This episode has been automatically transcribed by AI, please excuse any typos or grammatical errors.

Chris Glanden:  We’re here at Chestnut Hill College in Philadelphia for the second annual Wiese’s Career Fair, where Barcode has been invited to podcast, live speak, to organizations that are here representing, and to job candidates that are here representing themselves that may be in the search for a career in cybersecurity.

Chris Glanden: And we’ll be speaking with both of them tonight to get their input on the event. And we’ll also talk to them about, you know, qualities and skills that are needed when getting into the cybersecurity field. Okay, thanks for stopping by, barcode. If you don’t mind, please introduce yourself and who you’re here representing.

Pam King: Hi, I’m Pam King with Chestnut Hill College, and I am a faculty member and director of the cybersecurity program in the undergraduate and graduate schools.

Chris Glanden: Excellent. Thanks for stopping by, Pam.

Pam King: Happy to do so.

Chris Glanden: Fantastic facility here. My first time here, so thank you.

Pam King: For hosting lovely college.

Chris Glanden: That’s true, yes, very lovely college. Tell me a little bit about the cybersecurity program here and how long that’s been in effect and what you guys offer.

Pam King: Well, we started the underground degree in cybersecurity in 2015. Prior to that, we had started a digital forensics undergraduate degree in 2011, and they were both really successful. And then we built on that success by creating a graduate program in cybersecurity. We made the graduate program 100% online and accelerated, so people who are interested in getting a masters in cybersecurity could get through the program a little more quickly, also completely online, so it would be convenient.

Chris Glanden: Awesome. And tonight, you guys are partnering with Wisis to hold this career event. Tell me about your affiliation with Wiesis.

Pam King: Well, this was really interesting. We were at a secure world event, and two of the women that are part of this Wisis group tonight had come up to our table and said, hey, do you want to help us start a Delaware Valley chapter of women in cybersecurity? And we’re like, that sounds fun. So they had their first meeting here at the college, and there was only, like, I don’t know, maybe 18 to 20 of us, and it’s just taken off from there. So when they said, could they host a career event?

Pam King: And we’re getting near the end of the semester, so we have students who need entry level jobs because they’re graduating, and we have students that are looking for internships. So we’re like, oh, please have your event here. And they did an amazing job. The turnout here is great, and the vendors have been wonderful. They’re doing headshots, they’re doing resume reviews, they’re doing mock interviews. I mean, it could not be a better experience for the students.

Chris Glanden: Absolutely. I completely agree. And I sense that you’re noticing some students of the college visiting some of the tables. And have you gotten any feedback yet from any of the students?

Pam King: Yeah, I’ve got feedback from the companies at the tables saying how impressed they were with the students. And then I’ve had students coming up to me saying they’ve got a beat on an internship or maybe a job, and so they’re real excited. I even saw a couple students in business suits and I have. Didn’t barely recognize them because I’ve never seen them outside of athletic wear before. So they really put maximum effort into this, and I just couldn’t be prouder. They’re doing a wonderful job.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Well, thank you again. And before you run, I know you’re busy. Talk to me about where our listeners can find out more about Chestnut Hill College and the cyber security program.

Pam King: Well, the easiest thing to do would be just go to our website. It’s www.chc.edu. Our graduate school and our undergraduate school programs are all listed there. They can just search for cybersecurity and it’ll come right up. If anybody’s interested in emailing me, I’m kingpc.edu.

Chris Glanden: Okay. Well, Pam, thank you so much.

Pam King: Thank you.

Chris Glanden: Thanks for stopping by and talking to you. Yep, you as well. So first, just introduce yourself and tell me, are you, are you a job seeker? Are you representing an organization? I guess. Why did you come to this event here?

Alex Pickenich: Okay. Hi, I’m Alex Pickenich. I am a current job seeker. I just graduated in May of 2023, and I’ve been on the job hunt for almost a year now. And I’ve been really struggling with getting a lot of rejections, not being able to get my foot in and get some experience.

Chris Glanden: Gotcha. Are you pursuing a career in cybersecurity specifically?

Alex Pickenich: I double majored in computer science and data science and minored in cybersecurity. So within the realm of those three, I would pursue a position, but my passion was data science, so I’m looking to hopefully connect data science and cybersecurity.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, there’s definitely a connection there, especially more today than there really ever has been. So you mentioned your job search has been has been challenging thus far. What are some challenges that you’ve encountered over the past year that has made it, you know, particularly difficult?

Alex Pickenich: Some challenges that I face are putting my resume through where there’s hundreds of thousands of applicants and I know that my resume isn’t gonna shine through, especially not knowing someone and talking to a lot of people now that I started networking more, they always say it’s not what you know, you know. So with knowing no one that can really give me the experience that I need to gain, that’s where I’m struggling and that’s where other people are getting positions because they know someone.

Chris Glanden: What factors do you think an organization should have within their culture or their environment? That would be something that you get excited about.

Alex Pickenich: Some things I would look forward to is being a part of a team that we can all like, work together. And I will have mentors while I’m learning, so that I am always learning and can keep growing within the team.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, that’s super important. Yeah, super important. And then I guess what would make you less likely to accept the position?

Alex Pickenich: That’s a tough question. I guess it’s tricky because there aren’t a lot of entry level positions and the ones that are out there, not remote and bad locations. And like I said, that’s where I’m struggling because with the limited entry level positions, there’s always the bad flip side of I gotta go to a bad location and I have to move there and then I won’t get paid enough to even support myself to live alone.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, yeah, that’s true. And then, and then you have to make that decision on if that’s a, if that’s a trade off that you want to take or not, so. All right, so as a job seeker, where do you turn for guidance and support? I mean, you’re here tonight, so that’s definitely a plus. But have you, throughout your job search, had a mentor, a career coach, a recruiter, anybody else that was able to help you in your career journey?

