or teleworking right now. That is actually changing big time.
Right now, it really depends on the agency that you are supporting as a government contractor or an employee. GSA is really leading the charge on teleworking because when you think about it, they’re finally looking at it from the budget resource standpoint and being able to lower rent and so on.
So don’t necessarily say you can’t have a security cleared job and work remotely. There are opportunities out there, and that will be changing over the next 18 to 24 months.
There was another sort of comment and a few questions about only jobs with clearances are cool. Yeah, yeah. But not necessarily so.
I really want to say to that, yeah, there are really hard challenges that are in the security cleared work. I mean, basically work that no one can make money off of.
But there’s still really cool opportunities to be able to make a difference because, energy to rural communities or getting healthcare providers to specific communities that don’t have them.
I mean, those are big world challenges that are not going to be in the corporate world because they don’t have any revenue components. There’s tons of research labs. I know I saw a lot of veterans or folks who were in the military in the chat, and I reached out, hello, I’m a military spouse.
really, consider maintaining using your security clearance, but you might want to look at some of the research labs. North Pacific, northwest Labs, Los Alamos, Oak Ridge.
they’re really looking at setting up. None of them are my customers. I’ll just let I’ve just. It’s a passion of mine to say, using a combination of physical security and information security at the same time is something that a lot of veterans would be able to do in our research labs to then be able to set up the protocols that other energy companies can take care of.
So that’s my little speech. And CJ. Ura.
John Strand
Somebody did background searches on people.
Kathleen
No, CJ and I met in Orlando about five years ago, and he doesn’t remember.
John Strand
So, all blur.
Jason Blanchard
I asked for Kathleen to be here because for most people, if you’ve ever been to a hiring village at a pea sides, it’s most likely because Kathleen helped organize it and run it and make it possible.
So you’ve done so much to help people find jobs.
Kathleen
Thank you. You’re gonna make me cry.
John Strand
Oh, that’s our goal. That’s our goal. I got a question. Did you. Did you have any pets when you were a kid that you were particularly attached to?
Jason Blanchard
Me?
CJ Cox
No.
Jason Blanchard
No.
CJ Cox
That’s an interview question.
John Strand
Could you talk about what was it like when you lost that pet, Kathleen tree?
CJ Cox
Would you be if you were a tree? Kathleen Willow?
John Strand
We’re going to get people the weeping willow.
Kathleen
The weeping willow.
John Strand
because I think about fluffy, my body.
CJ Cox
Hey, Jason, you imposter. I think you’re a massive failure because you’ve only got about 150,000 awesome webcasts. I’m not even in it. Security. And this is great.
this was so amazing. Oh, it’s so great. But no, you’re an imposter, so we.
John Strand
All feel that way, right? I remember I was at, I was at Defcon, and I was hanging out with atlas of Doom and Visigoth, who have both won. They have both won defcons.
capture the flag. And that’s really super prestigious, right? And we were sitting around and we’re talking, people were coming up and they’re like, atlas?
Jason Blanchard
Oh, yeah.
John Strand
so awesome to meet you. Shaking hand. Oh, let me see your black badges. He had like, three, and I think it was Atlas went over to Visigoth and he said, all these people think that we’re gods, and, I’m not nearly at the level where they think that I’m at.
And Visigoth basically said, a dirty secret is all of us feel that way. And it’s just, just find your place, dig in, and learn and do the best you can. That’s all anybody will ever ask from you.
There’s the kitty.
Jason Blanchard
There was a lot of request for.
CJ Cox
West, so I didn’t see any of those requests.
Jason Blanchard
I saw one, so I went and got them.
John Strand
All the cats back.
Kathleen
I’m gonna have to go back and answer those later.
CJ Cox
You need a hat for that cat.
Jason Blanchard
Yeah.
John Strand
somebody said, how does one go about getting a security clearance? Is there a cost to do it? No, I’m sorry. You can’t just go get a security clearance on your own. You have to be leveraged against a.
CJ Cox
Program, a way to get this. Volunteer for an overseas posting for people in government or whatever. That’s a damn good idea.
Kathleen
But you can also be part of any of the reserves. So any of the reserves are looking for infosec people. So, it’s basically two weeks, a year and a week and a month.
But that gets you the process. It gets you additional community, excuse me, additional pay, but it also, gets you the beginning of the security clearance.
And yes, you can’t pay for it. I love it when people come to me and they say, I can pay for it. I’m clearable. Well, you don’t know what agency you’re going to be supporting. There are over 16 different agencies.
Each one has a different mission, each one has a different security clearance process. They don’t transfer from one to the other. Yes, it’s difficult. So, if you really want to do the work, that’s great.
Go work for a company that does both corporate and government contracting work. Build your credibility within the company and then talk to your manager and say, I want to stay with this company.
I really like the mission. I want to to support the cleared work. What is the process? Who do I need to talk to? But again, you’re talking several years out and it’s not something you can just automatically change and say, oh, by the way, I don’t like doing this anymore.
I’m going to leave. If you do, you just please don’t do that.
John Strand
Yeah. And there’s cool stuff in the cleared world, but a lot of the cleared world looks like the exact same it world, just with more. So keep that in mind.
Don’t, don’t put it up on this pedestal that you’ve been watching 24 and you want to work with Jack Bauer or special forces and stuff. It’s not like that.
It’s usually a danker dirtier cube farm, but it is. The missions matter. They do.
Jason Blanchard
Yeah. And if you’re dream job requirements as mission matters the most important and you.
John Strand
Want to go, and there’s a lot of nonprofits that are screaming for help, that have amazing missions that make the world a better place. So.
Kathleen
Yeah.
Jason Blanchard
All right.
John Strand
Yeah.
Jason Blanchard
Well, thank you for being here. I’m going to go take a ten minute meditation break because,
John Strand
Everyone around and Kathleen for showing up and she managed not to cry. We’re going to get her to cry. We’re going to get her to cry.
Jason Blanchard
I almost cried.
CJ Cox
And I remember you now, Kathleen. I remember you talking about clearance. I’m old.
John Strand
All right, we’re killing it. Later, everybody.