Why You’re Not Getting Cybersecurity Interviews (Resume & LinkedIn Fixes for 2026)

If you’ve been applying for cybersecurity jobs and hearing nothing back… this might be why.

In this episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast, two active cybersecurity hiring leaders break down what’s actually preventing candidates from getting interviews — based on real hiring experience and large-scale resume data analysis.

We cover:

• How to write resume bullets that show impact (not just responsibilities)
• Why measurable results massively increase callback chances
• The biggest LinkedIn mistakes we see from entry-level candidates
• How to tailor your resume for SOC, Cloud, or GRC roles
• Why “spray and pray” job applying no longer works
• How portfolios, GitHub, and even short videos can help you stand out

Competition in cybersecurity is rising — and small details now make the difference between getting ignored and getting interviews.

If you want honest hiring manager feedback, this episode is for you. 

Come hang out with us in the Cybersecurity Mentors Skool community. It’s free to join.

Transcript

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Why You’re Not Getting Callbacks

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I came across this study. They looked at uh over a hundred and twenty-five thousand resumes, and then from that they said, Hey, here are the top takeaways from that data.

SPEAKER_03 0:15

Could you teach me? Then learn fly. Nature rules on your son, not the mind.

SPEAKER_00 0:23

I know what you're trying to do. I'm trying to free your mind, Neo. But I can only show you the door. You're the one that has to walk through it. What is the most inspiring thing I ever said to you? Don't be an idiot. Changed my life.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Welcome back to the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast. If you've been applying for cybersecurity roles and hearing nothing back, your resume or your LinkedIn might be the problem. So today we're breaking down how to refresh your resume in your LinkedIn for 2026. Not with fluff or any of this BS, but with actual hiring manager feedback. And hopefully this will help you land that first job.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

Yeah, I mean, we see it in our experience, and uh we we've we've gotten thousands of resumes well over the years, and recently in the most recent job postings we've had, at least a hundred or more per job uh opening. And when you look at that, you're like, oh, well, how are we gonna weed these out? Well, sometimes it's easy. Sometimes you go through there like, Nada, no, no, no, right, because they're not even they're poorly written. They didn't put a lot of effort into those, they used just AI to build me a resume. You can look at it, be like, oh, they they definitely didn't write this resume, and it's not personalized. It just doesn't have that feel of like I put effort into this resume, and then on top of that, they didn't their LinkedIn page, you're that's the first thing we're gonna do is go look at your LinkedIn page based off of your of your resume. And as we're gonna talk about here in a minute, sometimes they're not they don't even have that, or if they do, it's terrible, right? So we see it, um, we know it's a problem. You can't just fire and forget it, you know, but you also need some structured advice, and that's what we're here to give you today.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

All right, so let's not waste any time,

Impact Over Responsibilities

SPEAKER_02 2:22

let's get right into it. So we're gonna talk about resumes first, and then we're gonna transition into LinkedIn profiles. Now, again, this is our opinions, okay? From two active hiring cybersecurity managers, directors, leaders. We see this and we're just giving y'all some feedback. So, my very first one is lead with impact, not responsibility. What that means is what I'm seeing, or what I see a lot of, is in resumes when people start posting what they've done or what they've tried to accomplish, they are leaving a lot on the table. What I mean by that is I'll give you an example. So I have one here where it says, as an example, on your resume, you would have monitored sim alerts. Instead of doing that, you have to be a little bit more specific. You have to give me some meat and potatoes, right? You only have so much real estate on your resume. And if we're talking about entry-level person, we recommend you do one page and one page only. So you have to be very strategic and very direct with your information. So instead of having monitored SIM alerts, I would say something like triage 30 to 50 daily SIM alerts, escalating high-risk events, and improving response accuracy over time. That one sentence gives me three to four different things that you've done. So that tells me you triaged so many daily SIM alerts a day. It tells me that you escalated the high-risk events, and you're telling me that you improved response accuracy over time. Those are three things that you're telling me in that one bullet instead of monitored sim alerts. So you have to be very, very strategic with how you phrase it and how much information you give me, because again, you only have so much real estate in that one page.