Alex Pickenich: Yeah, originally I was looking towards my mount St. Mary’s alumni who have been in my degree in my, where I am now and have excelled. So I’ve been looking at them, but now that I met Wesys and everyone’s now connecting me and going to secure world, I met so many new people and I’m just going to try to continue networking until hopefully there’s an entry level position that works for me and the company.

Chris Glanden: Well, thanks for stopping by the podcast station and I wish you the best of luck.

Alex Pickenich: Thank you.

Chris Glanden: All right, Manasa?

Manasa Pisipati: Yes, that’s right.

Chris Glanden: Thank you for stopping by. Barcode.

Manasa Pisipati: Thank you so much for having me.

Chris Glanden: Absolutely. Tell me a little bit about yourself and who you’re representing here at the Wis’s career fair.

Manasa Pisipati: My name is Manasa Pisipati. I am a second year grad student at the College of IST in Penn State University park. I’m also the president of women in cybersecurity student chapter at Penn State University park. We’re a very new chapter. We just started last year, so fall 2023 was our first active semester. And then this semester, we’ve been able to get more membership and do some events, activities. So I’m here trying to get some sponsorship, corporate sponsorship, corporate partnerships, also to see if people are interested to participate in speaker sessions or maybe hold workshops, because we’ve been able to do a couple of those, and they’ve been very helpful to our student members.

Chris Glanden: Nice. And so, yeah, talk to me a little bit about that. That program at Penn State.

Manasa Pisipati: We’re a very small community of about 1012 members right now, and the idea is to be able to provide a community to the women inside security. The ratio of female students in our. In our college is very skewed.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Manasa Pisipati: So, for example, in my class, it’s just two of us females.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Manasa Pisipati: So the main idea is to be able to, number one, provide a community of females, and number two, to be able to provide opportunities for women to advance in their careers.

Chris Glanden: Gotcha.

Manasa Pisipati: It could be through internships, it could be through upskilling, and also through full time jobs. So we’ve been able to do a speaker session, a workshop, and then some professional development courses. The idea is to be able to introduce students to different verticals of cyber security. So we did something on threat intelligence. We’ve done something on offensive security, and we look forward to doing more events like this, but also to be able to expand, have students travel to conferences.

Manasa Pisipati: We also traveled to the wisdom conference two weeks ago, by the way.

Chris Glanden: Nice.

Manasa Pisipati: That was incredible. It was my first experience at a wisdom conference, and it was just amazing.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Manasa Pisipati: So, yeah, we want to be able to. To help them travel to conferences and then maybe even provide some, you know, some discounts for certifications. Just anything that students need in terms of cyber security, we want to be able to provide that.

Chris Glanden: That’s so awesome. So this is, I guess, specific to Penn state students, correct?

Manasa Pisipati: Yes. And Penn State University park students.

Chris Glanden: Okay. And then if. If there’s any potential sponsors out there that may be listening, how could they.

Manasa Pisipati: Get in touch with you, I would say we have a website, Wesys University park website. They could reach out to me, Manasa Pisipati on LinkedIn, or the current president, who is Siadhivekar on LinkedIn. Or they could also reach out to the secretary who is on the board of the wisest Delaware Valley affiliate, Monica, so they can reach out to her. So, yeah, we’ve been in touch, and they can get to us through her.

Chris Glanden: Okay, well, thank you so much for stopping by. Take care.

Manasa Pisipati: You, too.

Chris Glanden: All right, so welcome to barcode. Could you please introduce yourself?

Yvonne Brown: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Yvonne Brown, and I’m so excited to be here today at the cybersecurity event here at Chesney Hill in Philadelphia. I’m actually here today because it’s timely, because I’m looking to transition into the cybersecurity field. I’ve been in the project management space for so long, and I’m just looking to network and to see what companies I can talk to to see how I can transition into cybersecurity.

Chris Glanden: Very good. Tell me about what made you pinpoint cybersecurity as your next move.

Yvonne Brown: I’ve always been up for a challenge, first of all, and I heard that it is a good field to get into if you want to do something different. And I do know, as you know, with how technology continues to advance, cybersecurity is not going anywhere.

Chris Glanden: Right.

Yvonne Brown: For me, it is the next challenge for me, but it’s also the opportunity to find something a little bit more stable and not have to worry about. Am I next to be on the chocolate block?

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Yeah. Now, you were doing project management. Did you ever cross paths with security teams or security related projects?

Yvonne Brown: Yeah. So at my former company, financial banking industry.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Yvonne Brown: Some of our projects, we did have to deal with security issues like vulnerabilities and scans of that nature. So I have some similarities as it relates to, like, terms and process for those things, but not in depth.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, well, I mean, it helps to have heard the terminology. So how has your job search experience been so far? You know, what has been the most challenging aspect of your pursuit, or have you found it to be pretty easy?

Yvonne Brown: No, it’s not easy at all. It’s been very tiring, actually. But what I know is that I’ve leveraged my network, which has been very supportive. So. And I make sure that I’m intentional about how I spend my time each day when I’m looking for a job, and I’m just not sitting at a computer every day when I’m looking for a job. So I’m picking up the phone, I’m texting. I’m attending events like this because I believe, you know, FaceTime is good as well, speaking to people, just to see, you know, how I can immerse myself into this field.

