Solo Episode (No guest)

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How do you shine above everyone else when you're applying for jobs? The more work you do, the more you're actually in your competition. You need exactly what you put in and honestly it's a simple math formula. Inputs equals outputs.

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One plus one equals two. Okay, the more work you do, the more you get for it. The good news is most people aren't willing to put in the work and most people are always trying to find shortcuts to success.

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Here's a secret. There is no shortcut to success. The shortcut is accepting that there are no shortcuts and getting to work as soon as possible.

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Hi, I'm Kyser Clark and welcome to The Hacker's Cache. The show that decrypts the secrets of offensive security one bite at a time. Every week I invite you into the world of ethical hacking by interviewing leading offensive security practitioners.

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If you are a penetration tester, bug bounty hunter, red teamer, or blue teamer who wants to better understand the modern hacker mindset, whether you are new or experienced, this show is for you. Hello, hello. Thank you so much for tuning in.

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So in this episode, we're going to talk about competition. And in episode 15, I said anyone can get into cyber security, but that doesn't mean everyone will get into cyber security. There is a limited amount of slots in cyber security, and you are in a competition against other people for the same position.

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So keep that in mind when you're considering taking a break from your studies. A lot of people who are not competitive or people who shy away from competition or just don't believe they're in a competition, they might be cringing a little bit. I'm like, well, I'm not in competition with anybody but myself.

(1:42 - 2:17)

And while that's mostly true, you do want to be better than the person who was yesterday, and you do want to get 1% better every single day. However, keep in mind that if you are putting in a half hour of studying or work every other day, and the person who wants the same position as you is studying or working five hours a day, who's going to go further? Probably the person who's putting in five hours every day compared to the person putting in a half hour every other day. And moral of the story is, the more you work, the more effort you put in, the more you get.

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It's inputs equals outputs. So when it comes to competition, you got to understand that when there's a job opening in the cybersecurity field today, there is hundreds, if not thousands of people applying for the same position. And guess what? Only one person is going to fill that slot.

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And the company is going to pick the person who is the best fit, not necessarily the most skilled. Keep that in mind. There's a difference between best fit and most skilled.

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There's people who are highly skilled that don't win these positions because they're not a good fit. And I talk about this in episode 15. You can have all the skills in the world, but if you don't fit the culture of that company, you don't fit the culture of that organization, you rub someone the wrong way in the interview, then they're not going to hire you.

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This is part of the game because companies and organizations, they want to hire the best people that are highly skilled and qualified. A lot of the times, what's more important to them is the culture fit. Now, they're not going to hire someone who has the right attitude that has zero skills.

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They're not going to do that. They want to hire someone who has enough skills, who fits in the culture, who fits the team well, because morale and chemistry is extremely important when it comes to organizations. And if you don't fit into their puzzle, then they're not going to hire you.

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So nine times out of 10, when you get rejected, it's probably a culture fit, especially if you feel like you're qualified. You can apply for things when you're a little under qualified, that's okay to do. But most of the time you're applying for positions that you believe you're to be qualified for.

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And when you get rejected, you're like, well, I met all the qualifications. I actually exceeded them. Why didn't I hire them? Well, it's probably a culture fit.

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You didn't like the way you talked. They didn't like your attitude. If you're a go-getter and you like to get stuff done, and you're a workaholic, and you are in a company that's laid back, they don't want you.

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On the flip side, if you are laid back, chill, go with the flow, and you're applying for a company that's go-getter, workaholics, never quit, never, never stop working, they're not going to hire you. They really want people that fit the culture. So keep that in mind when you apply for these positions in cybersecurity, because that's honestly how you get rejected.

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I would say more times than not, especially positions that you are applying to that you're qualified for. So that's part of the competition. And you know what? Don't even feel bad.

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If you lose someone because it's a culture fit, it's actually a good thing. You don't want a company to hire you if it's a culture fit issue, right? If they bring you into the organization and you don't fit in, you're not going to like it there, okay? They're actually doing you a favor, by the way. So keep that in mind.