SPEAKER_01 4:05

Yeah, that that's a good point. One of the things that I came across was this study of this company that they use this called resimatch.io. And I think the whole purpose of this company is you, you know, you send them your resume, they process your resume, and give you feedback. Hey, you need to change this, you should change that. Well, they looked at uh over 125,000 resumes, and then from that, they said, hey, here are the top takeaways from that data. And one of those takeaways was including metric-like data, uh, like bait measurable results. That was actually number three, like some kind of measurable results. So what you just described of talking about, you know, hey, I looked at this, I did this, this was the outcome, is specific to that. So and they said that most resumes that they they looked at, only 26% included some

Data From 125k Resumes

SPEAKER_01 5:05

kind of measurable results. Now, for me, what the number one thing that stood out, which was kind of surprising, is out of 125,000, less than half even included a link to their LinkedIn profile. Like didn't even have a link to LinkedIn. And that to me is seems silly, right? Because that is the first thing, as I said earlier. You're gonna go look at the resume, you're gonna go look for the link for the um the LinkedIn profile, and go check it out, right? Now, there's a second study that they referenced in this first one that talks about they they basically created a test, it was kind of shady, honestly, where they sent out a bunch of of resumes that some of them had links to they weren't real, links to real, a well-done LinkedIn profile, a bare bones LinkedIn profile, and no LinkedIn profile, right? And as you might expect, out of the thousands, like 25,000 results that they tested this with, the the people that are the supposed people that got the callbacks or got the follow-up were a a filled out LinkedIn profile versus a bare bones profile. So I mean that's make that makes sense, but you must and you have to at least include a link to your LinkedIn profile, right? So LinkedIn is a must, it's not a nice to have, it's a must, in my opinion. And and Steve agrees with me. So definitely include it, but on top of that, include you know a well-done LinkedIn profile.

SPEAKER_02 6:39

I completely agree, and we can talk about that some more when we go to talk about the LinkedIn profiles, but I completely agree with you. It's not a it's not a a maybe, it's a must. You must have a LinkedIn profile and it must be complete. Um, all right, so my second item that I have for how to improve your resume in 2026 is you have to align your resume per the role you are applying to. And this might seem like a no-brainer for you guys by now, especially if you've been following us and listening to us for a while, but I still see it. And I still cannot believe that people are just creating a general resume and just shotgunning

LinkedIn Link Is Non‑Negotiable

SPEAKER_02 7:20

it to like five, six, seven, twenty uh applications a day or whatever the magic number is now that these YouTube influencers are telling you to do. You have to take your time and tailor each resume. If you are applying to a sock role, your resume needs to read for a sock role. If you're applying to a cloud engineer position, it needs to be cloud focused. If you're applying to GRC, it needs to be GRC focused. Like you have to tailor it. Now you may say, Steve, I'm I'm a beginner. I only have so much things that I've done, and all those things fit in two or three of these roles, so they're gonna be exactly the same. That's okay, but it's how you word it and how you phrase it. Okay. So if you if you've done work with Splunk, for example, for a sock role, your those those bullets will be very focused on what you've done with Splunk, kind of like the example we used above, right? Where you triage daily sim alerts using Splunk, escalating high-risk events, improving response accuracy over time. That is how you would use Splunk. If you're if you use Splunk for a cloud position, maybe you're maybe you've used it installing it in a cloud form or setup, right? You're not really on-prem but in the cloud, or maybe you've helped with configuration, or maybe you've tied it to AWS or Azure or whatever. So those were the things that you're gonna highlight. We're still talking about the same tool, but you're you've used it or done different things with that tool that fit each role that you're applying to. Now that's just an example, but that is how the the tailoring works, and you have to do it. I don't care what anyone on social media or anywhere else you're getting your information tells you. The days of creating one general resume and applying to five, six, twenty, thirty jobs a day, it's out of here. That that's that's back in 2020, 2020, whatever. Nowadays, with so much competition, you have to tailor your resume and put your best foot forward

Tailor Per Role, Not Spray And Pray

SPEAKER_02 9:20

first, or you're gonna get overlooked and left behind.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah, well, let me ask you about that. You know, you that doesn't necessarily mean I don't think you mean this, that you're creating a different resume for every job type or every company. There might be things you tweak about it that are customized, but it's more the position type, right?