Yvonne Brown: And because for me, I don’t have any background in it, it’s even more important that I get out here into events like this, if they’re virtual or on site, just to see what I can learn.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. And have you found that to be very helpful? Have you been able to network more?

Yvonne Brown: And so actually, this is my first one site cyber security event, someone who I was networking with, power and network, she actually shared this event with me, and so I was like, I definitely have to come. Prior to that, I was doing more virtual events, and I was attending those just to see what that world was like and what are the opportunities that I could possibly go into cyberspace? Because, as you know, there’s a lot of different avenues and a lot of different lanes.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Do you know what lane you want to get into?

Yvonne Brown: So I’m probably considering GRC.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Yvonne Brown: Only because in speaking with people who are currently in cyber, they say because I have that project management background, I could potentially leverage the compliance pieces, the process improvement pieces, the oversight pieces, you know, the skillset that I bring for the project management land. So that’s where I’m hoping to land first.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Yvonne Brown: And from there, I’ll see what other possibilities there are.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Yvonne Brown: You know, because I’m not having heavily technical, even though I’ve worked with technical teams, but as it relates to the cyberspace, I have no knowledge with the technique.

Chris Glanden: Have you been able to identify some good areas to train for that GRC Lane, or is that part of your networking strategy?

Yvonne Brown: No, that’s a part of my networking strategy. I actually just reached out to. Oh, what’s the name of the organization? I know it’s through Careerlink, Pa.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Yvonne Brown: Actually have a workforce advisory grant program where they have partnerships with certain schools.

Chris Glanden: Oh, okay.

Yvonne Brown: Yeah. Where I could. They’ll give me the grant and I can go for Grant.

Chris Glanden: That’s awesome.

Yvonne Brown: And at least learn the essentials. Right. And then there’s some other. Some other courses that come with that, and they’ll give me a certificate. So I am looking into that currently.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. That’s good.

Yvonne Brown: So far, everyone I’ve kind of reached out to within cyber security, whether they’re on the heavy security side or they’re in the process side, they’ve been very super helpful. It’s just a matter of what strategy I can use to get my foot in the door.

Chris Glanden: No, I hear you. I hear you. When you’re looking personally at an organization, what’s one thing that you’re like would make them stand out from the other organizations that you’re applying to?

Yvonne Brown: They put people first. For me, I think that’s important. Understanding that we’re not relaxing, I would like to have that look, like balance. What it means to me is I’m not available.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Yvonne Brown: I need to shut off. I need to reset, I need to recoup and then come back the next day. Crunch. So that, to me, is very important and a culture that believes in support, especially as a new person coming on board, making sure they have training, they have some type of mentorship program, they have some type of, what do they call it, like, career development or center of practice that I can lean into for people who are seized within that area, that I can get support in.

Yvonne Brown: So it’s a host of things, but those are the top ones. And flexibility.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Yvonne Brown: Right.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Yvonne Brown: You know, if I choose to. If I need to come to the office, I feel that should be my choice.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Yvonne Brown: You know, if I feel like I can do the most, that should be my choice. So I’m not. I don’t want to be. I want to have. So that’s kind of what I’m looking for. And I do realize that sometimes, committed to cyber security, I may have to be a trust.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Thank you so much for stopping by. How can maybe potential hiring managers listening to this get in touch with you if they would like to have a conversation? Sure.

Yvonne Brown: Thank you. So I’m reachable by email and LinkedIn. Yvonne Brown. I’m sorry, I don’t remember the full URL or my email is Yvonnebrown zero nine. So that’s Ybonnebrown zero nine.

Chris Glanden: Thank you so much for stopping by, and I wish you the best of luck.

Yvonne Brown: Thanks for having me.

Chris Glanden: So welcome to barcode. Thanks for stopping by.

Jessica Sylvester: It’s an honor.

Chris Glanden: Please introduce yourself to our listeners.

Jessica Sylvester: So my name is Jessica Sylvester. I’m a risk and cybersecurity division lead for Tech systems. Tech Systems, if you’re not familiar, is an IT staffing and professional services company. And I am going on my 8th year with them. So basically, I’m customer facing and I support our clients in the northeast region and help them solve problems in security as well as procure really great talent because our recruiters are awesome.

Jessica Sylvester: Our local recruiting office is in Conchohakin, sits about 200 recruiters and so we are here to offer services such as, you know, recruitment services, helping with resumes, mock interviews, and things like that for students and people who are in the job market looking for a new opportunity.

Chris Glanden: Very good. And I know there are a good amount of individuals here seeking a career in cybersecurity, and I’m sure you see that filtered through tech systems as well. Talk to me a little bit about when you receive an applicant or a resume, what to you helps you filter out the qualified candidates from the unqualified.

Yvonne Brown: Yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: So kind of being in this industry a while, when I look at a resume, just in general, we’re not talking about for a particular position. There are certain things that I look for as green flags, and there are certain things that I look for as red flags. I’ll start with the good first.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Jessica Sylvester: Green flags would be things like repeat assignments. If you’ve worked for a company, you know, you’re a contractor, you’ve worked somewhere, and then a few years later, you go back and work for that same company again, that means you did a good job. They wouldn’t have brought you back if you didn’t do a good job the first time. The other thing that I like to see in a resume is I don’t want to see just a list of products and tools. I want you to expand upon your experience.

