Tech Job Hunt: What's Hot, What's Not?

obviously you know we don't have like horse and carriage anymore all this stuff like evolves and evolves right and you you have to like um you don't have to do anything but you should kind of hop on the wave and like see what you can do with the stuff that came out building a successful career in the tech industry can be difficult these days rapidly evolving Technologies the constant need for new skills and the daunting task of standing out in a crowded field the journey to a successful career field is full of challenges but there's a path briming with opportunities for those who know where to look and how to leverage their unique strengths that's where our guest in today's podcast comes into play Josh Mador Josh isn't just an educator he's a mentor content creator and a Guiding Light for those looking to forge their path in the IT industry his dedication to sharing resources and knowledge has made a profound impact helping countless individuals gain skills and the confidence need to tackle the challenges of this Tech driven world so without any further Ado let's roll to this week's episode welcome to the show Josh do you mind taking a few minutes and introducing yourself for those who don't know who you are yeah sure uh thanks for having me here first of all yeah my name is Josh I've been in it since 2007 or so um I've worked in it cyber security and some development as well initially I cared a lot about my employability and I was like really scared to like not being able to replace my current job so led me to being really good at job hunting which led me to doing YouTube and trying to help other people job hunt and get into it so yeah that's kind of my background I kind of actually wanted to dive a little bit deeper into your journey and talk about some of the challenges and triumphs you faced along your journey uh into the IT field I in the beginning of course I didn't really know how to get into the field I guess um I kind of had that initial mindset like oh you have to like get a degree and then you know sort of ifications which I mean it it helps a lot right but I I just didn't know like how to make myself employable and like how like what made a good resume and like what how I should be applying um so I just kind of floundered with that quite a bit and it took me a couple years to get my first job and then again it took me like a while to get into cyber security just basically to answer your question I didn't know like the proper way to apply to stuff and I didn't know like what was important if that makes sense and I just did a bunch of stuff until I ended up um you know finding jobs eventually so I kind of want to talk about the current state you know diving right on in I want to talk about the current state of the it and cyber security industry and particularly I'm noticing it seems like there's a skill Gap and an increasing demand for qualified professionals you know do you kind of agree with that or do you think the market is in kind of in a Slowdown right now it it seems like it's in a Slowdown based on like the general sentiment of people you know but I do think there there is like a skill Gap as well and there is like a a lot of jobs cuz I look on IND like quite often and you know LinkedIn and there's like a lot of jobs and you see like you know Google and big Tech doing something with their laugh but that's not really like indicative of the whole industry that's just big Tech doing their thing and there's like a lot of other companies that are not really affected necessarily by like you know the economic climate if that makes sense so there's a bit of both I guess I would say it it seems like it kind of goes in es and flows um sometimes and uh the economy feels like it's going through a downturn um some people say the Market can get saturated during that time you know people but learning on what skills you know you need to make yourself stand out from the crowd can be really you know a useful thing to know for people who are just trying to break into the field what are some skills should they be focusing on to really kind of stand out from all the other noise yeah are we talking about um it and cyber security or just Tech in general yeah just kind of yeah Tech in general so for any given job like what you should focus on um what I what I this is really weird and I'm going to make content about this rather I made it it just hasn't been released yet for certain jobs what I like to do is I'll I'll go to like indeed this is a really weird thing to do by the way and I'll I'll collect like a 100 job descriptions and titles and then I'll use GPT to like parse those out and see what like uh employers are asking for and like what's popular if that makes sense so I did it recently for IT jobs and of course like um there was like a lot of like Azure AWS um active Direct Factory ticketing systems this kind of stuff like came out a lot so that's kind of like an indicator if you want to work in entry-level it like okay maybe I should really familiarize myself with cloud computing maybe I should do a bunch of active directory Labs cuz the more you you do those labs and like practice that stuff it becomes like easy easier for you to talk about it when you finally get to the interview and it gives you something to put on your resume so yeah I I observe like a large chunk of jobs in the area that I want to work and just pull out stuff that it looks like people are asking for that makesense no absolutely have you noticed like a certain trend of like you know is are things the requirements starting to shift a little bit more for jobs or jobs starting to focus more on certifications versus like a degree or you know how's the how are you things seeing things change this is me personally um I don't know if this is the reality of things but I I feel like job descriptions are getting a bit more realistic these days from what I've been looking at recently they get made fun of a lot when they say like entry level and you need 5 years of experience like I that still exists but I've been seeing it less um so I think that they're getting a bit more realistic about it and also they're they're coming to realize it's good to have a degree and they will always put like