SPEAKER_02 9:44

Yes, absolutely. So another good example is this. If I am specifically applying to sock jobs, that's it. I'm not messing with GRC, I'm not messing with cloud. My resume is gonna look kind of similar. Where I can set myself apart is if you look in the job description and one company says, Hey, we would prefer experience with Splunk, and you have that, you want to highlight that. Or if another company says, we prefer experience with elastic and you know how to use elastic or you know what it is, and mainly you're a Splunk heavy, but whatever. But if you've done something with elastic, then you want to highlight elastic, right? So by focusing on specific tools or specific policies, processes, activity, things that the position description describes in terms of what they're looking for, that's how you want to tailor your resume. So you're right, John. Like, I'm not saying you have to create a different resume for everything, especially if we go back to what I just said about a beginner, you only have so much experience under your belt. So a lot of that same experience, that's all you got. So there's not much of changing, switching things around, but it's how you take advantage of the position description and how you tailor your resume to that that will make you a a bigger potential or candidate when they start reviewing those resumes.

SPEAKER_01 11:28

Yeah, that's a good point. Yep. Um, so mine is similar, my next one, and it's about keywords. And one of the things that they also found in this was that um candidates only included 51% of relevant, not revelant, relevant keywords in their resume with a 60% match rate for hard skills and only a 28% match rate for soft skills. So taking the job description, just like you said, in their example, um, they took the job description and and basically copied the whole job description and pasted into a word cloud generator. Now I think this is an okay approach, and I kind of like the idea of the visual of like here's the keywords that they're looking for in the job description, and I did this with a security analyst sock job. And you see things that pop up like monitoring, um, you know, administration skills, systems, and things like that. But I kind of took it a step further, and and I think word cloud is a little bit too basic, honestly. I think with AI, there's a lot of firepower you can take advantage of with AI and say, hey, here's the job and here's what it's looking for. Can you help me look for the skills and keywords that are really highlighted in this in this job description that I might want to include? Now, with the caveat, don't get too crazy trying to get past their AI filter or whatever filter and just bombard your resume with a bunch of keywords. And we've seen that, right? We've seen like the the the section, the beginning section of this and this and this, and Microsoft Office. I'm like, look, you you do not need to click include Microsoft Office in your security analyst job. Please don't. It's silly. Um, but the thing that I did that was that was kind of fun is I used this tool called Apify or API 5A. But basically, Indeed has an API, and this tool lets you use their API easily. So instead of having to go write a whole Python program

Smart Keyword Strategy With AI

SPEAKER_01 13:36

and use get the API key and yada yada yada, you can just say, hey, appify use the indeed scraper version of their apps, and here's the keywords that I want to search. And I think I did like sock analyst entry level, that was it, right? And from there, I got almost a thousand different hits across everything in Indeed. So instead of trying to hunt and peck every ND job that has security analysts or sock analysts, I got all that in aggregate. Now from there, I was able to take all that data and download it into a CSV, like a spreadsheet, and then now you can look for patterns of data. Now, this is like broad patterns that are across that are interesting that might this is the approach you could also use. I talk about this all the time of like using the job descriptions to help you understand what you want to look for, what skills you want to work on, but also for your resume, what you may want to highlight, or if you don't have on your resume what you may want to you know go after to achieve. So I'm gonna quickly share this little PDF file that I had it generate for me that basically did a breakdown of the skills that and keywords that it found. So this was 757 jobs scraped. 250 of those were actually entry level. So you know when you do this keyword searches, it always like changes things up. But you can see here some of the top five must-have skills were security clearance. Well, that's kind of like a that's not necessarily a skill, that's something you get.

SPEAKER_02 15:13

Yeah, yeah, but that's good though.

