Ep 117: LinkedIn Best Practices with Jessica Cassidy

Good afternoon, and welcome to this week's episode of Level of Cyber. My name is Tony Brian, your host and the executive director of Cyber Up. Really been looking forward to this conversation today. Jessica and I've met each other over the last couple of years do LinkedIn interactions, which makes us a great timely conversation because we're going to dive into that idea of way to leverage and use LinkedIn as a tool to extend your reach for jobs beyond applicant tracking systems and some best practiceestor really make that happen.

So Jessica comes with the wealth of experience through years of recruiting and supporting candidates, so we're going to share today a little bit of those best practices. So excited about the conversation and I want to be the first to welcome you to the show, Jessica. But as we get started, i'd love to have you take a second introduce who you are, where you work, and how you got to where you're at today. That would be great.

Absolutely, and Tony, thank you so much for invited me to be a part of this podcast. I'm really excited to just share what I know so yes, I am Jessica Cassidy and I am the practice lead for O Piece cyber Talent. And you know how I got into really just recruiting in general, was I found myself in a position where I was a business analyst and so I and this was back in you know, two thousand and five, where I was a business analyst and found myself getting more and more technical and working with a lot more you know, technical folks such as developers, QA, managers, you know, the whole gamut.

And so as I found myself being in a role that was more fingers on the keyboard, I realized, Okay, I really like the relationship aspect. I like the understanding and identifying pain points aspect of the role. But I didn't want a code I didn't want to get really more into like the code reviews or anything like that. Just my mind doesn't work that way.

I like to hear about it, but I don't necessarily want to do it. So as I found myself, Okay, what do I want to be when I grow up? I got into recruiting. And I started out with an agency just doing some baseline recruiting for accounting and finance, and six months later a former co worker of mine said, hey, DST Systems has a technical recruiter position open, and so that was in two thousand and six, and I became a technical recruiter corporate recruiter for that organization until twenty eleven, where I just focused on software engineers QA.

You know, all the folks that I had worked with, I knew what made a great engineer or a great QA person or you know, whatever the technical role was by working side by side. So I leveraged that experience into becoming. A technical recruiter. So fast forward moved on from DST where I joined OP and became an internal recruiter for a couple organizations where it was more strategic.

We would go in, you know, identify their first you know, fifty or one hundred so hires, implement their best practices for recruiting, ats, all that good stuff, and. That was great. It was super rewarding because a lot of those companies then were able to build and scale quickly and then eventually either you know, get acquired or grow public. And so did that for a while, and then the opportunity came for me to join a cybersecurity firm here in Kansas City, and that was Fish Tech Group.

So I joined Fish Tech Group in January of twenty nineteen and really focused on all things security, so whether it's identity, GRC SoC security engineering, the development behind the actual technology and tools, and was there for about five years. So when it came to the point of my current employer, OP Objective Partners to start the recruiting practice for all things cybersecurity, I was very excited to do so. So we started OP cyber Talent in April of twenty twenty three and have had some really great quick success just due to the you know, the relationships that I was able to leverage from former experience and then also just working for a quality company.

So I've been in technical recruiting and I think I've touched anything technical from entry level help desk all the way up to a CISO and in all different areas of security since about two thousand and six. So you've seen a lot of different best practices. You've seen a lot of careers and paths and so what is you know, let's say, let's I'm gonna segment this by entry mid senior because you know, I know, we a lot of our audience since century, so you know, if I'm an entry level person, I just a college graduate.

I just finished my program. I'm trying to break in right and I've been told network LinkedIn find mentors. What can I do on my LinkedIn profile to really help stand out and show my talents and maybe highlight that or you know, so that way, as the Jessica's of the world are finding crops of people to bring into roles that I would stand out to you for that profile, what what what would be some good advice there? Yeah, so that's a good question, Tony.

So I always suggest to in your summary the about me, you really want to talk about what you're passionate about, why you're interested in cybersecurity as a whole, and really leverage your interests because there's so many different areas within cybersecurity. I mean, you've got identity, You've got risk and compliance, then you've got security engineering. There's a sales aspect, there's a sales engineering aspect. There's all different levels.

So you really want to be very clear with the type of role, why that that role or that that opportunity or kind of dream job really speaks to you, and then what are you doing to enhance your knowledge you know, where are you going to you know, practice that craft if you will, as at home labs. Is it taking you know, the tests in order to get your certifications, maybe on your own, or maybe you're getting that through a boot camp or your your two year four year program. You really want to be able to stress what you're doing on your own, what you're reading, what you're following, and how you're actively practicing your skills.