Bach computer science or related field they'll put this but from what I see they're more like um it's not like a hard requirement anymore um cuz I see like a lot of people who go through my courses not everybody has a degree right and they're obviously getting jobs I I can talk to them about it a bit so I think employers are getting like a bit more realistic about it but you still need to like convey your ability to like do the work on your resume and then you still have to like you know convince them to hire you when you get to the interview but they're they're getting a bit more realistic from my point of view anyway so for those people who have like certifications and stuff versus a degree you know apart from just having the certifications is there other ways people can highlight their skills that they have whether it's like a personal lab or a blog or something Have you seen something that you know you that tends to stand out more yeah I think people um should definitely make a portfolio and make it on the web somewhere and then put like a a short URL on their resume that is a real way to distinguish yourself from your peers cuz it's it's one thing to be like I know Azure like I have you know um a900 or I know AWS and then you have like something in your portfolio with like pictures and descriptions and like an outline of what you did and you're explaining like the architecture implemented it's like a huge difference you can really distinguish yourself from your peers and like other people applying um if you do something like that I think I feel my opinion yeah a lot of people when they start to set out in the it field they just focus on like the certifications and what it takes to pass those certifications but I always say you know there's more to building a successful career than just the certifications and just the knowledge you learn from certifications one thing I always talk about is uh your soft skills your soft skills are super important to build building a successful career do you agree and if so can you kind of elaborate on that a little bit more yeah I 100% um agree with that and I can can I speak to the certification part and then the soft skill part oh absolutely okay okay so certification um it's good to have and but the thing that bothers me is a lot of people will they'll focus on just like having the actual paper and that having the paper is good on your resume cuz it little keyword match and stuff but they have this mindset where they're like oh I have this now I can I can like trade it for a job or something and people will say like um you know if a certification comes out that's new that's like really good like for example like Google cyber security or Google IT professional because like it doesn't say that in the like the job description people think that it's like worthless or something but the content of that thing teaches you it has like so many Hands-On lab and it has like um it teaches you like how to job hunt and all this like other stuff that's actually useful so it certification like it kind of gives you two things like first thing is like technical ability and like knowledge but and the second thing it can like provide you something to go on your resume but people focus like too much on like just having the certain and that kind of like just be careful not to do that in my opinion I guess this and the soft skill part I I think this is like really important it's hard to like quantify it and talk about it um I've made like some content around it but it is it is really important to be you know like empathetic and kind and articulate and um courteous to people because when you're sitting down for your interview cuz this is one that like really matters right when you're sitting down for your interview and that maybe they'll ask you like have you worked with active directory and you'll be thinking like oh they're judging if I can like work with active directory but the way you like deliver your answer and conduct yourself and like talk and like all that is like being observed whether or not the interviewer even aware of it and if you if you come off as like arrogant or you do something like rude or weird they can kind of they'll like infer that from the way you talk during an interview so it's like really it's really important to like be aware of that and you know soft skill is really important so it they're they're judging more than just like your technical ability during the interview so just like keep that in mind as a hiring manager myself during my interviews I will ask questions that I specifically leave open-ended and I want to see that person's thought process I want to see how they work through those problems how they convey that to um maybe a non-technical person and how they conduct themselves with little information because I like I want to see them work through the problem like for my organization we're a small organization and you know the people that are successful are independent workers independent thinkers you know don't necessarily need that kind of handheld they're eager to try to um learn and take control and stuff like that so I want to see that during the interview way you conduct yourself in communica in your interview just keep in mind you know the interviewees is not necessarily always looking for your answer to you know to a technical question but how you're going to answer it if that makes sense can I can I ask you a question about your interviewing yeah do you expect people to use the star method like the situation task um the action result thing I never you know kind of expect people to go through that necessarily cuz I I'm different than I think the the typical hiring manager I conduct my interviews very much as a conversational uh framework where I want to be a casual conversation because I feel like when I'm putting that person on the spot and they feel like they're in a very rigid interview they're going to try to they're going to try to impress me you know they're going to try to okay this is what he's asking but he's really trying to ask this where I feel when I kind of kick it down and off and go into a conversational mode they kind of let their guard down and I kind of see really the true person they are there's nothing worse then