actual tips on preparing for your first cybersecurity job in GCC | Anya Shpilman

Okay, so first of all, congratulations.

Second...

Do you know, actually, it's quite tough for students to come back to GCC when they do university degrees elsewhere.

But I think for anyone, for whether you finish university here, US or wherever it might be, experience is your main thing, right? So you've done the theoretical stuff, you've done your lectures or whatever it might be, just get your hands on any internships, get In regards to what you want to do in your career, it depends on what you like to do, right? Some people like offensive stuff, some people like defensive stuff, some people like compliance.

Some people do, right? Whatever it is that you enjoyed.

I'm not sure how cybersecurity degrees work, by the way, but I'm sure there's parts of it that you liked.

Just try it.

And I think for any students at any stages of their, whether it's first year, last year, or even if it's your first grad and you're working already, just try as many different things as you want, right? If you tried one thing, you know you can be an offensive person and then um you don't like it in a year that's okay just try your hands in something else but keep doing stuff the more stuff you do the better you are equipped to get into the workforce

yeah

um so do as many projects i think for students it's actually quite difficult to i don't recruit students unfortunately um There are internships that I share sometimes on LinkedIn, but companies don't come to me for fresh grads.

However, if I was going to do that, I would go for what they've done themselves or anything they've published, blogs.

You know, you want this person to be passionate about what they do, right? So if they have...

And you always know, by the way, you always speak to them.

We had coffees with students, you know, me and you, and you know this passion, like it like oozes out of them.

And it's so nice.

It's so lovely.

So that's what you want.

So you want... as much done try to find some sort of mentor for example if you want to get into SOC find someone that you like what they're doing or they work for a company that you aspire to be in

this is a really good point actually which I want to kind of piggyback on this as well is that a lot of the times I've had assumptions about roles I've had assumptions about a particular career and I've just either I read about it or I've assumed it based on a YouTube video I may have seen it's kind of tweaked or it's tweak my perspective on it but then I eventually meet someone who does it or I actually get a chance an opportunity to even do it myself for a little bit and it completely twists it right for example threat hunting was not what I've always always expected to be it's cool I really enjoy it I really enjoyed learning about it and trying to do it and trying to you know practice it but it's totally not what it sounds like it is right threat hunting sounds really cool but it's not really that it's very much IR centric right it's very proactive it's very you know but it's Having those conversations is a point there.

So try to reach out to threat hunters.

And that's what I did in my early career as well.

I reached out to a lot of SOC analysts and just asked them questions.

I'm like, oh, look, I got, can you tell me about your job? Like, I don't have answers.

And AI, especially now, can give you an answer, but it's not the personalized perspective that may help you into the next part of your career, the next job, right? Exactly.

Exactly.