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Ever wondered how an Air Force veteran like Lee Clayton pivots to a thriving career in tech and cybersecurity? Strap in for an enlightening journey that navigates the tightrope walk between experience and opportunity, and how roles such as security engineer are ever-evolving amidst a competitive job market. Lee's candid disclosure of his transition offers a treasure map for those plotting their own course into the tech world, be it through military service or other industries.
This episode is a trove of practical guidance, from mastering job interviews with the STAR method to emphasizing company values. Lee and I dissect the nuances of job satisfaction, dissecting the catch-22 of experience versus opportunity and the importance of strategic networking. It's an honest reflection on our personal career paths, complete with reactions to cybersecurity tips from TikTok, and advice that's as fresh and relatable as if we were your savvy guides through the tech terrain.
As we wrap up our tech talk, the focus shifts to the real grind behind job seeking and the dedication required to succeed in cybersecurity. We lay bare the challenges faced by aspirants, highlighting the dangers of spreading oneself too thin and the value of concentrated effort on one skill at a time. So, for anyone gearing up for a career switch or taking their first steps into the tech industry, this episode is your front-row seat to valuable perspectives and experiences seasoned with wit and genuine insight.
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Welcome back to the textual talk podcast, the show that talks about tech, career life and much, much more. I'm your host, hd, and today we have a wonderful guest for you. His name is Lee Clayton. Lee served this time in the Air Force and is now a security engineer for a DOD contractor. In this episode, we'll unwrap the layers of finding the joy in your new work, negotiating pay bumps and whether those help this gig or golden tickets or detours on your career map. Lee gets real about the struggles of breaking into cybersecurity and the cash 22s of the experience versus the opportunity, giving us an honest look at the grind behind the glamour. And we'll also be reacting to some TikTok tips and discussing the military's role in shaping tech careers. So, before this episode is over, you'll understand how individuals can effectively prepare for job interviews in the tech industry and what roles do company values and star questions come into play for preparation. You'll also understand why the cybersecurity market is so competitive and why sometimes your first job may not be in cybersecurity, and how you can also leverage your experience from feeder roles in order to land a role in cybersecurity. So sit back and enjoy the show.
This video is being sponsored by level up in tech. Are you interested in starting a career in cloud computing? The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that between 2021 and 2031, cloud computing jobs will increase by 15%. Linkedin is also showing 170k plus roles related to the cloud that are currently open now. Also, the average cloud engineer salary is 132,000. Now you may be sitting there asking yourself hmm, I want to make $132,000. How do I get into the cloud? Well, level up and tech has got you covered. Level up and tech is a 24 week comprehensive program dedicated to helping you land a cloud role. It will show you everything you need to know related to the cloud. They also have coaches that can guide you and ways on how to help you interview better. Level up and tech has helped many people start their cloud career and they have so many testimonials on their website. So if you're interested in starting your cloud career, use my link. That'll be in the description.
About zip. We hit the club, pay for about 10 niggas to get in. We crump.
I love what you said In your bitch yeah, no we walk around the world.
I need a record thing to cut. Like my cousin, I'm not giving a damn about what I feed my dad.
We've been an intro to it. I'm going to let you know I'm going to do like this. I'm going to let you know Get your ass smushed.
Hey, they went crazy when it dropped out the concert Biggest Maybe no concerts, I don't do Put it in the chicken man 21. Can you do some for me? Can you hit a low?
risk place for me 21. Can you hit a low risk place for me? 21. Can you do some for me? 21. Drop some bars to my pussy ex for me. Alright, no, leave you right now. 21 spot Can you do some for me? Can you talk to the ops next for me? 21. Do your thing. 21. Do your thing. 21. Do your thing 21.
Y'all diamonds in the wash. This shit cost a lot. Never send a bitch on that. I'll tell the kid too. He's got to be sad. I'm in vanish mode. I do that shit a lot. Took up panties off in this bitch's dicker than a fly. I'm my exes. I ain't nothing. I'm pose busted. If my ops ain't rapping, they ass-tucking. You ain't ready to pull the trigger. Don't clutch it. I know you on your period, baby, can you suck it? I'm a savage. 21. Smack a booty and match. I'm gonna say slap a booty. I'm a rapper with a ratchet. I might slap a track on this woman. Get that addy. Don't call me on Christmas Eve. Bitch Call your daddy. Bitch Call your uncle. Bitch Don't call me. I always in my ill, your whole fleet. Why my ops be posting guns?
on me. Come on, let's sing this while we're here Leigh hey, like an athlete. No, mike, don't try to.
Are you hoes? Are you hoes, come on Leigh, y'all talking. This may work.
This may work. This may work, this may work.
This may work. This may work, this may work. I messed up like that. I don't give a fuck.
I don't know the lyrics like that Find you someone else to call when your bank account get low.
You define, you someone? Hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm on this slaughter gang, shit, hey.
Murder gang shit, hey, slaughter gang shit. It was so funny that Drake saw us saying this.
I'm like Drake. Come on, crom on chrome. That's just what a nigga on. Got him kissing through the phone. Puss his link in up so they don't feel alone. Hey, he gonna say something about Memphis. I'm always. Memphis. I'm like I'm P and D, d and I'm like hell when I argue this shit, I'm mean to Kanye West.
I'm Hinabout in the crazy picture. This is man to be rapper all the time through texts and phone. So I figured let me just bring somebody who don't agree with the stuff I'm saying on the pod. So it's not gonna be like the traditional pods. It gonna do the intro and introduce itself, but then we just gonna start talking about what we always talk about. Cause it's funny, cause I think we're, I think we represent two different places in our careers and so that's why we see things pretty much differently, which is pretty cool.
But if you're watching this on YouTube right now, you know what to do Subscribe, hit the bell icon, click on all so you can be notified when I'm dropping out content. And if you're listening on Apple podcast, spotify, google podcast or any other streaming service, please follow us. Download the podcast, share it out, leave a review. Really helps us out in the podcast algorithm. But without further ado, is Mr Lee Clayton? What's up with you, man? Yeah, what's going on, man? Man, this has been a long time coming. You know what's funny? I actually want to tell like a funny story, like how I met Lee. Lee is like technically I guess you can say like a mentee, but not really, because he don't really ask me. So he's like man, look at this. He'll always just tell me to check something out. But ideally Lee and I had a consultation. It was like the middle of the year, very beginning of this year. It was the beginning of this year. He wanted to be cheap, though.
He didn't want to get no where's the man?
none, well, you know. But he did end up landing a startup. But we kept on talking after that. And I talk to people all the time like, just because you don't get services me, don't mean I'm just going to block you and not talk to you, because that's not really my idea. Like, do I want to make some money? Yeah, but I'm not in it for the money. Like, I had a client last night Well, not a consultation, our long consultation and he was asking me about when I was opening up coaching for clients.
Again, I told him maybe February or March, so I can make sure I give them the right amount of time. And I was just explaining them how I do stuff. And I was like I make the group coaching with the Zoom videos and everything else. And he was just like, well, you know, can I just do the coaching and get the videos? I was like, if I wanted to just get the money out of you, sure, but I was like I want you to get value out of it. And so I know he'll probably come back Because I could have stuck him up, I could have got the $700. He could have just got the videos and went on his way, but I don't think that's going to be as beneficial as him getting the one-on-one time with me. So if y'all do need some coaching, y'all can get at me. Or you need a resume done, y'all can get at me.
And now shout out Christy, over there is on the 1st and 2nd. She's helping us out today. You know what I'm saying. So it's a good day. It's Saturday evening. We got Leah out here. My boy is he on, if y'all heard the intro to the, to the pod. But you know, it's new chapters in life, new chapters for everything. Yeah, but without further ado, can you go ahead and introduce yourself to the listeners and the viewers? Well, yeah, so I said most of it already I'm Lee Clayton, I'm from Memphis, tennessee, so made that very known.
Background was military, did some military work for a few years about one and less meant for four years and now doing work, cybersecurity work for a defensive contractor and, yeah, I just like to stay abreast into the new technologies and just meet new people Like. I'm going to meet this guy right here, and that's not how this man really talk.
But, all right. So now I'm going to get a little controversial. So the first thing is I want you to kind of talk a little bit about your military experience. Why did you choose to go to the military? Well, it wasn't my first option, so I got out of college. I was doing mostly. So, you went to. So you went to the military after college, so you went as an officer. I guess we got to talk about that.
So I didn't, I didn't know. You went to college first. Talk about like, yeah, after high school, so you went to college, went, so I went to a community college stress first out of high school back in 2014 because, so I went to my community college for a year because I wanted to save some money and not go directly to university lifestyle, so did that for a year.
Then I went through the last three years in middle Tennessee so a shout out to the raters. But so I graduated from there in 2018. And while I was in school there, I was like a driver, a driver manager and also I was driving also box trucks overnight, so I was like doing driving things Really wasn't thinking about.
What you majored in.
So I majored in broadcast journalism, so my my thing was what's your middle initial? Hold on, where are we jumping? I don't know. We not what we doing. I got a joke that, such as you was your middle initial, what if I ain't got one? So you got a middle name. Well, maybe, maybe I don't what it depends on what the joke is I was going to mention about. You know, stephen A Smith.
So it's going to be like Lee A Clayton. Yeah Well, middle name begin with a D, so Lee D Clayton. Yeah, you watch a one piece, I ain't watch that stuff, and so on. That's the thing. Well, it should be going on like 20 plus years now, right? So I just said that because you know all the D's, and one piece like means some monkey D Luffy people. Yeah, I ain't watched that in a while. So yeah, but that's what I was doing I can call it just driving and graduated and said, hey, well, back then, this is when I started to notice, especially because the city I was in, in Murfreesboro, where the college was at, that's why I started to notice a lot of things being built up.
How's this? The community was being built. So guess what Price is starting to wind up. So, in my sense, well, now I got to the degree, I got some experience on this driver manager thing. So I took my ambitions to go back to Memphis and thinking that life was going to be easier because it was still cheap back then to live in Memphis. The rent was still like $600. It's not even that, no more now. But so that's what I did.
I went back to Memphis and it's just not landing those driver manager jobs. And I was what is the driver manager? So what I was doing is it was this company that got different routes to car dealerships and they dropped out car dealerships car parts at night and I drove it first. I was driving, I was driving the trucks at first and then I switched to just sitting in the office and just managing the routes, with people having problems or they're calling with issues or gate code changes or whatever. So I was just doing that and it was like pretty easy money that I was in college and it worked with my schedule since it was overnight. So, yeah, it was decent money back then, maybe like $800 a week which was yeah, that's what we consider rich.
