[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Tech Certified Podcast. I'm your host, Caleb Oni Certified and this is the podcast where we interview tech professionals and tech creators who inspire us on our journeys in the tech industry. In this episode we're going to be doing something
[00:00:16] slightly different from what we usually do. We're going to be going through a compilation of some of the incredible advice on getting into the industry. In each episode there's been a period where I've asked the question to our guest, what is your advice on getting
[00:00:31] into the tech industry? And in this episode of the podcast we're going to be going through what each of our guests has said so far. This is episode 7, so that's been six episodes, six incredible episodes so far and each of these episodes has provided some great advice
[00:00:50] in it's say. Let me know in the comments section what your favorite episode has been and let's now before we get into it I have some good news and some bad news and I'm going to start with
[00:00:59] the bad news. Now the bad news is this is the last episode of season one part one of the tech Certified Podcasts. We're going to be going on a short break before part two of the podcast and
[00:01:12] in part two we're going to come back and complete the season but not to worry the good news is that during the break there'll be some other content not podcast but some other content and I will
[00:01:22] still be posting every single Monday. Now the content is not going to be podcast I've kind of missed doing other forms of content don't worry it's not going to be boring on Caleb when he's
[00:01:33] certified there's going to be lots of other content on the channel and it's still going to remain super interesting and super fun. I've got some other things planned so stay tuned tune in every
[00:01:42] Monday and occasionally on Wednesdays I post as well so stay tuned okay that's enough talking let's get into it let's listen to some of the advice from our guests on getting into the tech industry
[00:01:54] here we go. I wanted to ask you about you know getting into cybersecurity and I know that on your channels and platforms you know you give a lot of great advice on how someone would get into this
[00:02:13] it's not easy and loads of people struggle to break into cybersecurity and so I wanted to ask you whilst we have you what advice would you give someone trying to get their first role in cybersecurity?
[00:02:27] Yeah so for me I think the advice science a little bit philosophical first and then it starts with actionable items so my philosophy is that if you want to in two days world break into cybersecurity
[00:02:45] firstly you really have to know your reason and your purpose so like knowing your why is so important because that's what's going to keep you grounded throughout the struggles so throughout the information overload and not finding kind of the area that you want to focus
[00:03:02] into or maybe you have the area that you want to focus into but you really don't know how to like hone in on the skills that you need or the experience that you need for that area like knowing
[00:03:13] your reason and your purpose for wanting to pursue the journey for me I have always found that that's what keeps you grounded and motivated to keep going so that should be the first thing
[00:03:24] to really really like solidify your purpose for going there so that you don't stray away from the journey like as you are like 30 or 40% on the way there and finding it more and more difficult.
[00:03:36] The second thing then is that a lot of people are focusing on the credentials and the by the credentials I mean like the educational components, the certification components and that's great right I have I did go the educational route at first and I did get a lot of
[00:04:00] certifications that did help my career a lot. However, the barrier to entry for cybersecurity professionals today is really like it is a lot harder than what it was maybe even three, four
[00:04:16] years ago and so now when someone is trying to get into the industry you really need to have skills and knowledge like that is so important so the one thing I say is in parallel to doing the
[00:04:30] educational aspect for example if you're pursuing a cloud engineering or cloud security analyst journey then cloud certifications are great they're going to help but cloud security skills is what's going to demonstrate the knowledge for you to be able to actually get the job and that's what's
[00:04:51] going to really be the factor that sits like you apart from the other kind of pool of candidates that's flooding for the entry level roles because wherever the entry level roles like they could
[00:05:04] be hundreds of people applying for that same entry level role so the thought process always has to be what's going to make me the unique candidate when I'm applying amongst hundreds of other people
[00:05:16] that's applying for the entry level role and then I would say finally alternatively instead of applying for the entry level role maybe gain more skill do more projects and apply for the intermediate
[00:05:30] level role right because that is kind of a hack that people are not talking about that often but work experiences not the only experience you can have yeah wow that's a good one there's a