hiring someone and like a week or two later they start kind of relaxing and you start seeing like oh this isn't the person I interviewed this is this person is not going to work out because I've been there and I've been on the flip side of that where you know in my interviews I always try to be me I try to be honest and a lot of hiring managers can see right through that um you know if you're trying to put on a show for them and stuff like that so does that make sense yeah yeah yeah it does thanks one thing I wanted to point point out is you're an instructor for course careers and I really think what course careers is doing is kind of unique compared to other online e-learning platforms one thing is you know their their curriculum is very career oriented Hands-On and they also offer like job placement support and more do you mind kind of give us a sneak peek on what you do for course careers over there and you know what's kind of going on behind the scenes okay so yeah I'm just like a instructor right for course careers and yeah I deliver like the It course the way I kind of structured and my um I don't know the word the proper word like I guess my rule is I try to make the curriculum as narrow as possible of what people need in order to like get a job into it on purpose I don't teach like a a super broad because in in reality is if somebody's trying to enter like it like entry level it they the stuff they need to know is what the hiring manager expects them to know you you don't necessarily have to like the hiring manager expects you to know this but you go out and like study this this takes like it's good but it takes like a lot of time to like learn this much so I teach those like really like basic um active directory VPN titing system this stuff that like most help desk people need to know and then Hands-On and then the portfolio part and just we just Tred to make a corers we try to like laser focus on what makes people super employable so they can get a job like ASAP instead of you know going a degree for like for four years and then you know hoping to make 50k I really think that's great and that's kind of how I got into the the field I think a lot of people think oh I'm going to need to study cyber security for 2 years before I even start applying for jobs that I don't that method doesn't work because you need to start working in the field ASAP to start building experience so you can start evolving into those higher level jobs experience is huge and like you were saying earlier a lot of these jobs are still asking for you know a bunch of experience so I think the sooner you can land that first entry level job even though if it's not quite the job you want but it's potentially going to give you that experience to be able play that job you want is huge in the field I really um harp on this a lot I'm like don't be just get a job ASAP and cuz if you want to work in cyber security like almost every like entry level it job has some component of cyber security cuz if you work in help desk and someone C clicked a virus or I I clicked a fishing link or something that's like you're you're doing incident response and then you you will be like executing part of a Playbook or something and you can like spin it on your resume and such so you should like as you're saying you should try to work as soon as you can that is really I think golden advice there um and I kind of want to dive into that a little bit deeper especially the people that are new and like they're wanting to get that you know their big break into the tech field in general you know whether it's their their goal the long goal is cyber security or if it's networking or whatever you know what are some things people can do other than just trying to land that basic entry level job that they can do to give themselves an edge amongst the competition so in my opinion like entry level cyber security is it's kind of like kind of like mid-level it I made this thing called the employability framework any job when it comes to like getting hired you only have to really care about two things like the first thing is like actually getting an interview and the second thing is passing the interview and then then you have a job right to get the interview if you want to be like as competitive as possible you just have to look at what a bunch of different employers will care about like some people care about certification some people care about degrees some people care about EXP experience you should try to work to like fill those areas so you might do some research so they can watch your videos and see like what's what's popular or what HR knows about in terms of certifications and try to get those certifications in them because WGU exists now and you can get a degree like kind of quickly for like kind of inexpensive I it might be worth doing that just so you can take care of like that portion because some people care about degrees but if you don't want to get a degree um you have to like make up for in other areas so like you can have like a really strong portfolio right with some really like relevant projects and articulate all of those things really really well make some experience on your resume like if you are um I I won't Shi my course I'll I'll do like another another way so for example if you being like Oh I'm a cyber security content creator cybercity evangelist and you make a bunch of educational cyber security content where you teach people about the labs you did and you post it on like LinkedIn and YouTube and then you make like your own like company or something you say like cyber security like content creator and you have tangible like links to the stuff that you've done that's way better than not having anything on your resume at all and that's something that you can do yourself it helps a lot for for sure um so just I guess to answer your question look at look at the stuff people care about like degrees certification Etc experience and then think about what you can do and just do that thing really really hard and then of course make sure your resume is like ATS compliant like you know all those all those things there's a couple things from that I want to unpack the first question is say I'm new to the it field I have no prior work experience