SPEAKER_01 15:15

Still, that's good to know. Like, hey, maybe getting security clearance, which is not easy to do, might help unlock a lot of doors for you. But intrusion detection, instant response, pen testing, sock and sim experience. But I thought I think the breakdown is even more interesting, right? So 55 jobs had Security Plus as their top uh certification in all these jobs, right? 55 of those. CISSP was was 14%. Now that's that's not entry level, right? That is not entry level. That's not entry level, but it's kind of interesting to see. Maybe they're asking for that, and it's like, wait a minute, this is definitely you guys don't understand entry level. Um, but it had CEH, uh GAC, CISA Plus, Network Plus, seven jobs had that. But then even a little bit more detailed is like the operating system breakdown. Windows, Linux, there's even some Unix still out there, 4% is lent as Unix. SimTools, Splunk was the market leader at 14%. So, I mean, if you're gonna go study one, maybe you should study Splunk, right? That might be the one you want to go put on, or put that, make sure if you have that, put that on your resume. Um AWS and and Azure were even, I thought were interesting for cloud platforms. Yeah. Um, and endpoint protection detection, which didn't quite understand what it said here, because it had CrowdStrike as 6% that had Nessus and Wireshark, which those aren't really in the same category. But you could you could I didn't really do a lot of like digging, digging, digging but and mining this, but this is a gold mine of information where you can see like which frameworks are mentioned, which jobs had HIPAA and DC uh PCI DS the DCS. One thing I thought was interesting was Python had uh was or 22.8% of jobs had Python, 29 jobs had PowerShell. So again, you can use that data to kind of see what people are looking for, and then also thinking about keywords. I did another search to kind of pull out what are the keywords that are most on most of these entry-level jobs. Um, and it's a lot of the stuff that's like incident response, network security, vulnerability management, risk assessment, right? Um, so it did a really good job of like that's one thing AI is very, very good at is taking a bunch of data, deciphering it. Now you have to curate it and train it, basically say, no, no, no, I don't you need to change what you think this is, but the data is still there and it gives you the percentages of that data. So that was kind of their this studies approach. I just kind of amplified it with you know, not just put it in a word cloud, but you could use tools like this, download all that data, and basically build yourself a roadmap and see what you need to put on your resume.

SPEAKER_02 18:12

That is really cool. That that has basically made it even simpler for people to do what we recommend them to do, which is go and review job descriptions, and from there you can get an idea of what are the things that are in demand, and you can start learning and going and reviewing those things so that you are filling those jobs when you are ready. So this makes it even simpler, makes it even easier for people to do that. So that that's really cool. And for those listening, John will share the PDF. Yeah, we'll have it, we'll put it

Cut The Tool Dump

SPEAKER_02 18:41

in our in our school community so you can come check it out. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I had one last thing for resume, uh, and it was basically cut the tool dump. So instead of listing every single tool that you've touched that you've seen that you watched the YouTube video for, only list the tools that you want to show based on, again, the position description for that job. What are they looking for? What are the skills and knowledge and know-how that they want you to know or bring with you? Only list those. Now, when you're listing them, don't just don't just do a bullet list of tools and say Splunk, Nessus, CrowdStrike, whatever, Defender. No, don't do that. You have to, you have to, again, you only have limited space, limited real estate in that one pager. So you want to make sure you get the most bang for your book. So how I would how I would list Splunk would be something along the lines of used Splunk to analyze authentication logs and identify suspicious login patterns or behavior. There, you've told me that you know how to use Splunk, first of all, but you've given me an example of how you've used Splunk. Now you can tailor that if they are looking for someone that knows how to use Splunk and they list out specifically what other things you want to do, creating dashboards, uh running queries, creating alerts, whatever it is, you can say used Splunk to do XYZ. Again, you're taking advantage of that real estate. Not only are you telling me that you've used Splunk, but you're giving me an exact example in terms of how you've used it. And if that example meets what I'm looking for in the position description, that just makes that even stronger. So that is my last one for resumes.

SPEAKER_01 20:31

Yeah, just to I'll have a quick one that backs that up. And in the same study, they talked about um it there's a sweet spot for how long their the resumes that they found, and in their their research, it said the sweet spot was between 475 and 600 words, saw double the interviews of those that were outside of those ranges. So either too short or too long, and 77% of the resumes that they scanned

One Page And Word Count Sweet Spot

SPEAKER_01 21:01

in were outside of those ranges. So probably more long, I would assume longer more than shorter. I think that's our experience. We typically see the longer two pages, even five pages have said that before. Um, so that that there again, like you you just said, you only have so much real estate, right? So don't go crazy.