Some really good advice from the same question, how would you translate that to maybe a mid tier Right, I'm trying to make that leap from let's say I've been doing help desk for a year or two and I'm trying to make that transition from a help desk or service desk role to a more security role. What are some things that I could do maybe from a training perspective or even from a LinkedIn perspective. And I know I have a question I want to ask you about truthfulness to some of this, right, but I also want to lean into the idea of, you know what, what's a good way to position myself outwardly to make that transition into a more technical cyber role.

Yeah. So, and I've seen this a lot where somebody's going from maybe either the help desk or like a system's engineering or systems I've been background and wanting to get into cybersecurity or more security specific type role. You know in your summary you do have the opportunity then to talk about, Okay, this is what I've learned, this is the gap or the pain point that I'm seeing day in day out, and this is how I feel that my experience then can leverage into that type of role.

So if it's a security analyst type role, or and typically it's going to be a security analyst type role, let's just let's just use that for the example. You know what you're doing in your current day that you know len's well because you've seen it in the job descriptions, or you have friends that are in that role. What are you doing in your current role that you know that's going to be an easy transition and really highlight those skills. So it may be, you know, especially with the help desk, you're answering for phone calls or you know, tickets.

How do you know that's the right person, How do you know it's not fishing? How do you know somebody's not trying to scam you to get information from a help desk perspective, you have to put that security hat on in order to understand that this information is this person needs to reset their password. Okay, well we all know that that's a lot of the times that how organizations can. Have some sort of incident.

So the help desk, systems admin type roles, they really have to put on that security hat in order to navigate their day to day, same as a security analyst or security engineer. So it's very you know, intertwined. So in that same note, if you are in a position where maybe you have a couple of years of experience in help desk or systems administration, you can also utilize LinkedIn to understand other people's career paths or reaching out to folks of who you want to be. When you know, if you identify somebody you're like, they're in this they're in my dream job, use LinkedIn to pick their brain how did they do it?

How did they make the transition? So not only are you setting yourself up from your profile perspective, but you need to use LinkedIn as that networking fact finding you know, career networking tool. I have to you know, this job as a direct relation to a friend in a contact, a LinkedIn, who had a brand, who had a friend and interview ute. Right.

So it is a really powerful, powerful tool to leverage and build that network, but it can also, I think be a little bit overwhelming for somebody who's trying to figure out the ins and outs and how to uh write those things in a way that does position you, right, And there's always uh yeah, I had another question, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna we never covered the senior right, So we hit those senior roles because your profiles looked different, right, Like I put myself in you know, somebody in that seven to ten year mark that's debating do I want to go?

See? So do I want to go individual contributor? Right? Like, those are different paths you alluded to you earlier past that somebody can take.

Now, are there different ways in which I'm presenting myself and packaging my kind of content I share to really position myself better for one of those opportunities or what would be a good advice for that for you? Yeah, you know, when you're in kind of your mid level career and you're wanting to get to that next level, whether it be a management security leadership role or maybe even you want to start your own thing and start your own security consulting organization. What you'll want to do is, and it's not really LinkedIn at this point, it's going to be those user groups.

It's going to be those specific security user groups that you want to become a part of. So again identifying you know, from a security management perspective, it might be like the Cloud Security Alliance, it might be is s A. You know, there's so many different professional development, networking groups and educational groups that you'll want to become a part of because then you will be working with those folks that are either in that future opportunity that you either want to become and then again you get to be in the same space and learn from those people.

Or you know, certainly those groups are just going to continue talking about what are their emerging threat threats, the trends, and you're always a constant learner. So I would say, you know, outside of LinkedIn, it's really going to be those professional user groups specific to that security topic. Yeah, we talked a little bit prior to hopping on that. You know, this is a space where there it's high the competitive right now for the job market, and there's probably a lot of people that are out trying to just mass apply right and put resumes in and some different things, which has a tendency oftentimes where there could be some amplification of maybe skills and and things that somebody can do.

Right. I always think of, you know, hey, do you have splunk experience? And somebody says yes because they turned on splunk a year ago in a class I took. Correct, That doesn't mean slunk is part of it, right, So, you know, are there some tips and tricks or ways to try to articulate those things in a better way to make sure that you're not overstating or over like you know what, what would you recommend to make sure that whatever I'm saying I could do is aligned with my actual true skill set to highlight that.

Yeah. Absolutely, And typically these you know, they can't eidents that are looking for a new opportunity. They are. Applying to many different organizations, many different roles that also have different descriptors, right, so there's different qualifications and requirements.

