Dave Bittner, Producer & Host of TheCyberWire

Finding Your Career Path in Cybersecurity

Security
Dave Bittner Hesdshot
Image shows a four person panel in front of a greenish screen.  You can see the back of three audience member's heads.  People are in the background behind the screen.

Top experts on what you need to know now about landing a job in cybersecurity.

What’s a must-see from the recent RSA Conference? Definitely this panel discussion on cybersecurity careers with some of Juniper’s top security professionals. If you’re interested in pursuing a career in tech cybersecurity, push play now and get the inside scoop and great advice on how to get your foot in the door at top tech companies like Juniper. Whether it’s extracurricular activities or proven passion, you’ll learn what qualities really matter to those in recruiting positions. 

Show more

You’ll learn

  • The career path each of these experts took to get where they are today 

  • Why some companies are starting to rethink the requirements for hiring in tech

  • Things that make a resume stand out when applying for career opportunities in cybersecurity 

Who is this for?

Security Professionals Business Leaders

Host

Dave Bittner Hesdshot
Dave Bittner
Producer & Host of TheCyberWire

Guest speakers

Krystle Portocarrero Headshot
Krystle Portocarrero
Product Manager, Advanced Threat, Juniper Networks
David Brezinski Hesdshot
David Brezinski
Sr. Director of Security Architecture & Engineering, Juniper Networks
Mounir Hahad Headshot
Mounir Hahad
Head of Juniper Threat Labs, Juniper Networks

Transcript

0:06 all right folks we are going to go ahead and get started here let me get the thumbs up from our tech crew to make sure we are rolling and set to go all

0:13 right perfect thank you all for joining us here at the rsa conference we are here in the juniper booth i'm dave

0:19 bittner from the cyber wire and it is my pleasure to join our friends from juniper once again great to be here with

0:25 all of you and thank you for joining us for our panel discussion here it is titled finding your career path in cyber

0:31 security we've got a great group of experts here from juniper uh starting uh

0:36 at the far side there we've got crystal puerto carrero she is the product line manager at juniper next to her is david

0:44 berzinski he's senior director of security architecture and engineering with juniper and to my left is lanier

0:51 haha he is head of juniper threat lab so welcome to all of you and thank you for sharing your insights

0:57 um let's start by going down the line and just getting a brief introduction to each of you can you share with us what

1:03 was your career path into the industry can i start with you crystal all right so

1:08 my career path was a very long winding that's what i would say i started out that i have a degree

1:15 in glass and sculpture so clearly a direct path into security

1:20 after i got out of school i realized that they wanted me to pay back those loans

1:26 which was a shocker i said oh i need to find a job i actually started out just doing help desk and i moved from doing kind of just

1:33 like endpoint help desk kind of work into more server

1:38 administration and then i took a job for a while doing sharepoint so if anybody's ever worked with sharepoint i just teach

1:44 a five-day architecture class at the end of five days you learn that doesn't matter what you do it's still gonna suck

1:52 this is like when you had to run your own you know sharepoint like infrastructure is that horrible i took a job at the us army i ended up

1:59 doing like custom sharepoint development it was the worst thing we ever did and after that i said anything that's not

2:05 sharepoint i'll do and actually what came across my desk maps was a teaching

2:10 gig for juniper networks funny enough to actually help their next screen to juno's conversion as you're

2:17 removing all the old net screen devices and then moving the srx so i was actually early on an instructor uh

2:24 teaching for juniper on some topic from palo alto did comptia to a number of other

2:31 vendors in the security space and that was always the thing that really interested me the most

2:36 so eventually after a number of years i wanted to get out of the training kind of contracting sector and moved into a

2:43 job in sales as a sales engineer with juniper and then into products a couple years later

2:49 so really interesting and i think worth capturing that you know a non-traditional path into

2:55 the industry you don't have to have gone through and gotten that computer science degree to find your place here right

3:01 yeah yeah and funny enough i actually started out at rit as a computer science major and decided to move to do glass