[00:05:44] lot of people that are watching this that are looking to get their first roles in either cloud computing or cybersecurity and they are looking for how they can get their first role and how they get that
[00:05:59] chance and opportunity so for you who's had a lot of experience in this industry and this ever changing industry what advice would you give to someone who was trying to get their first role in
[00:06:11] tech whether that cyber security or cloud and yeah sure I mean look I didn't start in cloud and security and there's a whole there's a whole big conversation to be had about gatekeeping a lot of
[00:06:23] people say you cannot start in security without doing that you can't start cloud without having that's true now I think that starting and help this can be the path of least resistance and I don't think it's something to turn your nose apart if it's opportunity presented to you
[00:06:41] but at the same time if you can skip it skip it like I don't I don't think that no one starts and security something to do especially when you look at your shock rules like lots of people
[00:06:51] are hired out of university to do to do shock rules and manage security instance and do triage and stuff I would say just I mean focus on look as you're looking at your area and see what's actually
[00:07:04] hiring and see what the most common technologies are and try and pick up those technologies yourself and look yeah if it's I'm not sure about the AWS side but if you look at Azure obviously you
[00:07:16] watch them courses but you need to start labnet start doing it whether you're building a Windows server home lab or you're doing it all in Azure I mean what's your course it's
[00:07:26] make sure you're understanding your budgets in your course the list where you do any of that but all your defender products they all have free trials they all free trails at last a month or two
[00:07:35] and so you can really start configuring this stuff and it's okay to use tutorials it's okay to use all the MS learn documentation but I would say just if you're out of loss for
[00:07:46] again then you just need to look at what's hiring what technologies are needed and see if you can get some sort of free trial for those and start teaching it yourself I mean they're always
[00:07:55] going to they're always going to basically favor someone who's going to go above and be on to learn these technologies if I'm an accident in the interview do you know this as a null back in
[00:08:07] learner like I'm eager to learn it like and so that's another thing is that look when I was hired as an apprentice but I saw another option of apprenticeships and degree apprenticeships are also
[00:08:16] something to look at with a degree apprenticeship come out with a four year degree at the end which is really really valuable again apprentice apprentice to the wages are really low
[00:08:27] and so I know that's a luxury that some people can't afford I mean look when I was an apprentice I earned 15,000 pounds a year but I was very lucky in that one I lived with my parents and two
[00:08:37] I had a six grand on call six grand a year was on call as well so it was 21 I knew apprentices that were on 12,000 a year because you've won all these apprentice courses and I worked for a very
[00:08:50] good company some companies get apprentices for just cheap cheaper labor and so yeah I know there's a luxury issue with that but looking to apprenticeships degree apprenticeships they're always worth it and now you just you take up on yourself to start learning the tools really sorry one last
[00:09:07] point was that when I interviewed in the apprenticeship there was people with more experience there was people that had degrees I didn't have a degree but they liked my attitude and that's a true story they they liked me better because I had a better attitude I was so
[00:09:20] willing to learn and that's how I ended up with the job so don't necessarily think that you're you're up against people with better qualifications and you because you are but it's not always about that see they can always teach technical but they cannot teach a good attitude
[00:09:34] and no one wants to work with someone horrible or just like someone arrogant very true like I don't even need to ask this question because you've given so much advice already but the question is what advice would you give to someone trying to get into tech I guess
[00:09:52] other than the advice that you've given already you know with personal branding yeah what advice would you give to someone trying to get into tech industry I think it's just you literally just
[00:10:06] starting out like you said I'm getting into a field I would want to be the best in that field and not like the best the best but I would learn is such a way that I would want to be the best
[00:10:18] like I wouldn't learn it in like you made your power with them I'm learning front and they know how to be a few templates I'll just stop there no you have to like go the extra mile to do a
[00:10:29] lot of research build as much projects as you can because doing your interviews if you're able I plan for a very technical role and speaking about engineering so my business will be by
[00:10:40] us well if you're a very technical role you want to have conversations with your interviewer and you want that person to say oh this personal training knows that on your own like you want to be
