Welcome to Career Hacking Village.
My name is Kathleen Smith.
I'm one of the Village team members.
We're so happy that we finally have been able
to bring a Career Hacking Village to DEF CON.
As we know, many of us are looking for a job
and by recent studies,
there were over 43% of people said
they did not know how to find a job.
So I'm very thankful to invite Kirsten Renner
as one of the best recruiters in our community
to sort of share some of the best practices,
especially now.
Please remember that we'll be doing discussion in Discord.
We also have resume review and career coaching
going on from 10 to 1700 on Friday
and 12 to 1600 on Saturday.
So without further ado, Kirsten.
Hello, DEF CON.
I know that we all wish we were in Vegas right now,
but let's make the best of this.
This is actually the first summer in 11 years
that I am not there doing summer camp.
I know that for a lot of you, it's 20 or more years.
So this is crazy, but let's get through it
and make the best of it.
So this is my talk, but I still need a job.
So this will be a conversation for the active candidates
and also, and mostly probably,
for the passive candidates as well.
So I'm going to also offer the perspective
of how this can be helpful, not just for candidates,
but if you are trying to fill a job
or if you have in the past, if you will in the future,
this is going to be relevant to you too, and here's why.
Think about how this is going to offer to you,
noticing what are the challenges
that candidates are facing
so that you can help make things better for them.
So we will go through initially what's new
in our current times.
Although I will say we're so far into this
that we're probably all sort of getting to the point
of being an expert at all the new things
that we have to deal with,
but I will touch upon them quickly.
I will go through some tips.
One thing that I want to do differently
is show you how to hopefully take advantage of
and use to your advantage
how the new circumstances
can actually have a positive twist for you as well.
And then we will go through
what I like to call the fundamentals,
the things that all candidates face
and talk about on a regular basis.
So who am I?
As Kathleen mentioned, I am Karsten Renner.
I am the Director of Recruiting at Novetta,
an advanced analytics and cybersecurity firm.
I'm a college dropout,
started in software engineering,
and then I went into IT.
And how did that lead to recruiting?
Well, when I was building help desks
and managing them,
that's my favorite part,
was building the teams,
finding the people to bring on to the teams.
And so here I am 20 years later,
random personal thing.
I run ultras.
Ultras are anything longer than a marathon.
I've done about a dozen of them in the last 10 years.
And I have a almost disturbing love for crime TV.
Also a proud Army mom over the last week.
So I'm gonna talk to you
from a few different perspectives.
So I have seen and heard and read
many intelligent individuals
offering useful advice from their perspectives
on how to best find a job in our community specifically.
And they're coming from the perspective
of having been a candidate,
or a hiring manager,
or in some cases, a recruiter.
So I just happen to have been all of those things,
and I still am a couple of those things.
So I'm hoping that I can take my 20-ish years
of doing this and offer to you
the things that I have seen definitely work
and definitely not work,
and make those into tools that are gonna work for you.
So speaking of perspectives,
the survey that you see on the screen
is something that I put up on Twitter and LinkedIn.
And anytime you see a survey in my slides,
that's where I got it from.
Otherwise, I would have stated the source.
So I feel like it was a few months ago,
I heard, and this is not an exact quote,
but Alyssa Miller was talking about a survey
that she had put out for a talk that she was doing,
I believe at RSA, which she noted.
And she said something along the lines of
that there's a certain amount of responses
that constitutes data, maybe that makes it scientific.
So this is not thousands or tens of thousands of responses.
This is probably hundreds of responses.
This is just little snapshots.
This is before I started to do,
or to put together the talk submissions
that I was gonna do for this year.
I wanted my community, the people that I speak to,
the people that I interact with in the community
to tell me what they face the most.
What are they looking at the most?
What do they want me to focus on and talk about?
So that was the purpose of these.
So again, I was actually a little bit surprised
when I was looking at this.
Are you actively looking?
Are you passively looking?