Jessica Sylvester: A lot of people think there’s this one page resume rule. It’s a fake rule.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Jessica Sylvester: Yeah. If you cannot speak to it in length and give a tangible example of something that you’ve done, just take it off your resume. A lot of times, what we see is people will put a tool or product because it’s in their environment, but they themselves haven’t actually worked with it. And that’s how you back yourself into a corner in an interview really quickly. Obviously, large gaps in employment can be a red flag, but that really just depends. Right. Especially, you know, there’s been a lot of companies over the last year or two that have gone through different rounds of layoffs. But, you know, if it’s multiple years, it’s gonna be challenging to find you a new opportunity.

Jessica Sylvester: There’s a lot of consulting companies out there. Right. The accentures, the protivity is where you’re working on as a consultant, but you have various end customers.

Chris Glanden: Yes.

Jessica Sylvester: So this will be a pointer for a lot of people out there. When I see a resume or their own LLC. Right. Someone’s consulting through their own LLC, which is fine, but if you have a timeframe of four years, that you’ve been working for Accenture or your LLC, and there’s just a myriad of bullet points. Like, I want to know who your end customers were. Some of that is confidential. I understand that. But sometimes a manager will look if they don’t recognize the company name.

Jessica Sylvester: Your resume is getting tossed in the garbage. So instead of having, you know, XYZ LLC, security consultant, whatever to present, and then just a list of all your skills, I recommend people do it by projects. So Accenture security consultant and customer Comcast project multi factor authentication. And what your part in it was. If the average hiring manager, this is backed by Gartner. I’m not making this up.

Jessica Sylvester: Looks at a resume for 40 seconds, tops.

Chris Glanden: Wow.

Jessica Sylvester: So think about that, right?

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: You want them to see reputable companies. So that’s just a little piece of advice that I’ve been giving out a lot more lately because we’re seeing more and more people that are coming from consulting backgrounds.

Chris Glanden: So what’s an ideal length for a resume? You said the one pager is no more, right?

Jessica Sylvester: It’s not a rule.

Chris Glanden: That’s it. That’s a myth.

Jessica Sylvester: So what I tell people, especially if you’ve been in the industry a while, the typical rule of thumb, unless you’ve been with the same company for a very long time and you want to show what jobs you had before, that if it’s beyond ten years, you can leave it off. Or what I say is don’t leave it off.

Yvonne Brown: But you don’t have to put the.

Jessica Sylvester: List of bullet points. Just list the company, the date range and what your title was. And then if an employer wants to know what you did at that company, they’re going to ask you that in an interview. But, you know, if you’re someone who, which is very common in it and especially in security, has had, you know, five, six, seven different jobs in the last ten years because you’re a contractor, because you, you know, are a government contractor. Some people prefer contracting because maybe they don’t require the benefits.

Jessica Sylvester: I say if it’s beyond ten years and now we’re looking at like your 8th or 9th assignment, you could probably remove it because employers are really only looking for, for their position, what more recent and relevant experience you’re going to have.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. And you also hear about like resume SEO now, too. Have you seen candidates, and you mentioned this earlier with basically just putting, if you use a tool and you put that on a resume because you know.

Jessica Sylvester: That might get caught stuff in white writing. So that.

Chris Glanden: Oh, yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: So that they pull it up in the. In the system that scans for buzzword.

Chris Glanden: But then when you sit down with.

Jessica Sylvester: The hiring manager experience, there’s some of that that is more of a hiring problem than a candidate problem. This is going to be a hot take. That’s why having a recruiter is so important. Right? Because when you submit a job application online, I don’t think any of us are strangers to this.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, you could.

Jessica Sylvester: It could be weeks before you hear anything. And the reason is, is because it goes into a CRM system, right. It sits there, and then guess who’s screening it to see if you’re a good fit?

Chris Glanden: HR.

Jessica Sylvester: Exactly. When’s the last time HR was in cybersecurity?

Chris Glanden: Right?

Jessica Sylvester: Precisely. So when you’re working with a recruiter, we typically aren’t in the business of working with HR unless there’s full time hiring needs that they’re bringing us in on. We’re working directly with the managers.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Jessica Sylvester: You think about it that way. It’s like you want to get your resume directly into the hands of the manager. You don’t want to have to worry about someone screening your resume, simply looking for two different buzzwords. And if they don’t see it, you’re out. When really you probably have the experience that they need. They’re just looking for very, very specific certifications or buzzwords. So having a recruiter that’s selling directly or account manager, what I do, right. I sell my candidates on the behalf of their recruiters.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Jessica Sylvester: To market their experience. That is a completely different interaction.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: When I’m telling you, hey, here’s a candidate. You’re looking for someone who has, you know, x amount of years with Sim engineering in their last role at X company. Here’s what they did. And I’m talking the manager, through their experience as they’re skimming the resume, as they’re looking at the reference that we provided. And guess what? If he. He doesn’t have the opportunity to say, I don’t see the buzzword because I’m the one selling the candidate over.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: So I have to be convicted around that, and I typically am. I won’t submit a candidate unless I know that I’m convicted, that they’re the right fit for the position.

Chris Glanden: Well, how has your security knowledge evolved over the years? Because now you get that. Now you have to get to know the candidate. Yes. You have to be that B’s detector.

Jessica Sylvester: Yes.

Chris Glanden: Right. Because you don’t want to go to the organization and send them a bad.

Jessica Sylvester: Candidate to be an expert in my customers.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: That’s the biggest thing, the number one frustration and the biggest challenge that I’m up against because, you know, there are a lot of salespeople and account managers in the tech industry is like, like, you don’t understand my business. So the biggest thing is understanding my customers environment. Right. What are they trying to accomplish? What do they care about? What’s the team culture like in order for this person to be successful? Day one, what past experience do they need to have?