[00:10:50] mentioning things that you've experienced things that you've got in your hands that's even it's right you want to talk about your projects you want to talk about the pitfalls the projects they worked on the challenges that you faced how you were back in this challenges how you worked
[00:11:03] in 18 how you were a leader the problems you had put in your teams together I mean all those things so you really want to get your hands tattooed like the technical stuff and the non-technical stuff
[00:11:14] and you also have to prepare very well no matter how many years of experience you have if you have an interview the company you shouldn't say oh I've done this before this is nothing you should
[00:11:25] still go ahead to practice do more interviews speak with people to make sure that you're interviewing you as I still ready to go so I think it's just basically standing out you does much projects
[00:11:37] as possible if you can launch those projects on maybe the app store or a website if you you're working on stuff that don't really have UI work like maybe devolves cybersecurity in blockchain you can start building like architectural recommendations that you can talk about
[00:11:54] make sure that your gift hole is really good I mean just text yourself at this point during would you hire you and pay you a lot of money so if you can't comfortably say oh I can hire me
[00:12:06] and pay me like $200,000 in a year or $500,000 in a year then hey you're not ready basically standing now and just making sure that you're not doing yourself with this favor when
[00:12:21] if you probably get rejected just so that it's not it's coming from the company and not to you so that level of confidence is what you should try to build yeah and I really like that question
[00:12:32] would you hire you? that's really good story and it's interesting because I feel like the cloud security industry well I could say for this channel there's a lot of people in the audience that watch this channel that are really interested in this area and getting into
[00:12:52] this area and finding ways to get in what do they need to know what do they need to learn to get their first role in cloud security a lot of the time cloud in general but some people
[00:13:04] really focus on cloud security cloud security yeah and I wanted to ask you whilst we have you because of your understanding of this area and of course speaking to so many people who work in this
[00:13:16] area what are those key skills to understand and work on a no-to to be able to thrive in this industry sure I would make an assumption here that if anyone who's watching this wants to get into cloud
[00:13:30] security having basic foundation knowledge for IT should just be a given the reason I get a lot of reach out for masking people who would say hey I want to look for an analyst
[00:13:40] calling cloud security I would say the likelihood of you finding that would be fairly low because think about the kind of companies I look for an analyst role they're not like the small companies they're the big companies like the banks for look for the
[00:13:55] financial studios oil and gas they take a big industry they're all looking for those and they're not looking for someone who's just doing cloud they're looking for someone who can be across other things as well because as an analyst it's supposed to be across many of the things
[00:14:09] the way I personally see and at least when we have hired for it and this is what I encourage people for as well the reason I say it's a low bar is because if you have like say
[00:14:19] I have met people who've done the company a network class company security plus they've been working on own fashion projects for a this is a business use case I've been documenting that on the internet and I've been talking about it length I have seen that to be a
[00:14:34] better approach to find a job in cloud security which is ultimately the goal for a lot of people it's not just doing a certification as much as every certification program would tell you out there
[00:14:45] even though the diet of the certificates are a bit deceiving because like oh it's a word for an AWS solution or a professional AWS solution but yeah so see a similar for I think the Google Cloud wants a cloud security Google something as you're a similar one
[00:15:01] it may have the title of that but I would the honest answer to that is when a professional looks at those certifications the first thing they come to mind is okay so you have a good
[00:15:12] understanding of the services that are provided by that cloud so it's so item it does not give the person the confidence to feel that you can help me with the project I would feel
[00:15:22] to work with you on that and that the reason I bring that up is because as a school set if you're trying to build something I would say definitely if you have not got the fundamentals
[00:15:32] get the fundamentals in first that's definitely quite a bit irrespective of AWS Azure Google Cloud which I want to go for another one if you are more already a technical person who enjoys Linux and knows about containers definitely look at Kubernetes that's again one of those fields where
[00:15:50] it's a low bar to entry because just it is still a big unknown for a lot of people even there's been there for eight hours I want to say eight nine years similar space and they've