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It might sound unfair, but in the long run, it's well worth finding a place that you enjoy working with. You want to like the people you work with. You want to like the tempo that they work at, and you want to like their values and their morales.

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So when it comes to competition, I'd say it's fierce. And the reason why I say it's fierce is because there's limited slots. There's not that many open jobs, actually, believe it or not, despite the cybersecurity skill gap numbers.

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You know, there's a huge myth out there that says there's millions and millions of unfilled cybersecurity jobs. And by 2027, there's going to be 7 billion open cybersecurity jobs. All that is nonsense, okay? Take it from me, someone who went through a job search nine months ago.

(5:31 - 5:39)

There really isn't that many open positions. That might sound discouraging, and honestly, it sucks. But you have to understand that the economy was in a rut for a while.

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Now the economy is turning around, okay? So that's the good news. The good news is the economy is on the ascend once again. So it was on the decline for a while, but now we're turning it around.

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And when I say we, I'm talking about the United States. That's where I'm from, and that's where the majority of the viewers and listeners are tuning in from. So if you're in a different country, this might not apply to you.

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And you know, I don't like to talk about things that aren't cybersecurity, but the economy and the job market. So the job market kind of reflects the economy, and cybersecurity open positions reflect the job market. So that's why it's kind of important to mention the economy.

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So it's important to pay attention to stuff. If you don't think the economy is important, it definitely is when it comes to your career and your life, honestly. So that's why we can talk about it in the Hackerscatch podcast because it is very important.

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So the good news is the economy is getting better. More jobs are going to start opening up because when the economy is better, more companies have more money to spend on cybersecurity. That's key because jobs are only opened up when companies have money to spend on cybersecurity.

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Cybersecurity is an afterthought for every single company. Every single company, unless you're working for a cybersecurity organization that delivers cybersecurity services, is an afterthought. OK, for example, do you think Amazon's primary concern is cybersecurity? Now, they have to take it seriously because they have to protect their customers and their interests.

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No, their primary concern is delivering the services and the products to the customers. And cybersecurity is kind of an afterthought. And that goes for any company.

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Their primary concern is delivering goods and services to their customers. And cybersecurity is just an afterthought. It's a cost, actually, to them.

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They only do it because they want to protect the company. It's kind of like insurance, right? Like, for example, think about car insurance. Like, do you enjoy paying car insurance every month? If you could get away without paying car insurance, wouldn't you do that? I know I would.

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I know I don't really like paying car insurance because legally, I have to. Speaking of legally, cybersecurity is not legally required for many organizations, especially the small ones. It's really only a mandatory thing for publicly traded companies, finance companies, and health care companies.

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Any other company is not really mandatory. It's becoming more and more important. Don't get me wrong.

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But cybersecurity is still not mandatory for the majority of companies out there. And because of that, not everybody hires cybersecurity professionals, or they hire cybersecurity professionals to perform services, like a pen test, for example, or an audit. The skills gap is a myth, right? There's just not that many open jobs.

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The majority of the open jobs that you see on Indeed and LinkedIn and Monster and ZipRecruiter and all these job board websites, a good amount of them are ghost jobs. What is a ghost job? A ghost job is a fake job. Why would there be fake jobs? Well, there's several reasons for fake jobs.

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One reason is companies want to pretend like they care about cybersecurity when they really don't. It looks good on paper, saying, oh, yeah, we're trying to find a cybersecurity guy to come in here, but we can't find someone that's qualified. And they just reject you.

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They're just doing that to kind of go through the motions, to act like they're caring about cybersecurity, but they really don't care, if that makes sense. A way of showing it's like, hey, we tried. We tried to find someone for cybersecurity, but we just can't find somebody.

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They don't even tend to fill that position. It's just for show. That's one reason.

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Another reason is they open up jobs to appear as if they're growing, because when companies appear as if they're growing, it looks good to investors, potential buyers of the company, customers and all this stuff. They open up jobs to appear as if they're growing, but they don't tend to fill that position at all. Another reason is companies will put a slot open because they want to intimidate their current employees by opening up a slot.