3:07 and sculpture this was a choice that i made and it ended up years later and a bag on that side

3:13 all right well david how about you hello everyone there we go hello everyone david

3:19 brzezinski nice uh appreciate everyone uh taking time out to uh sit in on this

3:24 session um so i uh my dad worked for pac bell way

3:29 back in the day in their early 70s and he was actually responsible for building out the t1 networks

3:36 those of you that have been around for a while t1 1.544 megabits per second and i

3:41 remember as a teenager hearing him talk on the phone and uh troubleshooting and i was always

3:46 fascinated by that and so uh some fast forward a couple years later commodore 64. you know i started playing

3:53 with those writing basic little programs tinkering i love to take things apart put it back together i love the wiring

4:01 like uh wiring at the in the home phone systems data systems

4:07 so um i went into the united states army i learned how to jump out of perfectly good airplanes at nighttime set up

4:13 communications equipment i was trained as a um as a signal operator and it was

4:19 assigned to special operations unit at fort bragg north carolina and i think that was really the the

4:26 the star or the catalyst for me in terms of kind of heading in this

4:32 direction over the years and so after i served a number of years in the military

4:37 i took a couple system administration jobs i finished up my college degree it's in information systems management

4:44 computer science and really started out as an administrator

4:50 worked as a network admin transitioned to network manager this was long before security was really a specialty of focus

4:57 but we you know manage things like firewalls and stuff like that and then about 20 years ago transition more into

5:05 a dedicated focused security role so it's really really been um a wonderful

5:11 journey and i think that you know for me and i think this is true for most of us

5:16 you have to find something that you have a passion for um that's the bottom line you know and

5:22 so um that's been my experience and that's kind of how i ended up where i am all right very good one year yeah these

5:29 are great stories by the way i'm here the counter example to say that uh you do not have to have worked with the us

5:35 military to end up in cyber security contrary to these two guys

5:40 i you know for me honestly the cyber security has always been a matter of a calling it's not really a job

5:47 i i feel strongly about what we're doing and i realized that kind of thing when i had

5:52 to move away from my parents house and the only means of communication was through the internet they are not

5:58 internet savvy and i'm thinking look if the hackers get a hold of this thing and mess it up for

6:03 us it's just too big to lose and then you know i i fortunately got

6:09 the chance to do some education abroad and you know uh it was very easy for me

6:14 to do that and i was thinking that there's so many people around the world that do not have access to quality

6:20 education it used to be now they can right you can get online you can get all kinds of education in

6:26 the middle of africa you can still have access to quality education now the problem with that is

6:32 if again we touch things like a matter of trust on the internet identity on the internet or

6:39 just if you start ddos in these kind of places or hitting with ransomware these kind of places

6:44 we're going to destroy this ability that we have to share knowledge across the world

6:50 and it just couldn't stand by and not do anything about it so it's really a comment for me to get in there now how i

6:57 got in there was a little bit of a detour i actually did a lot of electronic design automation

7:02 software in my early days and i ended up at some point i wanted to

7:08 work for the e-level security because at the time it wasn't really about ransomware spam was the problem it's

7:14 like you send your parents an email they can't find it because it's in the middle of a whole bunch of jobs so that's how i ended up in cyber

7:21 security and i honestly haven't looked back well welcome to all of you i i you know

7:27 i think there's a there's kind of two sides to the cyber security employment discussion one is

7:33 that we hear about all of these unfilled jobs uh thousands tens of thousands some will

7:39 say millions of jobs globally that are going unfilled but then you hear uh

7:45 folks who are coming up through school or are considering switching and they're saying they're having trouble finding a

7:51 position they're having trouble getting people to take them seriously for that entry-level job

7:57 are we missing out here of not bridging that gap between it seems to me like a lot of organizations are looking for

8:03 folks who are coming fully baked you know they want people who have 10 years of experience for a

8:09 technology that's only been around for five years right um how do we bridge that gap