in the field I'm trying to get that first job so I can eventually get a cyber security job when you're when I'm applying for jobs and I'm seeing jobs that of course I probably don't meet the qualifications because I don't have that previous experience should I still be applying for those jobs you think or should I be waiting and trying to figure out other jobs I should apply for yeah you should definitely apply um you shouldn't be like completely naked in the sense that you don't know anything right but if you if you know stuff you should definitely apply I had like a security Analyst job at Microsoft that paid 120k and I only knew what like three of the requirements are were on the she I didn't know anything else but obviously I I have done other stuff as well if you can articulate that well in the in on your resume and if you get an interview and you can articulate it in the interview like oh I haven't worked with AWS but I've done like ABC and XYZ and Azure that relates um of course they're going to like that's enough right because humans are so strong and they can learn anything and if you show that you've done like ABC obviously you'll be able to do like XYZ right that's how I think about that the other thing I want to touch on that you mentioned was ATS and not everyone um that's starting out really knows what that term is you know what that stands for do you kind of want to dive into why that is important part of you know making sure your resume is formatted properly yeah so ATS stands for I think applicant tracking system um you can just think about it like an automated ré scanner because the humans are tired of like reading résumés um so they will run your resume through the ATS and if the ATS is like not smart enough it will like omit big sections of your resume so for example if you have like um a resume with like two columns or something and might not know how to deal with that or if you put like you education then some kind of like weird line underneath it and then your education it it's possible that it will Emmit that whole chunk because like the line you put like confused it for whatever reason so like a sample resume just make it like in my opinion right it's simple as you can with a font that's like not crazy and really like standardized to make sure like the even the dumbest of resume scanner is able to like you know parse it out and infer and like record what you're doing cuz you don't want to go get a B Bor degree and spend like you know 10K at WGU and like another like 6 months on Sears only to have the ATS like completely o omit those and reject you right so it's important absolutely now this is a question I get asked a lot I'm sure you've gotten asked it before too but how do the emerging Technologies such as Ai and blockchain and even iot how are they impacting especially the cyber security landscape and the job market the only answer I can give to that is that it complicates it I guess the in terms of like the threat landscape so I guess it it's uh what's that employability insurance cyber security in terms of like the the job market um especially things like AI it's going to make it so we can do less with more people but at the same time it's always when like there's new crazy technology it ends up making more jobs as well likely I just predict there's going to be a shift so some jobs will probably go away like we're seeing this in software engineering because I I noticed this cuz I was doing software engineering or at least development and automation at Microsoft when GPT came out and I was like wow I can do like the work of five people with this it's really crazy so for sure it's going to like reduce some jobs in some areas but for sure it's going to make jobs in other areas cuz um it it just will so in in terms of like what people should do about it um I think you should still like if you're trying to get into cyber security it's pretty much you're going to be doing the same thing anyway but I would recommend like leveraging chat GPT and like AI to help you with your job preparation process right you can you can get really good at interviewing much faster than otherwise if you use GPT to like dump a job description in GPT and be like oh like make me 50 interview questions oh answer the 50 interview questions and it it will make you better like faster than otherwise right the thing I tell everyone is those that are leveraging AI as the tool that it is are really going to go far in the career field there's those people out there that say oh AI is after our jobs it's going to rep you know take all our jobs we're going you know those people it is going to take their jobs because they're not willing to adapt and evolve their skills I think the people who are willing to leverage AI as the tool that it is are going to be able to advance their careers and go after those higher level positions making even more money yeah you you have to ride those wave I I rather I would recommend it because obviously you know we don't have like horse and carriage anymore all this stuff like evolves and evolves right and you you have to like um you don't have to do anything but you should kind of hop on the wave and like see what you can do with the stuff that came out cuz if you can do that you know you're just going to make yourself more valuable and then you know stay relevant and employable and all those things don't be scared of it just embrace it and try to explore what you can do cuz I I use it every day it's crazy it it is you know I I I use probably chat GPT at least almost every day I'm not quite every day yet I think but pretty pretty darn close it's crazy the things that I'm doing with able to do with it to automate some of the simplest tasks and make it so I can focus on the more important stuff and the stuff I really enjoy doing um it is a really useful resource I kind of wanted to backtrack a little bit and talk a little bit more about course careers course careers is you know I've partnered with them for the creation of this video I kind of want to talk to your experience with working with course careers and some of the uniqueness they offers like I mentioned earlier course care is not your typical online learning platform what really sets them apart from the other online