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Because if they say, hey, we're going to bring someone in here, employees, they're like, oh, wow, they're going to bring in a new guy. They're on the verge of being replaced. And that happens in some places.

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By the way, if you're working for a company that does that kind of stuff, that's not a healthy organization to work for. But that does happen, right? They do it. They pretend like they're bringing in people to replace the existing employees or, you know, get the employees to work harder because they can bring in someone to replace them, essentially.

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So that's another horrible business practice that a lot of companies are doing. Once again, they don't intend to fill that slot. They just want to look like they're hiring someone to get their employees to behave in a certain way.

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Like I said, a horrible business practice and a horrible thing an organization can do. But it happens. That's what organizations do.

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They really do it. I've seen videos online where HR people, you know, they quit over this name, you know, made a video on LinkedIn or like talked about this stuff. And then the last type of ghost job is threat actors.

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So they pretend like they have a business and they open up a job board. And what they do is they just collect resumes and they collect people's information to attack you. Or maybe even they're not attacking you as an individual, the person applying for the position.

(11:01 - 11:28)

Maybe they're attacking organizations, right? If they can get a resume that says you worked for company X and, you know, their technology stack is a certain way, you're going to have that technology stack in your resume. So when they figure out what technologies the company is using, they can use that information to attack the organization. Or like I said, they can collect your phone number, address and whatever information you put about yourself on a resume.

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They can use that against you as well. So I highly recommend if you do apply for positions, don't put your address on the resume. It's OK to put your phone number.

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You definitely want the recruiter to call you and stuff. And it's OK to put your email. But don't put your address on there.

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The employers do not need your address. And if you apply to a ghost job that gives your address away, then that kind of puts you and your family in danger. So definitely don't do that.

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So moving on, the employers that are actually hiring the real jobs that are intended to be filled, right? They do exist. They're just a little bit more scarce than what we'd like. These employers, they're looking for highly skilled people that are ready to go on day one.

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They do not want to train you. And that's just not that's not a problem just in cybersecurity. That's across the entire job market in all fields right now.

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I believe I'm not in any other field. I've only been cybersecurity, but I have a hunch and my limited amount of research shows that this is a common theme across the entire job market for all industries. Companies aren't willing to train people there.

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They just want to hire someone that can do the work day one. So that's why a lot of people get rejected. They're like, oh, they can train them on the job.

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I'm like, no, they don't want to do that. They do not want to do that. They want someone that's already ready to go.

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And, you know, you might be wondering, well, how do I get the training if no one's willing to give me a chance? And that's a good question. Luckily for you and for me and for everybody in this field, you can learn all the stuff at home. All you need is a computer and an Internet connection.

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That's all you need. And most of us have that. And if you don't have that, then get that.

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Go get Internet connection and go get a computer and start learning stuff because you can learn so much for free. And then you can also get training for very cheap. It's out there and you can teach yourself how to do all of it from your home.

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And that's the good news. We have that luxury. Not every field gets that.

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So that's what we have going for us within cyber security is you can actually teach yourself how to do this stuff at home. So competition is fierce. But how do you stand out from the crowd? Right.

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How do you shine above everyone else when you're applying for jobs? Well, as I alluded to earlier, the more work you do, the more you're actually in your competition. Exactly what you put in. And honestly, it's a simple math formula.

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Inputs equals outputs. One plus one equals two. OK, the more work you do, the more you get for it.

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The good news is most people aren't willing to put in the work and most people are always trying to find shortcuts to success. Here's the secret. There is no shortcut to success.

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The shortcut is accepting that there are no shortcuts and getting to work as soon as possible. It's a long, challenging ride, right? There's no easy way into this field, guys. It takes thousands, thousands of hours of studying and practice.

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And that's what it takes. And that's what employers are looking for. And if you're not willing to put in the work, then maybe this field isn't for you.

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But if you're willing to put in the work, great things are going to come. Because like I said, it's not easy, guys. There's nothing about cyber security that's easy.

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The best part is you can learn all of it from the comfort of your home. But the bad news is you're constantly learning. You have to constantly upskill.