Jessica Sylvester: Not a list of, you know, certificate. No. What do they need to be able to tactically do and what do you want to see proven experience of? Prior, but definitely, I mean, I recruited for a little over a year, and then I moved into the role, the role that I’m in now on the customer facing side in 2018. And I kind of cringe sometimes when I think back. I mean, even the girl who probably cold called you back in 2018, I’m like, whoa, I wonder what she sounded like.

Chris Glanden: I’m sure I could find an email. Oh, for sure, my email box.

Jessica Sylvester: And our system has everything from forever. But no, it’s definitely a passion of mine. I mean, something that helps in any field to gain knowledge are events like this, right. Networking is everything. The quickest way I learned was through people like yourself, by talking to them and just being really intellectually curious.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Jessica Sylvester: And what do you do and how is that important to the bigger picture of what your company is trying to accomplish? One of my favorite questions to ask, yeah.

Chris Glanden: And I try to enforce that even to the job seekers here, is that this industry is so welcoming. They’re so willing to help anyone that’s getting into the industry. So don’t be, you know, don’t hesitate to ask questions. And I think that’s resonating. If they’re not doing it, they’re starting to do it and see that. And so I can’t, you know, stress enough to come to a network event and speak to you guys.

Jessica Sylvester: Right. And the pandemic in 2020 took away a lot of that for a while. Right. Everyone was remote, events were all virtual, and even my job. Right. I used to spend 90% of my time on the road, on the customer site, and we’ve gotten back to that. But it’s been, it’s definitely been a challenge in recent years to make connections when everything has become so virtual. So that would be, like, my number one piece of advice in this industry. If you don’t want to get stuck in the cycle of waiting weeks and weeks and weeks to hear back about a job application. Like, get out there, get a recruiter, go to networking events, go to conferences, and build relationships, because even we at tech systems, we’re eight times more likely to place somebody if they’ve come from a referral than if we recruited them ourselves.

Jessica Sylvester: So it’s. I mean, the proof is in the data.

Chris Glanden: Well, Jess, thanks for stopping by. For those that are listening that would like to get in touch with you or tech systems to possibly help them, how can you do that?

Jessica Sylvester: So LinkedIn is the best way to connect with me. Jessica Sylvester, like Stallone or the cat, that’s how you can find me on LinkedIn. And then you can also just shoot me an email, J. Sylvester at Techsystemstek systems.com.

Chris Glanden: All right, well, thanks for stopping by.

Jessica Sylvester: Thank you.

Chris Glanden: Welcome to Barcode. Thanks for stopping by. Would you mind introducing yourself and who you’re here representing?

Emily Rose Nunez: Sure. My name is Emily Nunez, and I am currently a product owner with Leidos. So I really focus on product design and delivery, speaking with the stakeholders, getting the requirements midset, and making sure that the development teams stay on track.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Emily Rose Nunez: I am looking to maybe make a pivot in my career. I’m most interested in blockchain and crypto, so that’s really what brought me here today. I just wanted to really check out the market and see what these companies were like, and there was one in particular that I really liked called Risk 360. I was very intrigued by what they had to offer, and I will definitely be applying.

Chris Glanden: Nice. And so, as you’re networking with people here, what is some good advice that you’ve been given tonight?

Emily Rose Nunez: Some really good advice I was given would be to get a security plus certification, just to really understand how the nodes connect with each other, how they communicate, how a system can be penetrated. So, yeah, I would say that was pretty valuable, because I definitely came in here like a fish out of water, not really knowing what I was getting into.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Are you interested in going more into the technology side or being more of a technical practitioner or. I guess. Cause you wanna make sure, I guess, when you’re at these events that you’re seeking out, you know, some of the right mentors that you may wanna work with or getting some of the right information, or are you just trying to get an overall general idea of things, and then that would help you pivot to wherever you wanna go?

Emily Rose Nunez: Yeah, I think I’m trying to go into a more technical position. Okay. My long term goal is to have my own startup, so I want to. And it what does it will be heavily involved in cyber security. So I definitely need to understand this and how to implement this so I can really build what it is I want to build.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, don’t tell us what you want to build because I don’t want anyone. I don’t want anyone stealing.

Emily Rose Nunez: They’re going to steal it, right? I’m not there yet. I’m not ready.

Chris Glanden: No, don’t say a word. All right, well, thanks for stopping by. It was great meeting you. If anyone here listening and would like to reach out to you. How can they do that?

Emily Rose Nunez: My LinkedIn is Emily Rose. N u n e z. My email address is emileenrose mail.com.

Chris Glanden: All right, well, thank you so much. It was great meeting you, and good luck with your job search.

Emily Rose Nunez: Thank you so much.

Chris Glanden: All right, take care. Okay, sir, thank you for stopping by. Barcode? Yeah, thanks for having me. Can you please introduce yourself and who you’re here representing?

Tyler Yeagor: Yeah, so my name is Tyler Yeager. I’m representing arc technology consultants. We’re based out of Bluebell, Pennsylvania. We’re essentially an IT cloud services firm, helping organizations with, well, a lot of things, but essentially their it needs.

Chris Glanden: Nice, man. Well, thanks for coming to the event tonight. You’ve been walking around talking to some. Some job seekers. Right. What’s the overall feedback so far

Tyler Yeagor: I think for me, what I hear is the job market is still tough. It’s tough for people to. There’s. There’s a lot of people going after the same position. Okay. And it’s hard for people to stick out and get the opportunity. I still feel like it’s. It’s. It’s a crowded market, per se. 

