Transcription
So here's what we've got going on today. We are supposed to have another presenter during the 2 o'clock slot. They weren't able to make it. We talked behind the scenes a little bit. We were like, "What if? What if I do a job hunt where I talk about OSINT techniques so that you can apply what we do, like you do as red teamers, as offensive security folks, and say, 'Well, how can I apply this to job hunting?'"
So if you've never seen one of my job hunting live streams before, I do this on Twitch and LinkedIn Live. 234 people have come back and said that they found jobs. That's great. I'm pretty sure there's more than that, but 234 came back and said they found a job. Uh, you don't have to come back, but that's what happened. So if you're like, "Is anything this guy's about to talk about, like, actually legit? Does it work?" Uh, yeah, it works.
Okay, so let's get started. All right, so I have a, I have a list here. Here's how most people currently in the world are job hunting. They go to LinkedIn and they go, "Uh, I am a SOC analyst." So they type in the word "SOC analyst." Now, if you didn't know, if you add the negative senior, minus Sr, minus leads, that normally gets rid of all senior-level jobs, except for, darn it, uh, promoted jobs, right? Promoted jobs, they kind of have some different things, but, uh, so if you go through here, promoted jobs, promoted jobs, promoted jobs, promoted. That's a lot of promoted jobs. Uh, promoted jobs, promoted jobs. Good golly, that's a lot of promoted jobs.
All right, so anyway, when you go through all the promoted jobs and you get to one, you would find a job and then you would say to yourself, "Can I do this job?" I don't know about you, but, uh, many of you, uh, go straight to the bullet points of a job and then you find the one that you can't do and you automatically disqualify yourself and then you move on to the next one. I'm not calling you out personally, I'm just saying what I know about job hunters.
Now, there are some of you right now who are like, "I ended up at a job hunting thing during a summit for offensive security. Why am I here?" And if you currently have a job, here's what I'd like you to do: Keep hunting. Job hunt when you don't need a job. Hunt. I learned this from a headhunter. If you don't know what a headhunter is, it's a recruiter essentially who goes and finds people who have jobs and then sees if they can get them to leave that job to come to a new job. If you didn't know that was a thing, that's a thing.
So headhunters, one of them reached out to my wife and said, "Hey, uh, you have the qualifications that we need for a specific role at this other company. Would you be interested in moving?" And she said, "No, I like my job. I'm not currently looking for a job." And then this headhunter came back with this amazing advice that I've remembered ever since: Look for jobs when you don't need one. That's it. Look for jobs when you don't need one. Build a network when you don't have to have one. Put a resume together when you don't need it, right? Like, if you have a resume ready, if you have a network ready, if you have job leads ready when you don't need them, when you do need them, they're already available.
What most people do is they job hunt when they need to job hunt, and that is the worst mentality to be in when you actually need to job hunt. You suck at putting a resume together because you're just down on yourself and like the situation. You're depressed, you're upset, you're angry, whatever it is, like you're putting that together at the worst possible time. You're building a network when you don't feel good about yourself and you're like, "Hey, would you like to meet me? 'Cause I don't know why you should, 'cause I don't, like, I recently got laid off and things aren't good." Like, you're doing this at the worst time mentally.
So job hunt when you have a job. Put a resume together when you currently have a job. Build a network when you currently have a job. Now, if you don't currently have those things, I feel for you. I have empathy and sympathy for you, and I know what you're thinking right now is like, "Where were you five months ago?" Uh, I have been on the internet. I'm just doing my thing. Uh, but for those of you that are currently job hunting, what if, what if you took the concept of like a CTF, right? Like, I like doing CTFs and selling challenges and puzzles and like, what if you adapted that to doing job hunting? Like, what if you took the idea of open-source intelligence gathering and adapted it to job hunting? What if you took the concepts of like bypassing EDR, but you like bypassed the normal hiring process? Like, when I got into cybersecurity, I was like, "Oh, I've been doing this for the longest time. I just didn't know it was called OSINT. I didn't know it was called this. I was just doing what I thought was wise and kind of weird to most people of the way that I job hunted."