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And if you're not training on a consistent, regular basis, then you're going to get left behind because this field is rapidly evolving. And there's so many technologies out there today. Employers expect you to have a wide range of skill sets.

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And it's important to learn this stuff. Like I said on episode 15, anybody can learn it. You just got to put in the time.

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And the people who put in more time than others are the ones that are going to win out in these jobs that are open. Also, here's another secret. It won't always be fun.

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You're not going to want to study every day. You're not going to jump up for joy every single time you open the book. Every single time you jump on your computer and open the terminal.

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It's not always fun. It is work. OK, this is a profession.

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It is work. There's a common saying out there. It's like, oh, if you do what you love, you won't work a day in your life.

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I think it's a load of crap. Honestly, I think I love my job, guys. I do.

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I like being a pen tester. And I don't see myself being in any other field other than cybersecurity. I'm in it for life.

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But I don't enjoy. I'm not having fun every single day. You know, there are times where it's like, oh, that's really cool.

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Right. And those moments are they happen. Right.

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And they happen enough that to keep me engaged in the field. But it's not the whole time I'm studying. Right.

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Every certification that I do, you know, I usually start off the certification or the training or course, whatever you're doing. And I'm loving the content at first. I'm like, oh, it's something new.

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It's exciting. But then you're going to come across something and that you just find boring and repetitive or it's going to be truly repetitive, especially when you're going after certification because you have to read over everything multiple times and do the same practice questions over and over again. And it gets very dull because it's very repetitive when you're trying to go after a certification, for example.

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And that's how you learn. Repetitions, repetitions and doing the same thing over and over. It's not necessarily fun all the time.

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Like I said, for me, it's fun enough to keep going every day, but it's not fun every single day. There's days where I'm like, man, I don't feel like laughing today. I don't feel like reading the book today.

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I don't feel like doing this pen test for this client today, but I do it anyways because it's my job. As long as you're having fun, I would say enough, whatever it is for you could be, you know, 50 percent of the time, 75 percent of the time. For me, I don't really want to put a number on it, but the moral story is it's not fun for me all the time.

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And I would imagine that it's not fun for other professionals who are already in the field all the time either. Right. It is work after all.

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So how do you stand out from the competition? How do you do that? I said we put in the work, but what work do you put in? So you can go after certifications. That's one thing that I love the most. And you can see from my resume, I have 16 certifications.

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And that's really what helped me out the most is just having a ton of certifications and just having a ton of knowledge. It's not all book knowledge either. Right.

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I have five hands on certs now. And but a lot of it is book knowledge and a lot of it is hands on skill. So you got to you got to have both.

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You have to have the book knowledge and hands on skill degrees. College versus degrees is a heated debate all the time. And I'm going to make a video on that one eventually.

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I'm probably going to once I finish my master's degree, I think I'll make a college versus degrees. I'm not going to get into it too much. But the moral of the story is that if you can get a degree, go get the degree.

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College is extremely expensive. It's not worth going into that for, in my opinion. But if you can afford college or if you're a military veteran like me, then you're just you get your degree projects.

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Employers love seeing projects. So whatever you're trying to do, maybe that's a home lab. Maybe that's a tool.

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If you can code a tool and make it public and let people use a tool that accomplishes some sort of tasks, especially in cybersecurity, that's good. I did 100 days of code and I wrote the whole, I documented the whole journey and I programmed several games in Python. And that was a project for me.

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So any kind of project you do, open source, if you're if you're contributing to open source projects on GitHub, that's another one too. That helps. CTFs, catch the flags.

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If you're engaging in competitions and you're winning, you don't even need to be winning. But as long as you're competing and playing in these competitions for CTFs, you're gaining experience, you're gaining skills, gaining knowledge. Hack the box.

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Try to hack me. If you're doing that, that's great. Employers want that kind of stuff.

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CVEs. I don't have a CVE, but that's another thing you can do too. If you can find a bug in a, you know, open source software and you can get a CVE.