[00:16:02] definitely growing this is from skills that perspective if you already had the ID fund that the next thing I would understand is every cloud service provider AWS Azure Google Cloud has example architectures that are available I think on the GitHub as well as on the documentation page
[00:16:20] it wasn't happening some of them over someone was to reach out as well but the reason I point you there is that gives you an understanding of how businesses implement that in their organization
[00:16:30] because that's what's going to help you in the interview right that's what you're actually going to do in a job it's not going to be which Azure service are you going to use for AI protecting AI
[00:16:40] application aid there is no service that does that I think they tried to work on it but it is expected with the answer being it's not the the employer would not care about the fact that
[00:16:49] what how many services can you remember it's more about hey I have a problem it's not going to mechanic you don't go to a mechanic because even a buy a car you go to mechanic to like hey I need to
[00:16:58] fix my brakes and lose a like specific problem you're trying to solve that's what they're to solve and the in a way you're trying to be that mechanic for the organization where okay
[00:17:07] what are you trying to solve we want to expand into AWS or Azure we want someone to help us build the entire architecture for what that could look like or another project could be the fact
[00:17:18] that hey by the way we have recently started working on building our security uplift program for Google will look into improve attention access management work in what do you think we should do
[00:17:32] and even listing our five or six examples by the way you can ask chat to you pretty for this as well you're only going to have to like be an expert and start learning at that those are skills
[00:17:42] I would say I would invest more time on the certifications are good because at least it helps you get through that first HR door of knowing oh you have a certification but when it comes to the
[00:17:52] interview there will be expecting you to at least have a few examples for business use cases where you can say oh I learned this technology like I learned Azure Sentinel which helps me do threatening the audience I made my own playbook things like that those are solid examples
[00:18:06] I don't think all yeah I want this person because I think better than saying I have certification wait stop there is no way you've listened to this podcast all this way and have not subscribed
[00:18:17] to the channel some of you have not even liked the video if you've taken any value from this podcast please subscribe to the channel Caleb only certified and leave a like on this video so
[00:18:29] you can get out to as many people as possible and you never know leaving a like might actually give you some good luck okay that's enough let's get back to the podcast let's talk about
[00:18:38] what advice you would have for some of the audience because I know there's a lot of people who want to switch careers they're working in a certain area and for whatever reason they're not
[00:18:51] satisfied with that area and they want to switch into tech whether it's cloud or software or type of security whatever the case they want to move on and work in the tech industry
[00:19:04] so what advice would you have someone wanting to switch careers in the same way that you have? okay I think my biggest thing is check him so ask yourself first like why so always find your
[00:19:17] why why is it that you want to do it? once you've found your why I think your next step is to research so research the different industries me going to that that's head first for example
[00:19:28] or me going to Microsoft I was able to do my research even though I wasn't there with a pen and pay for you know scribbling down notes I was watching I was active I was asking questions
[00:19:39] I was like is it with my friends like what did you think of that I remember even walking up to you okay I'm being like I love this that how do I at least you know that how do I get there
[00:19:50] whenever you say you just go do it you just go do it I'm like yeah around so find your why do your research ask people like people within my reach have helped me so much and I think
[00:20:05] it you do not have to do it alone like if you want to make that switch get people involved in your journey you can consult if you can give you advice that would be my biggest thing and then just do
[00:20:16] it just go for it like don't hold back it is scary though I won't lie it is very scary switch and careers it is scary because it takes you out of your comfort zone well that's amazing it
[00:20:30] takes you out of your comfort zone yeah I think it's a risk a lot of the time when you're leaving what may be comfortable and easy and what you're used to and going into a role where you don't
[00:20:44] know what the future holds you don't know if this is right for you you don't know if you're going to do amazing in this industry but you're going for it because you think I'm just gonna try I'm
[00:20:54] gonna do it which is amazing the next kind of question I wanted to ask was kind of to do with getting into cloud computing so getting your first role in the cloud or as a cloud engineer