Where are you coming from, from a candidate's perspective?
And I did get Dirk Vader's permission to quote him.
Apparently when he responded to the survey,
he responded with the comment that it is really good.
And I couldn't come up with a better way to say it.
So I asked him if I could quote him.
He said, yes, it is really good career hygiene
to always be at least
kind of keeping your ears and eyes open, right?
That's how we do this.
And as a random side note, technically,
I met the CEO of my current company
when I was happily employed
and had no interest in ever looking
for another job ever again.
I was gonna retire from the job where I was.
So I think that's just a really good testimony
to why you should always keep your eyes open.
And we met at the Mandalay Pool.
Yay, DEF CON.
Okay, so things are kind of different now, aren't they?
Interviews are happening differently.
Everything's happening differently.
So we're gonna go pretty quickly through
some of the tips and reminders.
And I am Italian, so I will tell a funny story
or I find it funny.
I'll probably laugh at myself as well.
But before we go through the tips,
I want you to know that one of the things
that I am very passionate about when it comes to recruiting
and everyone that works for me,
all the recruiters that work for me will tell you,
this is how business is done.
You have to treat your candidates
like they are the most important thing.
The candidate experience is the basis
upon which all the processes that I design
and implement and analyze are based
on the ideal candidate experience.
So when I did an iteration of this presentation
at B-Side San Antonio a few weeks ago,
people on Discord were commenting
while I was giving the presentation
as opposed to reporting it the way I am now.
And they were shocked.
They were shocked when I said that the recruiters
should always make you feel like they are your advocate
and they care about you.
And this is about you, the candidate.
It shouldn't be shocking to you.
It upsets me that it is shocking
and we can make this better, okay?
So we together will make this better.
Keep in mind that throughout your experience as a candidate,
one thing that is really an advantage to you
is that your future employer,
which is everyone that you're interviewing with
and everybody that you're talking to,
is gonna reveal to you in all likelihood
what it will be like to work for them, I believe.
Right? And on the other hand, as a recruiter,
the way that you're behaving as a candidate
is going to give me a little view
into what it's like to work with you, right?
So let's be kind both ways.
Let's be reasonable both ways.
Again, keep in mind, if they aren't flexible,
if they aren't accommodating,
if they won't give you a break and let you be a human
and meet you halfway,
what's it gonna be like to work there?
So keep that in mind while you're facing challenges
in our current environment.
So let's just go through a couple of the pointers.
I, since this is recorded,
you can take a screenshot of this.
You can save it.
I won't read it all verbatim.
However, test, test, test.
I logged in eight minutes early for this recording.
And guess what?
I had to fix some things.
Some things weren't working.
So test your stuff, right?
Test your camera, test your microphone, test everything.
I will also tell, here's a funny story.
When I was presenting at the Many Hats Club Isolation Con
earlier this year,
my first ever virtual presentation, by the way,
I logged in to Green Room and Ray Redacted was there
and he said, let's test it out.
Let's see.
So many of us will have many iterations
of our browsers open at one time
with 10 or 15 tabs per browser at one time.
Let me tell you something.
Close all that stuff.
Close all the things.
So many things can happen.
My company is a Google shop.
So if I had any of those Google windows open right now,
while I'm trying to do this via Zoom,
the camera's gonna get confused
and it's gonna say, who's trying to use me?
And it's never gonna work, right?
You may not even realize
that some minimized window is stealing your camera.
So very important.
Back to the Ray story.
Don't just close the windows, close the document.
When I shared my screen with him as a test,
guess what the first thing that popped up on his screen?
I couldn't see it.
So a lot of us will have many monitors open at once as well.
You don't know what you have minimized.
You don't even remember.
It was my credit report.
I gave my social security number, date of birth,
credit report and credit explanation to a hacker,
just like that.
So close all the things.
So when I say close all the things, by the way,
I get the song,
hack all the things stuck in my head
and then I sing close all the things,
but I won't sing for you today.
