1 year Career Makeover into Cybersecurity
Hey there Cyber fam! It has been a minute, I'm glad to be back in action :)
Are you looking to change your career path into cybersecurity but are not sure where to start, how long it may take, or really if it's the right move for you? Well you have come to the right place! My name is Jenn and I'm going to tell you how I took the leap from a totally different career path into cybersecurity space, and landed my first full time remote job that I love in cybersecurity! This is going to be a long one but well worth the read for anyone struggling to make the jump.
Planting the seed
...I had heard of cybersecurity for years and thought it would be a really interesting field however made many excuses as to why it wasn't for me. I "wasn't technical enough, smart enough, would never make a good wage as a woman in a male dominant industry...bla, bla" so on and so on, all a bunch of garbage. It was way easier to make excuses than to make changes and that is where I stayed in my thought process until around 2021...
There I was, about halfway through 2021...running my own business in marketing and web content creation, I loved my clients, but I was BURNED OUT. Not just a little burned out, but crash, burn, full cat.5 dumpster fire kind of burned out. Something needed to change, I needed better job security, I needed time with my family and I was ready to put away the excuses and explore cybersecurity seriously, or at least try. I did some research and found that Sec+601 was a good "get your feet wet" kind of cert. I gave myself permission to try it out, why not? What is the worst case, I bomb the test and confirm my suspicions that cybersecurity wasn't for me? Fueled by caffeine, doubt and blind faith, I set the date to take the exam and started to study, study study.
Finding Confidence
As I began to study I found that I actually REALLY love cybersecurity. It was a new topic with possibilities and curiosities, after 30 days of dedicated study I passed the exam. This was enough knowledge base for me to understand I COULD learn the materials, even though there was still a long way to go and a lot more to learn.
Empowered with this new confidence and CompTIA Sec+601 under my belt, I changed my degree plan from marketing and business to cybersecurity with WGU. There are a handful of reasons I chose WGU but that is a conversation for a different day.
Let's fast forward to mid 2022, at this point I've gotten my ITIL4, AWS Cloud Practitioner, and A+ in addition to Sec+601 and am flying through my degree plan excited to learn more and land my first job, there was just one problem, every resume I sent out seemed to get lost in some deep dark internet abyss never to be seen again. Talk about discouraging...I couldn't even get an interview, or a rejection... so what now?
I kept hearing "with a couple of certs and a (very nearly done) degree I could land a job no problem", then why dose it feel like my wheels were spinning and I wasn't actually getting anywhere?
It was time to suck it up and re evaluate. I needed to consider who I was trying to reach. I realized it wasn't WHAT I was providing that was the problem but HOW I was advertising myself. It wasn't that my skills or qualifications were bad it's that they were not reaching the right audience (or any audience for that matter) so I started to network.
Who's Hiring?
First step was to find the "who", the people I wanted to reach. Cybersecurity recruiters, hiring managers, CEOs and talent acquisition professionals. So that is exactly where I started to send connect invites. One mistake I have seen on LinkedIn is people add accounts that mirror their own, like "open to work" however if your audience is all "open to work" you will inevitably create an echo chamber of people looking for work and no one actually hiring, this does little to no good and may actually make you feel like there are not jobs available, which isn't true. If you connect with people "looking to hire" then you have found the right match. Over the next few weeks/months every day I would take some time to connect with my target audience (those hiring) on LinkedIn. If there was a person that seemed like they would be a good match or a future connection, I'd send them a message to say hi, introduce myself and attach my resume. What is the worst case they ignore me? As I started to build this network I knew I needed something to "offer" as though I was a solution to a problem that they had, I was the product..
Be Yourself, Brand Yourself
I pulled on my marketing pants and started to evaluate myself as a product. Who was I? What did I have to offer? What skills can I bring from past experience? How do I want others to see me at a glance? I wanted others to see me as confident, capable and eager to learn. You have about 3 seconds to catch a viewers attention on your profile before they move on, I knew I had to communicate FAST. Ok so how do you communicate confidence, capability and eagerness in 3 seconds? I started with a good profile picture! Word of advice, if possible hire a professional photographer for headshots or put a little effort into your outfit and lighting then snap one with your phone. I also cleaned up my resume to be very specific to the job I wanted and got rid of all the noise that wasn't relevant. Same as with your profile you have about 3 seconds to catch the viewers attention with your resume so make sure it's fitted to the specific position you are applying.
Lastly to set up my "product" was to make sure my profile looked clean, professional, and had lots of industry relevant key words that were up to date with the types of positions I was looking for, this would help the algorithms play nice with my account and hopefully get a boost towards the audience I wanted to attract.
Now all the wile I am still applying, still having resumes get lost in the sauce but I'm also getting more emails back, getting rejection letters and automated replies but this is good because that means my resume is reaching somewhere now!
The Final Push
After a month or two of building out my network of professionals looking to hire, getting into inboxes, cleaning up my profile and interacting with others it was time to make a post! I posted a professional headshot of myself, told a little about my story and what I was looking for and BOOM, all the prep work paid off. 50k+ impressions, hundreds of comments and shares along with some not so nice comments and unsolicited advice. From this post I applied to maybe 50+ roles, was rejected from half of them and was interviewed for the other half, had a handful of job offers and was able to choose on that fit me best. It all took almost exactly a year and really solid foundation. Let me stress the importance of that network. If I had made the exact same post before building those connections it would likely have flopped on it's face.
If I told you, start today and in one year you can be in your dream job, working with an amazing team where you feel valued and challenged, would you start today or would you wait until tomorrow? or even the next day? You are your biggest cheerleader or worst enemy. There are going to be gate keepers, negative people and rejection but those are not the things that define your ability. You can talk yourself into reaching your goals, or out of ever trying. If you want it GO GET IT!
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