8:16 crystal thoughts on that i think part of it yeah i mean i think there is a gap that was there

8:22 and i think more companies need to be just partly willing to grow like their staff we know that

8:29 there's a staffing shortage but how else do you expect to feel it we either fill it with more technology and more things

8:35 which if that fixed the issue would all be okay but it's not that the

8:41 you know reality so i think you have to be okay taking people who are early in their

8:46 career and really trying to help them grow and learn these things because it's not the easiest field to get into and

8:52 when it comes down to the amount of data especially nowadays that you're looking at when it comes to say like research or

8:59 just attack surface i mean there's so many different components to security that it can

9:05 become really hard just to figure out where to start i always like liking it too remember being like a kid

9:10 and your mom says go to your room and clean up your room and you get up there and look around you're like oh my god people don't even know where to start so

9:16 i'm going to sit down and not it's it's very it becomes difficult to figure out how to start

9:22 dating yeah so um i i do think that some companies uh juniper included are

9:29 starting to rethink things like college degree requirements right i mean there are a lot of very talented smart people

9:36 out there that for whatever reason did not go to college and i think that

9:42 that's great that's okay there's a lot of potential talent out there and

9:48 i really think it's about aptitude and inserting ourselves into the

9:53 um existing pipelines and developing new pipelines i was talking to someone earlier today about um

10:00 you know girls and boys at teenagers that they do have an inclination that you know

10:06 they've been using these devices all their lives right and so how do we get them and funnel

10:12 them into a pipeline where they can get some of the basic educational baselines

10:17 things like understanding basic networking and uh maybe a little bit about scripting and you know some of the

10:23 very basic foundational things that they can then in turn build upon and i know for me i was talking to munir just a

10:30 while ago you know i have a couple racks open and it has been very challenging in that

10:35 there's a lot of people with uh you know they'll say well i have background with sock and ir but then you

10:40 find out they have simply read some reports when you talk to them right and so again i think that we need to do more

10:47 to uh intervene earlier and uh and uh

10:52 i'm willing to take the risk if someone has the aptitude and shows that they have you know i i love to solve hot

10:58 puzzles and so that's one of the things i do when i interview people is i'll give them a little puzzle and see how they they do with that and oftentimes if

11:06 they're like you know they engage whether they solve it or not it tells me a lot about their personality and their

11:13 ability to really you know come in on this path yeah but here are your thoughts yeah i i just

11:19 want to echo what dave was just saying about the shift in the need for looking at degrees like to be honest with you

11:25 guys the most senior person on my team has never had a college degree it was perfectly fine extremely smart

11:32 guy he can pull up a proven concept for rsa kind of thing in no time and he's just the

11:39 wizard you know he can do whatever we need him to do so it's not all about degrees i have to

11:45 admit that sometimes when we're going for degrees you're looking for some sort of a stability because

11:50 in my team for example we do great research quite a bit and research is also about sometimes discipline right

11:57 that discipline comes from what you learn at school if you've done your homework on time you've done your assignments you know how to write

12:03 reports it makes it a little bit easier that's why we're looking for degrees not necessarily for technical knowledge

12:09 behind those degrees now but on the flip side of things yes we do need to start forming people who

12:15 come in out of college with some amount of information about cyber security some level of knowledge

12:20 and and i think we're doing some industry and academia um relationships

12:26 of building uh but it's that just doesn't go far enough last year for it actually it was

12:31 nice it was two years ago just when the pandemic started i took on four senior students from

12:39 a college down in southern california and we had a six-month project of internship for them and it was

12:48 funded by juniper and it was followed by their own advisor but you know i was

12:53 also the advisor for for that project and that team and it was a really good partnership

12:58 because they get to learn what the industry knows and they apply their skills and knowledge that they're learning at

13:04 school and what you end up with is people who have both the degree some amount of experience right it's not

13:10 it's not measured in years but it's definitely very useful when they're starting and it was a very successful

13:17 project and we actually ended up hiring some of them at the end of that internship let me ask each of you when