First and foremost, you do not want to embellish anything on your resume. You really have to be truthful. If you have read about it, you don't necessarily want to put that on your resume. You want to talk or you want to display truthfully what you can honestly and actually do day one.

You can walk into an environment day one and start actively participating in So if so, you don't want to have other keywords on your resume that don't reflect your actual experience, then what you want to do is, you know, once you've applied to the position, you're you're going to want to try to connect with the recruiter. You're going to want to try to find out who you know, you can find out who is on that team, maybe there's a security engineer, security analyst, or whatever that person may be, and start connecting with them and say, you know, I would love to have this opportunity, this is why I would be so great at this role.

I know that really stood out for me as an internal recruiter, where folks would reach out to me outside of the ATS or they would try to, you know, find a creative way to get in front of somebody on that team or organization just outside of the ATS. And you can certainly do that in a couple of different ways. But but LinkedIn is great. For that or.

Adding in your objective again, really stating your your passion, if you have even maybe a portfolio or a sample that you can share. I know folks have done that as part of their resumes, and then again really listing out there. They're just I guess they're tailoring. Let me let me, let me pause for a moment.

There could be opportunities where you have one security engineer role that's going to differ from another security engineer role, so you want to tailor your experience. To that job description. But truthfully, you don't want to necessarily have two different resumes that that have differentiation on experience. But you can always tailor it.

Say okay, well, whether it's healthcare or maybe financial services, tailor it more towards the industry because there's different security needs for different industries, whether it be compliance or different vulnerabilities or certain things that they see from you know, merging threats. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense that I also know security as a whole. It's just hard to highlight and show your work, right. So like I always think of code codings and I could get a GitHub, I can drop that and put a link in on my linked in and it's a really easy way for somebody to see my expertise and the skill within the cyberspace.

It's so much harder it. Really because nobody's going to click on it. You know, security manager is not going to click on a hyperlink or anything like that and their email or in their resume, So you know, you have to really be able to. Describe it.

And that's where you know, a recruiter or you know, somebody in their network can kind of help them navigate how they're going to present that on paper. Yeah, is there you know, any good tips or tricks? I know, the skills and attributes you can kind of add the buzzwords and the LinkedIn I don't I don't think people look at those very often, so I don't think it's a strong suit. But what is a good way for somebody trying to show and highlight their skills right other than write it?

Is there any other kind of tips and pricks you would offer for skill highlighting for a LinkedIn profile? You know, again you'd have to really be able to highlight those. It's almost like you would have to prioritize the skill level based upon that specific role for that specific company, because again It goes back to kind of tailoring that resume for that right job description, but in an honest format, so you may prioritize certain experience for a security engineer role in healthcare.

Differently than how you. Would prioritize maybe somebody in financial in the financial industry. And again I'm thinking of more like vulnerability management, complainience requirements and regulations that these security engineers and analysts have to be aware of. Where healthcare is going to have you know, HIPPA and high trust regulations, but financial industries are going to have you know, PCI and in certain terminology you know GDPR, or certain type of audits that affect their their industry differently.

I've always given advice around like profile stuff, and I know on our kind of notes for the show today was the matching of your profile to your resume where there should be. They need to be alignment. Yes, those two you want to do? You want to dive into that a little bit more.

Why are they so important to make sure there's some alignment there? I do so I know in my experience from a recruiter perspective, I have sat down with hiring managers and we literally compare and make sure. Well, I do it upfront from a recruiter perspective, to make sure does their LinkedIn recruiter match their resume? And I would a ninety percent of my hiring managers do the same thing when I'm doing my candidate presentation, So I'm already making sure before I even present a candidate, does their LinkedIn match their resume?

And what that means is the dates, the titles, the descriptors. I mean, they really should mirror each other. Now, if you are working for an organization where you don't want to display it on your LinkedIn for security reasons, then put confidential, but have the matching job title and dates. You don't necessarily have to say the organization.

I know a lot of security professionals do that for obvious security reasons. But what can really help an individual is making sure that they are a good replica of each other and then also stating this was contract or this was full time, or I left this position to move on to this next position. You know, you can use it as a story to tell maybe it was a reduction and force, maybe it was COVID, maybe it was a personal matter. So if there's a gap, you know you can use LinkedIn or use your resume in order to tell that story as well.