I had bought my Mustang five point over that money and everything back then. So what year? That was Well about Mustang. That was 2016. And they wanted to cause. Back then it was like spring break was the big thing. I want to go spring break.
It was fun with the Mustang.
So I'm like you know I'm skipping on a spring break. This year they came back. I had the Mustang. They were like, yeah, y'all spent all y'all money on spring break. That's what I got. It's going to be around for a while. What color was?
yours.
All black blacked out, Everything blacked out. Wheels Everything blacked out.
Was it that new 2015 model. No, I had a 2013. But I spent a lot of my extra money just making it thing my car, basically. So so, yeah, that's why I was going back then and then moved to Memphis and it just wasn't working out. So my uncle did 20 some years in the military. He did army and Navy. So he was like, man, why don't you just try a military? I'm like I don't see, why not not really doing much here in Memphis? So they said, well, you need to try out there for us, because I didn't. You know it's harder to get into. You know like, okay, I see if I can use that why is that?
Yeah, because it's considered the smart people, the people who do. I don't really be considering that when I be being the Air Force people. I'm like y'all just regular people, it doesn't. I mean they have so so some roles that require a little bit more knowledge, but all in all, they just have higher as bab scores that you need to make to land a decent role.
that's not you know, something that's going to have you hating a lot. That's going to have you hating your life for your whole term there. So, so, yes, I told him I just try that out, since he already did two other branches and we really didn't have nobody in the family that I knew that did Air Force. So I went through that whole process and then started my alisman 2019. Okay, check you out, hey, if it feel good being in Memphis with the Mustang, didn't it? It felt good at college with it because I had so I had when I was in college.
I had a older Mustang that I bought cash. It was a 29,. It was a no, not 20,. It was a 1998 Mustang GT. So what's it that like body started had like on, um, mr Society, and stuff. Yeah, it was a. This is older body style. I think that's okay. It wasn't a Fox body, it was a SN 95. The SN 95 came after the Fox body and then um, so I had that one and then I bought the 50 GT 2016.
So I was I had two cars, I had two Mustang's, so I had both of those at the same time.
So, yeah, they had them coming in and out of dorm, didn't I? I was feeling myself back then, man you know, but hey, but yeah, that's that's what I was doing in college and we had like a group of the guys I'll start out on car club stuff and that's that's what I did on the weekend, just car stuff, you know. And um, memphis, you know they have street outlaws that go there. They have recordings. They got a whole TV show that records street races and stuff like that.
So it's trying to make it big like the backboard. Um, yeah, not big. But you know just, I had like little vests and stuff. Y'all were vests.
No, no, no, no when.
I grew up, I started seeing it, I went to school and so I take them car clubs very seriously, like they had the decals on their car and they posted up like, like that was real deal, like a little clip yeah. The car clubs we had. They just had like decals, they just put on that car the Instagram label, but it wasn't. It wasn't, um, not, it wasn't that deep.
Okay, I know how you feel, though, and 2015, I had got that new 2015 black GT. Yeah, you was balling there at the year that the car came out. On that year, yeah, I will. Previously, I graduated from college 2013 November, to be that November 2013. And I can pull up on my Facebook now. I posted a magazine with that Mustang and I always send people like this the style I want.
Yeah.
End up getting in a bad wreck going to work in the beginning of 2015. And I just joked, somebody hit it. Somebody hit my car. No, I didn't have a Mustang at the time, I just joked, I was like man, you know that made you get the Mustang to wreck.
Okay, yeah.
I said I did want a new car. Yeah, so I went and got it back then. Hey, people would have swore I probably made like six figures with that GT back then.
Yeah.
They thought I just had money, I was making 40 K, I wasn't balling. Yeah, I mean they don't cost much, which is why I like them. They don't cost a whole lot. I mean but that's still was. I mean, that was like 550. Oh no, mine was three. I played the cars right, put a little bit money down, and I put a little bit down. I said, if I knew that now.
I just went to the credit union and I would just pay the money down there. So it was a learning experience. I was like, going up they never had bought no new car, like we all said, got a cash car or something used. So I ain't know the process. I learned the game there. But I want to briefly talk about you, an officer, school officer, clayton. I mean officer.
Yeah.
Wish. Oh so you weren't an officer, no so that's not happening.
Let's talk about military recruiters. Well. So, hey, hold on, f, I, f, y, I Y'all. He don't have a good relationship with recruiters, well, but anyway, let's talk about the military recruiters, right? So the thing was back in the day this was 2016, 17 ish when you will talk to military guys and they'll tell you hey, you get your degree, that's all you need to come in as an officer. So I always used to hear that, but back then I wasn't really there, really wasn't thinking about military. I just used to always hear that because I used to come to the colleges and stuff like that.
So now that I had my degree in 2018 and I go talk to military recruiter for Air Force, but they tell me is that? Well, no, it's not just have a degree, you got to have high test scores. You got to have a recommendation from somebody, that's you know, who has some power, like a colonel or general. That gets you a more scene that make your package more noticeable when you're applying for officer candidate school. So I'm like, well, I don't know any generals in the Air Force. And then I took the they call it the AFOQT, which is Air Force Officer Qualifying Test. So I looked at that scores was subpar, not the best of the best, but still passing.
They say, well, your best luck would be is to come in enlisted and cause most of our officers in Air Force are prior enlisted that switched over to officers coming in with no military background, without knowing nobody. Then it's going to be really rough. It's going to be a long process and at that point I was just ready to get out of Memphis and I said, okay, well, I'll do it. For how long I have to do it? Oh, you just got to do enlisted four years, then you can apply to be an officer. Well, that was not the case, because I learned when I was in that it still takes more than just that one year of service to qualify as an officer. As I talked to other people, we've been trying for over 10 years to become an officer. So, yeah, so that's how I went in enlisted with a degree, and everybody looked at me like why, but that's the story. So okay.
Yeah, I'm thinking why too, but you just want to leave. How was so all right, we got all these different questions that come about the military. Yeah, how was well? No, no, I don't even ask that. I've asked that too many times on Pies with people I had on here. Why is it always seem like the game plan is getting the military get 100% disability and get out? That's the game plan.
Cause think about it.
I see most people getting the Air Force. They get a little sign on and they go get them a charger. But if they not, if it wasn't for the military paying for them where they got to stay and stuff like that, they couldn't afford them cars. They couldn't afford it because, as an officer, to pay the pay band difference, you can look it up. Well, I don't know, officers get paid more, I'm just talking about regular people. Yeah, you can look up the pay difference, but yeah, that's, it's big, it's means that goes around, right, right, if you sign up for the Army or whatever military branch that you get a new Camaro, new charger, they try to get the young people who, fresh out of high school, with that card selling thing, I already had the Mustang so they couldn't sell me on that. So I guess, why the game plans? I didn't know about that until I got out or was on the way out about the disability thing. So I don't know if that's a real game plan, but hey, it works.
I was working with people at Help Desk that was like if I was 22, josh was like 23 or 24, full disability, and he was getting this help desk check and he was divorced. Let's talk about that. Did you get approached to get married while he's in the military? Approached to get married? No, for the extra money, what? Yeah, what people do is when you stay in the dorms and stuff, they get a little marriages or whatever. But to move out, some people know their marriages last a while. Some people, hey, it lasts a month. So just depends on your situation, man. We had a lot of people at my home church that were in the military, so that's why I don't trust military marriages. Most of them are just they got married, to get married they needed a little extra money, or somebody convinced them they was gonna get a whole bunch of money by getting married.
Then realized that this one ain't worth it. They could have kept that. Yeah, I think it used to be a meal to meal, which is a military to military spouse. I think it was a recent change while I was in, where both parties at first both get the housing allowance, but then they changed to where, if it's meal to meal, same branch, only the higher ranking person gets the housing allowance. So, yeah, that took away some benefits from that. So this is the last one. I'm turning this into some Furious Style stuff, man. So do you think the military is a place for a black man? Honestly, not a. It can be some places, and it just depends on your unit and who you have in leadership, because if you have some people in leadership, that actually is advocating for their people and minorities and who does not forget their background, where they came from, then it can be a decent experience.
but if not, it's either you conform or you get out. So that's why you got out. Did you? Were you ever to have a haircut when you was in the military? Yeah, you can have, I think you just can't have stuff that goes past your ears and stuff like that. So Did you get? Well, you don't really grow a beard, but did you know the people that had the exception, Like you, had to go to the doctor and be like, hey, I'll break out if I got a shave yeah yeah, that's a lot of people that get the shaving waivers, what they call them, but I definitely would have to get one.
Yeah, cause you just show them the, you just show the medical people one time, all these bumps you get, they push on that waiver. But still, it's the regulations. With that, it can't be too long.
Can't be too long. Can't be too long yeah.
I got it. I still followed the regulations, so yeah, and so you was stationed where In Los Angeles. How was that Interesting?
because How's the?
culture shock from from being in Memphis to be on the West coast. Well, there's a big difference for us lifestyle, for us income, for us pricing, for us weather and the people itself out there. But the base was interesting compared to other bases. As they say, it's not a real military basis, cause usually Air Force bases have you know, planes and hangers and actually have a flight line that that base didn't.
It was mostly space related stuff. So SpaceX Yep, they worked with SpaceX, so it was right around the corner from there, and now they also are.
I should have got on with them.
They also a space command now too. So since the space forces out now, so that base is considered a space force base. Now I heard the logo was Buzz Lightyear. No, but we had a One of the what was it? Astronauts. His name was Buzz Aldrin, I think that was his name. He was a one of those. He was in military Air Force, he was an astronaut and he was still alive. He came up to the.
Dears office one day. It was a super story. Everybody, just the whole base, just had a different atmosphere once they said he was arriving. So when you was in LA, like did you? Were you scared to wear certain colors or you was or what? Like did they kind of like a form, your A, if you going out where it is, where that? So those areas you talking about is like Compton and Inglewood and stuff like that. Well, I really didn't Hang out in those areas. Where the base was at was El Segundo, which is considered, like I heard Kendrick Graff about that. El Segundo is a nicer area of LA, is right next to LAX the report but I also stayed in. They had a housing base in San Pedro which was not too far from Long Beach but for his colors and where I really didn't care that much because I never had the issue but became a problem.
One day it wasn't about checking in.
Check in. Yeah, you checking in when I got there I'm being funny, you know.
I tell the rappers you got to check in, oh yeah.
Checking, like Houston, what they say. They told one.
I got a chicken. Check in in.
