Episode: 2886
Title: HPR2886: INFOSECOND
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2886/hpr2886.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 12:45:13

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This image PR episode 200886 entitled InfoCode, it is hosted by Operator and in about 19 minutes long and can remain an explicit flag.
The summary is thoughts around 90 and information security.
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Hello and welcome to the episode of HPR15 with your host operator.
This one is going to be about job hunting and my experience in the information security field and IT field.
I've recently accepted an offer to a new position and I'm going to go over some of that history and really how to get a job in information security and how to some resources you can use to quickly get there and get there quickly.
What I'll say and what everyone will tell you is unfortunately your best bet to get a job in information security is to have a background in IT.
And that's 5 to 10 to 15 years of really understanding computers, being able to troubleshoot them and understand how they work.
You can specialize in Windows or Linux, whatever networking, you know, in those kind of high level fields.
But at the end of the day you need the ability to troubleshoot something.
So essentially the analogy that I use is that pen testing, red team, whatever you want to call it is essentially IT backwards.
So instead of fixing stuff, you're breaking things and to understand how to break something you need to understand how it's put together or how it's made and all that stuff.
So people will hear that a lot and it's unfortunately not something people want to hear when they're fresh out of school or whatever.
But honestly, it will make you feel a lot better when you are able to have that background in IT and really understand what's going on when something happens or something's broken or something is got an issue.
And you can say, you know what, you know, I don't know about this, but I do know basics about networking that somebody else on the team doesn't understand that might be an indication of why this thing is broken or whatever.
So that's part of it. What I'll say the second part of it or some of it is having the right connections.
So once you have that initial contact or you have that initial baseline of whatever you need to get into the right field you're looking for, you're going to want to really use the community around you.
Unfortunately, if you live in the sticks, there's not a whole lot we can do for you.
Let me just say I'm clicking around. I'm multitasking here doing some photoshopping or inkscaping as they would call it.
So, you know, a lot of it takes that background into account for the people you know, the communities you hang out in and the passion you have.
Now, there's different levels of passion and I'll put it in three categories. One is the person that goes to work and they do their job and then they go home.
There's the other person that goes to work and wants to provide value and extra value and do more at work than anybody else around them or any of their peers.
They want to fix something, they want to solve a problem, they want to see a problem and they want to fix it and make the company better.
That's passion in one form.
And then there's the third which everyone wants is the person not only do they want to make things better at the office but they take their passion home with them and they do things at home that further educate them and make their professional career grow in that space.
So, that's what everybody's looking for but that's the thing that's hard to find.
You'll end up with usually what you end up with is people in the kind of gray area in that space.
They'll want to do something maybe they'll like to do a specific thing but they lack the technical ability to do that thing.
And that's one way one idea that one kind of type of person.
More often than not, I see the person in information security, I'll see the person that wants to do the best they can at work and then they don't have the passion or drive or they really want to, most people want to have that passion.
Most people want to take it home but they don't have maybe the technical ability maybe they don't have the time right maybe they don't maybe they're it's a time management issue right there they they have time management problems.
And it's not necessarily that they don't want to do it is that you know it's easier not to do anything than it is to be passionate and do stuff and be active in the community and all that.
So I don't necessarily put the people that don't don't take their passion home to in a bucket of you know in a bucket of lessness less lessness for making upwards.
But what I'll say is that a lot of the times it's kind of hit or miss the people that work with and talk with over the over the years it's it's hit or miss they'll say that they want to do something and they'll say that they want to be passionate or they'll say that they want to change something.
But yet you you get into the weeds and you realize that they're just kind of daisy chaining along and they're just kind of along for that right right.
And they're they're not necessarily interested in really making that next step and really providing the level of effort it takes to really understand whatever their passion is right.
They'll say one thing and then when you try to sync up with them or you know take them out to watch or whatever and you you you connect back with them you realize that they haven't done anything and that they're not as passionate as they said they are or maybe they want to be and they don't have the time or effort or whatever.