Okay, so instead of, right, I'm gonna be controversial right now. It's gonna be a little offensive just to get started. Instead of just like searching for a job that's available, what if you put a hit list together? What if you put a hit list together of the companies you wanted to work for? Like a target list, like a legit target list of companies you wanted to work for, not just, "Is like, well, here's what I could find." Like, I have learned over time that if you, if you find a job at the company you want to work for, you will pursue it differently. You will go after it with more gusto and zeal, and then when you get the job itself, you will feel more satisfied to have a job where you actually want to work instead of what you could find.
So here's what I'd love for you to do: Put a list together of the places you want to work. Now, what this might require you to do is actually think deeply about that. And so if I go over here and I type in the word, uh, "top top not stop top 100 startups in 2024." So generally, there's all these like top 100 companies, top this, top that. First of all, you have to decide, do I want to work at a startup or do I want to work at a corporate job? Like, that's number one. I would not last longer than seven days at a corporate job. I know me, I know my personality, I know the way I like to work, and I do not function well with process and bureaucracy at all. I like autonomy and chaos. That is who I am. So I would go work at a startup. I would not go work at a corporate job.
So you have to decide what kind of person you are. And then when you decide what kind of person you are, you then start looking for companies that you would find interesting, right? So if it's about startup companies, you're like, "I am passionate about food and beverage. I'm passionate about healthcare. I'm passionate about real estate. I'm passionate about fashion." Now, it's, once again, we're cybersecurity professionals, so you're looking for those type of jobs in these types of industries. All right, so you go through here and you're like, "What is SoundHound?" So you do some research there. "What is People AI? What is Flying? What is this? What is Arrow? What is Ling?" Like, you start to look to this. When you read articles and papers and you see that this company, like, I just, uh, this company Intuitive Machines tried to put a lunar lander on the moon, and I'm like, "If you're putting lunar landers on the moon, let's, it didn't work out, but if you're the kind of company putting lunar landers on the moon, I'd like to work for a company that's putting lunar landers on the moon. I'd like to work for space companies. That sounds interesting to me."
Okay, so when you are reading or you're researching or you're just living your life, if you come across something that you seem interested in and a company that's doing things that you are like, "I would love to be a part of that," then put it down on your list of companies that you'd like to work for. Okay, so once you put your list together, put it in the order of how much you want to work for that company. So think about it, understand what they're doing, what you're doing, what you're not doing, like look at the company and think about how you would want to work in there. Rank it top to bottom of most interested to least interested.
Now, I want you to understand this is your list. Your list, not my list, not someone else's list. This is your list of companies that you want to work for. So put it in the order of companies that you want to work for in the importance that you think they are. All right, so here we go. First question to the audience, and I'm watching Discord right now. I got it up. I'm looking at Discord. I'm looking at the chats. So here's my first question to you: Once you put your list together in order of importance, I have 13 companies here. Once you put the companies in order of importance, do you start at the bottom and work your way up, or do you start at the top and work your way down? Either say the word "bottom" and work your way up, or "top" and work your way down.
All right, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking, looking. All right, for those of you that said "top," you are incorrect. There was a correct answer. There was a correct answer. If you said "top," that is incorrect. You start at the bottom and you work your way up. Here's why: The people at the bottom are going to get the worst version of your resume. The people at the bottom are going to get the worst version of your interview skills. The people at the bottom are going to get the worst version of your intent and outreach techniques. The people at the bottom are going to get the worst of your skills and capabilities. As you work your way up, you're going to get better at this. And also, here's what I know about human beings: At the top of your list, you get stressed out. At the top of your list, you get worried about what words that you use. At the top of your list, you start fearing getting blacklisted from that company if you do the wrong thing. And so you get more hesitant, you get more like reserved, you start holding back. You're like, "I don't, it feels weird."