Conta City? No, nobody's known out there. But yeah, so you, big Lee, did you ask the ad for Memphis? You told them boys, well, it was obvious, because what I was talking, I was access, it was an everyday, real, current thing. I just wanted to have a sweatsuit that said Memphis because I just knew.
the question Is that your name.
Yeah, they called me Memphis. Yeah, when I was with basketball courts. You know you go to some courts and everybody get their own nickname. I don't go Memphis, Pick a Memphis man. So would you all start Air Force League in Hooper, no, so I got a team. Each base has a team, I'm sure, but I really didn't take it that seriously. I just played here and there. Really, you be talking to me like you just was like that or something. Hey, I mean, when we play, hey, I got videos. That's all I know. So you got intramural videos Did we do intramural.
I think I did intramural once. I'm just calling it intramural because that's the only thing I could associate it with. Like in college you got intramural.
Yeah, we did intramural on base once but we didn't like it.
I don't like a lot of organized basketball. Why? Because it's I like it. I don't just like, I don't really like watching it, I don't really like unorganized, like football, automatic too Everybody running the nines like bro. That's what's the different routes, because, yeah, I don't organize where you have more control of the game as to people you don't determine, somebody else is not determining what's a file, what's a travel? You actually send it for yourself. So people begin getting on some bulldog when you be playing, like anywhere else you know, and to be a file, or travel, or whatever like. They be doing so much stuff on tiktok. Well, dude, to do something that's like. Well, see, I picked this foot up and put it back down, so everything else like bro, if you got to do all that you can have it.
Yeah, people out there trying to be.
I don't know they be thinking they're going to the G League or something, but that's how you do it in the intramural I was like, bro, we got class, we got eight o'clock tomorrow.
Like you ain't even to go nowhere, you're not going to make the tech team. Yeah, some people, hey, some people that's in an Air Force, especially my homeboy. He's on a New Mexico based team. He just came in town yesterday. He was telling me how there's one guy who's on the base team. It's just, he made it to the actual Air Force team that actually plays an NCA. So he actually made it on their team. But then they also got like an all D O D team.
I didn't know about that. You made that they play overseas and stuff like that. But, yeah, so did you find out that you want to get in tech right before getting out of Air Force. So, in tech. So what happened was, you know, in Air Force you wear a million different hats. We work wherever they place you at.
So my primary duties in Air Force was like administrative work and paperwork, records, pay bands and all that good stuff. Then you have sometimes where I was needed in other areas, like they had a help desk in one of the offices and I was like, hey, well, we're going to put Clayton over here today. I'll show him how to do stuff over here. And it was. It was a lot to catch up with because they always had a backlog of tickets and issues. I really didn't like it but didn't have to do it too often.
But I did some of that. I did some shadowing with the I guess, the system admins you will call them there. The actual title is client systems, but it's basically a system admin looking at what they was doing and I really didn't think about tech. And yeah, until I got out, my homeboys kept telling me about maybe you should do tech, man. When you get out, do cybersecurity stuff man. You already got the clearance. I'm not really interested that much. I thought I was going to get into truck driver because you know that's already had knowledge.
I already had knowledge of that. So that's what I thought I was going to do. And then I go get my license and stuff. And then I just realized that now I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to be on the road. Now I stopped them, Not let them scared you off, and that and just I just didn't feel like being on. I just moved. I had just moved to Dallas and company offered me to be on a road three weeks at a time and two days at home a month. I said what's the purpose of me?
Even in the apartment even in the apartment.
that's going to be the case, and of course I could have looked other avenues, but that just that's just dead for me, just hearing that part.
So then, miraculously, I think it was like the very next day after I talked to that company, I get a random call from a school called ACI Learning. So they said, hey, we saw your profile. It was actually you wanted to start a tech career. I'm like not really, but what's y'all offering? So they told me how they got classes and get some search and hey, you don't have to pay nothing to use, you get paid. And at this time I really wasn't doing nothing. I was still living off my I was on what you call that leave. We're not all the way up to military, but you still on leaves. I was still living off of that. I'm like you know what. I might as well do this program. So I did that. That's what 18, I was a 10 week program Got some search. I'm like you know what they got to go this route. So that's how I got in from doing some stuff before and then just going through that and then just end the life in it.
So, yeah, what's the ACI program? Was that the spot that's over there in Irving Exactly? I know that because when I was laid off, I went to ACI and talked to them why I have to go back. When you start talking to you, I'm going to go look at my email and I figure out why the ACI Like hit me up about some stuff. And I think also I don't know if you watched the episode deal with my co-worker that him and I used to work at TSA. He helped us together, but he's out here in like Fort Worth now and I think he teaches some classes at ACI. Yeah, he's probably a military as well.
They wanted me to teach, but that's not my thing. Why, man you a little talking, yeah, but not teaching like the basic fundamentals of IT. That I don't want to talk about that. I want to talk about how to actually apply those things. Rather than you know what is IT, what does it stand for? You know stuff like this is what they was teaching a lot.
So you went through ACI and got some certifications. What certs did they stack you up with? So come to your trifecta. You know A plus, net plus, security plus. Then I also enrolled for the CEH. They had the course there, so I enrolled for that. I went through all the classes first and while I was in the oh and then you'll get the ITL too.
So ITL cert Can you explain in a more? Itl is what is there for information technology infrastructure library or something like that? It's just basically like a project management type of cert for IT. So it just basically says you know how companies should continue to improve. It gives you basic fundamental principles as a business that you should follow to have you know certain practices embedded into your companies. Talks about agile and scrum and all that good stuff that project management talks about a lot. So you want to be on a management business side of tech, then that's what the ITL is there for. So it really wasn't much used to me, but I got it anyway. Since it was free, it'll be used to you. Eventually I was working in an agile environment at JP Morgan and didn't even know. I didn't know I was doing my sprints wrong. It took him to almost to the end. I was almost going like, nah, you got to either clear these out or start a new sprint every two weeks. I was like you never explained it to me.
I was like when.
I used to work in JIRA. It was like, hey, go check out these rules, do this and that, and coming back and that's how my JIRA be done. I didn't work on my sprints to do stuff, so I was like that was crazy to me. So yeah, so I did that. I ended up helping this role, which I knew I wasn't going to do that. So where did you land your help, this role at?
That was the.
Bank of America. I think at this point, when I got into the program, I just switched my whole persona from trying to do this truck driving stuff into applying for IT roles. So I think I applied for them and obviously I did. Since they called me, it was basically hey, that is a help, this we're building up here in Addison and we want to see, we're trying to hire at least 100 people to start up.
So it was good.
So I tried to put a lot of people on, but a lot of people wasn't trying to. They didn't see the vision. I just thought, oh, I got to get to search first. I'm like I didn't have a certain at this time and it was just funny how everything just translated for the courses until the training. We had a two week training.
I'm like I know all this stuff already. I'm doing it in the class, as I was in, so I know all that. So I started off, I know my first day outside of the training taking tickets and I just had a, I guess, a fantastic day, apparently, because the site lead came over and said man, you're killing it. Today you took 30 calls and the average resolution is under two minutes. What are you doing? I'm like I mean, it's easy stuff Training. Yeah, it's like just easy stuff, man, it's not. It's not rocket science, a lot of these stuff becoming sense issues that people can fix, but it just don't think about it. So, yeah, man, we got people been here for years when they did 30 calls in a day. Yeah, I'm like, well, don't know, man, it's just how it is. I guess I just had easy, easy tickets, but yeah, so I did that for a few months, okay.
I got to have this question for you.
So, number one, did you realize that it was a lot of us on the help desk? A lot of us, yeah, uh, why was that? It was a mix of people. Um, it's a good mix of folks, but what was the majority of the people? How was they? I had to break it down. It was said they had a hundred people. So so yeah, between those hundred people, I think it was like maybe 30, 30 or 35 percent black, and you had some whites and middle Easterns and had a diverse. Yeah, I said it's diverse, but only reason. I said that because you've seen now, since leaving from that, that you'll never see that many black people.
Yeah, yeah that that, that was that job and I was my even in military when they did some IT work to help out. Yeah, we're still mostly, you know, caucasians and and some people you know from some people, some people from from scared to say who it is. No, some people from you know like Could I not get a US citizens? But they like Hispanic. So OK.
I was mostly Hispanic and white people that was on the IT teams in the Air Force, so that's what I was noticing. But, yeah, yeah. So next thing is like so you said this was simple, what type of cost did you get to help this? Funny calls? One person called me because we handle tech issues, computer issues, so this one was like 30 second call hey, I'm calling because my cell, I'm trying to set up my cell. Well, we don't do that, that's you calling the wrong department for that. Well, car chase. So, hey, handle that ticket easy. But other technology types of tickets that we got was, you know, hardware refreshers or some people computers may go down, or hard drive Something internally hardware related has started working.
How to get a replace? A lot of VPN calls, not a lot of new hire, which I hate it. When you, when they call in, we had a system that automatically, based on their you know credentials, show their profile of who they was and if they're a new hire. So as I saw a new hire, I knew it's going to be a long call because you got to set them up with VPN, you got to set them up with their first time logged in and it's just a long process that I told them should be handled through their manager.
I think in that sense, after telling them that, that we start again less calls on new hires, because it's nothing that we really needed to intervene with for them to just call us about that all the time. So so it was stuff like that. And people call him like I can't connect to the internet. Yeah, I can't connect to a lot of people working from home that can't connect to their like virtual machines. We had a virtual desktop machines that a lot of contractors have to use Any hours yeah, so we had to troubleshoot those.
We had.
VMware horizon. So I just go into the admin center, either running script on to get them back up and running or just do a just a hard shutdown and making sure they're logging in with the right server. We had different. They had different locations on where people should log in based on their location. So if people are clicking on the wrong one then yeah, it won't work because, you're not at that location to use that VPN to connect to that.
So there was a lot of that type of troubleshooting stuff. What else? That's a whole lot of different things, man it was a diverse help there so that's good.
And so now we'll get into like some other stuff is like because I was saying earlier like how me? You had the consultation, like I forgot. Like how did you even find out about me? Well, I think it was. I was just starting to get to being on LinkedIn and somebody like that I followed or was connected with, apparently either research or post it content. I started watching some YouTube videos. I'm like you know what. So I want to see what's going on. That's it. This. At this time I was interviewing a lot For higher level roles and then it was at the point where I see that it was some knowledge gaps there, but at the same time, I always got told that you don't have to know everything to get land a job. So it's like OK.