I'll go through a few more things.
Look out for distractions.
My dog right now is about a foot away from me.
He's always about a foot away from me.
If anything happens, he will start barking, okay?
Notice there's a glare on my glasses right now.
So do as I say, not as I do.
My dog's in the room, my glasses have a glare on them,
but notice things like that.
Notice what's going on in the background.
If I were to take my screen down,
you would see my bulletin board
and it has a lot of interesting things on it
and that would distract you.
So if you're going for your virtual interview,
just be reasonable and be aware
of what could be distracting.
I turned off all my phones,
which by the way is hard for me
because my son is at basic training
and I'm trying to have my phone ready for when he calls,
but turn off all your phones, turn off all the things.
So be aware of noises that you make.
Don't sip on your coffee, just wait until it's over.
That can sound really gross,
especially if whoever's interviewing you has headphones on.
If I start shifting the papers around on my desk,
does that sound shitty?
Don't do that.
Don't shift things around.
Don't hold your pen in your hand like I am right now.
Don't do what I'm doing.
All right, another thing you can do,
and actually I'll give Ray credit for this one too.
I won't tell you what he calls it,
but look into the camera.
So I personally am distracted right now
because I can see myself, I can see the slides,
I can see my notes,
but try to look into the camera to make this more engaging.
It thinks that I can't see all of you.
I love you, wish I could see your faces,
but look into the camera.
It makes you more engaging.
Okay, so one size does not fit all.
What do I mean by that?
In my upcoming slides, when I go through the fundamentals,
I'm going to be mentioning to you
what I think are gonna be useful ways
for you to be your own best advocate
and be successful as a candidate.
Are all the things gonna fit all the people all the time?
Surely not, right?
Because we already covered
that many of you are in different stages.
So frankly, if you're in the, I don't have a job,
I'm trying to keep the lights on,
I'm trying to get a paycheck,
you're gonna have different standards and perspectives
that are gonna make you make different decisions
during your candidacy journey.
And all of us, the best of us,
a lot of us have found ourselves at times
unemployed, not by choice, right?
It's happened to me, and guess what?
I had to take the first thing that came along
so I could pay my bills at that time.
So that's another stage that you could be in.
And that's another stage that you could be in
throughout your career.
So just keep in mind that I'm offering to you
different tools that'll make sense at different times.
So my recruiting team, where I currently work,
is not part of HR, and I'll tell you why.
We're part of operations.
And this is something that I always hoped
I would be able to do, and I'm thankful that I can now,
is be part of operations so that we're not working
against our customers, right?
Because if the talent that works at the company
is just as much of a tool, commodity, if you will,
as the hardware, as the software,
then in fact, recruiting is part of the operations
of that company, right?
To provide the services, to provide the software
or the products or whatever it is,
you need the right tools.
People are tools in this instance, in this metaphor.
So when I look back at my very brief time
of being a software engineer back in the early 90s
using Visual Basic, as a software engineer,
when you're trying to solve a problem,
what did I do to solve the problem?
You do intakes.
You do intakes for the purpose of what?
Defining requirements with all of your stakeholders,
with your customers and so forth.
Then you do what?
You plot and you plan and you whiteboard
and you try to come up with a strategy
and you implement and you test and you analyze,
rinse, repeat.
That's also recruiting when done properly.
Just listen to me.
I'm going to do what as a recruiter?
I'm going to talk to the,
I'm gonna intake with the candidates,
make it about them, figure out what their requirements are,
preferences, requirements,
and go rank those requirements, right?
I'm gonna find out what's most important.
I'm gonna do a proper write-up.
I'm gonna deliver that to the customer,
in this case, being the hiring manager, okay?
I'm also, as a stakeholder,
a stakeholder is also your customer,
and that would be the hiring manager.
So think of the recruiter as an engineer in this case,
or as a hacker, if you will,
because what they're gonna then try to do,
and I don't mean hacker in the sense of,
you know, people think of social engineering
and manipulating and being tricky and crazy.
