May 2017 |
Transition-e-news Volume 4 Issue 130 |
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Corporate Gray Military-Friendly Job Fair * May 24, 2017 * Virginia Beach
You are invited to attend the May 24th Corporate Gray Military-Friendly Job Fair at the Virginia Beach Convention Center and meet face-to face with representatives from Lockheed Martin, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Leidos, National Security Agency, Newport News Shipbuilding, Defense Contract Management Agency, ENSCO, LMI Government Consulting, AECOM, U.S. Postal Service, Durham Police Department, Michael and Son Services, Robert Half, L-3, and many more! The job fair will be held from 9 am to 12:30 pm, with free employment seminars starting at 8 am. To ensure you receive the job fair employer directory in advance, pre-register at corporategray.com/jobfairs/384. Especially for transitioning service members and veterans. Free and open to all job seekers.
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Thou Shalt Not . . . (Part 1 of 2)© Tom Wolfe, author; all rights reserved; excerpts from Out of Uniform: Your Guide to a Successful Military-to-Civilian Career Transition; used with the permission of the author and publisher, www.potomacbooksinc.com. Following these Commandments will lead you to a promised land called Interview Success. Here are the First through Fifth Commandments. 1. The First Commandment: Thou shalt not be late. There is no excuse for being late to an interview. Even a legitimate excuse will do you no good, unless you have contacted the interviewer well in advance and explained a cause which was unforeseen and beyond your control. That seems unfair and a bit harsh, doesn’t it? Well, maybe so, but think about this—assuming that everyone else interviewing for that job managed to show up on time, what does that say about you? Show up late and there will be a gray cloud hovering above your head. What’s in that cloud? Lack of preparation? Inability to problem solve? Failure to plan and anticipate? Lack of courtesy? Questionable reliability? Even if none of that is true, it will not matter. Perception is reality. By the way, this commandment applies equally to both face-to-face and telephone interviews. 2. The Second Commandment: Thou shalt not ask too few or inappropriate questions. At the most basic level an interview is nothing more than a Q & A session. Both parties check each other out and find out what they need to know by asking and answering questions. For you, the job seeker, your questions are the most powerful tool in your military-to-civilian career transition toolbox. There are two reasons for this power, one fairly obvious and one frequently overlooked. The overt reason for asking questions is to get answers. This is how you learn about the organization, the job, the opportunity, the culture, the environment, and the people. The second reason? Asking the right questions will contribute greatly to your ability to express interest in the company. This gets tricky. Your questions must be about them, not you. Save the self-serving questions (salary, benefits, vacation, holidays, etc.) until after the job offer is on the table. 3. The Third Commandment: Thou shalt not exhibit improper body language. Interviewing is a combination of listening and talking. It all comes down to communication and language and there are two components to language—verbal and non-verbal. Although solid verbal communication skills are critical to interview success, the non-verbal component—i.e., body language—is equally important. Body language comes in many forms and presents itself from the second you walk into the interview until you walk back out that door. It starts and ends with a unique form of body language, the only one that involves touching—the handshake. A handshake says much about a person’s style and self-confidence. It needs to be firm, but not too firm. Duration is also important. No more than a second in length. Either party can initiate it, but do not wait too long before you stick out your hand and introduce yourself. Do not vary your approach based on the gender of the interviewer. Many men, especially military men, will shake a woman’s hand differently—bad idea. Limp handshakes and sweaty palms are notorious for killing interviews. Accompanying that handshake is another form of body language—eye contact. Solid eye contact sends a signal of self-confidence, interest, and situational comfort. Bad eye contact sends the opposite signal. Many people do fine with eye contact when they are speaking but not so well when the other person in speaking. Think about the signal that sends. Additional expressions of body language include the way you sit in the chair, placement of your hands, crossing your legs, facial expressions, hand gestures, fidgeting, and nervous habits. Do yourself a favor and ask a friend or colleague to observe and evaluate your body language and adjust or modify as needed. 