I'm interviewing a lot and every interview I come across it was always something that I didn't know and I never got the job. So it's like what, what am I'm doing wrong? So I wanted to talk to somebody who probably been doing it for a while, who can probably relate to it. So, yeah, because I remember you sent me a job or something and I was honest with you. So I don't know if your skills have fixed that. Yeah, and that's the type of person I am. I just want to be honest with people because I don't want them to think about it. If I'm telling you I just apply and apply to everything, but I know your skills don't match and this I'm talking about in general Then you'll start getting upset with the whole process, everything. But I'm like well, the stuff you're applying to, I think you'll be able to do it if you learn it. But judging off of how it's marketed on your resume, they probably don't know that a lot of recruiters, if that's not what they do on a day, they don't know how to probably get that inside of your own, what you actually know how to do. So that's one of the things that I was saying, or whatever. But I think after that is when you hit me up like yo I, I landed the gig at the start of it. Right, I was evil, right? Um?
So the start of it was called share. It was a car sharing company, and I hit you up like the same day they gave me the offer and I didn't. I wasn't expecting it because I scheduled the car a few days back and it was just so happened to be at that when it was time for our call. They actually gave me the offer to start there, so it was right on time. I was guessing, but I was. I still took the call just to say, well, this is what I was going through, but now I got this. Let's see how this work out. But so, uh, yeah, I took that and turned out to be decent amount of knowledge and skills as I was needed. That I landed through self-studying, yeah so self-studying, that's startup right.
Yeah, startup. And so, from your experience being a person that pretty much straight out of help that's going into a startup, what do you feel about working in the startup as like pretty much like your first stepping stone type of job? I think it's a good experience if you have the mental capacity for it. Right, because it can be stressful if you let it stretch you out, but I don't really let job stress me out, I just take things as they come. I know when I first started my first week there, I was just completed a loss. We had two days of HR videos and then after that, because people was in Canada and California and Florida, everywhere I was expecting some guidance as to what we're working on, what we're doing, but I really didn't get that from the so-called manager I have. He was really my manager, but he was like the lead. So we had a lead and we had the chief technology officer. That was the whole IT team.
So I'm just sitting there for a couple of days and I just shoot them and measures on Google chat. I'm like man, what am I doing here? Like what is? Why am I here? What I'm doing? So there's got on the phone, he's scheduled to meet with the CTO and him and me on a on a Google chat, and he said, so, this row would not be a you know ABC 123 type of thing where we tell you what to do and just do it. So we want you to just find out whatever problems. That's going on off of some solutions and some suggestions on how we can do better or, you know, have some things in place. So I'm like, ok, so I just had open range to do anything that I want. They were like, yeah, whatever tools you need to do, whatever you need, go for it.
So I guess the very first project I had was setting up mobile device management, mdm, and they helped us help me out with that, because I did a lot of that at the help that's done with not setting it up but actually using it and seeing what people was, what problems people were having and stuff like that. So can you elaborate a little bit more about why you should have MDM in your environment? Yeah, because these people they had. They had remote workers and I know this came up in the interview I had with them too. They said, hey, so how would you secure remote, environmental, remote workers and their devices? That had company devices. I'm like, well, that's a simple MDM solution, right? So that was one of my first projects to set up.
So what happened is people will leave or get fired or whatever, and since they all had just regular computers so you can just buy a store, but it was company, so the company sent these, sent them to computer They'll send it back with locked out, like people set their own pass where do whatever they want on the computer. They had no oversight of what was actually going on. So they said, well, we got tied again, locked out and we're having to factor reset the computer where it could be some data on it that we probably need. So that was the purpose of having it in place actually tracking what people doing, keeping the company from being locked out when people get fired, and managing just their environment of what they downloading and things that, looking at, they shouldn't be, and all this good stuff Right, so cool.
Look at you learn learning something on the fly. What was the next like thing you? You did there. So I had to learn AWS on the fly. I had to learn, like you said, I had to learn to scrum and agile stuff because I had to talk to the developers every day on things that they're working on and had to set up Servers in the cloud AWS. So another thing they had is, since they had a car sharing application and they took payment card information, they think should be VPN protected, especially if it's remote stuff. So I had to set up a VPN. The VPN they had was never working. They said a client I was broke and it just called it was costing $500 a month.
They tasked me to come up with a solution to replace the one that they had. So I just started doing some Googling, came across an open source platform called pre tunnel or something like that. It was basically free. Well, it was. It was free to set up, but for enterprise type of environment, which I saw on there was only like $70 a month. I'm like, hey, you can get this one $70 versus 500 and it works, but you had to set it up on your own instance. So that's why I had to go in the AWS thing they call AMIs and pick the image.
I ran it on Oracle and install all the packages for that server and get it set up. I had to do some routing configurations and stuff on it. I had to set up a single sign on capabilities. And so you really are security engineer. Yes, I had to do all. I had to do all that Set up the routing and things are wire guard on it, setting up how people will connect to it and making it easy for people just to hey, just click here where it says sign on with your Google. We use Google workspace. It was a hybrid type of cloud. So they use Google for managing their accounts, aws for developing and things like that. So I made a service account on the Google workspace and added it to that server. So now when people go to the server's address, all they got to do is click sign in with your Google credentials, so it's like yes or so. Yep, I had to set that up. Yep, it was pretty interesting stuff.
So it seemed like you had a lot of just some good work there. What made you want to leave? Well, I didn't want to leave but I got it up for the company with now and I'm glad I did, because, coming with now, I've been, I've been working on it, I've been, I was trying to get on there for like a whole year and then somebody I seen on LinkedIn was just how he, referring people to the company, just hit them up. So I hit him up and then he referred me to like 10 roles and I applied to all of them and one of them came through. He said hey, they looking for you. You're ready to meet for this one. Go ahead and apply.
So I applied to call me back up like three weeks later, set up an interview. Well, they didn't call me, they just sent me an email to set up an interview with the team and pretty straightforward, just easy questions that I learned on my own. Like what is RML for? Like just easy stuff like this. So what is RML? Yeah, just from risk management framework, what is it? What's your think the most important step is?
and what do you think the most?
important step is so, since, yeah, so since I knew what that stuff was when I looked it up on my own, I said a lot of this stuff seems like it's more policy based. I'm like, doesn't make sense to have my policy. I'm like they have a step where you implement actually implementing what you set forth in the company. So I'm like, hey, I think the most important step is actually implementing the stuff that you said needs to be in place. So told them that it was a straightforward interview. How do you define success? And you know where you stay, Are you? And then I'm glad I actually got my security plus in November 2022, because they wanted you to have that to come in.
They interviewed me in January. They want you to have this. So, hey, you got security plus, where you, you know, abide by always having it up. You know having it up. I'm like, yeah, having it current and like, sure, Unexpiring years ago, yeah, so, hey, hey, if they paying for it, don't, I say, sure, it'd be there. And yeah, we didn't. Well, and yeah, so I was just, I was in the evening a whole month in the startup when they gave me the offer. So they, the recruiter hit me back and say, hey, pick a start date. So I'm like, hey, I'm trying to drag it out as far as I can, Cause I was in the middle of working on projects with the startup. So I'm like I didn't want to just leave when I'm in the middle of doing some stuff. So finish up the projects. I pushed out my start date like two months, like the farthest date I can get.
So I pushed it out, told him I was leaving and then got into the company, went down. Hey, everything happens for a reason because that company now is just it doesn't even exist anymore because of some bad business they was doing with the CEO. This video will be sponsored by level of careers. It has a 14 day money bag guarantee. It's a we self-paced course, the four year reimbursement and counts for continuing education. Here are some of the reasons why you can choose top security high demand, job security, competitive salary, work variety and fulfilling work. The national average salary of information security analysis of 113,000.
You're a instructor at Josh Maddacour and here is the brief overview of the course Theory, introduction, security refresher, security frameworks, security regulations and standards, security operations. Then you have these great labs where Azure, lock-in-and-mundry, microsoft Signals, secure Cloud Configuration and they help you with job plan and job pilot execution. Use my code to try out level careers. You get 10% off by using my code and you'll be taking the next step in propelling your career to new height. Now back to our schedule program. Yeah, that's what I was going to ask you. I forgot to ask you what did you? What were you going to pay for that first help desk gig? That was paying me 20, 25 an hour, so you was making big money to be help desk. I don't know about that, bro. Man, you'd be surprised when people be back in the office.
Yeah, I see 18 and stuff like that, but that was a pretty good startup. Starting out, paying the minimum pay was like 22. And so you negotiated 25. I think that will offer me 23. At first I'm like I don't know, I'm getting you certs and a lot of that. Okay, we can get you 25. That's the highest we can go right now. I'm like sure. My ass was 19. They wouldn't even try to give me that back in the day.
Yeah, so what about the startup?
Like what, what the startup offered you, just for you to leave the startup? It was offering 80. So that's a 30 K jump. So you know, I took that to the manager. I'm like, hey, I, I know this probably a long shot by a might as well, can y'all match this? I'm like, oh, no, brother, you making what my manager's here making now he wished me well and said hey, you got to take that. I couldn't be, I wouldn't be mad at you for taking that Right.
And I bet, once they found out you was leaving, everybody starts trying to see what, what you know how to do and this and that I'm trying to leave the help desk too. I want to make $80,000. Every, every, almost all the people that are just you know act like I just made it out, you know, made it out to hood or something like that. So and I'm asking them that, because every podcast I talk about how, in real life and not on Twitter, instagram, tiktok people is not making more than $80,000. That people is making 40, 50, $60,000. Yeah, 80,000 is a lot to them. So stay out social media, keep your head down and just try to elevate your life some type of way, because people will be happy to get that money. The job, matter of fact it's. I think I bookmarked it, I'm going to read it, I'm going to find in a second and we'll talk about it Now. What do you do at your current position?
Well, I, was doing the first role and then we'll get into the current one. Well, the first one, well met. Now what I was doing is just policy creation, a lot of paperwork stuff, hardware, labeling and you know, just configuration management on information systems, Like you just have to have them compliant with the government standards of things need to be properly labeled. You need to have a security policy in place on how this system will be used. How would you start downgrading classified information? Just having that policy stuff implemented?
was what I was doing, which I really didn't like that much.
So I think my manager's caught on to that real fast.
So yeah, I found a tweet and I'm going to put it on the screen once I do this. It's a post processing. He said y'all, for real, ain't taking these 70 to 80 K entry level roles as your first ever tech job. Damn y'all rich, rich. I would have taken that in a heartbeat and go up from there. Yeah, yeah, that's still decent money today I mean depending on where you live to, but hey, it's still. You stay in the street with a Memphis. You might be straight. Yeah, that's definitely good money. Out there. People still look at me crazy If I tell them what I make now. You make. Oh, no, you might as well stay out there. Don't move back to Memphis, man, it's a tick, tock.