But you want to make. Sure though that you're either your year's match, and if you do, you want to get really down to the month. Even if a resume says April but the LinkedIn says June, you've just opened yourself up to questioning and are you really telling the truth. So just even that little even if it's a typo or an accident or oh I didn't realize LinkedIn set that date, you as the candidate, you have to make sure that everything aligns.

You're telling your story truthfully. My advice, uh, well, my advice has always been one I try to keep I'm a blonde. I try to keep things simple. Like we all have a we all have our highlight reels, right, Like, there's three kind of career accomplishments that I think you're most people are generally proud of.

That. Like, if you take those three scenarios and your resume and LinkedIn, and you have your smart answers in mind, and you package your outcomes and results within that job description for those three out those three highlights, every question you're asked in an interview is aligned with your LinkedIn and your resume because it's all succinct and you know it's all package in away and you know some one year I might have a great year and my top three changes. But like those things help me with my personal brand.

They make it consistently in my answer and I know that I can always get a smart answer to any question. And that part I think makes it really it makes it much more marketable, keeps you on crack. I think that's outcomes it does. And then you know, to that same note, you know when you are let's say you're tailing tailoring a resume, but you're you're applying to a security analyst role, once to healthcare and once financial.

When you do tailor that resume, you're also showing to the organization, hey, I'm not just blasting my resume out. I'm targeting your position because I've got this experience that will help a healthcare industry do X, Y and Z. But I also have this experience that can help a financial So it's just showing that. You're not just blasting your your.

Your resume out to just to anybody because you want a job so bad, you're really putting your your thought into it. You're doing your homework and your research and be prepared for that job and for that industry in order to support them and protect them. Yeah. So yeah, we didn't.

We didn't really dive into but you know, Lincoln has an incredible amount of groups and kind of subgroups and pages you could follow and newsletters that are there. I've not gotten super engage in those things, but I know there's an incredible kind of network and community around some of these things. Have you have you seen much success or advice or is there any kind of tips or tricks you would kind of recommend for those, you know, fe groups and meet up. Within the security community.

I think really what's going to be more powerful is getting involved in those local security chapters. So whether it be like something like a b side or a cloud security alliance or some form of a security networking event or community, I don't know that you're necessarily going to find that on LinkedIn. I think LinkedIn's going to have a lot of great information just in general, but when you're really talking about a segment that is ever changing and changing by the second, you really need to be into more of a niche group and then also subscribing to some of these feeds or intel reports.

I mean, I know, you know, the big ones are going to be like you know, Mandian CrowdStrike, I. Think recorded future. You know, I know from my former company, Siderris, they send out these kind of these newsletters of what's happening, what they're seeing, and how to protect yourself. So being able to being able to subscribe to something of that nature, you know, dark dark reading.

Actually I've got a kind of a list here, but there's all different types of valuable intel that somebody could subscribe to on a daily or weekly basis, however they want to ingest that information. So I guess in short is you really want to get specific on what type of group that you want to keep learning about. So if it's security engineering or. Security analyst type work, then you definitely want to get more involved in like the dark reading or I'm sorry, I'm busy my train of thought there, but you really want to get more involved in a security specific intel report and just keep reading and learning about it.

I've always been a fan, great answer. I've always been a really big fan and encouraged many of our folks that have come through our program to find their recruiter, right like a recruiter somebody who is like yourself. You've been in the sector for quite a few years, You've got endless relationships with employers, so like you're a friend and could be a friend to many people over the course. So let's say I'm breaking into it and I want to find my person, my Jessica of the world, Like where do I go?

What are some things I should look for? And a trusted recruiting partner that I think is going to have my best interest in really help me and invest in my careers. There's some best practices there to look for. Yeah, that's a really good question, you know, I think.

Related. Yeah, I know it's not LinkedIn related. I know that's a great question. And you know every community is going to have kind of those top voices, you know, in their city or or.

Even state for that matter, or region. I think what you're gonna find is, I would. You do want to look on LinkedIn and see who are some of those LinkedIn recruiters or I'm sorry, those recruiters on LinkedIn that have you know, several thousand connections. They are also providing some insight on what's going on in the market.

You know, some data points that that shows that they're well informed. Then on the other side of that, they can show that they're well informed, you know, through their through their own work and their marketing efforts and all that good stuff. But I think it comes down to kind of that feeling. Is this person really listening to me?

Are they really asking Okay, well, let's really explore this. If I have this role, would you be interested in that role? I mean just because you show up and say, okay, this I want to get into security? Well, you want to be working with somebody who actually understands all the different areas of security, not just what laser focused on one area, because if you're a fit for one, you could be a fit for many.