SPEAKER_02 21:23

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a strong believer, and I think John is too. If you're entry level, even even mid, like if you're entry level or mid three years or whatever, one page resume is all you really need. Once you start getting to the two pages, if you're senior level, more experienced, director level, leadership, like that's when you start getting towards the two pages. But between from beginner to intermediate, one page should be enough. Like again, I I I say this a lot. Um, I say the resume is not the main course, the resume is the appetizer. The appetizer needs to be good as it can be to get someone to want more, right? And when they when they want more, they will call you for an interview. They want to know more. So you need to, you know, it's just an appetizer. You don't need to tell your full life story on your resume, only the key things that they're looking for to put their eyes on you to say, I want to learn more from this guy or this girl. Um, all right, so LinkedIn. John.

SPEAKER_01 22:24

What do you think? Yeah, well, I think, you know, just covering what I said earlier, you definitely need to have a LinkedIn profile.

What A Strong LinkedIn Shows

SPEAKER_01 22:31

You need to make sure that it is well done. Yeah, I I think you're better at, you know, you have a better feel for what you would say maybe more actionable for LinkedIn, like what a good LinkedIn page looks like. I just know what it feels like. When I go to someone's LinkedIn page, I'm like, this is terrible. Or that's so bare bones that you don't know what they're actually about. And some of the things I tell people is, you know, you want to be able to kind of get a better idea of somebody. You got your resume and your LinkedIn. What are you about? What are you into? What are you interested in? And showing that with your post. Like I was looking at people's LinkedIn profiles today who sent me LinkedIn requests, right? So I go look them up. Okay, who are you? Number one, the sales filter. Are you a salesperson? But number two, oh, okay, this person actually is out there. So this one person, um, they were out there, they'd been to conferences, they've been speaking at conferences, they were actually showing that they were into cybersecurity, they're in there in the mix. I could tell that they're passionate about cybersecurity. They're posting things that are related to them that they're interested in. And that again, it's a feeling thing for me. Um, but if you go to somebody's page and it and there's nothing except for a picture that's you when you were at a wedding and very little information, then I'm like, well, this doesn't help me, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 24:01

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, so uh if you if you let me, I'll I'll give a couple pointers. Please, please. Um, so these are uh a few of the things that um time and time again, guys and girls, um, these are the things that, in my opinion, my personal professional opinion, will help you. And I've had some conversations with recruiters. I've also seen a presentation or two from people who do really well on different social media platforms, LinkedIn, for example, and they've did a couple presentations here recently, and they highlighted some of these things. But so here we go.

Profile Must‑Haves: Photo, Headline, About

SPEAKER_02 24:36

These are my a few of the things. And John, you already said the first one. You have to have a LinkedIn profile. It's a must, and it must be a complete LinkedIn profile. What that means, you need an actual picture of you, something where people can see what you look like. Smile, a good uh picture. If you are using a picture that you took at a wedding, I mean, take the time. There are so many AI tools that you can use. You can upload pictures of yourself and it'll recreate some awesome pictures of you. Um, and you can use that as a in the time being until you actually take a good picture. But you need a good, solid picture of what you look like. Now with sunglasses, not with a mask over your face. You need people need to see what you look like, you need to smile, you need to be happy. Um, the next thing is you need to have a solid headline. What John said earlier about going to someone's profile and not knowing what they're about or what or what their interests are, that is 110%. If you have a general profile or even a profile that doesn't really scream, hey, I am in cybersecurity and I'm looking for an entry-level job, then you've already failed. You need to be very, very clear with what you want, with what your goals are. If you are trying to transition into cybersecurity, but you're currently in sales, create a LinkedIn profile specifically for cybersecurity. Your sales experience may come in handy in your resume and some of the things that you've done maybe under your work experience, but you need to tailor your LinkedIn profile with the end goal in mind. So if your end goal is to get a cybersecurity role, then your LinkedIn profile should read nothing but cybersecurity. Absolutely. Um, and by being having a clear and simple headline, that is that is all that is all you need. That would allow anyone to go skim out your profile. They see your picture, and then right under your picture, they see your name, and then they see the headline, which has to read cybersecurity analyst or security analyst, stock analyst, whatever, whatever your your role is, whatever you're trying to do, whatever you're studying, it needs to be very, very clear for them to see. The next thing is the about section. After you look at someone's page and you look at their headline, the next thing is the about section. Now, people may think, hey, this doesn't matter, but it does. And before, what I've seen people do is they were very specific about I'm only gonna put down what I'm doing right now, because that's all that matters. Wrong. What I've seen now, it has transitioned into that's where you get a chance to tell a little bit about your story. Tell a little bit about what you've done, what you're doing, and what you want to do in the future. That that is your opportunity to really tell someone who you are and what you're about. After that, you want to go down to your uh to your experience. For the three, say you have five jobs. For the