platforms the the narrowness of the scope and the the quality of the content in the scope that's being delivered if that makes sense and we will like revise the course kind of often to make sure it's relevant and we don't just like dump it on there and leave it for sure like we update it and then kind of maintain it as well and on the sales there's like the tech sales side and like other courses that are not just it but like the the tech sales side they have Partnerships with companies where they they can like feed students directly into the hiring pipeline we were working on that for it but it doesn't exist quite yet so I just Tred to go like really hard on like the job hunting portion of the course that's how in my opinion that's how course GRS is kind of set apart it's it's narrow and it's designed to like FASTT track you into getting a job instead of like you know teaching you a bunch of like Theory type stuff which is good but the objective is to like help you to get a job like kind of as fast as possible and I think again it just goes back to what we were talking about earlier is I think the sooner you can land that first entry level job in the field again it could just be the most basic help dust job but you're building that experience you know and course careers is helping you FastTrack that process to build that experience to land that first job so you can be doing the job that you really want to do quicker than normal so yeah people have been they're able to do it pretty quick in the it course um oh I have a bunch of interviews on my channel but like 8 weeks 9 weeks 10 weeks there's some people like even less than that so I feel kind of bad like saying it but that it it can be pretty fast like you just have to know what the hiring manager expects you to know and then you can get hired and once you start working just uh you know keep studying and keep building your skill and experience so it's yeah like you said it's good to get a job like ASAP cuz then after that you know it's kind of the pressure is off you just got to like keep learning absolutely you know as we start to land the plane here if you could go back in time and tell your younger self you know any piece of advice that you now know what would that be oh gosh I I would have just handed myself the employability framework and be like point just do this um so the problem I did when I was younger is I I kind of got like too many certifications um without doing anything else it's good to have them but it if I want to like Advance my career there's more economic ways to do it like a couple really relevant certifications and then uh a ton of labs in portfolio to make your lab work tangible that's what I've probably would have told my younger self to do I did practice a lot but I didn't like put it anywhere where people could see it so and I didn't put it on my resume either oddly enough which is really weird so just a lot of practice um make a portfolio of it and then if you can get a degree at try to have one just you know as an but yeah just don't get too many certifications just just just to have them right it's kind of not a waste of time but you can use your time better that's a really good piece of advice you know I I often get people coming to me saying I'm going to get this C this this certification and then I'm going to apply for my first job and I'm like okay why are you wasting all your time getting these certifications and money getting these certifications when during that whole time you could be working and making money and potentially having your employer play for these certifications and all that yep also to me like as a hiring manager I'm going to put my hiring manager hat on when I see someone that is applying for a job and they got like 10 different certifications they have alphabet soup after their name but they haven't put any of that to any practical use I'm going to be like okay this person's great at taking certification exams but obviously they don't know how to actually Implement those skills because they don't have any experience so they're instantly going to go into the rejected pile to me in my mindset is is that kind of what you you've you experienced as well yeah well I must have experienced that cuz I I didn't uh you know I didn't I was kind of slow to get a job and like slow to advance my career so that's probably that's probably what I experienced yeah you know if people want to kind of connect with you more see what you're doing over course careers or just you know connect with you um see the content you're putting out where can they find you they can just find me on YouTube at Josh maor and then of course I'm on I'm on LinkedIn as well um and I I post there sometimes but usually YouTube I'll try to post more in LinkedIn but yeah I think that's where I've actually first came across you know your content was over at on YouTube uh you make some really great videos over there oh thank you you too actually you too absolutely I appreciate that we we'll we'll definitely make sure and Link those up in the description for people who who want to watch more and learn more about what you're doing thanks appreciate that awesome well again I really appreciate you taking the time to come on the channel and share some amazing wisdom with us and uh and yeah thank you again yeah thank you too it's a it's an honor it's an honor to come in here and chat with you we'll have to do like another one of these some somehow in the future absolutely no I definitely would love to have you back on the channel thank you well everyone I really hope you enjoyed this video and until next time keep learning

Channel: The Bearded I.T. Dad

Views: 24,052

Keywords: The Bearded I.T. Dad, information technology, i.t. career questions, tech job hunt, job search strategies, jobs, cybersecurity, cyber security, cybersecurity salary, cybersecurity for beginners, cyber security training for beginners, introduction to cybersecurity, cybersecurity course, cybersecurity training, cybersecurity basics, what is cyber security, tech jobs, tech jobs without coding, tech jobs with no experience, tech, how to get into tech, cyber security career

Id: uTqkO6AdPJQ

Length: 28min 17sec (1697 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024