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I don't really have any advice for you because I guess I don't have any CVEs. But that's another way that helps you stick out from the competition. Content creation.

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That's one thing I do. That's one thing I'm doing right now. If you can write a blog post on how a certain tool works or, you know, if you found an exploit that isn't really talked about that much, write about it or make a video about it.

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You don't need to be a full-time content creator. You don't need to make as much content as me. But if you have some, a handful of blog posts or you post on LinkedIn with valuable content, which is I highly recommend, right? Just write stuff about what you're doing, what you're learning and just do it occasionally.

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That sticks out. And that's also a network building tool as well. Because when you make content, people are going to come across that content.

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When you put on the internet, people are going to see that and they're going to engage with that. And when they do that, they're more likely to work with you or ask you to work for them. So content creation is not for everybody, but it is a way to stick out from the crowd.

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Soft skills. This is another way to stick out from the crowd. You can talk to people if you communicate with people.

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If you understand business, then that's the way you can stick out. Because a lot of us who are technical, we don't have the best people skills, okay? And if you have good people skills, it makes you stick out. Let's just have two hypothetical people.

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We have someone who knows everything about everything, but is just mean to everybody and is grumpy and doesn't know how to communicate. Well, that person's not going to get hired. The person who knows enough about the technology, but is skilled with people, good communicator, knows how to navigate the complexities of an organization.

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That person is going to outshine. And that person is going to win out over the person who doesn't have soft skills. So soft skills are a huge, huge deal.

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People want to sleep on soft skills, but they're incredibly important. Speaking of soft skills, a good way to build soft skills is do the help desk. And don't act like you're too good for the help desk.

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Help desk and system administration jobs is a great way to break in this field. And that's what employers are looking for. There's very few entry-level cybersecurity jobs.

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Very few, almost maybe even zero. They're looking for some sort of experience in IT. You have some sort of IT experience that helps you out tremendously.

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So don't act like you're too good for the help desk. And if you have to take a pay cut to get the help desk, then do it. If you're coming from a different field, like for example, if you're a lawyer, you make a lot of money.

(21:43 - 21:47)

Lawyers make a lot of money. But let's say you just don't like it. You're just not fulfilled with that kind of work.

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And you want to navigate into cybersecurity. And one way to do that, start at the help desk. You're going to take a huge pay cut, but it is going to be worth it in the long run because that's a great way to break in the field.

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Help desk is one of the best ways to start out. And help desk, you know, it's not the highest paid job out there. And I'm not saying don't get paid what you're worth.

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Like you want to get paid what a help desk is worth. But, you know, the upper echelon, the ceiling of help desk is a lot lower than what a lawyer would make, for example. So if you're coming from a different field, don't be afraid to take a pay cut.

(22:23 - 22:30)

I took a pay cut. You know, I worked in a oil refinery. I was making decent money for a 22 year old.

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And when I joined the military, I took a pay cut. And I will make that decision 100 times again. That was one of the best.

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That was actually the best decision I ever made in my life. What so I can get my salary job and it sucked losing that much money, but ended up working out in the long run. So always keep your the long term goals on the forefront.

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Right. And so sometimes a short term pay cut is definitely the way to go. Be willing to invest in your career.

(22:58 - 23:07)

Right. But I thought, well, training and certifications and people, the common things people come back with me as like, well, not everybody can afford certifications. Most of you can't.

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OK, most of you can't afford certifications. If you look at it, they're really not a cost. It's an investment.

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You got to look at training and certifications and even degrees as an investment. Most cybersecurity jobs are pretty good paying. Like, for example, pen testers make over six figures.

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And if you spend $1,600 on OSCP, I think it's $1,700 now. They keep upping the price. Or even if you get the one year lab access for the OSCP, it's like $2,700.

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Yeah, that's expensive. It's not cheap. But think about it.

(23:43 - 23:53)

You're going to be able to pay that off in the first like two months of being a pen tester. It's a return on investment that's incredibly high. You can't actually make a better investment.

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There's no stock market trade that's better than that. Don't look at it as a cost. Look at it as an investment.