I'm not thinking about that.
What I'm thinking about is understanding
the machine of the human, getting to know them,
finding the requirements from each individual.
Every single one of them is different.
The hiring managers are different.
The candidates are all different,
and then finding the right match.
So it's not so much hacking, manipulating,
that sort of thing.
It's not social engineering.
It's really engineering.
It's really designing and really finding the solution
that will make the proper match between those two parts.
To get them all the way to the finish line.
So let's talk about item number one
as one of the areas people want help with.
They want help.
I said, what do you need the most help with?
Is it searching?
Is it finding?
Is it resume writing?
Which I thought, and I used to always hear,
was the big problem, but they said networking.
I posted my very first job opening, printed it,
faxed it to a newspaper, a paper newspaper.
This is when the internet was, what a thought.
And we've come a long way since then.
Let's talk about what we can do in the networking area.
We all know about job boards.
I'm not gonna list everything on here.
I am not here, oh, by the way, to promote or dox
anything that I have listed here that is a product.
I put that out there.
But I will talk about how some of them are useful.
All right.
And everybody knows about job boards,
but you may or may not know about state employment sites.
And here's the reason I'm going to mention that to you.
If you go, every single state has one, promise.
Now, because they're local government
municipality run websites, they might suck.
They might not be user-friendly.
They may not be easy to get your way around on.
However, they are there.
They are there and they are listing.
They are supposed to list every opening.
And here's how that works.
All the companies that are hiring
probably have an applicant tracking system.
And they have scraping tools that are happening
in the background and that are delivering those job openings
to all the state employment boards.
The reason that this can be useful to you,
and when I did this talk in Tampa in person,
I said, let's do an experiment.
Everybody whip out your phone.
So do this later if you want.
Whip out your phone.
Go find either your state employment job board
or the state that you want, that you're targeting,
that you want to move to or that you're interested in
and search around and see what's posted.
And you know what you're going to find out?
That there's jobs that you had no idea
that that company was hiring in your state.
In fact, in our current environment,
you are more likely to see jobs
that you never knew were available where you are
because they're available virtually now.
So enough about that.
No, I'm not getting paid by the state government.
Why didn't you know that?
People may not realize that that's available.
So please, here's another thing.
Actually, somebody split up in my last talk
and told me I was, last in-person one,
told me that I was incorrect.
But in this case, I'm not.
Don't pay.
Don't pay anyone for anything.
Sorry, people who get paid to do stuff,
but there's way too many people willing to help you for free.
Way, way, way too many people willing to help you
for free with your resume, with your interview skills.
It's happening right now here today at DEFCON.
It happens at all the B-sides.
Thanks, Kathleen.
There are people who will help you
learn how to interview better.
There are people who will help you
write your resume better, okay?
In particular, one of the things listed on this slide says,
hey, user, do you want to be a premium user?
Pay me lots of money,
and then the recruiters will be able to find you better.
Actually, there's four or five people listed on this site
who probably are mad because, or frights,
because they want you to pay as a user.
Don't do it, and I'll tell you why.
Because the recruiters, because the companies
who are hiring are already paying the money.
Lots and lots and lots of money to find you,
regardless of your account,
regardless of whether or not you have one,
and certainly you don't need a premium one.
Promise.
I just don't want you to waste your money.
But you can if you want to.
So I haven't recruited in a while, excuse me,
but I know that pretty much all recruiters
have a LinkedIn account,
and we will get to how to communicate with them through that,
and most of them have all of the ways
that you can connect to them open as well.
I know it's hard right now, but conferences are amazing.
I can't speak enough about it.
I can't tell you how much they have been valuable to me
in well over a decade.
The greater part of my success,
and I'm a pretty successful recruiter,
is through the conferences, through the community,
and through networking.
Not just the happy hiring hours and all that junk,
but the industry conferences in particular
are the most valuable.