So you want to make sure that you're working with somebody that understands you, your needs, what's important to you, whether or not that's going to be you know, remote versus on site. I mean, just some of that basic information that you know that you're going to need. You got to make sure that that recruiter is in tune with what your needs are, also in tune with what your salary expectations are, and also somebody he's also willing to check you a little bit because you can have your great wish list, but if you don't have that recruiter that's going to level set what's actually going on in the market from a financial perspective, from a hiring perspective.

You know, you kind of want that recruiter to be able to not necessarily play maybe Devil's advocate, but really educate you and check you on what's reality and. What's happening in the market, just like your friend would. Yeah. Absolutely, you want good.

Recruiter is your your you know, you want them to become your best friend from a recruiting standpoint, because they're going to be your advocate. Yeah, my brother in law had made a friend. She h a recruiter years ago for a smaller kind of boutique firm, and she's gone a couple different places, and I wanted making friends with her. It's still a great person that I could tap into and I need some support.

I'm not a technical person, but I learned pretty quickly from him and watch the investment she made in his career and the opportunity she brought or you know, like it was a win win, right, Like, if you want the recruiter to have that relationship, if you're a talented person. I'm going to make a reference of a silly movie with what was it justin Timberlake and Mela Tunis? What was it just friends? I don't remember what it was like.

She was a recruiter and got them a couple of jobs, right, So, like there are probably other parts of that movie they weren't appropriate in that because they got into a relationship. However, there was a level of just support and service that I think, you know, or that they had a relationship. She saw talent and that was a win win for both of them because it's you know, there is a compensation that's tied to that stuff. So there is not a bad thing.

Yeah, I think it's okay to talk about it. Yeah. And the compensation piece is, you know, from a recruiter perspective, depended upon it they're external or internal. You know external recruiters.

You know they do uh, they're going to receive a fee based upon your base salary. They should not be charging candidates upfront. I still hear that practice. I've never met a recruiter that does that, but that should not.

I would walk away from that person immediately if they're asking for money upfront. I think that is all that's a thing of the past, So that's that is something to think about. But again it's it's being able to have somebody that can really kind of showcase your effort, so they really do they do have to get to know you, but you also have to put your best foot forward and really showcase your talents and excitement and. Integrity throughout the process as well.

So if somebody is going to be working with you and helping you navigate your career, then you know you've got to be responsive. You have to be timely, you have to do your part, you have to do your homework and certainly be presentable and prepared for all of the things that the recruiter is going to navigate with you. Yeah, that's great advice. So we've hit the end.

It goes fast, but always yes and everybody gets the same last question, And we've covered a lot of good advice here about leveling up careers. But any kind of final thoughts of what advice you would give to somebody to look and to level up their cybersecurity career. Yeah, so if you want to level up your cybersecurity career, you really have to think about that. You are really selling yourself.

So what that means is, you know, in the world of sales, there's so many you know, prospect touches, let's say, or so many times that you're going to reach out to folks. Keep going, even if it takes ten times. It's going to show your discipline and your enthusiasm that you really want this opportunity. And if you're showing that you're going to keep you know, striving even though maybe it's been crickets, I think that goes a long way.

So again, it's it's finding out who those folks are on LinkedIn that are going to help you navigate your career, maybe through mentor recruitment or you know, the hiring manager for that role. And so you know, you've got to really think about that. You're really got to be able to sell yourself, and working with somebody like a recruiter or somebody in that field can certainly help help you improve your ability to brag about yourself. Some people love to brag about themselves, and I would say most don't.

Yeah, nobody likes to really talk about themselves. So I get that. It's it's a it's a it makes a ton of sense. Yeah, man, that was a great conversation.

I think that they're the listeners today. I will take a lot of a lot of out of that, and I think some really great advice, Like it is an incredible tool that has a ton of capacity whether I want a job or I'm trying to sell things right, Like, there's just it's a huge network that's out there that provides a lot of opportunity. And I think the tipical tricks you kind of share today is a great way to set a minimum be operating efficiently and probably hit some of those end goals to do.

And if you don't feel like you know it. LinkedIn Learning is also a great resource and a lot of free so pop in and don't don't sleep on the classes that are there and it you know, you can collect a ton of digital bandies and confidentially through it. And don't sleep on the boot camps that are out there and the programs that can help you, you know, increase your skills and knowledge. Awesome, well, Jessica, thank you so much for your time today and for the information you share with everybody.

It was a pleasure getting to hear all of that, and I want I say thank you to our listeners as always, and uh, I'd be remiss not to say happy holiday.