4. The Fourth Commandment: Thou shalt not dress inappropriately. Many military-to-civilian job seekers relish the thought of never again having to wear a uniform and/or concern themselves with being in the appropriate uniform of the day. Being out-of-uniform will no longer be a bad thing. Not so fast. Although you may choose to avoid the many civilian jobs where uniforms are required and the organizations with strict dress codes, there is one more uniform of the day that you have no choice but to wear—appropriate interviewing attire. One key to interview success is being memorable. You and your competition are alike in so many ways and the interviewer meets so many candidates it can be hard for that interviewer to remember who is who. It is obvious your goal is to be remembered for positive reasons but it would be a mistake to think that your interviewing wardrobe will contribute to that goal. The premise here is that you and your competition will all dress appropriately and interviewing attire becomes a common denominator among all the candidates. If however you are remembered for what you wore to the interview I guarantee it was because of how inappropriate it was. Do yourself a favor and find out in advance what you should wear. Sometimes it will be the traditional interview suit. Other times it could be coveralls and work boots. Sometimes you will need more than one outfit. Regardless, do your best to be memorable for the right reasons rather than what you wore that day. 5. The Fifth Commandment: Thou shalt not lack self-knowledge. Here’s a quick and foolproof way to determine whether or not your interview was successful. As soon as you leave the room, pull out your IMVGs (Interviewer Mind Vision Goggles) and take a look at the picture you created in the mind of the interviewer. What do you see? Maybe nothing—that is as bad as it gets. Perhaps there is a vision, but it is fuzzy or indistinct—again, not good. There is a chance you will see a picture of you doing a job, but not the one for which you were being considered. That too is problematic. How about this one: the interviewer sees you in the job, being productive, but with a frown on your face. Or, maybe you are smiling but doing the job poorly. One last shot—there you are, in the job, doing it well with a high level of job satisfaction. Congratulations! How do you create that vision? With a well-developed level of self-knowledge it’s not hard. Without it, it’s impossible. What are your strengths? Talents? Attributes? Skills? Motivators? Wants? Needs? What really matters to you? By arming yourself with the answers to those questions and by knowing the particulars of the job, and you can present yourself in such a way that the interviewer has no choice but to see you in the job, successful and happy. Remember this—you most certainly have competition for that job. There are almost always more good candidates than there are good jobs. The interviewer needs to narrow down the field and he or she can afford to be picky. You have a choice here—disobey one or more of those Commandments and make it easy for him or her to cross you off the list. Or, make the interviewer work hard to find a reason to reject you. As the interviewer digs deeper and deeper and gets to know you better and better, things will start to change. Unable to find reasons to say NO, he or she will start to focus on reasons to say YES and that leads to interview success. For additional information on this subject and much more career transition guidance, check out www.out-of-uniform.com . Join me again next time and we will take a look at Commandments Six through Ten. © 2017; Tom Wolfe, is an author, columnist, career coach, veteran, and an expert in the field of military-to-civilian career transition. During his career he assisted thousands of service members in their searches for employment, placing more than 3000 in their new jobs. Prior to civilian life, he graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy and served as a surface warfare officer. He teaches transition courses, gives seminars on career and job change, writes about the career transition process, and continues to counsel current and former military personnel. His book, Out of Uniform: Your Guide to a Successful Military-to-Civilian Career Transition, was published by Potomac Books in 2011. Tom lives on the North Carolina coast with his wife, Julie, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Maggie. |
Trump signs HIRE Vets bill into law
by THE DAILY PRESS (TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE) Reprinted with permission ©
Stars and Stripes President Donald Trump signed Rep. Paul Cook's bill HR 244, the HIRE Vets Act of 2017, into law on Friday. Rep. Cook, R-Apple Valley, had reintroduced this bipartisan bill earlier this year. The HIRE Vets Act will promote private sector recruiting, hiring, and retaining of men and women who served honorably in the U.S. military through the voluntary participation of employers. It creates a self-funded awards program recognizing the efforts undertaken by employers to hire and retain veterans. The HIRE Vets Act would allow businesses to display "HIRE Vets Medallions" on products and marketing materials. These medallions would be awarded as part of a two-tiered system associated with specific hiring and retention goals each year. "I'm thrilled this bill has been signed into law," Cook said. "This is a big win for veterans and the companies who are truly making an effort to attract and hire more veterans. With passage of the HIRE Vets Act, we'll be able to see which companies truly live up to the employment promises they make to veterans. "Veterans who serve this country honorably shouldn't struggle to find employment, and this bill creates an innovative system to encourage and recognize employers who make veterans a priority in their hiring practices. I'm grateful for the overwhelming support this bipartisan bill has received and look forward to its implementation." ——— ©2017 Daily Press, Victorville, Calif. Visit Daily Press, Victorville, Calif. at www.vvdailypress.com Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC. |