I don't know if y'all seen it, but it's a dude playing the game and it's like rent 625 and he has some gunshots right by him. Yeah, well, then go back to playing the game. That's nothing, I'm like. That's a real thing, though, I tell you by. Men will stay wherever for super cheap, but once you got a family and kids, that's when you start to try to get them in somewhere safe. Yeah, it was already carried a whole lot of long as it's livable conditions. You know my first apartment here. I thought it was good, it was decent, but where was that.
It was in Plano. It's called the Layton. It was like the pictures. Everyone was staying at the Layton. Yeah, it was a decent looking. But then I was in there Independence Parkway I'm still trying to learn all the areas out here, so I'm not really I'm not really knowing of big landmarks and so. But it was over there in that area and, like I said, it would have been a good place if you never needed maintenance. So as soon as the maintenance stuff had to happen, then that's where you started to see how they take weeks to get something simple done and I was over that. So I just stayed all over, kind of like the North Dallas Carrollton area. Yeah, so my first apartment here was a good start. Give me where I'm at now, Right, so so what type of now is the thing? Me and him go back on a lot of different stuff. Y'all been hearing me say training to him.
Because it's an insider training. What type of stuff do you do now work? Oh well, what would you consider your title to actually be now? More of a security engineer or something?
like that. How come?
a platform engineer. I would think it's more of that, because it's actually more the other side of it was. I said so working government people know what that is, more of just documentation, and people says low stress and things like that. But it's just not why. I saw myself for a career.
So management saw that they say, hey, well, work with this guy who does these. You need some help with the tools actually getting them configured and set up right, because the way it's set up where we at is, everything is air gapped on different networks, so you have to touch everything individually. So he's like needed some help on if you could figure one and then you had to replicate it through all the different networks. So so, yeah, it was, it's pretty interesting stuff. Okay, all right. So any specific tools that you work with now that you see out there, yeah, we got Splunk, we got the Tenable Security Center and Trellix, epo you know I hear all the bad stuff about them. So they all over ready. I think the only real entities are still using our even government or government contractors for some reason, but I don't understand it, because they also have on the on class side it's crowd strike. So so it's like why not have it?
on both sides. But hey, right. So now y'all, here's the fun stuff, all the stuff me and him disagree with. I've been ready to have fun.
So you have like a lot.
Yeah, because you have like a lot to say about people. Matter of fact, while he starts talking, I'm going to go find like his posts because they be they be different. But what are people? What's your opinion now in the job market? How about that? So, like everyone sees it, even people who not even looking for tech jobs. My auntie called me.
I was saying, hey, don't you do the cybersecurity stuff you be talking about like, yeah, I seen the ad about how it's so lucrative right now. Yeah, so that's that's the selling point. Ads, people, boot camps and schools are pushing the agenda of so many cyber professionals needed and so easy to get into, so much money to be made and it's a boom in market because it's always something about three million or some type of means of cyber jobs left on field. But it's not really the case that. What I can see because there's a lot of people who are getting these so-called credentials that they need to get the jobs but they can't get them but it's a lot, it's a lot of goes into that. What I've been hearing about is fake job postings to make this company seem like they're actually growing, when they're not for business purposes, and just a false advertisement of what's actually available for you to actually get into. So people are just running around chasing their own tail with no end in sight. So yeah, now and here I probably agreed to a little bit, because when it comes to cybersecurity because it's so vast, it's not like other professions or you want to say, specialties.
For example, if you want to go possibly into the cloud, it's a little bit more straightforward on what you'll be doing in the cloud. If you look at cloud engineering or anything that's related to the cloud job descriptions, they're a little bit more in line. If you type in security analysts, you'll probably find 15 different job descriptions. You should probably more than that, and that's because I so that's one of the things when I tell people don't get caught up in the hype of the title, because titles mean different things, different places. Focus on the skills. That's in the job description and what it wants you to do first. So what do you think? Do you think it's possible for somebody to give like five certs in 90 days to get their first type of security job? I don't mean anything's possible, right? Yeah?
That's how they. That's how they. That's how they. That's how they. That's how they phrase it then?
Do you think it's ideal? Let's not say possible then, because if you're going to nitpick me like that, no I mean hey, I mean it's possible, people have done it.
So you know, when you have one or two people in a boot camp or whatever institution it is, they say, hey, these are success stories. In the first 90 days they got these search and they got a great paying job with no experience. Okay, if you have 10,000 plus people in your institution, then you can give a success story for five. It's not really a good, it's not really a good rate of you know real success that you have there. So people see the success stories and then you know that's how they bite into the programs.
So it's the ideal not ideal, because right now there's no talent shortage for cyber quote unquote cyber security entry level roles. They want people with years of knowledge. And then there goes that question of how can I get experience if I don't have a person or company willing to take a chance on me? So that's that's the big, what they call it, the cash 22 that people going through right now of, hey, how do I get experience if I can't even man a role? So do you think it's more ideal that people take more feeder roles to get into cyber versus just trying to go right into cyber from jump with no type of high level skills anywhere else. I guess that depends on where you are in your career. Of course. If you are a first out of high school or college or something and you don't have a lot of bills or something coming in, then yeah, you can take a lower leveled role because you don't have a lot of bills.
You could take that you know that, pay and learn some things and build your skills, that's up. But it's a lot of people are successful in their careers and they're just tired of it. Have a lot of nurses trying to switch into it, have truck drivers trying to switch into it. You have some some lawyers trying to switch into it. So it's some people who've been in their career fields for 10 plus years and now they want to get into tech because they tired of where they at.
So would I recommend them go to the help desk? I wouldn't say that because I'm, but we know help this isn't like the only feeder all I mean. Yeah, but you know that's what a lot of people say. Hey, you should start up a help desk. I'm like well, that don't work for everybody, right? I agree, I think it depends on what you're trying to do. I got no. Help desk can be foundational in some ways, based on what you're going to try to do after that, but it can also be more for hindrance than it can be helping you out because it only limits your scope sometimes to be in the help desk.
And this exactly, I had an interview with one company I forgot the name, but it was for identity access management type of thing and it was something else trying to relate from my help desk to this row. Because they said, what, mama? I asked her what they, what they do in their current roles, and I said, well, we provision access to certain technologies, system based on where the users is, and most of those work, those type of tickets. I'm like, oh, I do some of the same things when people call us Excellent, hey, I got no access to this application. And then we tell them, hey, some of the ticket on this site here, and then it provisions you access to that based on if you are in the group to have that application. And I'm like, oh, yeah, I'm doing some similar stuff like that already. But I want to think they saw my resume was his help desk and I think they were just talking to me just to say, hey, we interviewed a lot of people and, right, did you say on your resume that you provision access? I don't, I don't change my resume so much Back then at that point. I'm not sure. I think I had most of the troubleshooting stuff I was doing with different technologies and that's the answer. That's the pitfall. This is for help this people right now. That's the pitfall that you'll fall into.
Like I was working with a guy. He had some of the stuff he was doing. Actually, last thing I went through, I went through his resume with him. I was like this stuff is good, but when they read this all they're going to see is help desk. I say, take off all this troubleshooting stuff, let's put stuff that you help with. He was saying. He was telling me how they helped stop a fishing campaign and some other stuff. I say, yeah, put all that stuff on there. That's going to show you got a grasp of the roles you're applying to. But it's so much like in certain help. This is so much stuff you can't put everything. Well. The thing is the reason why is a lot of people I don't want you to put what you do day to day. Let's put achievements of things you are proud of, different or different as you do at the job, because they help us can comprise the different things you could probably be doing some networking stuff, some support stuff, some hardware stuff, identity, access management. You could be running scripts. There's different things you could do because you need to write the stuff down.
I think a lot of issues is people get to the job and they're right down what they do, so they're just going to take the job description and put it on their resume and that's why they're not getting no success. And how do I know that? Because I used to do it. Yeah, and if I used to do it, other people did it and that's why your resume went good, it's not actionable. Yeah, I mean the resume got me the interview, but I think they asked me some questions. I knew the Institute of vulnerability management and stuff like that from self-studying. I want you to know about VMware. I'm like oh yeah, we're using VMware horizon where I met revision access, different virtual machines. I just had an answer to everything, except for that's more type of vulnerability scans you run.
I'm like well, I don't do that currently.
So I'm not don't run vulnerability scans where I'm at, I'm like, oh okay, that's fine, but that was the only thing I didn't know. I surprised you and said yeah, you know we. You could have said, yeah, as a company we run these Generally. You wouldn't have been lying, yeah, but hey, I wasn't, you know, I wasn't you weren't playing Fox show yet I wasn't thinking of my feet back then.
But a funny part about that is I had to recruit her where she and me. Up. After the interview I was like so yeah, you did good in the interview, but they say your skill says more fit for a help. That's role which is not in the salary range that we talked about for this role. So I'm confused.
What how?
does that make sense? She said your. They said your they fit as your skill set is more fit for help. This Cause she called me said well, it's your salary right, she's looking for it. Back then I said 70 to 90 K and I think the role was paying like 85. And so there was pretty much saying your skill set then fit what you want to be paid. Basically, yeah, even though I knew like 90% of the. So they was talking about it already because I didn't know that one thing. But why do you feel like it was that one thing? Because I had a great answer.
Well, I had, but understanding of what they and this is what me and him get into because, he'll tell me he said this or that on an interview and I was like what did you record it? I recorded some now, since I'm doing much more interviews now. But again, I wasn't. I wasn't aware of the challenges the tech field presented. I didn't think it would be this hard to move up or laterally the way I wanted to. But then this is why I started figuring it out that, yeah, this stuff is not ABC black and white like they wanted to, wanted to present to you in these courses and online.
But I don't think that. I think I think that some people sell that, but I think mostly people don't say it's like ABC, Because the courses that I do promote are typically ones that actually have something to help people with that and understanding the interview process In general. Because, like I said, it's hard for someone who's been doing help desk to change their mindset from action, from help desk, Like I had when everybody did the post and I was talking about my client in the situation where he was talking about MFA from a help desk end users perspective, but not from a security perspective of what this control can be used for, what type of policies we can use to help fortify our defenses. He was just focused on always easy interface for the end user. That's not what they're looking for when they actually had an interview.
I had to learn it a hard way too, so I had to change the mindset. I was talking to different people and as I came across, you know your stuff again. And yeah, just so, every day learning experience, yeah, like right now I got a client, I think he got he has an upcoming interview for a sock endless. So he did I always tell them okay, cool, go take my questions that I have posted on my or pinned to my profile link then and go do it so I can assess your skill set and then I can rep, I can review it and I can say what you work on. So by the time you really get to the interview, I also send you the stuff, the little BS stuff they'll send you about, like oh what is this?