Experience Bullets And Daily Activity

SPEAKER_02 27:41

three most recent positions, or two or one, which whichever positions, how many, however many you have, at least one of them, you need to have some specifics, some bullet lists in terms of what you did in that role. You don't need to do it for all of them, but if you, I mean if you've had like eight jobs or something, at least the lat the top two or three, you need to have some bullet lists in terms of what you've done and what you accomplished. At least at a minimum, the most recent role that you've done or accomplished, you need to have that information, right? Because that only not only does that help and give you a little bit more meat to your profile, but it allows recruiters and even hiring managers to come and review and say, okay, this is another item that I'm using as proof that says, hey, they have done what they say they've done in their resume. Um, also, activity. You have to post, but don't just go around saying, hey, great job here, great job there. No, you have to post, you have to be active in LinkedIn, but it needs to be thoughtful. It really does. I mean, it doesn't take that much time to get on LinkedIn every day for a few minutes, find a post that you actually connect with and make a quick comment, one sentence, bam, and be and and be be thoughtful about it, right? Don't just do it just to do it. So those are a few of the things that I have in mind that I would like to share that make a difference. They really, really do make a difference, guys.

SPEAKER_01 29:05

So my my thing, the only thing I thought about those oh were great. I have no issues with those, is as we've told people, you can include either on links to LinkedIn and or links on your resume to project type information that's more detailed. Now, I haven't we haven't talked a lot about this, but I think part of putting yourself out there,

Portfolios, GitHub, And Video Proof

SPEAKER_01 29:31

it could be. I mean, what stands out when I see those, and I think about Craig when he shared his, right? I go and I look at his stuff and I look at his reports that he wrote about what he learned and what he did, right? And he did that on on GitHub, his own GitHub. It doesn't have to be GitHub. It could be, it could actually be your own YouTube channel, it could be anything, it could be a blog, it could just be something where you write up what you did, you stood up your home lab, you stood up Nessus, you scanned it, you did this, you scanned the vulnerable version of this VM. Here's what you learn from that. This helps you stand out. So there's three levels, right? You get you finally get your application to be looked at by a hiring manager, your resume, then goes and looks at your LinkedIn profile, and they look, okay, this person's got a good link, you know, it's legit. Then they see either on your resume or LinkedIn another link to my project portfolio, the things I've done that for fun or on the side to learn, and then they go look at that. Now that's three levels of information you've given the hiring manager that they're like, okay, I get it, I get where this person is, and I get how interested and passionate they are about this career. And I can go look at it. And when I look at your work or see, especially if you do do a video, I'm not saying you have to be a YouTuber, but if I if you do videos, it gives me something and it gives you practice presenting. And so I could watch that and be like, okay, this person, they they're into it, and how they communicate. That's hard to do on just your resume and LinkedIn and even our GitHub page with projects. How you communicate also is how you stand out. If you were to do something and it shares me presenting on a topic that I'm interested in that I learned something from, again, it's another way to stand out. It's not a must-have, but if you get that level and I go look at your resume, I look at all those other things, I'm gonna get a good sense and be like, we need to call this person. They're down, they're into this, they get it. I can see how they communicate, I can see their passion. So this is these are just things that are breaking down the walls of the barriers to get those callbacks.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

I know, I completely agree. And and I just have one quick example. I was helping an organization with mentorship when it came to cybersecurity, and they had a program that they ran teaching certain skills. One of the things that bugged me was they took the angle of treating it as if it was school. So they had they had their students review, for example, penetration testing, just as an example. And they had to, they had to kind of run through one and then at the very end create the report. And and what they had them do instead was create the report and then write a paper, like explaining to the customer, like a like an essay, explaining to the customer what they found and what the recommendations are. Now, this is now this is apart from the report, which the report did have that information as well, but they had them write an essay, a two-page essay, kind of how they would explain this information to the customer. When I came in and I was like, why write an essay? Record yourself doing it, record yourself explaining to the customer, hey, this is what we did, this is how we did it, this is what we found, these are our recommendations. Record yourself doing it because you will have to do that eventually. Maybe not with if you go, if you don't go into penetration testing, but no matter what, if you work in a SOC or if you work in GRC or you work as a pen tester, there will come a time where you will be given an assignment you will finish, and now you have to explain it or you have to present it to your team or somebody else. So instead of wasting the time writing a paper, how many how many papers have you written when you entered the work field, John? How many essays have you written?