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And like I said, most of you can afford it. But you pretend like you don't because you are, you know, too concerned with buying the latest iPhone every year. You're too concerned with paying Disney Plus, Netflix, and Hulu, you know, whatever.

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I don't know. I don't even know what those costs, but I'm sure that they add up. Or you're doing DoorDash every day.

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And don't get me wrong. I've done DoorDash because I was too lazy. I don't want to say too lazy.

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I was too busy to go get food. So I would order DoorDash. But like, you know, I spent like $30 on one sandwich.

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You're like, whoa, that's like way overpriced. Don't spend the money on things you don't need. Don't eat out all the time.

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You know, cook at home. Learn how to cook. It saves a lot of money.

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You don't need a $30,000 car. You don't need an $800 car payment, dude. Like you just don't.

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And that's one of the reasons why I was able to afford training because I avoid debt like the plague. And I talked about this in episode 22. But more stories like finances are important, guys.

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Take care of your finances. Stay out of debt. You don't need the latest and greatest things, right? That's just no one cares what you drive.

(25:05 - 25:11)

I drive a 2012 Nissan Versa. The bumper is literally falling off of it. It looks like a piece of junk on the outside.

(25:11 - 25:15)

It really does. There's dents on the outside. But the engine's good and it's very reliable.

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Like I'm confident that I can drive that thing a very long time without it breaking down. And that's all that matters. One of the stories is like don't splurge on things you don't want to.

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Don't need to splurge on, right? Make some sacrifices and invest in your career. If you're serious about this career, so start doing things that benefit you long term. And also protect your time, dude.

(25:37 - 25:48)

Like don't waste it watching Netflix. And I mean, I just played Asian Mythology Retold for like three hours before I recorded this. And I feel guilty because I wasted three hours of my day.

(25:48 - 25:56)

And I should have been recording this a little earlier today. That happens. But more times than not, I'm not really wasting my time.

(25:56 - 26:03)

Okay, I'm always studying or making content. I'm always doing something that helps my career. My career is my number one priority.

(26:03 - 26:11)

I talked about that in episode 22, which that was a good episode. And definitely worth checking out after this one if you want to. Episode 15 too, which is the one before this one.

(26:11 - 26:17)

You don't have to watch it. Like this episode stands on its own. But there's two other episodes that you might want to check out after this one.

(26:17 - 26:24)

But that's pretty much all I have to say, guys. Overall, the competition is fierce and you do have to put in the work. Don't shy away from the work.

(26:25 - 26:41)

And the more you do, the more you're going to get. And you have to think about it as a competition, right? The person that you're competing with, just imagine them. Every time you're playing your PlayStation, every time you're watching Netflix, they're on TriHackMe.

(26:41 - 26:52)

Just imagine that, right? So there's people out there that's putting in the work. And every time you're not working, someone else is. And that's the way you need to look at it.

(26:52 - 26:58)

It is a competition. And some of you might not be competitive. I know a lot of people aren't competitive by nature.

(26:58 - 27:11)

I am super competitive, which is one thing that's really helped me out in my career, is I don't know how to learn how to be competitive. I'm just built that way, I guess. I don't know how to explain why I'm competitive.

(27:12 - 27:18)

I just am. And I don't know if you can learn it. But if you can, definitely look into learning it if you're not competitive.

(27:18 - 27:26)

Because it helps you out so much. Because competition is fierce. And it is a reality whether you want to acknowledge it or not.

(27:26 - 27:36)

And if you don't acknowledge it, then you're just going to get beat out by the people who do acknowledge it. And that is the moral story for this episode. So hopefully you got some value out of it.

(27:36 - 27:54)

If you have any comments, go to the YouTube channel. If you're not already on the YouTube channel, drop a comment and let me know what you think about everything I just said. Also, if you are enjoying the show, do me a favor and give it a five-star review on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

(27:54 - 27:59)

Then share the show with a friend. That would help out the show tremendously as well. Thank you so much for watching.

(27:59 - 28:03)

Thanks for listening. This is Kyser, signing off.