A Personal Brand Is Required Today© Copyright, 2017, Susan P. Joyce. All rights reserved. I know many people view the term “personal branding” as nonsense – pretentious hogwash and marketing balderdash. They feel that we didn’t need a personal brand in the 1990′s so we don’t need one now. Life would be much simpler for all of us if that view was correct. But, unfortunately, it is wrong. We lived in a much smaller world during the 20th Century. The Internet and Google Have Changed the “Game”!A personal brand is critical to the success of a 21st Century job search, and the longer a job seeker ignores defining and disseminating their personal brand, the longer and more difficult their job hunt could be. In the 1990′s and before, most of us didn’t have (or need) a personal brand. Unless we were actors, authors, politicians, musicians — think: James Earl Jones, Truman Capote, Bill Clinton, Cher — a personal brand was irrelevant and unnecessary. We were known by the people who needed to know us, so differentiating ourselves from the rest of the world was not necessary. Life was simple. Your Personal Brand = Your Professional ReputationThink of your “personal brand” as what we’ve long taken for granted – our professional reputations. Our professional reputation is much more visible to the whole world now because of our blogs, LinkedIn, Facebook, and other online visibility, including email. That visibility makes a personal brand/online reputation much more important, too. Rather than the local reputation we had in the 1990′s and earlier, this reputation must be visible, world-wide. Recruiters search for qualified job candidates, and “vetting” the candidate’s online reputation is very definitely part of the process now for the vast majority of employers. 4 Important Reasons YOU Need a Visible Personal BrandMany reasons exist for having a personal brand. These are 4 that pop immediately to mind: 1. To have the right keywords associated with your name.No recruiter is searching for an “experienced marketing professional” using that term. That would be a total waste of time. Instead, they search using the keywords specifically associated with the job they are trying to fill — like “B2B marketing manager” or “social media marketing analyst” or whatever terms can find the people with the skills and experience they are seeking. 2. To avoid mistaken identity online.Recruiters and potential employers (also bankers, credit card companies, etc.) need to be able to differentiate you from others who might have the same name that you have but who may have done (or been publicly accused of doing) “bad things.” You may lead a blameless, “perfect” life, but you could still be negatively impacted by something unsavory done by someone else with the same name you have. They may owe back property taxes, been accused of hitting someone with their car while driving drunk, been convicted of a felony, or any of a million other things that are now “public record” and easily found in a search on the Internet. If you don’t have a visible “personal brand,” something done by someone else could reflect on you, causing an employer to decide not to consider you for a job. 3. To avoid having someone else define your brand for you.Whether they intend to or not, someone else may define your personal brand if you don’t. They hand your resume to their boss with the comment, “She’s great at customer service.” Probably you are great at customer service, but maybe you’d rather find your next job in sales. Or you are quoted in a blog post, referencing your extensive experience in sales when you’d really like to move into marketing for your next job. In the two examples above, you would have prepared the person handing over your resume to describe you as someone who is great at customer service but accomplishing some amazing things in the sales aspects of that job and interested in moving your career more in that direction. Or the quote in the blog could link to your blog which is full of thoughtful articles about marketing and how marketing and sales work together to achieve important goals, defining yourself as a sales and marketing professional. 4. To demonstrate your understanding of how the world works right now.Being “invisible” is almost as bad as having a bad reputation. If you are invisible, either you don’t understand how the online world works or you don’t want to participate. For most organizations these days, that marks you as out-of-date or out-of-sync with society. Invisibility means you demonstrably don’t “get it” when it comes to operating in society today — few organizations are untouched by the Internet now. Marketing Your Personal BrandI think the best part of personal branding is the thought, time, and attention needed to define and develop a personal brand. Most of us haven’t put that much thought into our careers in the past. We just jumped from opportunity to opportunity without much plan or analysis. Once you have defined your personal brand, you market it by making it visible and living up to it. This involves any or all of the following:
