I was lost.
“How?” I asked myself. I was supposed to help others find their direction—why couldn’t I find mine? A web developer turned life coach, I was staring disillusionment in the face. Business had slowed to a trickle as people returned to the office, and the war in Ukraine made me want to join the military. Yeah, okay. Good luck. Soldiers gave fighters with no experience the nickname “bullet-catchers.”
“Dude, you’re just going through a mid-life crisis,” said a friend. “Why don’t you just buy a Porsche and date a much younger woman?” We both laughed. I did neither.
Government Agency?
Since both of my parents were Air Force veterans, I decided to try working for a government agency. Unfortunately, I had zero job history in such an entity, and with my most recent experience as a life coach, I had about a snowball’s chance of getting hired. I started submitting my resume on LinkedIn, then decided to talk to someone who might help.
I messaged a man with a history with the US Government, thinking, “There’s no way this person will get back to me,” but he did. So I told him what I was looking for, and his recommendation was straightforward.
“I would get into cyber,” he said.
Since I was a kid, the artist in me wanted to be a musician, but the scientist in me wanted to be a biologist. However, growing up, I started playing games and making digital art on my mom’s Mac Plus in 1987. I was fascinated with that black-and-white monitor and loading “programs” using floppy disks. I didn’t care about how computers worked; I just liked using them.
Pro Tools
Fast-forward to 2001, and I began making music on my girlfriend’s Titanium MacBook Pro. Out of necessity, I learned about RAM, hard drives, and operating systems and dove down the rabbit hole of computer optimization. That trip landed me my first IT job in the USC Film School’s sound department, where one of my main jobs was setting up and maintaining the school’s audio editing workstations running Pro Tools.
Since then, I bounced back and forth between music and IT until I found web development. That career path stuck until my short stint as a full-time life coach in 2020, at the start of the global pandemic.
Two years later, I reached a crossroads. Feeling more lost than ever, I contacted Honor Jensen, a long-time HR worker turned career coach, who helped me explore my interests and skill sets.
Meanwhile, the guy’s suggestion to get into cybersecurity rattled around in my head while I researched various career paths. “So many options…so many paths…” I thought. So I started watching YouTube channel after YouTube channel, looking for something that would stick. I got the CompTIA Security+ certification and started applying for any job for which I seemed remotely qualified.
Hunt for Jobs Like a Hacker
Rejection after rejection led me to view my resume like a snowball in hell until I came across a LinkedIn job for a web developer at a cybersecurity company. *SUBMIT*
That company was Black Hills Information Security, and after a lengthy application process, I was hired. Ironically, after researching Black Hills and waiting for my application to make it through the hiring process, I watched Jason Blanchard’s How to Hunt for Jobs Like a Hacker video on YouTube. I thought, “How is it that I’m applying for a job at a company that teaches you how to apply for jobs, and applying these techniques to get a job?”
Whatever it was, it worked, and all of that time scraping the bottom of the barrel with my career coach, agonizing over my resume, and tracking job submissions like an accountant had finally paid off. The team at Antisyphon Training hired me as a Web Application Developer but soon moved me into a Product Lead position for the new antisyphontraining.com.
Conclusion
If you need help, reach out to people. Often, our problems are in our heads and of our own making. We can’t see the solution because we get in our own way, and an outside perspective is all we need. Having someone see our blind spots and offer suggestions can help us overcome our limiting beliefs and offer the encouragement needed to push past rejection.
I’ve often thought I knew what I wanted and had tunnel vision when a better path was lying outside my periphery. Additionally, combining skills and interests leads to job possibilities that we may not have thought of, but seeing them takes an expanded perspective. Through this approach, I’ve been able to combine my web development, IT, and coaching experience into my role at BHIS/Antisyphon Training, and my music background helps me identify with the massive amount of musicians at this company.