What is SSH? What is port 53? All that BS crap. You can just go memorize that. That's really not a good way to measure if you're going to be good at the wrong. Yeah, I got a sock, endless interview. For when I said to start a company, I think it was EVO. Yeah, that's what I was talking about. I thought EVO was the start of no, evo was a payment. They big, they're internationally known companies. I would get you a raise, but they wanted me to come in at the same pay I was already making, but yet in an interview first of all, it was on site interview, so that was a long.
You have a suit on.
No, I just went in my work clothes and I had like a little polo khakis. You got some polo boots. No, I just have some tennis shoes on. I had some Nike's on some day, but yeah, you say so. Yeah, man. So we had these in person now, because when I was doing interviews back in the COVID days, had these virtual interviews and others felt as though people's Googling answers. I was just seeing them, looking around, looking down and a lot, a lot. So now we in person.
I'm like that's fine. I don't think it really actually was a lot of port numbers. I'm like, what services this, what port is this? What port numbers is this? I'm like, well, I gave it all. All of that was on the top of my mind since I was an ACI at the time, so it was all easy stuff to just blur it out. I'm like it's what it is, but I made it through that process and I made it to the final steps and I think they were trying to offer me that same salary for working longer hours, 12 hours.
And I'm like, it's like what?
three days a week it was rotating, so some days it'd be full, some days it'd be three. Yeah, it was like 12 hours. You think you should have took it? Nah, for the experience?
No, because I was getting more experience where I was at At the start up because I was touching so many different things. I was touching cloud touching. I was basically from beginning to end procurement of software. We procured crowd straight. They said, hey, we need antivirus because antivirus we got sucks. So hey, I had to set up a call. They say find a vendor.
I found crowd straight, had to set up a call with them, talk to them about our environment, talked about how many endpoints that we have, what our goals are, what our goals are as a company, what are we trying to protect from? I had to talk to that, that procurement standpoint, also deploying it standpoint, configuring it standpoint. So I went the whole like in another company. That'll be different roles. It'll be a, you know, probably a project program manager or something who actually talks to the vendor. Another team who actually sees how to configure, another team who actually configures it and deploys it. I was doing the job of four people put into one. So I think that gave me more experience than that that sock would have gave me. So Okay, I feel, like that.
You feel like you should have rolled the startup out to the wheels fell off?
No, because, like I said they no. No, I said to the wheels felt. When did the wheels fall off? Wheels fell off two months after I started where I met now. Now, just I hit up one of the old product managers saying how she was doing. She's like, oh, we're not doing it all. I'm like what does that mean? She's like, uh, everybody's looking for another job because we went two weeks without getting paid and nobody heard from the CEO. All the shareholders either quit or got fired and we just everybody's in the dark about what's going on.
And then you just go look up some articles about the.
The guy you see he's on a run owes over a hundred million dollars in investments to people and it was just crazy, so I was like what? I guess? I guess I got out at the right time. Two months too much would have went bad with him, and unemployed Got you All right. Look, now there comes a fun stuff, man, let's react to some some TikTok content. All right, I said.
I love doing this. This creator, she would be doing her thing, but a lot of stuff. You can tell us words, sally, and I'm going to show it to you right here so you can listen. Unnecessary fluff If it ever plays yeah Well, I said not play it.
Videos, not for you. So many companies are desperate for cybersecurity professionals because this is an area that the U? S has been neglecting. So all of a sudden, they're realizing oh snap, russia, india, china are all advanced and we've been behind. This is your opportunity to hop in and make some money. You could be well on your way into making six figures, and I want to help you out. Cybersecurity isn't a profession, it's a practice. It's a discipline rather than a field. Cybersecurity is the way you design your systems. It's the way that you design your software. It's the way that you design policy. You can do cybersecurity and you don't have to learn how to code. October is the new January and it's also cyber security.
First of all, you can tell she was reading from a script. She kept on turning around. It's not sounding confident because she's a person that just got in. Like I always get on the people like why are y'all giving people advice you don't know enough yet? But at the same time, people who are trying to get in, I say listen to the people who just got their role, because if you listen to some outdated advice from 20 years ago, some people don't be up to speed with what's going on. Hey, you should easily be able to get a job.
I'm like, yep, maybe 20 years ago, how many years of experience you have? I've been doing cyber for 20 years. I'm like it's not like that, no more. Yeah, but those people who are really fresh getting in some of them don't have, like I can also say, getting a cyber sometimes could be a luck game. Yeah, I think I already had experience. But I think the fact that, hey, I was in the right place at the right time, when going to the McAfee like signing up for the talent community, going there, talking to the manager, seeing my resume, them hitting me back up like yo, when can you start I feel like that's right time, right place. Yep, exactly, that's another thing, but that's why I also tell people location can be an issue. Also, tell people it's really not like you say, it's no one right way. But I'm not going to go out there and just tell you. It should be easy for you to go get six figures, because it's not because most of the time, that's still mid to senior level.
Depending on some companies at low bar, that might be principal level money. So they expect you to know how to do stuff and her saying well, it's not a thing, it's a practice and it's how you do this and that, like you don't have to. It's as the girl say, it's giving you want to sound smarter than what you are and she's a person I should have talked about Like I reacted to her stuff before all the nah, I'm happy like she doing what she doing, but people have to be careful because that's not even nothing that she said was actual, just like oh, it's the shortest and the USA, we're behind. It's not even. If that's the case, it would be super easy for people to get jobs. It's still not easy, not easy, especially in the private sector, definitely not easy.
You got people who done took the hard route. They done did the degree and things like that and they're in higher in manager positions. And they say, in the easy route, a person say, why did my dad 90 day boot camp? I ain't got no degree or nothing or no experience, but hey, they say I can make six figures in 90 days. I'm hearing an interview, what's up. I'm just looking at those people and say, yeah, okay, we're going to see what you know, ask them some questions and then you know they go blank in the face and then that's what happens Don't get a job.
And they go through that cycle maybe five, 10 times before they realize, yeah, maybe I just got bamboos or thinking it was going to be easy. Yeah, that's the thing. Somebody should never tell somebody, hey, it's going to be easy because it's hard. And I tell people you get a lot of shirts early on. Sometimes the interview is going to try to interview you a little harder than what it would be. It's called overselling yourself. I oversaw myself for a role one time but that company's kind of slick. They my co, my old co-workers working there, so it's coming for an interview. They pushed the interview up on the time where he they knew he wouldn't be there so they could be as my interview and just started to ask me about stuff. But I played myself because for one I had on tools. Back in the day I actually put every tool I had access to on my technical skills. But I shouldn't have did that. It should have only been so that.
I could talk about it Definitely. Secondly, I even butchered this. That's how I was like oh yeah, cause I'm just being honest, back then I didn't even know I was on blue team. I just know I was working, I had worked in the sock, there's all. You ran team blue team.
I was like man, I don't know. I knew the answer after that, cause that's why I tell people like sometimes it really don't matter and you probably just like man, how you didn't know that. I was like well, back then things was a little different. It wasn't as hot like where you can go every couple of articles and see somebody, cyber security, and they talked about red team, blue team, they more so was going off of the titles Like a hacker or a pen tester or you working the soccer, you do like forensics. They wouldn't say and like, oh you do, you're the blue team person and you're the red team person, that or like even then you got the mix of that. Like you got the purple team and I think they got like one call like orange or something. I think it's green.
I think it's green.
I said he do green team, basically like app sec engineering. So it's like so many different things so you could technically not know like what that is, and I was like that was a funny interview though. That's why I tell people like, don't oversell yourself, you gonna feel a plate. Yeah, I suppose. But hey, that's what they looking for people who got every skill under the sun. This is another one. This dude, he always make a lot of sense. Let's check him out. Make a lot of sense.
A lot of people are upset because Simone B's is selling a cybersecurity course.
I just started the one. I'll cut that one out right there.
I had it on there earlier.
That's not it. I think I liked it instead of bookmarked it one second. Oh, here's a TikTok King right here man.
Here's why you won't get into the cybersecurity industry. Now, usually I'm all about trying to be positive on this page and motivate you guys on this page, but there's going to be some people where, no matter how much information I give them on how to get into the industry, no matter what boot camp I recommend to them, no matter if we figure out a path to say you should get a college degree right, no matter if they want to go to free route, no matter what information I give them to get into the cybersecurity industry, they won't apply the information I talk to people every single day about how to get into the cybersecurity industry, specifically the information security industry, specifically governance, risk and compliance. People will DM me on Instagram, find me on LinkedIn, and I'll send them a link to set up an appointment with me or someone else from my team, and then they won't show up to the appointment. I'll send them the free link to Professor Messer's YouTube channel to start studying for their security plus certification. I'll check in with them, you know, a couple months later, hey, how are things going with your security plus certification? And they stopped watching the videos. And then sometimes I'll get on meetings with people and they won't have like any questions prepared and I can kind of tell that they haven't done any of their own research at all.
And something that I pick up on when I'm going to call with someone is if you tell me about a lot of the problems that you're facing, you should also be able to tell me about the solutions that you've tried. So if you can't do basic things like show up for meetings when you schedule them, or even just communicate with someone, that you're not going to be able to make the meeting right. These are the kind of things that you actually have to do in a corporate environment. So if you can't do them on a small scale now what makes you think that you're actually going to be able to do them?
If you're working at a Microsoft or you're working at a Comcast or a Google or an Apple or an SAP or whatever, 50% of the corporate game is about being able to effectively communicate and stick to your word. So if you tell someone that you're going to meet a certain deadline, you have to make that deadline or you have to communicate with that person as to why you won't be able to make that deadline, and it needs to be a good reason, and I hate to say it, man, but some of you guys are just simply just lazy, like, some of you guys are literally just lazy, and I can't teach you how to not be lazy. That's something that you have to have inherently. Here's why you won't get into the thing about that.
Yeah, that makes sense, man. You know people want the outcome of hard work without putting in the hard work, so that makes sense too. So, but it's on one side of the coin. The other side of the coin is you got people who try and everything under the sun and still having a hard time too. So I think the people that may be trying everything under the sun cannot be a faithful because they just keep on trying everything under the sun, yep.
So think about it.
You got to zoom in on what you really want you play. You know you was all start Air Force, so you play ball. A person that's first thought of playing ball if they don't even master something simple and they say, all right, well, today I'm dribbling, tomorrow I'm shooting. Tomorrow I'm working on defense. Today and I'm going to work on Duncan, they ain't going to be successful at nothing because they master at least one skill.