13:23 you're looking through that pile of resumes what are some of the things that that moves someone to the top are there

13:30 non-traditional things that catch your eye start with you david

13:36 yeah um i think someone that a lot of times when i'm reading a resume i can pick up on if there's a passion

13:44 that is uh exuded in the words that are on paper i can feel it right you know

13:49 and so that is one thing that i look for i really think in my experience those that are most successful and they're not

13:55 they're not coming into security for the famer fortune right a lot of times there's not a lot of

14:01 glory in what we do um and uh you know but

14:06 i look for that passion i look for people that like to solve problems and that have that kind of as a mindset

14:13 right um and i'm usually able to pick up on those types uh when i read it and then when i

14:19 interview it normally confirms those assumptions so christmas yeah i mean i love a lot

14:26 i look a lot of times for i guess maybe myself almost in some good times it's like looking for

14:31 non-traditional paths but you see again like passionate that you okay i can kind of see how you go from point a to point

14:37 b to point c because each you know along each of those things there were specific things that stood out like you really

14:43 enjoyed doing this thing and you took that to the next level the next kind of position you went into

14:49 so looking for like problem solving and also like what are your you know kind of extracurricular activities i'm always

14:55 kind of interested in because i think adding people who have different backgrounds

15:00 and look at problems in different ways whether it's where you come from or you know what your background is what

15:06 you do you know do you enjoy like looking at art and that's not necessarily traditional but it makes you solve problems and

15:12 think differently and it's not that it's different is better it's just that we're all better together if we have different

15:17 points of view not everybody is kind of looking at things from the same path linear yeah so i'm a little bit more

15:23 traditional from that angle if you're looking for just what bubbles are at the top right so if you have like 100

15:29 resumes what's going to be the top 10 you want to look at i'll be honest it's uh it's people who

15:34 have done something similar to what i'm looking for and they have succeeded at it and made a difference in doing so not

15:41 just oh i failed this role for like day in day out for a number of years but what have you achieved what have you

15:47 changed did you live with the status quo did you make things better that's really

15:52 important but you know honestly yeah also very from the opposite people i'm more uh

15:58 what excludes a candidate sometimes you exclude candidates a lot easier than just finding the one that you really

16:04 want and that's uh and that's also a personal choice but for me the one thing from my experience

16:11 at least what i have found to be a little bit um you know upsetting is the fact that people put a ton of keywords on their

16:18 resumes and i guarantee you most of the time they cannot talk more than a couple of sentences about each one of them

16:25 that's really exciting okay i understand you're trying to get through some reviews who may not understand what's

16:31 behind it as you're putting all the keywords in there but i think that's not a good idea because

16:36 in my book that that's going to lower you down the ranks it's an interesting a little bit of a

16:42 dilemma isn't it that i think for a lot of organizations that first level of uh filtering is

16:50 algorithmic and so if i'm that prospect how do i gain that to even get my resume on your

16:56 desk non-traditional ways yeah you know i keep i keep posting on linkedin that i'm

17:03 hiring not a lot of people actually push that button and say hey i'm interested

17:08 so i don't understand is are people just not looking are people not believing

17:14 uh i really don't get it but for me if you go the non-traditional route try to find where the position is uh what is it

17:22 about understanding and try to connect with the hiring manager if you can try to bypass all of this

17:28 send an email get on twitter get on linkedin whatever social media you can get a hold of the person who posted this

17:35 and people have networks reach out to your friends put your name

17:40 there what do you know about this position who's hiring for it what group is it reach out to somebody from the group

17:46 bypass hunger for patreon you know for one thing it'll say that you care about

17:51 that position in that role that you're interested in the company you're not just

17:57 spraying your resume around at 100 you know job post things and hoping that one of them would

18:03 i think that's uh that's equal [Music] yeah i i agree and i i think for me you know

18:10 it's those that i've seen those resumes where you know all the keywords are there blah blah blah but the ones that really stand out