[00:21:09] or one of those entry level roles in cloud and I wanted to kind of hear your advice or your recommended steps to getting your first role in cloud computing what would your recommended
[00:21:25] search for achieving that be yeah that's an excellent question because I get asked this a lot because I met her a lot of people and I you know one of my key goals is to help more people
[00:21:36] get into the cloud and what I've realized is there's a five step process that anyone can follow that help them get that first cloud job and it's one of those things where you know I know
[00:21:47] what it's like to try and break into the cloud you just want to learn one technology then the other you know one of your learning python the next year learning Linux date through your trying to
[00:21:55] learn Kubernetes and I find it's really easy to get lost in the weeds and to get confused and so that's why I developed the five steps and step number one is to get a learning plan
[00:22:07] because what happens if you don't have a learning plan is that you just get stuck on what I call a learning treadmill where you you're learning all these things but you're not you don't feel like
[00:22:18] you're going anywhere because you're not getting deeper so step one get a learning plan step two master the and for some context has the general order which I told people to learn things right
[00:22:32] one learn Linux because Linux is the foundation to everything you know if you can't do Linux don't even bother so learn the Linux command line step one step two you know get familiar with the
[00:22:44] definitely with the AWS console and start doing some projects right you know create some services create something in s3 and ect2 just learn how it works and once you do that then you can
[00:22:57] then move on to more automation tools like terraform cscd all of that stuff so that's generally the order in which I'd say learn that but again you know we can go deeper into that later on
[00:23:09] so step one get the learning plan step two master technology fundamentals what do I mean so let's say you're learning let's see you're learning Linux right you need to understand why is Linux important
[00:23:24] well Linux is important because 90% of cloud workloads at least in AWS run on Linux and the reason is is because if you're working on a Linux terminal you don't have the graphical user interface which
[00:23:36] Windows does which means that Linux you can use a smaller instance type which means it's basically cheaper and so that's why a lot of companies use Linux so understanding why the thing is how it
[00:23:48] is helps to contextualize it but then you also need to learn the basic commands right so a lot of the times people try and go to complicated and complex immediately they want to learn server
[00:23:59] illustrator ways like no learn something simple right so an example I give is a project where you have a WordPress server I deploy WordPress on AWS for example and you know so there's the simple
[00:24:12] way to do it which is launching EC2 in AWS I'm sure Azure has its own terminology but launch a virtual machine install WordPress on it and with WordPress you need a database you can also install the database
[00:24:25] on that virtual machine and just have in a public subnet to configure it right and just test everything works so I see that's the simple way to do it so that's step two you know a certain step
[00:24:36] through build simple projects so I feel build simple projects in that technology and then move on to step four which is build more advanced projects so in the early example I gave you had a WordPress
[00:24:50] it's only like a public subnet to the database WordPress everything is on the same server so how could we make this complicated or I don't really like what complicated I see a more of a real world
[00:25:02] example because most companies don't do it like this because it's not safe it's not secure it's not scalable so let's say you build this simple project now to make it more advanced you you then take
[00:25:13] other things into consideration so how do it is that I'd go okay now I need some public subnet and some private subnet and then add create a virtual machine in the private subnet and install WordPress on
[00:25:26] it but rather than having a database on the same virtual machine I use a managed service so in AWS it be an RDS instance and I'm sure Azure has its own managed services so now you've decopalled
[00:25:39] the application which is WordPress from the database right so now they decopalled and again the database is also in a private subnet for security and what I then do is that put the virtual machine
[00:25:53] with the application in an auto scaling group so that you know if it gets terminated another one automatically spins up and then not have an application load balancer in a public subnet and so the traffic comes through the application load balancer and then into the WordPress virtual machine
[00:26:11] and because and the reason you do it like this is because this house done in the real world and it just makes your infrastructure more secure, more scalable, more resilient but
[00:26:22] if you try to do this more complicated thing I mentioned off the bat you'll get lost and you'll get confused however if you build a simple project which I mentioned earlier you'll get to work out a lot of
