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What Job Seekers Should Be Doing Now: Part 1

The way we gather to share professional and personal information has changed dramatically in a matter of weeks. I used to get on a plane 2-3 times a month to present at conferences, our company would produce 1-2 career events a month, and we would meet for social gatherings on a weekly basis. With social distancing and a nationwide effort to flatten the curve, we’ve had to change how we interact with each other and how we provide critical career search information to our communities. As a result of these changes we launched our first webinar series on Zoom, “What Job Seekers Should Be Doing Now.”

If you missed the first installment of our three part series, you can watch the recording below to see Kirsten Renner, Sr. Director of Recruiting, Novetta, and Matt Duren, Sr. Manager of Talent Acquisition, Tenable, share tips to help guide your job search during these rapidly changing times.

Q&A with Matt Duren and Kirsten Renner

Here are the responses to the questions we received during Part 1 of our webinar series that were not answered during the live broadcast:

I have over 25 years of experience in the security industry and penetration testing, which currently causes me to not be hired. Managers constantly tell me that they are afraid that they will not be able to keep me interested and retain me. What is a good way of navigating this during the interview process?

I suggest that you be proactive in addressing this with the interviewers before they have a chance to think or ask it. Talk about the most recent project or task related to modern attack surfaces. Depending on the company for which you’re interviewing, it’s safe to say they are likely cloud-based or moving that way. Perhaps there is IoT or OT involved. Much of that is new and employers like to know that you can easily adapt to new technology.

This may mean reformatting your resume to highlight your understanding of how to pentest modern tech. Be careful not to let it overshadow the traditional on-prem network tech, though. Whenever you get a chance to talk about the new tech you’ve been working on, make sure you talk about how motivating it was to learn something new.

– Matt Duren

I hold clearances and am prohibited from social media use. How do I navigate the search process?

This is a great question, as many folks who hold clearances are either limited or prohibited from social media usage. Even without accounts to social platforms, you can use tools like Indeed and Glassdoor that are available for free. LinkedIn offers the ability to browse anonymously, and also doesn’t require that you have a public facing profile.

What you cannot do though, is send direct messages on certain platforms without an account. So just be sure to set it up in such a way that your account is anonymous. Recruiters in the cleared space will understand. From a searching perspective, you can still use what is shared on social as far as LinkedIn and Twitter to see who is talking and what they’re talking about. It can also be informative regarding events that you could participate in. Much of it is public, so you can see it without an account.

Also remember that Google, or the search engine of your choice, is your friend. You can search there for the job idea opportunity you are seeking. For example:

((“developer” and (“java” or “c++”) and “Virginia” and (“clearance” or “TS” or “top secret”))

Put that script in your browser search bar and see all the postings that come up on job boards as well as company sites! Now use that logic and change the terms to make sense for your search. Also, GovWin is going to tell you exactly who is doing what and where and how much. Then you can go directly to those companies’ websites.

– Kirsten Renner

Join Us for the Rest of the Series

As was shared in our first webinar, panelists stated that virtual interviewing will be used from here on out and that job seekers will need to be comfortable with virtual interviewing platforms. Join our webinars to gather career search intel while also familiarizing yourself with a popular platform used for video interviews. Sign up for a free Zoom account to participate in our live webinars or catch them on our YouTube channel a week after each webinar has been recorded.

We have many exciting webinars planned over the next several weeks featuring our employer customers and our veteran account managers, sharing tips on how to modify your career search at this time. We look forward to seeing you on Zoom!