Being “generic” — and I-can-do-anything brand — is as useless as being invisible. Changing Your Personal BrandYour personal brand is not set in concrete. It can change over time as your professional goals change, so don’t feel “boxed in” by your personal brand. As you grow in your profession or if you change professions, simply adjust your personal brand to your new goals. Bottom Line: You Are Your Personal BrandPrivacy isn’t “over” hopefully, but anonymity is. And your personal brand is your professional reputation – how the world (including the World Wide Web) sees you and understands who you are, deflecting mistaken identity and protecting your reputation. For More About Successful Job Search:To Be Hired, Be Found: Your Best Keywords Is Your Job Search too Old-Fashioned? The New Process for Landing a Job You Are Being Watched and Judged! About the Author… Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce Online job search expert Susan P. Joyce has been observing the online job search world and teaching online job search skills since 1995. Susan is a two-time layoff “graduate” who has worked in human resources at Harvard University and in a compensation consulting firm. In 2011, NETability purchased WorkCoachCafe.com, and Susan has been editor and publisher of WorkCoach since then. Susan also edits and publishes Job-Hunt.org, is a Visiting Scholar at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a columnist on HuffingtonPost. Follow Susan on Twitter at @jobhuntorg and on Google+ |
Analysts: Cybersecurity staffing shortages negatively affect national security
By GARY ROBBINS | The San Diego Union-Tribune (Tribune News Service) Reprinted with permission ©
Stars and Stripes The nation’s colleges and universities are scrambling to add courses to prepare students to fill the huge number of cybersecurity jobs that have arisen due to exponential growth in hacking worldwide. The extent of the problem isn’t clear; analysts say the number of job vacancies ranges from 100,000 to 350,000, with as many as 45,000 positions in California. Ashton Mozano, a cybersecurity professor at the University of San Diego, says there are thousands of $80,000 entry-level jobs available to applicants who have nothing more than an undergraduate degree in computer science or computer engineering. Analysts are trying to nail down the actual number of openings. “The cybersecurity industry does not have the best track record when it comes to quantification,” said Stephen Cobb, a senior researcher in the San Diego office of ESET, a digital security company. But the shortfall is real. And a lot of the blame has been placed on academia for failing to train large numbers of students with targeted skills. Industry and government officials also are being criticized for failing to define their needs more clearly — a key component for helping colleges solve the labor shortage. Academia is trying to fix the problem, especially in San Diego County, where hackers routinely assault the region’s huge military, defense and science communities, as well as the assets of consumers. National University, the University of San Diego, San Diego State University, UC San Diego Extension and Palomar College now teach courses that weren’t available 5 to 10 years ago. USD also closely works with Circadence Corp., a company in Kearny Mesa that specializes in the “gamification” of cybersecurity training. Students are exposed to high-resolution videos and graphics that give them a sense of what a real “hack attack” is like. They also use the immersive software to learn how to spot and prevent digital assaults. The company is led by Mozano, who is also part of USD’s growing cyber program. He’s trying to change the way students are taught in hopes to drawing larger numbers of people into the field quickly. “Unfortunately, presenting technical training in an aesthetically pleasant way does not seem to be a high priority among course material developers,” Mozano said. “Certain academic fields in mathematics and engineering are infamous for presenting material in drab, monotonic, esoteric, non-interactive manners.” Analysts said that compounds the problem because cybersecurity already suffers from an image problem. The field pays well, but many computer-science students would rather create new products and technologies for Apple and Google than design and operate systems that spot, resist and mitigate a widening variety of attacks. “Computer science is sexy. Cyber isn’t,” said P.K. Agarwal, regional dean of Northeastern University’s Silicon Valley campuses, which teach cybersecurity. “Cybersecurity can be a high-stress job where you can get fired if things go wrong, and no one pats you on the back if there were no problems overnight,” he added. Analysts said the industry needs to jazz things up and highlight job opportunities. “The chances are excellent for graduates of homeland security and cyber security degree programs to enter the job market directly out of college,” said Lance Larson, assistant director of the Graduate Program in Homeland Security at SDSU. “The reality for recent graduates is that they need a degree, experience, and certification; this is really the perfect trifecta for graduates to have a powerful job seeker portfolio. “At San Diego State University’s Graduate Program we are requiring students to intern, starting with our 2018 graduate class, to allow students to gain practical experience required for the job market.” San Diego-based National University also is emphasizing practicality. “One thing we do to improve students’ skills