Tyler Yeagor: So my connections that people I’m interacting with is the more, like, on the leadership level side of things, not necessarily the C suite, but, you know, you’re. Your directors, your managers, your supervisors, stuff like that. Yeah. And it’s still very competitive. That seems to be where it’s. Yeah, really competitive. Okay, so tell me about your company.

Chris Glanden: What do you guys do and what type of positions do you guys hire for?

Tyler Yeagor: Yeah, so, I mean, essentially we’re a consulting firm and driven by projects. So I would say individuals that are looking for the cloud architect type of roles, system engineers, consulting type of roles. Okay. They need to be keeping an eye out for Ark because as we get more projects, as opportunities come, that’s how we’re going to continue to expand. We do have a help desk as well, which is another great opportunity for if you entry level position. So help desk analysts. We’re always looking to, obviously, strengthen that.  So that’s another way to kind of keep an eye out to see what we got going on there. Yeah.

Chris Glanden: Let me ask you this, then. If someone getting into cyber is looking at getting into consulting, is that something that you would recommend or is that something that you feel they should have more experience in down the road to be able to help consult on different levels? Yeah. So I’m gonna give a long answer on this one. So.

Tyler Yeagor: So here’s what I’ve seen, right. You have a lot of entry level people. They start out in the help desk, which is a really good starting point, and then they have a decision to make. They say, which direction do I want to go? Do I want to focus more on cybersecurity, or do I want to go more system admin, system engineer, that type of role. Right. The ones that then go towards, like, the cyber security side, really start enhancing those skills to become, like, a, you know, SoC analyst and whatnot.

Tyler Yeagor: And they also leverage what they learned during the help desk to be able to kind of. Yes. You know, next building block. Now, to go to, like, from a consulting standpoint, our comedy, I wouldn’t necessarily say, is, like, security consultants. We partner with a company that handles, like, 24/7 Sock. Okay. So companies can outsource their soc operations to this partner, but we don’t necessarily get into, like, the whole advising aspect. Okay. From, like, security.

Chris Glanden: For folks that are listening to this, that would like to find out more about you or your company, where can they hit you up at? Yeah, so I’m pretty active on LinkedIn. I searched Tyler Jaeger, spelled y e a g e r. Really active on LinkedIn. Send me a connection. Send me a note. We’ll connect. And then website is arctci.com. And, yeah, you can send a connection for him through there. Cool, man. Are you based specifically in the Philly area?

Tyler Yeagor: So our office is in Bluebell. I live up near the Harrisburg central pa arena, but down here at least once a week between networking events, client visits, whatnot. Cool, man. I see you everywhere, man. So you’re not hard to find, I’ll tell you that. Just go on LinkedIn. You’ll find me.

Chris Glanden: All right, Tyler, thanks, man. I appreciate you.

Tyler Yeagor: Thanks, Chris.

Chris Glanden: Welcome to Barcode. Please introduce yourself and who you’re representing here.

Keith McMenamin: My name is Keith McMenamin. I represent visit Philadelphia and the Philly Tech Council.

Chris Glanden: All right, so thanks for stopping by, Keith, I see you over there in the corner. You’re reviewing resumes, correct? Yes. So tell me how that’s going well.

Keith McMenamin: Well, there’s a lot of good young talent in this area. You know, a lot of people hungry for work.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Yeah. So what’s the. What’s the verdict on, you know, the way that resumes should look versus what you’re seeing without naming names?

Keith McMenamin: All right, so here’s one for you. Maybe because I’m becoming an old man. The font.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Keith McMenamin: No tiny font.

Chris Glanden: No tiny font.

Keith McMenamin: Tiny font. That was my biggest pet peeve was the very small font that made it very hard to read.

Chris Glanden: So that could be because of the myth that I’ve just heard tonight about the one page resume. Everyone’s trying to fit a resume on one page, and maybe that’s the reason for the small font, but I hear that that’s. That’s a myth. You should not do just a one page resume.

Keith McMenamin: I don’t know. That’s not my area of expertise. I was kind of more looking for grammatical, easy to identify flaws.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Keith McMenamin: Where I can help people clean up and wordiness, too.

Chris Glanden: Okay.

Keith McMenamin: I felt that an area, maybe condense it and take some of those words to further elaborate a point. If somebody asks you a question now.

Chris Glanden: Are you performing the mock interviews as well, or just resume review?

Keith McMenamin:  A little bit of both, depending on what the person wanted.

Chris Glanden: Okay, Keith, how can the listeners here track you down, get a hold of you on social media, email, and where are you appearing next?

Keith McMenamin: Probably LinkedIn. Name is Keith McMenamin. M c m e n a m I n. You can follow the Philly Tech council on Instagram. Where am I next? I just wrapped up a busy April, you know, our secure world speeches. I was at the barn last week. I think I’m off until June. I’m building a conference. 401 North Broad Street, June 5. AI themed, but all aspects of technology. I’m trying to get all aspects of technology to unite under one roof for one day. So I’m going to have programming for everybody.

Chris Glanden: Nice.

Keith McMenamin: Check that out.

Chris Glanden: Keith, thanks for stopping by, man. It was great seeing you again. And go rest up.

Keith McMenamin: You’re the man, Chris.

Chris Glanden: All right, thanks for stopping by. Barcode, please introduce yourself and who you’re representing here.

Dave Birdwell: Well, first, I appreciate being on the late, late show. I think this is typically when the whiskey comes out.

Chris Glanden: This is where goes sideways.