18:17 to me is you know here's what i did and here's why i did it and here's the outcome right and then

18:25 based on that you can get more of the sense of their practical experience

18:30 in the role and i even have one of the questions that i ask when i do narrow it down is

18:35 tell me one of your shortcomings uh it can be anything we all have our strengths right but i

18:41 want to know about one of your shortcomings i work way too hard and i'm way too dedicated to my company i think

18:48 i i've had some amazing very thoughtful responses you know people saying look you know

18:53 i tend to get overwhelmed at times when i try to take on too many things all at once right well we all do

18:59 um and so uh yeah i think that there's a number of things that we can look for watch for and uh really help to hone in

19:07 on the you know the right people for the right job the right time right role yeah crystal yeah i would say to echo what

19:14 you're talking about that's always every interview that i do the very last question i ask is tell me about a time

19:20 something didn't work and how did you go through and deal with that i think a lot of times like your resume is always

19:27 about what's good about you like telling the story making sure you have those key words it's all of your successes

19:34 but nobody's path is filled with just success so i wouldn't know what didn't work and like what did you learn from

19:40 that i think it says a lot more about a person a lot of times and what what shows up on a resume

19:46 what about some of those extracurricular things i mean for someone who does have a lot of experience to things like um

19:52 capture the flags you know blog posts with showing the research that they're doing can that move the

19:58 needle for you that's for me for sure yeah you know i mean throughout research those kind of

20:03 things are really relevant for me it not only shows that the candidate might have the right background the right skill set

20:10 etc he also shows that he goes above and beyond to hone those skills capturing the plaque is not something you

20:16 necessarily do for your current job or for your studies right it's something you do because you're passionate about

20:22 that thing because you want to push the limits because you want to prove something and uh that to me speaks

20:28 volumes i for me it depends right i mean like if there's some technical aptitude or

20:34 something related to the the job that i'm seeking absolutely but i also have

20:39 seen where you know i'll go out and do a linkedin check and there's a thousand and one post on w you know a person just

20:45 making noise wanting to kind of market themselves and for me that's a little bit of a turn off

20:51 you know it's like if you want to do that go work for a modeling agency or whatever you know but you know people do what they have to do right but it's so

20:59 subjective yeah i always like seeing um especially when you you can tell somebody's

21:04 passionate if they're like doing blog posts podcasts because they're trying to share the knowledge that they're

21:10 learning with everybody else and i find that kind of the most important like you learn a lot again about a person to

21:15 figure out what they're interested in the fact that they want to share that with the world so looking at do they have like training you know

21:22 they always were not going to be a lot more we're going to open it up for q a here in just a moment so if you have

21:28 anything you'd like to ask our panel uh please keep that in mind um last question i'm gonna go down the line for

21:34 that person who is either coming up and considering a career or maybe pivoting from another career

21:40 what's your advice what are your short words of wisdom let me start with you crystal don't be afraid just go for it

21:46 like sit down and just take the time to start learning read do whatever like you read hands-on

21:52 like create labs i started out like a very non-traditional way doing training and certification

21:58 and like my job was to learn it so i could teach it to other people and so i think again just sitting down and doing

22:03 it and being passionate and keep working at it and you'll get there david um so

22:09 i mentor a couple people and i think that you said it earlier crystal it can be absolutely overwhelming right if you

22:14 if you've not worked in the space or been exposed to it it can be absolutely overwhelming there's so many topics

22:21 areas especially right and so um a lot of times what i do is i

22:27 will say well look if you really are let's find out what you're interested in ask a couple questions focus on the

22:33 basics networking basic coding scripting learning about operating systems targeting those those fundamental things

22:40 and then um you know uh really just kind of uh exploring and discovering right

22:46 and encouraging that and most importantly you know you hear about self-made men or

22:52 women or whatever right i don't i don't believe in that we're all dependent upon others right this is not a me thing it's

22:58 a wee thing so i think that latching on to someone that's in this industry

23:03 finding a mentor or a couple mentors is absolutely critical

23:10 and you know something i've heard over and over again is how willing people in this industry are to take on mentors