All right, so if you start at the bottom of your list and work your way up, then what happens is, like, if this doesn't work out, you're like, "I don't know, it didn't work out." So here's what happens, right? So you start at the bottom of your list and work your way up. All right, once again, it's your list. So I go over here and I type in the word "Intuitive Machines" into Google and I get the homepage and I'm like, "Cool, Intuitive Machines." Now I'm going to start doing open-source intelligence gathering. As soon as I get to the website, I'm going to start looking through anything I can possibly find that could get me into this company. So I see things like investors, and I don't know what this is. They got a press kit. Press kits are the best. If you've never seen and like ran through the press kit of a website before, it is a treasure trove of information. I know this because I used to write press releases at a job in my previous life, and I know what a press release requires. A press release requires a quote from a senior executive on the team, and since it requires a quote from the senior executive of the team, that means they have their name clearly listed, which means you can use that in LinkedIn.
All right, we go over here to "More" and we got "Careers." We're like, "Okay, Careers. View Jobs." All right, so I go over here and it's going to take me to this adp.com website. Cool, adp.com. So they're using this third-party provider, and they're going to have all these different jobs here. We got like an inventory intern, thermal analysis engineer, propulsion engineer, okay. And then it says, "Join our Talent Community." Do it. If you're currently job hunting and you want to work here at some point in the future, remember this is about finding jobs when you don't need one. I know right now you might need one, but it's also about looking long-term, three years, five years, 10 years, 15, 20 years from now. Join these talent communities.
But here's what I'd like you to do: Get an email address dedicated to job hunting. Get an inbox and an email address dedicated to job hunting so that way all this stuff that you sign up for and you collect goes into this one place. It goes into this one place where all my job hunting dreams are in one location, not mixed in with all the other crap, but I have one email address for job hunting. Okay.
So I go over here and I like type in the words, "They only have six jobs available." And so I'm thinking to myself, you might be thinking to yourself, "Oh no, there's no jobs here for me." Well, that doesn't stop, right now, because the best jobs are the ones not listed. If you never heard that before, the best jobs are the ones not listed. So we go back over here to LinkedIn. Let's go ahead and turn this into a, uh, nope, I don't want that. Okay, let's go over here, do this. Type in "Intuitive Machines." Go here. Jobs. Now it's got two jobs posted. No, I want to go to companies. So let's go to companies. We go over here and then we click on, let's look at "Posts." See if there's any posts here. Okay, so four days ago, Tim Crane, Tim Crane of Intuitive Machines. So we go over here, open that up. Let's see who that is. We scroll through here and "Tackling our moonshots, inspiration from our CEO." Cool. We got a CEO here. All right, let's scroll through here. Anything else that we can find? Nope, nope.
All right, so I just went through and I found Tim Crane, who's a Chief Technology Officer at Intuitive Machines. And if I could click on, I could hit "Connect," "Add Note," and then say, "Hey, I'm currently reaching out. I have a dream of working at Intuitive Machines at some point in the future. The work that you're doing is amazing, and I would love to be a part of it. Just want to connect to see if there's any opportunities at some point in the future." Okay, makes sense. Sense. I can reach out. I, I'm going to stop right now because I think some of you right now are going, "So I can just send Tim Crane a LinkedIn connection because I want to work at the company?" Yeah, you can. Will Tim Crane accept it? I don't know. Can you send it? You absolutely can. You have no control over what the person does that you send it to. You do have control over what you do. Now, if this intimidates you or causes you to feel fear, well, you got to work through that, okay? I can't do that for you. You got to work through that.