Dave Birdwell: That’s fine. We’ll go as sideways as you want to go. So Dave’s Dave Birdwell, talent architect in Philadelphia. However, recently, I’ve taken over the nation for a company called Sony, headquartered in New York. But I run our Philadelphia chapter and as I just mentioned, the nation.

Chris Glanden: Nice, man. Well, what do you think of the event so far?

Dave Birdwell: Events been great, honestly. There’s a lot of good energy. The headshots, I think, is a nice touch, particularly for folks that are just entering the workforce, are looking to rebrand themselves. That’s something you typically don’t see in events. Yeah, that’s a real, really nice touch. Crowd is. Here’s the, here’s the deal. Dirty secret. Women in cyber put on the best events.

Chris Glanden: Yeah.

Dave Birdwell: Like, the crowd is always good. It’s lively. I always walk away with some sort of new connection, which is really critical, particularly for new people to get out of your comfort shell. There’s a lot of folks in it that aren’t always great with. With networking, getting outside of what they do day to day, which is, you know, usually very singularly focused. Right. They’re very tactical on what they do in terms of practitioners and kind of stepping back and realizing there’s a whole community outside of what their day job looks like, I think is encouraging.

Dave Birdwell: And when you come to these events, you always meet someone new that’s probably going through the same struggle that you’re going through your day to day job and not thought share, I think, is really difficult to duplicate, particularly over distance. So getting it face to face with people, I think is really hard to duplicate. And women in cyber brings together some of the best people in our local area.

Chris Glanden: Very true, man. Tell me about Soni. Tell me about what you do there.

Dave Birdwell: For sure. Soni Resources, our tagline’s fastest growing privately held staff staffing firm in the country. We have four unique divisions, professional services. So think of that as the office of CHRO, down to generalists. We have our creative division. So chief marketing officer down to potentially graphic designer. Right. We have our tech division, which I run. So CIO to CTO down to, you know, your entry level, it help desk folks. Right? And then we have our finance and accounting practice. So office of the CFO, down to, you know, potentially someone that’s just getting in financial services and entering the industry.

Chris Glanden: Nice, man. So let me. Let me ask you this. I’m positive that you get to see a lot of resumes coming in.

Dave Birdwell: I do.

Chris Glanden: You have to filter the noise there in terms of who you need to contact to fill certain roles. So from your perspective, you know, how challenging is it to do that? And can you talk a little bit about the methodology that you use to do that?

Dave Birdwell: So AI has entered everything these days, resumes, and COVID kind of broke the mold. So we’ve got a confluence of things that are entering the human capital market that we haven’t seen before at an accelerated rate. AI is taking resumes and duping them to match bullying searches like we’ve never seen before. So we’ve got countermeasures now that are finding these resumes that are frankly fabricated in every sense. Right. And we can pick them up pretty regularly. So that’s one thing that, that we’ve seen.

Dave Birdwell: The second thing is folks working multiple jobs.

Chris Glanden: So hold on real quick. So it’s basically AI versus AI at this point.

Dave Birdwell: So it’s who’s going to build a better, faster version of AI to detect AI resumes. Correct. So folks are saying, here’s what I’ve done, right? Putting that into large language model conversational chatbot and saying, hey, build this, tweak this, right. How do I take what I’ve done and elaborate that so that I show up on multiple searches instead of just populate our one or two? Right. So that’s the end game, particularly if you’re looking at remote jobs. How do I just get my resume in front of 15,000 hiring managers instead of 500?

Dave Birdwell: So I understand the need, particularly because there’s such a need in cybersecurity development. Right. Those two are remaining the top and they’re not going to go away for a long time. So I understand the need to do it. However, if you really drill down, it’s fake. It’s not that you’re taking what someone has done and you’re embellishing it so that you simply show up on more searches. Then you sit down with someone like yourself and you say, okay, Chris, walk me through.

Dave Birdwell: And you’re like, well, you know, we did that. It’s like, well, what did you do as an individual contributor in that spot? Well, frankly, not. Why do you have that technology listed? Well, I touched it, bought the license for it, but I don’t really practice in it.

Chris Glanden: You get exposed quick.

Dave Birdwell: Yeah, the exposure happens. So here’s what I’ll tell you. Boil it down. So I’ve looked at thousands of resumes in my career. The ones that always stick out to me come down to three points. And three points only companies you have to start looking at. Why does this seat exist in the organization instead of. Right? Oh, there’s a backfill scenario. Whatever it is, why the seat exists, why that position was created in the first place in the organization is critical.

Dave Birdwell: So backwards engineer that, why was your seat created? It was either created to make money to save money or to mitigate some sort of risk. And that’s for any job and that ever existed. So backwards. Engineer that through your. So how have you helped the company make money, save money and mitigate a risk in every job that you’ve had and deliver that succinctly in your resume and that will catch the eye. This new product we launched made $50 million. And here’s what I did particularly to that new product, and here’s what we learned, and here’s what you know. Here were the technologies used.

Dave Birdwell: Put that in a succinct manner and then follow that up with, hey, here’s something that we implemented that helps save x amount of dollars from a manual process as we automated that.

Chris Glanden: Right.

Dave Birdwell: And here’s the technologies we used. Spell it out in a succinct model. If it spills onto two or three or four pages, I don’t care how long your career history is, just make it succinct and make it matter. The throwing a bunch of words in there and a bunch of technologies in there so that you show up on a search, that is noise. Frankly, when I represent someone, I blow it out of there with their consent. I say, hey, listen, this isn’t a great representation of who you are, although these technologies you may have touched, it’s noise to the hiring manager. We’re going to blow it out of there, and we’re going to start with your education, your certifications, and then we’re going to get deep into what you’ve done to help the company make money, save money, and mitigate a risk.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, straight to it. Straight to it. And so you work with a lot of hiring managers as well. How do you feel that that resonates with them?