23:15 there really is a culture of sharing and lifting people up from from uh below so

23:21 but here what are your thoughts yeah that's true about the mentorship thing it's actually one of the cultures we have at juniper where it's you know

23:27 pretty much everybody in some some leadership position uh is mentoring people uh you know my thought about this

23:34 is you know first of all you need to really think that you want to be in cyber security because

23:41 again it's going to take a toll on you it's going to take a long time to be good at it and if you do not want to be

23:47 good at it then maybe it's the wrong thing for you but the one thing you got to think about is that cyber security is so such a fast space the one thing

23:55 you've got to know from the very beginning do i want to be in defensive cyber security or in offensive cyber security because it's going to change a

24:02 lot about what you want what you're going to do what you need to learn the amount of availability you need to have

24:07 for yourself and your own education your continuous education so figure out whether you want to be in one

24:13 or the other and then you have to be genuine about it this is not again about a job you really have to want it to be

24:20 good at it and if that's the case then i see absolutely no problem for anybody to

24:26 succeed there's a ton of educational material there is a good culture of raising people up

24:32 newcomers specifically so i would say just go for it and

24:37 be certain that you're going to succeed at it and i would also suggest that there are a lot of non-technical jobs out there i

24:44 mean cyber security needs lawyers we need graphic designers we need managers all that privacy yeah there's

24:50 plenty of opportunities for the folks who didn't come up with it who aren't computer scientists and donate ever

24:55 intended can i yeah i just want to say one other thing in in response to munir my friend

25:01 here um i when i mentor people and they're asking and it is overwhelming for sure i don't

25:07 necessarily say look you need to figure out where it is you need to be here because it is so expansive try different

25:13 things out it's like you know kids that are heading to college or maybe not going to college just trying to figure out what am i going to do with the rest

25:20 of my life try things discover but the main thing is do you have a passion for it is there

25:26 meaning and purpose and what you're finding here and if so you can figure out if you want to specialize in

25:32 something or maybe you're a generalist maybe you do more on the project consulting side and you dabble in a lot

25:37 of different things right that's okay so yeah absolutely all right we're going to open it up for some questions here

25:44 anybody have any questions for our panel let me see uh raised hands anybody

25:49 doesn't look like it oh yes sir when you're looking to join a company or

25:55 evaluate a company given a lot of the uh ip and really the secret sauce

26:01 makes it hard to really understand how that company is doing something needs to be better than another competitor or

26:07 how do you from the outside looking in particularly in a field like cyber security think through that when you really won't

26:13 have whole visibility until you come on the inside good question wow do you want to take

26:19 this one yeah that was a tough one boy that's a great question and i i don't have a real great answer to it

26:26 because like i've been doing this for a long time and i think that uh in the security domain

26:33 i think a lot of the vendors have complicated things right you know um and so

26:39 we've made it very complex and so um i i you know i think that

26:45 if one's looking at a job at a certain company it's important to do all your basic homework you know what do their

26:51 balance sheets look like how do they how are they positioned in the market right and i think that that says a lot but i i

26:57 think um that's a real tough question to answer until you get into the inside and you kind of get an understanding of the

27:03 inner workings so i want to add to that if you don't mind that it depends whether you're looking at

27:09 cyber security from an infosec perspective or from a security vendor perspective where you're doing things

27:14 like you're developing security products or you're doing good research for uh for that purpose it's very different um

27:21 don't be shy of asking these questions so one very important thing that a hiring manager in security is going to

27:26 look for is can i build trust with this candidate is this somebody who i can

27:33 believe they will not let me down when there is information at stake that is maybe

27:38 confidential or customer-related information that we need to keep in a secure place

27:43 we need to build that trust so the interview is really important for that i had interviews where the candidates themselves asked me just about as many

27:50 questions that i asked them i give them usually a few minutes at the end you end up going for like half an hour with some