That's what I find a fair amount of the times.
But every once in a while you'll get a gem out of that rough and you'll find someone that has that passion and they take it home with them.
Those are the those are the rare finds right those are the people and I'll say I take some of them home I you know take a portion amount home I do have a family and I have a certain amount of stress that I can't that I can handle.
I can generally handle less stress than most people so I don't necessarily take it all home and and and really go you know crazy with with what my passion is.
But anyway so let's get on to the kind of finding a job part what I'll say is the biggest key is networking.
If you can get on LinkedIn if you can get on meetups if if you go to a meetup don't don't plan on really connecting to people the first few times.
You got to go to a few meetups before you realize you find the right audience three to connect with or you find the right group that you're looking for.
A lot of it is just getting getting the right group and getting the right finding the right people that you're comfortable around and there's that whole aspect of you know if you're anti social that there's going to be an issue there.
I have learned and taught myself to be more social and break out of those molds because it allows me to connect to people in a different way and a more realistic way and a more enjoying way when I do finally reach out and connect to people but again making that first that first connection is the hardest part right.
And that first time you reach out to someone and you get positive feedback that you're looking for is the hardest part.
So go to your meetups if you're into programming you go to a couple of programming meetups.
If you're into InfoSex you go to InfoSex. InfoSex meetups if you're not anywhere in your in a rural area you can actually do WebEx-based stuff there's tons of stuff for especially information security out there that you can search around for for free to reach out to me if you have issues outside of meetup.
The second part I'll say is that LinkedIn is a great resource. It is time consuming I'll say when you switch yourself on to a specific you know a wanted level or say wanted level but I'll say looking for opportunities type of setup.
There's an adjustment there in understanding you know what that process is, how recruiters work, how the process works for recruiters and I'll kind of go over what I've been able to glean from that whole process.
So the way recruiters work I can tell from my experience so far is you have automated autonomous bots that go out and send you stuff through LinkedIn.
These aren't actual people sending you anything it's probably a script or some kind of cut and paste macro that they do and you'll get a LinkedIn request telling you to do a job that may or may not be relevant to your skill set.
What I will say is that changing anything on your profile will trigger those bots those autonomous things.
So even if you go in and set up your title and add a space to it or maybe you add a new position and it's just a bunch of no values or maybe you change the your profile in such a way that it refresh the bots.
That's a way to get a lot of traffic and a lot of hits. So the best thing you can do is really get a new job, add that information into your profile and then set yourself to looking for employment.
So you can say something as simple as you know consulting services blah blah blah make up a bunch of stuff that you're doing your own consulting.
That will change your profile enough into the into the fact that you're you're and you can add it as an additional right and I think it really changes in your profile at all.
I've done something as simple as change a space to a edit of value in my profile and that that's enough I think to trigger some of these autonomous systems.
Now there's an advantage to that and there's also the disadvantages that you have lots of recruiters and lots of work ahead of you.
And I'll tell you I get one when I have it on the the looking for positions and I'm in I've been in a post like for you know 10 15 years.
When you turn that on you get about one or two a day and and with with 500 connections and you have those connections laid out in the right manner.
You're going to get one to two a day so the trick is is when you're first contacting the person you have a template and my template includes my my LinkedIn information which is my LinkedIn blog.
My personal website and my resume link to my resume and telling them at a high level what I'm looking for you know I'm looking for a flexible.
Be very brief and very simplistic you know two sentences your information and done a lot of times they'll come back with asking for information that you've already applied.
You already told them said well here's my I sent you the link to my resume I also attached it.
So there in a bot mode so what you want to do is spend as least amount of effort and time talking to those people at the first level as you can.
The problem with that is that you're at everyone's mercy.
So when you're speaking with your recruiters you have to be primed and polite and feel like you've got nothing better to do and this will talk to them all day.