Dave Birdwell: So hiring managers are inundated from, think about it, technology hiring manager today is getting hit by SaaS vendors, infrastructure vendors, cybersecurity vendors, staffing vendors. Right. They’re getting hit by because they’re using.

Chris Glanden: More than one recruitment, as you should.

Dave Birdwell: I think you should diversify your agency, you should diversify your tech stack, you should reduce tech, you should do all of those things. But if you boil it down to just their inbox activity, it becomes difficult for them to manage. So what I try to do is deliver the cultural fit with a technology fit as fast as I can and not, not over fill their inbox, but certainly not give, give them a big, big enough sample set for whatever they ask me to do. It’s typically three to five and say, these are the three or five best people that I think that I have found for your organization based on what you told me was, was important.

Dave Birdwell: I’m not going to send you 50. I’m not going to send you two.

Chris Glanden: Yeah, yeah. That’s a good approach, man. Well, thanks for stopping by, man. I think this has been incredibly valuable for job seekers out there that would like to get in touch with you or, you know, get more information on Sony. How can they reach you?

Dave Birdwell: Yeah, so on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is typically the best way. So it’s Dave Birdwell, last name, phonetic, B I R D W E l l. You’ll see talent architecture. I’ve got a purple suit on, I think, with a purple tie. That’s me clicking there. Sony. Sony resources.com for more information.

Chris Glanden: All right, thanks, Dave. Appreciate you, man.

Dave Birdwell: Thank you. You’re the man.

Chris Glanden: Thanks for stopping by. Barcode, please introduce yourself and tell me who you’re here representing.

Alyssa Gordon: Hey, Chris. So glad to be on the podcast and so happy to have you here. I’m Alyssa Gordon. I am the event chair for we sis and also here with Comcast.

Chris Glanden: Awesome. So tell me a little bit about the event that we’re at now. This is the second annual event. I was fortunate and lucky enough to be part of the first annual last year. So just, I mean, explain to the listeners a little bit about the event and what you guys are doing here today.

Alyssa Gordon: Sure. So our event is really all about bringing out employers and jobs seekers to explore careers in tech, in cybersecurity, to help, you know, different skill sets and skill levels, figure out what’s out there, what are the different career paths and job opportunities, and help them with career enhancement and advancement. So we’ve got resume review and model interviews, heard some really great feedback from the folks that did that. We also have headshots.

Alyssa Gordon: So it’s always really important to have a good professional headshot, as well as all of our employers. So we had over 20 employers here exhibiting their jobs and actually meeting good candidates right here on site of the event.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. Having a networking event like this is so valuable. I think to get that FaceTime, especially when it’s regional, you get to see a lot of the local representation from organizations here. You get to meet a lot of the local talent and having it at a college, too, you get a lot of the student.

Alyssa Gordon: Yeah, we had some, or we had a lot of students come out. So it’s really nice that they can just walk over, check out what’s going on, explore different careers.

Chris Glanden: Yeah. And a lot of the feedback I get is, has all been positive and again, just being able to network and talk to people and introduce them to recruiters here that can help them along the way or even if they’re not familiar with WiSAs, you know, just being able to get familiar with the organization as well. So can you talk to us a little bit about the organization itself? 

Alyssa Gordon: So, WiCyc Delavere Valley is all about, you know, networking and mentoring and really just a group coming together to collaborate and share their knowledge and help other women and also men. We’ve had a lot of male supporters as well, just all foster these relationships and, you know, help with that career advancement and enhancement.

Chris Glanden: A lot of great partners here.

Alyssa Gordon: Yeah, we’ve had a lot of, you know, good partnerships, supporters over the years. I mean, today we had, you know, 250 people, you know, register. So one of our biggest events ever, and it just to show, like, what we’re doing in the community, we have a lot of great representation. We’re really getting traction we’re helping a lot of people.

Chris Glanden: I want to thank you for including me in the event. I mean, it’s been great just being able to see how far these, this career event specifically has. Has come in just a year. So I thank you again and hope to be part of it continuing on.

Alyssa Gordon: Of course, you’re from here on out in this event. You’re a stable supporter.

Chris Glanden: I will definelty support you in any way that I can. So before you run, I know you’re busy. We’re getting ready to shut down now. Can you just let our listeners know where they can find and connect with you online and also the WiCys organization?

Alyssa Gordon:  So listeners are welcome to connect with me on LinkedIn. Alyssa Gordon. That’s probably the best way. Send me a connection request or a message. I’m always happy to chat, you know, with any job seekers or transitioners, people looking to get into the industry just for advice or, you know, for knowledge. Like, my door is open. Haven’t helped anybody. And then if you’re looking to become a member of WiCys we’ve got a really simple online forum on our LinkedIn page.

Alyssa Gordon: I would suggest that our listeners go to Wisys. Delaware Valley LinkedIn page. Follow us. The membership form is right there. We post everything when it comes to upcoming events, industry trends. Like, it’s just a really good channel if you want to stay up to date with what’s going on in the area.

Chris Glanden: Definitely. So thanks for stopping by, Alyssa. I appreciate it. And please continue doing the great things that you’re doing here?

Alyssa Gordon: Thanks. It’s been a pleasure. And we’ll see you next time.