27:56 of them that's really important ask all the questions you want what is the funding in that team you're going to uh

28:02 what projects are they working on are they looking forward or are they just patching holes so all of these things

28:08 are are going to give you this uh warm fuzzy feeling when you're comparing that

28:13 interview with another one this is the place i want to be at or maybe it's not

28:18 i would add on like i guess for me a lot of it comes down to people like there's the technology side

28:25 and a lot of companies have a lot of a really amazing tech but you have to work with the people on your team day in and

28:31 day out and so i'm really more interested like will i get along with them do i believe that they're going to help like uplift me and i can help up

28:37 with them and we'll all be better together or is this just they need me to do a specific job and that's it and

28:44 again it depends on what you're looking for at the time yeah all right any other questions

28:50 yes [Music] what would you say uh you know about

28:56 folks who look at job requirements and maybe self-select out because i know you

29:01 know especially these days like there are a lot of postings out there with you know

29:08 i want 10 years experience and all of these certifications and that may be

29:13 you know really really intimidating even though the person might actually be able to do the job

29:20 good question i think i think especially women right as women we tend to do that

29:25 maybe more yep and i'm not quite good enough i'm not gonna have i don't check all the boxes so why would they even

29:31 care there's somebody out there that's always better than me and what i would say is just go for it if you think that you have an

29:37 opportunity i would prefer when i'm hiring i would prefer somebody that's passionate rather than somebody that has all the technical

29:43 check boxes but if they're passionate and they really care they like i can feel that they want to move things

29:49 forward and make look at things in a different way that's totally okay yeah i've seen survey results that show

29:55 that um women in general will not apply for a job unless they have all they meet all

30:00 of the requirements and men will basically apply for anything

30:06 yeah the one thing to uh kind of realize is that not all joke post things are created equal some people would create a

30:13 joke mostly that describes their ideal candidate and the key word is ideal are

30:18 they going to find that ideal candidate chances are not so what do they do after that they start compromising on certain

30:24 things that okay it's not the ideal candidate but you know what i think you can learn this one thing that is missing

30:30 so but we also have to be pragmatic and practical as as hiring managers if we let it lose and go just don't worry

30:36 about it that's on the job description that's not going to work for anybody either and then we're back into the algorithmic selection and that's not

30:43 going to help people so what i would say is look at the most important requirements

30:49 in that job description if you think you can do most of them if you have something special to bring to the table

30:54 by all means go ahead and apply but if you feel like you're completely outside

31:00 the box and give yourself everybody else a favorite time

31:05 yeah i i agree and i um i know like um i have a couple openings

31:10 in both bangalore and the us and it's interesting in that in india

31:15 i will have a job at a certain grade and says five to seven years practical

31:20 experience you know seeking cissp prefer blah blah blah and i will have people

31:26 with two years experience and no certifications apply but if they have the uh track record in

31:34 their previous roles and it looks like that passion is there i will often interview them and there have been

31:40 occasions where i've downgraded the grade to slot in someone that i thought had the potential to grow in the company

31:47 and the context we were seeking i think also like i know something we do when we put out a job uh

31:53 you know request is uh we'll say you know four-year degree or equivalent experience and that just

32:00 helps people know that don't automatically disqualify yourself if you don't check off every single time

32:08 all right well everyone thank you for coming and sitting in here and being a part of our presentation here today i

32:13 want to thank our panel uh we have crystal porto carrero she is a product line manager at juniper we have vanir

32:21 haha he is head of juniper's threat labs and last but not least david berzinski

32:26 he's senior director of security architecture and engineering how about a round of applause for our panel here

32:31 today [Applause] i am dave bittner from the cyber wire if

32:37 you're not familiar with us please do check us out we have a whole lot of podcasts including our daily podcast

32:43 which is a daily cyber security news feed it's about 20 minutes of everything you need to know for your day in cyber

32:49 security so do please check that out i understand we have some giveaways here so i'll hand it over to the juniper

32:55 folks to take care of that

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