The problem is is that you're so far away from the position at that point that it's not even hardly worth your time talking to these people unfortunately.
So you're you're sitting way far out of the main now where what and that's that's a big contrast what I'll say is from from before.
You used to back in my day you used to go to companies and you would give them your resume and you had to get in a car and you had to drive around and you had to talk to people and apply for positions.
Even online and on people's websites.
So with that being said you know having a recruiter contact you is is is easier but at the same time you you kind of feel defeated in some aspects.
You feel like you're you're starting at the very bottom and that's really that's really the game now is that you have to start at the bottom and work your way up and they have their processes.
And you try to just be as brief as you can but also keep in mind that they're they're with a filter.
They're the filter to filter out the complete and utter and qualified people.
So the first people you contact on on the recruiters are always going to be your filters and the filter people you want to answer their questions and move on.
Answer their questions and we want to be polite but spend its little time as you can as possible with those people because they're just going to escalate you to their managers and their managers are the ones that actually talk to you and the ones that actually will provide you the position details.
In general that's almost always how it goes down your there's always somebody in between the employer in yourself if not two people between.
So you talk to the filter the filter escalate you to the manager you talk to the manager the manager sets up an appointment with the actual employer you talk to the employer the employer after talking to the employer the employer has you talk to the other people which hopefully is a onsite interview or final interview.
Or is a phone interview with with the correct parties now at the end of the day what I'll tell you is that you want to talk to the people that are going to be on your team.
For me and information security and technology that's the most important thing that I have found to be the most of value is to say okay who am I going to be working with?
Okay Bob Sam and Sally okay can we talk to Bob Sam and Sally or one of the one of the two or three people and get a feel for what the team is like.
And for me it's about the team it's about being confident and having a cohesive team and working with a cohesive team and information security the money will come and all that stuff we won't have to worry too much about that.
But it's about being cohesive and all that stuff so that if you can talk to the team and stress that the important part is the team and the important part is finding the right value to your or finding the right the job for your skill set.
That's a good place to start.
What else do I need to talk about so you've you've managed to I do have a LinkedIn bot script that I'll add in the show notes to essentially if you don't have 500 followers you can learn connections you can use this script or create something similar.
And I can help you if you want create a script that will connect you with with other people and oftentimes those are recruiters too and those are what you are looking for in some cases.
I talked about the community stuff I talked about the LinkedIn I talked about I've been talked about kind of showing what your passion is so it's great that you're doing stuff you're doing stuff you're taking it home you're being passionate about what you do.
But you need a way to document that and tell people that hey and show people that hey I'm working on this thing it's really cool or maybe it's not cool maybe it's just something that people have done before maybe it's something very simplistic right maybe it's it's something that that it's been done before but you haven't really looked at it before and and just having a documentation or having a way to document what you're interested in.
And what your passion is is is one of the biggest things you can do now whether or not the employer goes to the effort to figure that out and look at what they're what you're passionate about and understand what that is is a different story but you know get involved with local communities go to local hacker spaces.
Go to go to information security conferences go to any kind of conference you can within your area to do that networking get that networking part and really find find a mentor if you can find a mentor there's lots of places out there let me know if you need a mentor in the security space or information security space or even IT.
Let me know I can be your mentor I can help you find a mentor that's in connection with the right people with the right town but really finding a mentor and saying and they can help you hey you know what I don't really think I'm doing this right I think I need guidance in this specific area or you know help me be better at this and if you have a mentor that's been there they can help you understand what what the differences are I'm actually in a Slack channel the
brakesack B.R.E.A.K.Sack podcast has a has a nice Slack channel with a bunch of good stuff in it the other one on hangout is a netsec focus which is NEC at CC focus is a great room to hang out in that's not not mastered on but whatever the other one is.
And then the other one on hangout in is discord there's a lot of discord channels out there for information security and local security stuff or IT stuff but if you don't have a mentor let me know or we can connect you with the right people yeah.
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