Summary and Overview Part 6
Introduction to IT & Cybersecurity
good advice. So here's one that I think Ken will be happy to tackle because it's it's one of his pet peeves. Should you list all of your jobs on your resume for cyber security?
Like, honestly, if you're going to know if it's your cybersecurity like you're, you're gonna be a stock analyst for something. And you know your first job before that was McDonald's or something? Sure, right. You want to show you have some work experience. If you know if you've been working for, like 20 years and
you there soon. Just know there's just no sense in listing a job from high school on there. It doesn't it doesn't matter for was an I t. Job or not. That's just too much. And you'll hear debate on this from
different recruiters and stuff like that. But But honestly, like employers like nobody wants to look through all that, no one's going to look through all that because for most job postings and get 1000 people applying at the same time, so truncated down like list jobs are relevant. And don't just list like a I. Because I worked at Burger King, you know, growing up so
don't just list like, yeah, you know, I was able to flip burgers. Really good.
Like talk about the skills you actually did. Write time management, project management, you know, customer service, those types of things that are relevant to a career in cyber security there something that you can build a bomb. So that's my advice on that together.
That's one of the questions I get pinned a lot on Link done on. Like, Should I lost everything? Absolutely not. You may have seen when that's question first came up a little bit of the light leaving can, in my eyes
way review a lot of resumes. Sometimes, as you know, service to people in the industry sometimes is part of hiring, sometimes part of bringing instructors on board. I've seen a lot of resumes and the ones that were like eight pages long. I've gotten resumes. They're legitimately eight pages long, and I'm I have to tell you, I'm not gonna read that resume.
I have 100 more candidates to review before lunch.
I don't have time to read yours your novella. So keep your keep your resume short, keep it punching. Have a master resume have a giant list of everything you've ever done and all your skills and all your qualifications. And when you're writing a recipe for a company Taylor that take specific information out of it and use that to build a specialized, tailored resume, you're gonna find not only better
sort of turn around on that your resume in general is just gonna be better looking
a resume your can mention. There is some debate among recruiters. I will say that the gold standard in writing arrest May 1 page your resume if it can fit on a single page is about.
The numbers are kind of fuzzy, but about twice as likely to be read by by a recruiter or by hiring manager. Once you go to two pages, you dropped about 50%. Once you go to three, I have never met a recruiter who will read a three page resume. I've got to be honest, so it's very important to keep your keep your resume punchy and accurate and relevant to what you're working on.
And 11 minor thing. I'll add to that Joe just since we kinda dived into resumes a little there. I always recommend people start off the resume with some kind of a quote like, kind of like your reference right? So instead of someone calling Joe for a reference, they could just see that Joe says this particular thing about me, just like one or two sentences. Hey, he's a hard worker or he's a great guy Whatever
the case might be
because that differentiate you from everybody else. Nobody else doesn't write. People go on and get templates and do it. Resume that way and everyone's resume looks the same. So you want to stand out if you really want that particularly and kind on that note, one of the things that I do for my resumes. I use what's called a hybrid format for my resume. So instead of just lift listing jobs, just listening skills,
I list out the skills that I know they're looking for in bullet points of the very top of the resume.
And then the jobs that I select from my master is me or the rules that I select from my master resume
or each chosen to map directly to those skills. It helps me to format my resume. It also means that if they're using automated systems like a lot of places are right now, you're much more likely you're gonna get picked up because of the fact that you have those bullet points where it's specifying the exact skills they want.
Which leads me to last notes on resumes before all that can petition resumes. But
fun fonts are not for your resume.
I'm a times new Roman held that kind of person. Those were the only two funds you need to write a resume, and frankly, you could just use one if you've got If you're using Pop Iris, I promise your resume is either going in the trash or it's going up on a corkboard to make fun of it. Those were really the only two options, So
there are a lot of people. Judge you advice have a flashy, showy resume and the creative in a design field that's often very commonly necessary. If you just give them a piece of paper with black text. A lot of creative and design agencies problem will look at you, but this is cyber security. This is a very sort of, you know, uh,
I don't say business minded, but kind of a business minded feel. This is a very technically minded field.
Professional resumes are always going to be better.
Absolutely, you know, and the only other thing I'll add on this one Joe way kind of turned into a resident, so we'll stop digressing. But the only other thing I would add, it's if you have, like a portfolio folio. So, for example, if you have a website up where you're showing different things, you've done like Web design or whatever, or if you
even just threw up like YouTube videos of like doing different task in cyber security.
So, for example, if you wanna be a stock analyst showing how you analyze information coming in, how you spit it out in a report or whatever, put links to that at the top. Right below that bullet point area. Joe mentioned distort links to that like, Hey, here's a sample of my work. I just makes it so much easier, like everything's right there for someone like Okay, who is this person?
And let me take a look at this stuff and then they could get into your work experience.
Most people don't care too much like work experience. If you show that you've got the skills, they want it The show that somebody's kind of verified, you know that, you know, giving you that review that I mentioned And then also that you've got work that you're doing to show you actually want this job. So, yeah, ghosts, those couple of things adding in there
that should help you a lot and actually getting interviews and hopefully getting a judge. So that's the end of our
impromptu resume workshop way. See a lot of resume. So we have some pretty particular
bugbears on that.
In this FREE IT and cybersecurity training for beginners, you will learn about the four primary disciplines of information technology (IT) and cybersecurity. This introduction to IT course is designed to help you decide which career path is right for you.
Senior Technical Instructor at FireEye, Inc
Ken Underhill
Master Instructor at Cybrary