SPEAKER_01 33:23

Man, like, you know, there's a ton of reports, but really more presentations, like by far.

SPEAKER_02 33:32

So that is a skill that you guys can use. And this goes to what John was saying. You don't have to be a YouTuber. This is not what you have to do. If you've created a GitHub and you created a project around installing and running Splunk, for example, right? Then you can show us the screenshots, you can show us everything that you did, you could take screenshots of dashboards, you can do

Communication As A Differentiator

SPEAKER_02 33:51

all that stuff in in in GitHub. But if you add a five-minute video explaining what you did, like breaking it down, that just adds more fuel to the fire, my friend. That just next level, that is another skill that you're using. Another example. I can't tell you how many freaking vendors are using the angle of, hey Steve, I saw your podcast, I saw this episode. We actually have a solution for this problem that you and John spoke about. Like you do, you have no idea how many calls I'm getting now. And it's like, hey, I watched your podcast, hey, I did this, I did that, or hey Steve, I actually agree with what you said about the recommendations for uh resumes in LinkedIn or whatever.

SPEAKER_01 34:33

Like they're not looking at the they're not watching. They're they've got AI out there scraping the the videos, oh let's go find all the transcripts and and then create email.

SPEAKER_00 34:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Probably.

SPEAKER_02 34:43

But what I'm what I'm trying to get at is if you have if you have a video, if you have something of yourself explaining it and kind of going through, that is just additional ammunition to just you, your profile, and your candidacy, because you are fighting against others for the same role. There's only so many roles, and there's so many people going after the same thing. And let's be honest, a lot of the advice and a lot of the things that people have to do to get started in cybersecurity is a lot of the same stuff, a lot of the same certs. You go after your security plus, you go after your A Plus, your network plus, whatever else, right? You're if you already know that Splunk was the number one tool that John found in his report for SIM as a sim solution, others hear that information too, and they're going after Splunk too. So there's a lot of things that put you at the same level with a lot of undercandidates. The things we're mentioning here can hopefully put you one step ahead because it is more work. But look, you got to put in the hard work to get to get to where you want to get to. And we're here to just give you some truths and say, hey, it's time you take that next step because competition's getting getting fierce. So what's gonna set you apart from all the rest?

SPEAKER_01 35:58

Yeah. No, I I totally agree.

Competition, Next Steps, Community Invite

SPEAKER_01 36:01

And I think I think that's good. I think we kind of gave them some really good advice based off of research, based off of our experience. Um, I think those things will help you stand apart. Um, but you know, if you would like to get some help and get some personal help from us, you know, you we are open, that's what we're doing as part of the school community. We have the free community you can be a part of and just meet and greet and hang out and chat. But if you want that extra level uh where you want to get our direct input on your resume or our direct feedback on a job that you're applying for, we're happy to help, right? You know, you just just join us, be part of the the group coaching that we're doing. We want to grow it. We're we're having a good time with the people that we have. Um, we'd love to have you there and and come check it out. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

And if you are brave enough, join us in school and one of our free hangouts, we can just do a resume or LinkedIn roast, and we'll just I will just break it down right then in there live for everybody to see, and we'll give you feedback. So if you want to volunteer, just join the school community, let us know, send us a message, and we'll put you on the list. Sounds good. Well, thanks everybody. Have a good one. Till next time. Thank you for tuning in to today's episode of the Cybersecurity Mentors Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 37:23

Remember to subscribe to our podcast on your favorite platform so you get all the episodes. Join us next time as we continue to unlock the secrets

Closing And Calls To Connect

SPEAKER_01 37:31

of cybersecurity mentorship.

SPEAKER_02 37:33

Have questions, topic ideas, or want to share your cybersecurity journey? Join our school community, the Cybersecurity Mentors, where you don't have to do this alone. Connect with us there and on YouTube. We'd love to hear from you. Until next time, I'm John Hoyt. And I'm Steve Higgeretta. Thank you for listening.