Welcome back to the series, and I hope you have made some progress in your cybersecurity career! In this blog post, we will look at the next step I go through when I look for a new job: The résumé. A small note: This will not tell you how to write a résumé. Instead, it includes recommendations to improve your existing one.
What is a Résumé?
Before we look at how to make or improve our résumé, we first need to know what it is. Oxford Learner’s Dictionary defines the word as: “a written record of your education and the jobs you have done, that you send when you are applying for a job[.]”. In addition, the Wikipedia entry for “résumé” also makes a great point in that “a résumé is a marketing document[…]”.
There is a great thing that I can’t remember where I heard from, but it states that every interaction you have is a transaction of some kind. If you’re in sales, this is obvious; either you can sell the prospect your product, or they can sell you a reason or excuse not to buy from you.
Essentially, you can think of the hiring process as a form of “procurement.”
What is “Procurement”?
“Now what is ‘procurement’? What in the world does ANY of this have to do with my cybersecurity career?” I hear you ask. Well, Investopedia defines it as such:
“Procurement is obtaining or purchasing goods or services, typically for business purposes.”
So what does this have to do with us getting a job? Well, an example of procurement could be that the city wants to build a bridge. To do so, they start a procurement process and invite contractors to place “procurement bids” which contain price, the amount of time it will take, and so on.
Does it sound familiar yet? If not, what if instead of the city wanting to build a bridge, a company wants someone to perform services on their behalf to the company’s clients? In this case, the procurement process would essentially be the job description, and you are the contractor, offering to sell your time and expertise.
That is where the résumé comes in. It is the document you submit to the company saying what experience you have, what your expertise is, and what you have to offer to the company. In short, you have to sell yourself. And you have to become the best salesperson of yourself that has ever lived. That is unless you want someone else (a recruiter) to sell you. But you can never be 100% certain of what they say about you or how they will portray you to potential companies.
So now that we know what a résumé is, and what role it fills in you landing your first job in your cybersecurity career, it is time to get started.
The Importance of Crafting an Effective Résumé
To make sure we have everything we need, take out the list you made in the last blog post. We will use that list for this part, as you will make one résumé for each company.
To begin with, I would recommend using a template. There are thousands upon thousands of them online. Some are better than others. I will only recommend the one I use personally: “Awesome CV” by “posquit0”. In addition to a CV, it also allows you to make a résumé and a cover letter in the same style. It can be slightly tricky to set up, but since you are (probably) here to start a cybersecurity career, I am sure you can figure it out.
Tailoring Your Résumé Template for a Cybersecurity Career
I will say this. Résumés come in various shapes and sizes. I am not an authority in writing them, nor do I pretend to be. To reiterate what I said in the first post in the series: This series is based on what worked for me and my experience. You might have regional differences as well, so make sure to pay attention to that. An example of this would be Japan, where domestic companies don’t use CV or résumé, but the Japanese 履歴書 (rirekisho), which is more of an even more condensed CV, and where you have to include certain information.
Even so, there are a few key things to keep in mind:
- Your résumé should not be longer than two pages. This is the general rule, but I guess that you wouldn’t be here if you knew when to go over two pages.
- When you write your experience, include quantitative data.
- If you have work experience, work experience comes before education.
For that last point, at least in Sweden and Japan (and probably many other places), once you have a couple of years of experience, no one cares about your education. Okay, they might care if you are applying for a C-suite job, but apart from that, they probably won’t.
The Structure
Here is the structure or layout that I used for my résumé, and some details on a few of them:
- Name and other information
- Experience
- Skills & Certifications
- Education
- Extracurricular Activities
- Interests
Experience
This is where I list all relevant experience. I have had many odd jobs in the past including, but not limited to telemarketing, brick-and-mortar store employee, and web developer. If I apply for a job as a cybersecurity specialist, working as a telemarketer isn’t relevant. As such, I wouldn’t have included it. However, the store job I have included sometimes depends on what the company values and what the job description says. For example, if the job description includes assisting the sales team during pre-sales meetings, the experience of dealing with customers and the interpersonal skills I gained from that job would be useful for that role.
The thing to take away from this is just because your experience isn’t in the same (or even adjacent) industry, it can still be applicable. Remember, this is a marketing document. Sell yourself!
Skills & Certifications
As with the experience section, include items relevant to the job description and exclude those that aren’t.
Extracurricular Activities
This is just where I include things that don’t fit anywhere else. For example, in my cybersecurity résumé, I include things like details on my home lab, any talks or cybersecurity groups I’ve participated in, and things like learning platforms where I am doing continued learning to show motivation and that I keep improving, rather than going stagnant.
Some Recommendations
Now that I’ve shown you what I do, I will include a YouTube video by Cyber Insecurity which helped me modify my résumé:
Leveraging LinkedIn for Networking in Your Cybersecurity Journey
And for the final recommendation: Get yourself LinkedIn. Yes, I know you might not like the platform. But the truth is that there are jobs on there, and networking helps a lot in this industry (and many others). It is estimated that roughly 80% of all jobs are landed through some form of networking (friend of a friend, meeting the new employer at a networking event, etc.). In addition, it is estimated that somewhere around 70% of jobs never end up on public job listing sites, but are filled via networking or referrals. The exact data on this depends on where you look, but there are quite a few articles out there on the subject, such as this article by Forbes from 2020.
Once you get your LinkedIn and start setting it up, Cyber Insecurity has another couple of videos on YouTube called “Hack Your LinkedIn”. You can click here for the first video.
Conclusion
Getting started in your cybersecurity career isn’t easy. Today we went over a few of the things that I do and some tips for when writing your résumé (you remembered to use quantitative data, right? Right?)
Originally, there was going to be another post in this series, which would go on about how to gain experience when you have none, using things like home labs. However, I’ve realized that it’s not something I should do, as that was not the path I took, thus I have no authority to speak on it.
That said, there are a ton of free resources out there. Do a quick google search on how to setup a home lab, check out things like “GOAD” (Game of Active Directory), and so on. These things will help you practice. Write reports of things you’ve done and share them (make sure you’re allowed to before you do so).
I wish you the best of luck with getting started in your cybersecurity career!