And if you have the opportunity ever
to volunteer at one of them,
I promise it's going to be multi-fold beneficial to you.
It will be so advantageous to you to be a volunteer.
You will learn, and you will grow,
and your network will flourish when you volunteer
in any way that you can.
So raise your hand, volunteer.
Okay, so real quick about this.
You may or may not be able to see these images.
I put through them together very, very quickly.
I hear you when you say, the recruiters are horrible.
They're horrible.
They reach out to me, and they say horrible things to me,
and they just say things that make no sense,
and why are they asking me all these questions?
I get it.
I'm going to talk to you
about two different perspectives here real quick.
The top is a quick snapshot of my LinkedIn.
My LinkedIn says, oh, by the way,
if you're a recruiter, and I don't know you,
I won't accept your connection request.
P.S., I'm not looking for a job.
It says it right there.
However, you can also see this dude reaches out and says,
do you want to recruit for me?
So I get it, buddy.
You're doing your thing.
My recruiters do their thing as well.
However, I also hear a lot of you saying,
or I see a lot of you saying, are you serious?
You just asked me if I wanted to be a Java developer,
and I'm a CTO, which is kind of like that, right?
No, I don't want to stop being a director
and go source for you.
I get it.
It happens.
I'm sorry.
But it's also an opportunity,
and this could be an opportunity,
even if I hadn't time, for me to talk to this person
and to say, you know what?
You'll notice that, no, I'm not looking.
However, I do know somebody who is,
or maybe you should look in this direction
or that direction.
So everything's always an opportunity to network
and to help others as well.
Also, real quick snapshot down here.
It's 15 or so people who are,
all they said to me in my DMs is,
hey, and that's all they said.
Sorry, not answering you.
So I'm not saying you have to tell me something
super clever or write a whole dissertation
or anything crazy like that,
but you have to compel the people you're reaching out to
to take the extra step.
I heard, I read, you have three to five seconds.
All right, so just do slightly better than just, hey,
because frankly, people like recruiters
who open up their DMs to you on social media
are kind of making themselves vulnerable when they do that.
They're doing it for you so that they can help you,
but we're also opening it up to creepy things
that people send us every once in a while.
So be kind.
Okay, so let's talk about resume real quick.
Obviously be truthful on your resume.
I will go through the guidelines
that I think make your resume most effective for you.
However, remember what I said about responses
and communicating on DMs.
So let me tell you what to do real quick.
And I really want to hear your responses someday,
however you get around to it,
letting me know if this worked for you.
People don't get back to you.
I could be one of those people.
I am guilty of it.
It happens, I'm sorry.
Remember that you're not the only person
that they're hearing from, okay?
So how can you get them to respond to you?
Because I'm betting that most of them,
them being the recruiters, want to talk to you.
They want to help you, right?
But they have a great volume of people
that they're trying to help.
So please remember that.
You're not alone.
There's a lot of people in the inbox.
How can you get them to respond to your application
when you apply?
Apply, wait.
Wait a couple days, not longer than that.
Then go to LinkedIn,
look for ABC Company wherever you apply.
Probably a recruiter works there.
So you click the people button,
you look for who has the recruiter title,
you send them a DM.
Hi, Jim, it's me, Mary.
I applied for ABC.
Look for an identifier when you apply for the job
that can help them look and find the job.
There's usually a rec ID or something like that.
Look for that, mention it.
So then they're going to go look for your application.
And when you reach out, you say,
I applied for this, can't wait to hear back from you.
Okay?
Probably they're going to reply in one business day.
They're going to see your message.
They're going to reply.
They may have never seen your application.
Sorry, it happens.
They probably have 50 jobs to fill.
They probably have 50 applications per week
or more per job.
So now what are you going to do?
If you don't hear back from that recruiter,
first of all, if it was one of my recruiters, tell me.
If it was any recruiter
and they don't get back to you in a day,
if you want, the next step could be
look for a director of whatever
the engineering department is,
VP of that department as well.