But I will let you know right now, if you are currently a veteran of the United States military, if you're transitioning out of the military, or you're currently find yourself as a student, you have the ability to reach out to anybody in the entire world and ask them, "Would it be possible to talk to you?" And, and I'm going to slow down here so that you get, you get this. If you're a student, a veteran, or transitioning out of the military, you can reach out to anyone in the entire world and you can ask them, "Would it be possible to talk to you for 10 to 15 minutes to find out how you got to where you are in your career and what advice would you have for someone like me?" Now, when I say students, veterans, and people transitioning out of the military, this will work for you about eight out of 10 times. You reach out to somebody who is actually active on LinkedIn, right? You got to check to make sure they're active, that they don't just have an account, they actually look at it every once in a while. This will work eight out of 10 times for students, veterans, and people transitioning out of the military. This will work one out of 10 times for those of you that are not those things. Your odds are not as good, but that just means you have to contact a hundred people to talk to 10. Do you understand what I'm saying? You have to reach out to 100 people to talk to 10, and you're going to ask them the question, "Would it be possible to talk to you about how you got to where you are in your career and what advice would you have for someone like me?" And they're going to talk for the majority of the time, and then they're going to give you advice. Take that advice. Here's a hack, ready? At the end of any conversation like this, always let the person you talk to know, "Here are my two takeaways from what we talked about today. Here are my two takeaways from what we talked about today, and here's something I'm going to do over the next six months based on what we talked about today." When you do those things, the person that you spoke to will be like, "Oh, you listened. You paid attention. You got value out of this conversation." And then you ask, "Would it be possible to reach back out in about three to six months and let you know how things are going?" And generally, they all say, "Sure, that sounds great." Okay.
All right, so Intuitive Machines, I can also go over here to the "People" tab. If you didn't know the "People" tab existed for all companies, you can. So I type in the word "recruiter." What's a recruiter? They're a magical job fairy. A magical job fairy is a recruiter who works at a company to help people get hired at that company. A magical job fairy's sole purpose in life is to help positions get filled at a company. They are successful when they fill a position. So we got this person right here who is a recruiter at the company that you would like to work at. And I go to "New Tab." So I'm going to look at this new tab over here, and the messages, the messages are wide open. All right, so before I actually click on the messages, now that you see that the messages are wide open, you can just send a message here to this person. We're going to go down and make sure that they're actually using LinkedIn. So we go to "Show all posts." And if you didn't know, LinkedIn is the biggest tattletale of all social media sites, and it'll let me know that as of a week ago, that this person reposted this thing that was a week, it's a week old. So I'm going to go down here and see if there's anything in their social media feed or in their, their feed here that will lead me to other people who work at the company that I can also reach out to. So this person here is a junior mechanical engineer that is working at the same company. I get down here, "Incredible shout-outs from our OD is the cool." We got that. Uh, "First off, mooner landing from two weeks ago." Cool. Got an internship class, got a first internship as a go, as we've, as we have grown. So as a robustness for our internship program, if you're currently sitting in school right now and you're like, "I want to go work for this company," positions are located in Houston and on-site. I did not look up any of this prior to today's talk. This is all new information that I am finding live while we're talking. I didn't want to prep. I didn't want to like, "Oh, look at this, the turkey is all finished." I was like, "What am I going to find?" This is just as exciting for me as it possibly is for you.
Okay, so what you now know is that this person uses LinkedIn on a pretty much regular basis. So then we go back over to messages, and here's what your message is: "Hi, my name is Slim Shady. My name is [Your Name], and I would like to introduce myself." Okay, so first sentence is why I'm reaching out. Why I am reaching out. And so that is, I'm reaching out because I'm currently looking at a role at Intuitive Machines, and, uh, you seem to be the only recruiter there. Uh, who am I? Is the second question. Who am I? So this is, "My name is [Your Name]. I'm getting ready to graduate." "My name is [Your Name]. I'm transitioning out of the military." "My name is [Your Name], and I'm moving from this industry to this industry." "My name is [Your Name]." Like, my name is, and do it in one sentence. Number three, why I care about you, the company, the company, or the position, right? You might find a position that you're perfect for. It might just be the company that you would love to work for, or it might be the recruiter that you actually care about, right? So let them know, like, "I'm reaching out for this reason. This is who I am, and this is why I care." About your company, or you, or the position. What I am asking for is a 10 to 15-minute phone call to introduce myself.