and make them more marketable is provide opportunities to work with local small businesses and nonprofits to conduct free security assessments as part of their final Capstone project,” said Chris Simpson, director of National’s Center for Cybersecurity “Students who gain experience from this applied learning and who have the opportunity to network within the tech community have shared with us how well-prepared they are for the job market.” The staffing shortage is serious enough that, “The president should … train 100,000 new cybersecurity practitioners by 2020,” the Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity said on Dec. 1. The shortage also means “you’ll see more things like the Tesco attack, which targeted bank accounts (in England), and a greater risk to health-care records and everyday devices like your phone,” said John Callahan, director of cybersecurity programs at the University of San Diego. “In the digital age, this is potentially the greatest period of risk that consumers have ever faced.” There’s special concern about ransomware, a type of malicious software that hackers can use to remotely take control of computers, including those in automobiles. In most cases, victims have paid money — from hundreds to tens of thousands of dollars — to regain control. For example, hackers carried out such an attack against Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center in February, forcing the hospital to pay $17,000 in ransom. The U.S. Justice Department estimates there are about 4,000 attempted ransomware attacks each day against individuals, companies and the government, and that many of them are successful. “Based on FBI statistics, bank robbery in the U.S. is a $40 million a year problem, whereas cyber criminals using ransomware are making over $200 million per quarter,” said Cobb at ESET. “And while a handful of bank robbers are shot dead every year, there are no reports of cyber criminals ever being killed in the commission of a crime,” he added. The federal government and the military began to significantly ramp up their efforts to fight cyber attacks about a decade ago. Security firms and a wide range of companies did the same. The results have been mixed. Analysts said most cyber attacks, including some pretty sophisticated ones, are blocked or minimized. But hackers have quickly adapted to every method used to stop them, leading to damaging and embarrassing breaches amid an ongoing game of cat and mouse. Earlier this year, hackers stole digital spying tools thought to belong to the super-secret National Security Agency. Hackers also stole data from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign in an apparent attempt to influence the presidential election. In late November, a hacker disabled the fare system for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency, forcing it to give commuters free rides until proper operations were restored. Experts said these kinds of intrusions underscore the need to develop a huge professional class of cyber professionals — and to market the field as a noble and dynamic domain where well-regarded, highly valued specialists defend precious assets and protect the public’s safety. “Some people think of cyber as the I.T. guy, which is wrong,” said Callahan at the University of San Diego. While the staffing estimates vary, analysts agree on the huge need for qualified workers in the cyber industry. Northeastern University’s Agarwal estimates there are 100,000 of these unfilled jobs nationwide. Peninsula Press, a journalism program at Stanford University, puts the figure at 209,000. Cyber Seek, an industry-government coalition, said the number could be about 350,000 when including positions that require at least some cyber abilities. The job descriptions range from security analysts to network engineers to software developers to risk managers. Some lower-level positions pay as much as $70,000 per year, and management positions can hit $235,000 or higher. Experts are eager to see the applicant pool widen, and they’re looking for specific types of candidates. “The best cybersecurity professionals think like criminals,” said Domini Clark, an Idaho-based recruiter at the recruiting company Decision Toolbox. “The joke in the industry is that superstars have an ‘evil bit’ in the code of their personalities. They know better than to have a high-profile online presence. ‘Paranoid’ is too strong a word, but they tend to be hyper-cautious and some take pride in operating in ‘stealth mode.’” Those people tend to be coveted, so low-ball employment offers just don’t work. “(Some) companies are doing lip service, not willing to fund the important roles that are necessary for the growing security issues,” said Kirsten Bay, chief executive of the firm Cyber adAPT in Half Moon Bay. “There is a desperate need for technologists who can speak at both the engineering and board levels, candidates who can understand technology and yet speak to the business case for security.” Clark at Decision Toolbox agrees, noting: “About half of cybersecurity professionals are contacted by a recruiter at least once a week. If you post a standard H.R. job description of duties and requirements, it will wash out among all the other background noise … (Candidates) want to do intriguing work that is varied and unique. Let them use their devious creativity to your company’s advantage.”
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