So when you try and every other thing or I talk to people say, oh, I think I'm interested in pen testing. I'm different than that, or what do you think about this? Well, I'm like you go on too many places, you're not going to be successful. Fine, one discipline and stick with it. It's like chopping down a tree Just get your axe and keep on chopping, it's going to eventually fall. Yeah, I think that's one of the things that they mess up on. And if we get into it too, like everybody want to be sometimes cheap. Yeah, they want to pay. If you do something free, they're not gonna show up or respect it. People only respect when they got to spend their own money. Well, I guess I'm different. I try to avoid spending money wherever I can.
But, if you spent your own money. You want a certain service and you gonna respect it because you work hard for your money, right, yeah, but I went to ACF for basically free. It's different. Somebody paid for it. It's my pay, for I still went and you knew the outcome. Like you was dedicated. It's kind of like going to school. I'm just saying it. I'm just saying Jake, in general, generally speaking, I realized doing this for going on like four years now, people respect what they pay for. Yeah, they do. Hey, I'm paying for this, I need to do this, this and this. I got you, let's say, got money to blow.
Not a lot of people. Some people got. I mean, now you write about that. Now, some people are the people that, no matter what they gonna do good, regardless. It's. That's why it's different people. That's why I say hey is different ways. That's why there are people, when I have consultations, I might recommend them a certain course or something that's a little bit more hands-on, that I'm saying, hey, well, these people had this course. They teach you this, this and this. You can call and check them out.
I checked these people out because you may need that because, like you said, you know a lot of self-study. It's hard to when you get off work, whatever you do, study two, three hours yeah, it was, but I had to do it. But some people need the structure of okay, hey, you paid this money, we got this coming up every week. This will be gonna be working on anything that outline the curriculum. A lot people need that roadmap to stay on like, think about it. You know you need your GPS to make sure your new destination, yeah, so some people need that and they're complaining, but when they If we know micro macro economics right, this is a small part.
So this is the bootcamp. We'll say bootcamp is $10,000 and that's whatever. One year now, let's say you are 20 years old, 25 years old. Now you got another 30, 40 years where you 65, and that tank $10,000 possibly helped you increase your salary 50, 60, 70, a hundred thousand dollars. So when you look at it like, that takes away, did you get your return on the investment eventually? Yeah, if it came directly from what you pay for, though, but sometimes it's not like even think about it something.
When it comes to school, people are saying school is getting school again, possibly. But guess what, when I talk to recruiters and I tell them what type of money I want to make and they start Okay, you've been doing this 10 years, you got this or that, you got your masters. Oh cool, you'll probably fit in this band, so sure you can say it's a scam. However, on the long run, is you credentialed up so you can ask for certain money on top of if you interview? Well, you'll possibly come in at a certain level? Yeah, I think it's your credentials, but if you can find, or if you can get a So-called entry level role where an organization would pay for your school?
and I get that but take off of our who's paying for. I'm just saying in general, whatever money is spent, the investment you would get out of it. Yeah, so that's what I'm saying. Like whether you pay like cuz you don't have people that's paid six figures in their education and some people got there, got their return on investment and some didn't. But that's only because they chose the wrong thing. I think that's the issue. If you choose a major that is a major that eventually will make money, you're doing the right thing.
Now I would say, if you can probably try to find a more efficient way to do the degree program For like less cost, like you say, going to a company that's gonna pay for it At least they pay half or something. Like they're getting you a couple of grants, that's cool, but eventually you're gonna get that that return on investment back. So sometimes, like they say, scared money don't make no money, our people on on this level always complain about price. But then you got entrepreneurs that pay these business coaches Way more money than what we would charge a regular person To take their business to the next level, and so they get. So they went from 2k months to 20k months, 30k months, based on some principles that they spent probably $10,000 on.
But everybody don't see it like that. They just see you want $5,000. Yeah, because what you're gonna get out of this is gonna be a great return on investment. If I got people paying me $500, $700 and then after working with me, they salary go about 25, 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 dollars you do the math I would say I'm not charging enough. Yeah, yeah, um. Or even if we, if we even take off you laying a job I've had people where they make it 50,000 dollars. I do. They resume, they go in. I'm interviewing for jobs making 90, 100,000 dollars. Really, my, my job is technically done because you weren't getting them interviews until you got with me. So now, if you knock it out the park Like dang, that's been 500. I'm making I got 50,000 dollar increase.
Yeah, it's like nice people don't look at it like that, though they just look at what it costs right there. So, uh, yeah, that's that's some valid points. I think that's uh, um, that's the same percentage that the bootcamp use if you uh Laying a job in the program. So Example me. I just take myself. I um Landed a job while I was in the bootcamp, but it was no avail to the bootcamp because I'm the one who applied and I'm the one who started. You know, learning the information at home to actually land a job.
So I Me with me. Being in the bootcamp wasn't necessarily the reason why I got the job. It was me what I was learning, actually applying it To why I got the job, but also what happens is at the end, like they they'll call you or whatever they see. All the people went to the program have landed something, no matter what it is. If you went to a bootcamp for For cyber but you landed a job and I'm all Doing, nothing now no no, listen, listen, this is true.
This is real. No, it's not. This is really landed a job, something that's not even related to the bootcamp. They marked that as they do not, they marked it as all, that's all. That's a percent of somebody landed a job because it's a time frame they have. I would not. I do not believe that. Hey, why don't you show me proof? I'm telling you, hey, no, show me, show you. Yeah, this is just inside of knowledge, of course.
It's not inside of knowledge. I ain't gonna put that out there, hey what, trump, you say fake news?
Hey, okay, that's what I'm saying. Show us. You can show you the conversation. I have verbi place like me, showing you that we talking right now. If it's not recorded, I don't believe it. Men, men lie, women lie. Numbers don't. Well, hey, they numbers, say 70 percent of our, because that's be it. You know, it's funny, though that's something that um, or 75 percent of our people graduate and get jobs and whatever. But then you see a lot of people go to maybe the same bootcamp I won't put one name out there, but you know that's one particular one that says hey, all you need to do is come to my 90 day course. You become a subject matter expert on how to audit for payment card industry stuff.
And they say 90 days, hey, that's what it's programmed. Say 90 days, you good. But hey. And then they say Well, whatever percentage of people gets these jobs. But then we see a lot of people who went through that same course, complaining about and never got no job, just say they wasted 15k plus dollars and it's just.
But I'm also gonna say, because I used to be of that mindset but now I'm also realizing it's some people, because I know this from being a coach I got people that's go, that's gonna be go getters, they gonna do them, they're gonna land something. Then I got the people that I'm have to keep on following up with what you working on, what are you doing this and that. So I do know in these boot camps you got the people that's on it and they do what they're supposed to do, like a person like you in your aci course Ain't got the people that's paying they money but they're not really into it like they should. So of course they're not gonna be successful. So it's one of the things is like we can make a case for either, or I put it like that I would also say for programs like that.
That's a really neat specialty. You should probably want to have some type of experience first. Well, they advertise you don't need no experience, all you need is the knowledge. It wouldn't always like that. It changed. That's where it's coming at. That's why I like my gosh out to uh broadest. When we talked I believe on our episode, we talked about that and he's gay, he's like nah, like I think I forgot what he said they percentage is was like Like anybody probably saying like a percentage is like X amount, that's like too high. It's like just impossible to do certain percentages when it comes to guaranteeing stuff. It's just hard because you got people that drop out life. Everything else is just hard to do. So Yep, now let's, let's get you started on these recruiters or let's get you starting these interviews, man, like he be hot.
Yeah, man, cuz the interviews that I'd say that was a great experience, or ones is actually Asking you what do you know and applying it directly to what they need. Now we have all these you know, come, tear, drill down types of interviews.
What is?
this versus this, somebody would say, well, yeah, you should probably know that, but the same time, that's not like you said doesn't gauge Whether you can do the job. It's just see if you memorize, come tears or whatever vendors concepts on how technology is supposed to work. Yeah, if you memorize 50 ports doesn't mean you're a good stock analyst, so why are we even wasting time going through this? Right, I had, I think maybe I was telling you about the, the interview my client went through with a couple of days to work at, and how, first of all, the interviewer was trash. He didn't even acknowledge him, like when he was saying oh, how you doing.
Yeah, keep on ignoring them and all he did was ask some stuff from google and not even trying to get them to not be nervous, the and that's what things I was like. Just as much as you want to get out clean, you need people to not an interview and have empathy and soft skills that can actually kind of get somebody that could. You might have the great candidate up there, but he nervous everybody on test wheel. Everybody gets shy to talk. Some people don't want to be on camera. Some people get anxious when they like people look at them. They don't know what you're gonna ask. Like I think, uh, I went through a process to where they had a full itinerary of each interview and what each interview was going to be on.
Every company should implement something like that, because Prepared for an interview is tough. You think, like you trying to prepare for all these different things or whatever they're going to ask you, and it's like I don't know what to prepare for what entry level people don't, because their job is going to be a little bit different If you get a little bit more senior and you kind of know what the role is nine times. I think you should did enough stuff that goes directly into that and it shouldn't really be any Deviations in the interview process unless somebody just trying to give you a hard time because they don't want you to get the job, which we see happening a lot. Yep, and I already know so how you feel about this. I always tell clients eight, don't, it's not over till, it's over until you get a sign offer, until you get Maybe even the first check, till you get equipment. It's not, it ain't over till, it's over. How you feel about about that, like either somebody's telling you do good or you got an unofficial offer.
Or I used to ask the question like, hey, is there anything about my skill? Say that how you know company I could do job, yada, yada, yada. And then a lot of Something I'm supposed to say no, I'm pushing to the next round. You hit his stuff, I got it on cat, I mean recording. So thinking, okay, cool, I'm about to get off from the next round. Never hit nothing back. And then you got chase down the recruiter oh, they remember somebody else. Like, okay, they could have told me that exactly the science, what they asked us to have communication skills and I'm being open and, you know, being a team collaborator and so it seemed to get reciprocated a lot to people. So, um, I feel about it. Yes, yes, it's, uh, it's annoying at best, but the original thought of that was, um, the interview questions. Oh, oh yeah, so you said how you asked the question of Is anything about my skills? That like?
I don't act like anymore. Yeah, good.
Cause. So people said that well, that's not a good question to ask. I'm like why? Well, you're already, if you done already went through the interview, probably already done. Whatever you done said is already said, like it's nothing else to go back.