Now, back to the whole like, "If you're currently job hunting, you're not in the right headspace for a lot of this stuff." Like, I get it. You're not in the right headspace. A lot of self-confidence issues, a lot of self-doubt, like blowing through, like you're thinking to yourself, "Why would they want to talk to someone like me? Why would they even care?" Like, why, why, why? Like, just get over it, right? Just get over it. And you're like, "How do I get over it?" It's a long walk, man. It's a long walk. It's a long walk, right? It's a long walk. You might have to yell a little bit. You might have to like, "Why am I like this?" Like, whatever it is that you got to get over it. You got to get over it.
And so what's going to happen is you're going to send the message, "Would you like to send the 15-minute phone call to introduce myself and learn more about the hiring process?" And they may not respond, right? But it's not the end of the world because what is it? It's at the bottom of your list. It's at the bottom of your list in this, in this world, right? Like, and out of the companies that you would be willing to work for, this is the least one. I don't care as much. So when you send this message, you don't care as much. You're like, "If you respond back, that's great. If not, that's fine." Now, when you get to the top of your list, all of a sudden you're like, "Please respond back. Please respond back. Please respond back. I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to mess this up. I don't want to mess this up." But down here, you're like, "Whatever, whatever. I'm good. I'm good."
All right, so we're back over here, and then lastly, how you reach me. Okay, so what if you do this, and then all of a sudden you're like, "Well, who did I talk to?" Uh, so we had this company here. Who did I find? Remember, because this is going to be fun for you. So you got to make sure that you do not lose all the information that you're tracking. So you're going to go back and you're going to keep track of all this information that you can find, right? Because you don't want to lose this. So we go back over here and we drop this in, and then "First Contact is on 3/13." So "First Contact is on 3/13." I reached out on 3/13, and what happened? Well, potentially nothing happens. Nothing. You reach out, and nothing happens. And so do you just go ghosted? Straight ghosted. They didn't want to talk to me. Once again, remember when you're job hunting and you currently need a job, not the best mental health space, right? And so when someone doesn't respond back to you, like, "Well, they didn't want me." But what about what's the column? What, what's "Second Contact"? That well, it takes place seven days after the first contact. If you don't hear back within seven days, feel free to follow up. Feel free to follow up. And in that follow-up, you're like, "Hey, is there a better way to reach you than here on LinkedIn?" Ask, "Is there a better way to reach you than here on LinkedIn?" And so that's going to be on 3/20. So that's a week from now. What happens if you don't hear back from that one? Ghosted again, like always. "No one ever wants to talk to me." Wait, wait, wait a second. What's this column? There's a "+21." "+21." So 21 days after the initial contact, so 21 days after the initial contact, you can send an additional message. And this one is, "Hey, I wanted to see if I could reach out to you one more time. I know life might have been busy. Uh, my life got busy over the last couple weeks too. Uh, so if this is the best way to reach you, or you're not currently hiring for any positions that I might be, uh, possible for, then no worries. I'll reach back out in six months and see if there's anything that's changed, right? I'll reach back out in six months or so." Okay.
So for some of you right now, you're like, struggling mentally, healthy, like all that stuff, and I get it, right? There's 900 of you watching right now. You've got to be like, all through the gamut of some of you are like, "I'm in, man," and some of you like, "No way." All right, so back to what, let's just run through this again, okay? Back to this one more time. You put a list together, the companies that you want to work at. You put a list together, companies that you want to work at, and then you start at the bottom of your list and you work your way up, doing open-source intelligence gathering on the company's website. So if I go back over here to Intuitive Machines, remember that whole like press kit or press payloads, something over here, like there's this press kit. Uh, they probably have like senior leaders. If you go over here, they might have like investors or mission payloads or mission or contact or about. Uh, go to the "About" section. They might list like the names of people here. Leadership team. Ah, leadership team. You didn't get a chance to go here. Jade Marcontel. All right, let's do that. Jade Marcontel. We'll do that. Jade Marcantel. All right, there we go. Chief Human Officer. We go over here to her, and then on the right-hand side here, it's all the other people. It's all the other people who work at that company. We go down here to "Activity Feed." We take a look. Is she currently using LinkedIn? As of five days ago, she is. She's reposting stuff. And so that means you can also send messages, and her messages are wide open as well.