[00:26:31] the kinks right so you know a lot of the simple things so by the time you get to the more advanced project what your what you're fixing is a bit different because you've already figured out a lot
[00:26:43] of things so it just makes it easier to navigate whereas what I see a lot of people do is try to just complicate it first and then get completely lost and the final thing so once you get a couple
[00:26:53] of projects under your belt so you've done some projects using AWS service you've done some projects using CICD so I'll give you another example of a simple and an advanced right with CICD
[00:27:07] so a simple CICD thing is that okay you have some code and then once you you know do a poor request and merge into a branch it automatically gets deployed into a virtual machine right
[00:27:19] so that's really simple you push your code it gets deployed in a virtual machine great using pipelines however in a real world you might want to have a test environment and a production environment
[00:27:30] so you want to test the code make sure everything works before I get deployed in production so more complicated setup then an a more realistic real world setup is now you have let's say two branches
[00:27:42] in your code repository you have a test branch and a production branch and then also in AWS or whatever cloud you have you also have two different servers a test server and a prod server
[00:27:54] so if you make a change to your code you then merge it to your test branch and then that deploys code to your test server and then you can do your test to make sure everything works
[00:28:03] and once you satisfied you can then merge that code from your test branch into your production branch which then deploys that into the production server so you can see again we've gone
[00:28:12] from simple which is one branch, one pipeline to complicated and by doing this you then build up a repertoire of high quality projects you can talk about because again there's a lot of competition
[00:28:25] so the more you can do, the more you can the further you can take yourself the more likely an employer is going to look favorable on you and so this brings us to the final step which
[00:28:35] is learn how to communicate your experience now this happens in two main ways the first way is in your resume right you need to know how to write your or the project you've done all your
[00:28:47] skills or your experience in a way that sort of attracts recruiters and I see I review a lot of people's CVs or resumes and I see they don't really know how to do that properly either they don't
[00:28:58] have enough detail in there or they have too much detail or they're not formats in it properly so learning how to communicate your experience and paper is really good and then the second way
[00:29:09] is through interviews right so once you actually start getting calls from recruiters how do you talk about the project you've done like Caleb you'd be surprised how many people I have mock interviews with and I'm like okay so tell me about the project you've done and they're going
[00:29:23] um I can't remember and you know they don't have an answer for me and you know this is a question that's definitely gonna come up in an interview right so you need to know how to respond today
[00:29:33] you need to practice you need to know what the common interview questions are and how to answer them confidently and you're competently right with a smile on your face and with enthusiasm so
[00:29:44] these are aty by following these five things so just to iterate because I know I've said a lot of things you step one get a learning plan step two master technology for the mentors step three
[00:29:56] build simple projects step four build advanced projects step five communicate your experience and that's the five step framework to get your first class job that is a really good framework and
[00:30:09] I'm sure the people watching this who are trying to get that first cloud job will really be able to take a lot from those five steps that you've just shared um one of the things that I was
[00:30:21] really interested with was when you spoke about the basic project and then into the sort of advanced project the basic one was quite simple you know create a VM install WordPress get a
[00:30:34] database behind it and the second one was kind of building that in a way that kind of looked like the real world having a test environment production environment and kind of pushing that through
[00:30:45] as if it was a company doing so or as if it was real life um so these these steps were really good and and it's really great to hear sort of a framework that people can just go along with
[00:30:57] and follow to getting their first role so I hope those watching and who are looking to get their first welcome really take a lot from them. Wow that is some amazing advice from some of our tech professionals.
[00:31:10] I hope some of this advice is really really helpful for you guys and I hope it's stuff you can really put into practice on your journeys and in your tech careers. Thanks so much for watching.
[00:31:19] Remember to leave a comment saying your favorite episode from this season so far and let us know why is that your favorite episode? Thanks again for watching and I will see you next Monday.