You say, hey, hi, Jane.
I applied for this position.
I reached out to so-and-so.
Can't wait to hear back.
Let me know if you need anything else from me.
Now, really, probably,
you just kind of got the recruiter in trouble,
but you're probably going to hear back.
Okay, so let's go really quickly
through how to write your best resume.
Start, please, please, please.
Here's my name.
Actually, with or without a name,
here's the most important part.
I'm a this, and I want to be a that.
This is the bluff.
This is the bottom line up front.
I'm this, and I want to be a that.
Do not assume that the person reading your resume
has the time or the technical qualifications
or that they're not totally fatigued out on resumes
to know, to be able to look through your resume
and know what do you do and what do you want to do.
Hi, I'm a systems engineer
looking to be a solutions architect.
I am a developer looking to manage programs.
Just one or two sentences, help me out.
Then I know how to proceed with you.
Then you're going to do your technical,
put the technical in there,
the technicals that you've used,
the tools, the software, the hardware,
then a chronological.
People argue about the length of resumes.
Obviously, shorter is better.
It's less to have to read,
but don't feel like it has to be one or two pages.
We are reasonable.
Frankly, if you're in the cleared space
or if you would like to be in the cleared space,
it's helpful to either mention
that you do have a clearance
and or that you are eligible and willing to get one.
PDF is fine.
It didn't used to be fine.
It is fine now.
Remember, if no one was responding,
up to you to ping, send a message,
send a little reminder, be patient.
And customize each resume per the job within reason.
Does my resume make sense?
As your experience grows,
it may become harder for whoever's looking at your resume
to realize which thing you're trying to do.
So on to the interview,
try to do a little research on the company up front.
It doesn't have to be that big of a deal,
but just don't be so,
I'm interviewing at so many places,
I can't even remember who I'm talking to.
Do a little bit better than that.
Do a little bit of research.
Try to find a way when it makes sense
to answer as many of the questions as you can
in the form of a story.
What's your strength?
What's your weakness?
You know, all those kind of questions.
Well, funny you should ask.
One time I was building a robot
and it was supposed to cross the street,
but it actually blew up in the middle of the street.
And so I learned that in the future,
you don't cross the red and blue wires
and you always bring a fire extinguisher, whatever.
You just revealed to me
the way that you learn from mistakes,
the way that you prepare to solve problems in the future.
You invited me into a little bit
about your problem solving skills and so forth.
So look for a way, think about it in advance.
What are some stories that you can tell?
You know, kind of about things that have occurred for you.
Also, this is where I'm gonna ask you
to give yourself a chance to be a real person
and put the person on the other side of the table
as a real person as well.
They almost always say,
do you have any questions for us?
At the end, right?
So hopefully they're not a grandstander
and they've been trained properly how to interview
and give you the opportunity to shine
and not make it about them
and all the things that they've done.
However, make them into a person
and they won't be ready for this.
Say to the interviewer when they ask,
do you have any questions?
Yes, actually I do.
When you were looking at coming to this company,
did you have any reservations about working here?
And how did that turn out?
Wow, what a question.
That's gonna tell you a lot.
Maybe they're gonna say,
you know, actually my kid has soccer three times a week
and I was concerned about the commute
and turns out they gave me a chance to do this,
this and this to make that better, right?
They're gonna make themselves into a person
and they're gonna help you envision
being an actual person working there
instead of being all technical.
Other favorite questions.
Yeah, actually tell me,
I see you've been,
how long have you been working here?
Three years?
Cool.
What have you learned?
Wait for it.
What a revealing thing for them
to have the opportunity to tell you.
What have they learned here?
Because if they haven't learned anything,
it's gonna be very revealing, right?
So I'm not telling you to trick them, right?
This isn't a social thing.
This is making them into a person.
They're really gonna tell you.
I often liken interviewing to dating.
