As a Security Professional who is degreed in Human Resources, I understand what you are saying. However, in your effective writing courses you should have learned that with the multiple definitioned acronyms in the world today, we should not use an acronym and ASSUME that it will be understood for what it means. Recruiters are not typically reviewing bugtraq, have never heard of Defcon unless it was DEFCON while they were in the military, and don't visit security web sites or read security magazines online or otherwise. I guess what I am saying is that if you really want to get a positive response, you need to write your resume so that anyone who reads it understands what you are saying. Regards RL -----Original Message----- From: Nicko Demeter [mailto:nickoat_private] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 5:53 PM To: Moyer, Shawn Cc: securityjobsat_private Subject: RE: "Security Expertise In Short Supply", but no gigs to be found While diversity depending on times may or may not be a good thing what gets me is the recruiter that does not get things like: "Well I have posted advisories on Bugtraq" "I have spoken on H2K and Defcon" "Run my own security site/zine" "Have contributed kernel code" etc etc I am not saying I've done all of the above. However there are skills that are of course amazing for the job that go into a black hole into the recruiter's brain since he/she is unable to comprehend the information. <venting> Oh, and talking about diversity I have the titles webmaster, network admin, edi administrator, systems admin, director of it, and engineer in my resume. I refuse to make up a title just because it sounds cool or is the same title the recruiter is looking for. However I always get "Well, that's great but do you know....how do you call this...TCB..no wait...TCP and security?" </venting> Oh and I do have a DoD sec clearance. Have not seen ANY recruiter get excited at all about it even when the job is "InfoSec"-ish. I think the moral of the story is to have a copy of the resume that looks like exactly what the recruiter is looking for. Bleh... Nicko -----Original Message----- From: Moyer, Shawn [mailto:smoyerat_private] Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2001 3:07 PM Cc: securityjobsat_private Subject: Re: "Security Expertise In Short Supply", but no gigs to be found In monitoring this thread, it occurs to me that this is very likely one of those times when the ability to switch-hit or have a "fall-back" skillset is handy. I think most of us came into InfoSec from another area (Unix Sysadmin, Networking, Dev, etc.), and if responses are lukewarm, it might not be a bad idea to have an alternative resume or two emphasizing another skillset. I have several colleagues who have a "Sysadmin" resume and an "InfoSec" resume... Some of the higher-level folks on this list could likely also serve as competent IT managers, I'd wager. In fact, the InfoSec background may show a broader history than someone who's very highly specialized -- it could even be an asset in finding a position in another area of IT. I'm not in the market myself (I like to lurk on the list to get a feel for what's going on in the InfoSec job market), but in the past I received a lot of calls / emails about Unix and Cisco positions since those are areas that I work in a lot, even though InfoSec has been my specialization for quite a few years. Although I found it annoying at the time, it's nice to know that in a pinch there are some other areas to market myself in. To paraphrase the VP of a sales of a certain highly aggressive security software vendor, it's good to have as many hooks in the water as possible. --shawn -- Shawn Moyer Project Lead - Information Security Reinsurance Group of America, Inc. 1370 Timberlake Manor Pkwy. Chesterfield, MO 63017
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Fri Nov 30 2001 - 07:51:51 PST