So that was a recap of the things that we've talked about here. So I know that you might have questions, and I may not be able to have time to answer them. So what I'd like to do is invite you to come to live streams that happen on Tuesdays at 10:00 AM. If you're currently job hunting, you can always say the word "Hunter" here, uh, and then there's nine hours of recordings on, uh, YouTube that you can watch too if you want a deep dive. Okay, so start at the bottom of your list, work your way up. As you work your way up, you keep track of all the information that you collect because, like, who did I talk to? When did I talk to them? What message did I send? When did I hear back from them? And did I hear back from them? And if you're a student, veteran, or someone transitioning out of the military, you can reach out to anyone in the entire world and say, "Would it be possible to talk to you for 10 to 15 minutes to find out how you got to where you are in your career and what advice would you have for someone like me?" And then make sure that you tell them, "Here's what I took away from that conversation." For the rest of you, you can do it too. You can do it too.
And as I wrap up, because I'm done, right? Like, in conclusion, we just burned through 27 minutes super, super fast. Uh, hopefully, you took something out of this that can potentially help you. But here's the main point: Job hunt when you don't need a job hunt. Put your resume together when you don't need a resume. Build your network when you don't need a network, because you will be in a better headspace. You'll be better mental, mental health-wise, to be able to do that. And when you put a resume together when you don't need one, you feel in control of what's going on. When you build a network when you don't need a network, you feel in control of what is going on. When you reach out to people and you job hunt when you don't need the job hunt, you feel in control of what's going on. That proactiveness, that feeling, is that, "Bring on the layoff. Bring on the collapse of the economy. Bring it on!" Because I am prepared and I am ready. Not like, "Let's do it," but I'm saying it's like, I am not afraid of it because I am prepared for it. When you're prepared, you're less afraid. And when you hit that job hunt like process, and you've been preparing for a long time, sure, it's going to be difficult. It will be difficult, but you will feel more prepared during the process. And with that, I'm done. Y'all can head over to the next talk. Thank you so much for joining us today for the Offensive Con Summit. My name is Jason Blanch. I'm Content Community Director at Black Hills Information and Security, and I appreciate your time today. Uh, we have a minute and a half for questions if anyone has any questions that he did not cover. You're blowing a lot of people's minds, which is really, really fun. Withness. Yeah, any questions that you can cover? Got a minute. Accept my LinkedIn connection? Absolutely. I accept LinkedIn connections, which allow you to connect with my LinkedIn connection. So sure. Did someone send you a message while you were? I saw a message like pop up. Yeah. Well done, everyone. How many positions should someone apply to at a single company? The ones that you feel you're capable of doing. So if it's more than one, if it's 15, then do 15. But if you feel like you're capable of doing more than one job, feel free. Do you have different resumes? Tailored resumes? Tailor your resumes. Yeah, I have one full resume. When someone says like, "Hey, Jason, will you send me your resume?" Like, "Sure, you're gonna get all eight pages. Like, you're gonna get all pages." If you say, "Send me a resume." But if they say, "Can you send me a resume for this job?" Then I will go in and tailor that resume specifically for that job. And so it might be one page or two pages at that point. When I scale everything down to the most relevant information for the last minute, um, what are your thoughts on cover pages? Cover pages? Uh, cover pages should die in a fire. Uh, there's no need for it in the year 2024 to have a cover letter. Uh, the only reason people have C cover letters is because they use the same resume and they send it everywhere. And no, no, do not have one resume and send it everywhere. Uh, you have a resume for every job you apply for. Uh, so that's why cover letters were invented because they thought you would create one resume and then you would tailor the cover letter to the job. But there's no reason for it. All right, y'all, head to the next talk. All right, guys. All right, Ryan, kill it with fire. Kill it with fire. For.