I actually don't have any dating experience,
but I imagine that if you went on a date,
and you sat down and you said,
I love kids.
I love traveling.
I go to church every Sunday.
And none of those things are true.
You have probably just guaranteed
that that relationship isn't gonna work out.
So don't show up at the interview and be like,
I love solving problems.
I'm an independent worker.
Actually, I love working on teams.
All these things that you're saying about yourself,
if they're not true,
you're hurting you and them, right?
So make it real.
And here's the thing,
you might reveal something about yourself,
and then the interviewer might say,
you know what?
James, what you told me means
that you won't be a good fit for this.
But turns out, you're a perfect fit for this other thing
that we didn't even know we should be talking about, right?
So if they're doing a good job,
the more you tell them about the real you,
the better off you both will end up.
Okay, so really, really, really, really,
I want you to be yourself.
I want you to be honest.
My hair was blue at my last interview.
It is what it is.
It's okay to pivot.
I mentioned that I was a software engineer.
I ran a help desk, right?
It's okay to change.
It's okay.
There are so many opportunities out there.
It is okay to pivot.
I want you to find your next best opportunity.
I really, really do.
I want you to be where you're happy
and where you're comfortable.
And I think there's enough opportunities out there
for that to happen.
So really, really, be who you are, do what you love.
So real quick, I think this is my last spot, negotiating.
People really, really struggle in this area.
I have screwed up in this area.
I have undersold myself.
I have, and I've seen others do it as well.
Here's what's up.
Do not tell anyone how much money you make.
Don't do it.
A, they shouldn't be asking.
And every federally mandated ordinance in the U.S., anyway,
says that they can't ask you.
So I guess I should preface that.
A lot of you aren't in the U.S.
Sorry, that applied to the U.S.
I don't know the laws everywhere.
But I will say this, regardless of where you are,
the amount of money that you currently make
has absolutely nothing to do
with the amount of money you should be making
or could be making, okay?
Because it doesn't speak
to your bonafide occupational qualifications
or your education or your certifications
or the most important thing
that every single one of you has to offer
is your willingness and your ability to do the job.
Regardless of what you have done, right?
What are you willing to do and what are you able to do?
Right? What can you learn?
You know what?
I don't even know how to spell Python,
but I know how to script.
I just proved to you that I could be a Python developer.
I'm willing, I'm able.
So please, don't tell them what you make.
Think about, but also answer the question
when they ask, what do you want to make?
And think about how you're going to deliver that question.
What matters to you?
More than just your paycheck.
Is it shares?
Is it 401k?
Is it flexibility?
Is it the ability to go remote?
Is it performance bonuses?
Incentive compensation?
Think about the total package of things
that matters to you in the long run.
Is it the insurance premiums?
Man, I'll tell you what.
The difference, I'm not going to dox anyone,
but between two paychecks at two different companies
where the salaries were very similar,
but the premiums were significantly different.
Boy, that makes a huge difference.
So, okay.
And that's pretty much it.
So let's recap.
Always be open.
Be your own best advocate.
I get it.
Descriptions suck.
Sometimes so do resumes.
Let's find a way to meet in the middle.
Be exactly who you are.
Be yourself.
You is good enough.
Notice how you're being treated
all throughout your candidate experience.
That's very, very telling.
Remember that these challenges are like the ones
that you will face as an engineer, right?
Look at them that way.
And you can't make them go away,
but you can hopefully beat them.
Thank you, DEF CON.
Thank you, Kathleen.
And if there's a way for us to do questions and answers
in business court or something, I am always open.
Thank you.
Thanks so much, Kirsten.
I really appreciate all of your great points.
You've been just an amazing asset to the entire community.
Yes, everyone can ask you questions in Discord channel,
and I'm sure you'll be hanging around the con
throughout the entire weekend
and can answer other questions.
Please do connect with her.
She's always open to answering questions.
And be sure to follow us on Twitter at Hacking Career.
And that's it for today.
Thanks so much, everybody.