I would disagree there's been time, so I've asked that and they were saying I think he was a little. I'm not coveting your ability of this when you answer this and I've reiterated different things to kind of strengthen my argument To certain things. So I'll disagree about like whatever you said, because sometimes maybe you just didn't explain what you need to explain in the right way. But I just don't ask it anymore because I actually just don't want to put the thought process in their mind. It's one of the things I was looking at when they was like oh, how to prepare for the amazon interview?
So it was like don't ask that because you know and some companies let you know, hey don't send us no thank yous because what you send us don't matter no way. So that's that whole thing right there. Like how you feel about thank you letters Um, thank you for the interview, type of things. I haven't Haven't really done those. I may have that a follow-up, like If it going on two weeks I haven't heard anything, hey, is there anything?
you never said hey, uh, paul, thanks for interviewing me. I like this job and I really said during the interview I'm like thanks for taking the time out to meet with me today. I know that, but I'm saying you never saying like you know how people summarize the meeting you had. They have summarized the meeting to send it to everybody. You ain't never summarized, like your interview, and sent it to the recruiter, um, summarize the interview. I mean, I say what we talked about. I think it went well to it. Some questions that you know do me off a little bit, but really do you so? Do you take notes during your interview? Um, I record them now and then I go back and write the questions out. Yeah, but I'm asking do you take notes During the interview?
Yeah.
Because I know, because I never see how it was perceived Like if you writing down things, they may think you're trying to cheat or something.
No they're not no.
Well, this one small tip has always helped my clients. I say let them know hey, like you see me looking down, I'm just taking notes as well. Yes, exactly Like I told you about the first interview, I ever even said hey, people looking down, looking around, because they was Googling stuff. But no, that's different. You can tell when somebody's typing a Googling versus somebody's writing notes. You can, because if I'm writing notes, I'm going to look straight down. I'm not looking left and installing. I'm taking notes on what you're saying, but what that does is to show them you came prepared to interview, just like they prepared to interview you. So you stand out.
It's something small, but you stand out, you should try doing it For camera interviews any interview, even in person.
I don't see a whole lot of in person.
Well, I can. Well, it's not probably an hour I can show you so many things. I've written down different interviews and dates. It just helps. Yeah, I mean I got some, because the questions like, for example, so how do you, when you say you're knocking these interviews at the park, like, what questions have you been asking? What I asked them?
I asked them what they're Like when a person just is new to the role or new to the company, what their first quarter look like. What are some achievable things that people have? What are some projects that they're currently working on? What are some common issues that they come across? So how their experience in the company and how do they like it? And the best opportunities they were presented with Learning opportunities, what are they? Training opportunities that you all have for no career progression what does that look like? How long does people stay currently? What is the tenure for this type of role? What type of roles people move on to if it's within the company acts a lot of stuff. So I'm gonna tell you two good ones that I recently came across. One of them is what's the most challenging thing about working here? That's where you get an honest answer for the actually tell you when I asked them how, what the hardest thing they have project they worked on, type of thing, it's still a separate thing, like that's a project. But this was actually just asked. My company culture.
Oh yeah and then the other one is like, hey, you know what separates your successful employees versus the unsuccessful ones, so it's just so. I'm probably like now it's like preparation, like think about it, everybody that play basketball, football in the league, whatever they, everybody good, everybody athletic. But now we say who prepared the best? Yeah, who know, when this guard let this leg up, that they pull in to do a sweep? Who recognized that success? Okay, when you see that, come, come down to the box and get ready to blow up this sweep man, so I like that's what it gets you.
Now, when you prepare for a rose, you really like going through the company values, researching those, getting your star questions together so you can ask them to that. So that's when it become more of a Outside of that. I know everything. So, okay, how am I gonna make sure I nail this and I knock it out the park? That's that's kind of what it goes to and that's why I'm always on you like well, I want to hear what you said, because it gotta be some disconnects. Like if you was that good, it could be one of two things I already found somebody, or you didn't do as good as you thought you did. Well, hey, I can tell you, like I said, one of my recent interviews was just covering what is search versus experience. How did I feel about that? That was a 30 minute.
I know that, just like we're doing right now outside person is able to look at them like Maybe you right or maybe you want, maybe they ask you this and maybe it's something you didn't catch on. Oh too cuz. Sometimes when you interview you in, the mom is like dang, like I that the interview I did for the fan company. Right after I listened I went back in love listen to it.
I was like I shouldn't say that that's a whole big example, we giving out specific examples, type of thing. No, it was just. It was a star question that I didn't prepare for as far as like, how did I? I think was like, how do you handle, like, working with a teammate? They got an issue or some type of crap that I didn't really, or handle bad news, some some crap that I didn't prepare for. You know what speaking of that star meant the thing. So they brought up Amazon and it was his guy. Who's like he calls himself. It's something they call themselves when they are in the interview panel. I forgot they called themselves something, but he's a some razor, some type of whatever they call themselves.
But whatever.
He's been a software engineer and interviewer for like 15 years. He says now Going through Amazon interviews, might as well get the star method and throw it out. It's not applicable. I'm like that's the first time I heard of that. Definitely not true. That's the first time I heard of that. He said no, what they, what they call the myth, it the best method is.
It's something they say it's called man in the hole. So basically, this shows how you can. You have a deep rooted problem that you're very deep into and you talk about all those issues and you talk about each step that you've taken to get out of that hole and make it a better Situation. In general. I would totally disagree because their main thing is their principles. Yeah, so he talked about the principle. He was just saying how you else in with your star met it Might as well. I can show you Later on.
But I was like that man, that biggest thing really is like they're gonna actually something about the core values and then they may. If now they have to be something. That's outside of the soft skill question. That's when you can probably use that man in a whole type. Yeah, if one of the soft skill he was talking about for like technical questions, you use that type of course. That's different. Who wouldn't want to go in deep and like go into detail or flesh something out? Because he answered in a star method and I took and I think it took like a Minute and a half to get through that response.
He said now I take a minute or two. But he said yes with the man in the whole method it took him like two plus minutes, almost three minutes. So him just talking about the problem and actions taken and I'm like a lot of stuff to talk about.
Let me see, oh, come here. You always like, what does we get on about? Oh, this is a good one, me and you. Now our friend here once wants a certain amount. Well, really know, this is the thing he wants to do, a certain type of role. And I'm telling him what I see him as, at least Right now, just because I think he's very good at that. But he wants to do the other one.
I'm not saying I don't know why. I think he just wants to do it because it interests him, and I've talked to him plenty of times about how I, how I feel, like, how you value your skills more than the other companies do, and that's one of the things too I think people run into. But they want they're like holding out on maybe certain jobs because they're trying to get something else, and Sometimes the market doesn't dictate that unless you got a certain skill set in doing it, and it's a hard thing. It's like, well, how do I get the skill set and doing it when I want to do it, but I also want to get paid this. It's like it's that thing right there that I'm always talking to you about and you'd be like, well, I ain't doing it, I'll take this. I Don't want to look at this all day and I'm like well, sometimes you got to see something's a little a lily pad and hop to hop over to the other side.
Sometimes and I sometimes you don't be willing to do that you just reel gun. Hold on what you want to do. Yeah, because I think it could be easily swayed if you forget where you, what your end goal is. But that's just me. Some people say, hey, I'll do this. I'm in a point to where I want to just do something that I actually enjoy doing. I think you enjoy doing what you do. I enjoy would do what I'm doing now, and I also have interest in other things as well. So it's like I have to go into something I don't think I would like doing. I wouldn't probably I wouldn't make myself unhappy just to go to the end. I just try to Work around it with what I currently have.
I told you my time until my time comes.
I told you how to. Yeah, doing something probably told like doing no, that's not what I told you do. I said stick what you do now and then set up your own thing. When you're doing red team stuff, yeah, yeah, how you do it. Oh well, yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I mean that's the cheat code, like two jobs instead of just trying to force your way. Interviewer, like you can just show them hey, I did all this stuff. It's documented. All these different what's called the go get your PMPT. That's on this in them. That's in the works. I like that certification. I think that's a pretty cool one. I think it's gonna give you a good.
Already got the voucher for it.
I just now I'm done with school and so I can focus on it. Yeah, but we Going down to the end. So I want to know, like what a man from Memphis will tell the listeners what a man from it with about what?
It's a bad thing.
Well, do your research before you. Spend 20k on the bootcamp as you do anything else and no wings. Stop does not have the best wings.
Nobody said they have the best wings.
Some people, some people I know. I said we stop is good.
I ain't saying you got the best one. Well, if it's still.
If it's still, if it's still considered good, then maybe you're lacking in Diversitized chicken you just trying to make up. So he said diversitized yeah, you got to have some different types of wings man.
That's not the only type of wings we brought up, though what other types of wings? Any place that you can go, that got some good lights. You know who got some good wings, but for a while wings, let me tell you that Okay, okay, I fence. If you told, if you tell me those are good, I know something is up. No, no, no, because we stopped to run like franchises so everyone don't even cook the same. It's not like Buffalo Wild Wings, but top golf got some good wings. You and even know it, yeah, cuz I hardly ever go there.
but but yeah, I don't know.
Pins you close enough to it? Yeah, well, what else you want to leave it with, man? You want to follow you anywhere? Well, yeah, you can follow me on LinkedIn. I'll also have my own podcast. I'll talk about more issues into getting to tech, talking to different aspects, different minded people who have different aspects on how to get into tech. On my YouTube channel I got a call to Clay talk show. That's it's got like to bring up a lot, but that's where I'm at LinkedIn. I guess he can leave a link down there below. I'm getting back on my channel soon, so some don't. A lot of extracurricular activities now and that's all I have. What about? Can they follow you on IG? Man? I'm not on every social media platform. I already tagged you, so you on IG? I mean, I'm only IG, but I'm not on IG. I think we're gonna. We're gonna force them to make a TikTok. I'm not gonna force them to make a Twitter. I'm not on these plat, I don't know forcing to make a twit.
It's too much, he's so country man.
It's too much to manage. It's really not I posting get off. It's not too much, it's too much yeah people get on them things. It's strong scrolling for hours. They don't know.
Twitter more like tick tock than Twitter. Yeah, that's where I'm at so far. Linkedin and my YouTube channel. That's about it. I appreciate job for tuning in today. Yeah, tune into the clay talk show. I'll give him a pants one day. He'll be back on here eventually, maybe going live, and we'll bring up some more stuff we get into it over about, because it'd be hilarious when he be talking on the phone. But, um, yeah, if y'all want to see this episode early, like even though y'all the end episode, please subscribe to the patreon. Y'all can see everything. No skips, no ads, except maybe the ones I integrate into the pot. But, like I always say, should raise D, stay textual and we out.
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