How to Hire and Retain Cybersecurity Personnel and Scale the Business

[Music] hello everyone welcome to another episode of dark rhino security confidential today we are honored to have carl sharman join us carl is head of cyber security solutions and consultancies for stott and may across north america carl's helped build and scale teams across multiple types of businesses including fortune 500 pre-ipo late-stage ventures early-stage startups security consultancies and mssb which is what we are here at dark rhino right and mdr but uh i digress he is often brought on by companies for either extremely difficult hires mass hires at speed and scale or discrete leadership hires uh carl is a contributor to the cyber security sector with regular white papers podcasts and public speaking appearances uh he was recently featured in the top one percent of search and staffing professionals globally by linkedin thank you for joining us no it's my pleasure thanks for having me on uh it's great to have you um i think you know cyber security we're seeing such growth in the industry and hiring people retention these are all critical topics one of the things that i'd love to get your opinion on is anyone that's looking to make a transition career or they're transitioning into cyber do you have any pointers for them as what they should do to get a foothold in the industry yeah and of course i think it's a big topic right now you know i'm not the biggest fan in saying there's a shortage i really don't think there is i think there's a lot of people that want to work in security where i think the where i think the issue is is with the employers themselves they have um they have these requirements that's very unicorn-like where um you know i suppose the expectations are too high of what they're looking for and it's an incredibly competitive market and i think we need to you know make sure we bring in a range of people with a range of backgrounds to the table to make sure that you know we have more security professionals and transitioning is one of them you know transitioning is such a great great great way of um you know getting more people into the sector and i think you know one of your one of your previous guests carla you know me and between me and her you know we've been a big supporter of people transitioning into security whether that's uh women who go and have you know children and and then come back into the workforce and are retrained into cyber security or whether it's other professionals who are looking for a new career change you know and i'm a great example of this like i started in soccer industry um you know i i was doing recruitment for soccer clubs in the premier league in the football league in the uk and um i i wanted to try something different in the business world and i i happen to fall in recruitment because it's it's what i did you know it's very similar to what you do in the soccer world but i had to learn cyber security and i had to spend time learning that you know doing courses and trying to make sure that i understand as much as i can about it or what i need to do so i you know i've done the transition myself although it's it's seen differently and and that's all it is it's what's seen it's how it's interpreted so i think for anyone that's doing that you know i think what we need to consider is you know firstly you know what education can you go and get and everyone always thinks well that's cost that's time you know i want it now and stuff like that and i totally get that and i think the easiest way to you know counteract that is go and get a sans course go and work with cyber infosecs you know these companies that offer short courses certified courses that can just show that you have the appetite to to want to work in there you don't necessarily need a bachelor's degree or a master's degree in cyber security you know like there are companies you know like the big four consulting that will ask for a bachelor's but they don't ask for a cyber security specific bachelor's so you know it's important to go and get the education and then the second thing on that is just mentoring like i have a group of mentors around me um that are that are csos of large banks or are um you know heads of consulting practices you know and that's because their fingers right on the pulse you know and they give me their time they give me the insight of what i need to know from an intelligence standpoint from you know the next career move that i make because i'm still trying to work out where i go next you know every every day every month there's a new challenge that you know that we have internally that i need i need a bit of outside resource on and i think people that are transitioning the easiest way to the easiest way to understand what's going on in the market is to have their mentors so the two starting points that i'd always say you know go and look at where you can get certified and what education you can do to supplement what you where you want to go and then secondly to help you along that journey go and get a group of mentors don't be afraid to ask people for their time um and and that will be the starting blocks of making that transition and you know well a couple things one is uh football not a lot more fun than cyber yeah yeah i get that i get that a lot you know obviously um i lived i lived a lot of people's dreams like i got to watch soccer for free every day um you know and just just go to these great stadiums in the uk and europe and travel europe and and whatever else and you know it was all paid for um but the flip side of that is i shouldn't really say this because we do this in cyber but you know it can be long hours and uh and you know you don't see your family that much and um you're expected to be you know it's not always the nicest industry there's a lot of um you know backstabbing and politics and whatever else it teaches you a lot you know it teaches you it taught me a lot of how to defend myself how to promote myself how to um how to manage politics of the boardroom and and stuff like that and you know i i learned i learned a hell of a lot during that period but also i'm not you know i do i work for a lot more than money you know like that's not that's not what drives me uh drives me is what drives me is is being you know adding value to people's lives um and and you can do that in in in soccer but like you're just moving players to another contract you're not you're not really giving them you know occasionally you will get a player out of nowhere and and you give them the opportunities um as you've as you've seen there's many examples of doing that but there's a lot more to it and that's what i like about cyber is like you can you can really actively help companies defend and we actually have a value in the market where we're actually protecting the industry because we're finding these resources for these companies to help them uh you know defend or whatever their objectives are as part of their business and we actually helped solve that and that's that's a bigger part of of what i what i didn't feel was in in soccer because in soccer all you do is is help line the uh the owners pockets and uh and there's a lot more to working than that but uh you know i have a lot of time for anyone who works in that industry because it is a hard hard graft well yeah there are no easy jobs out there that are worth doing that at least that that you would want to be in but you know that uh commitment passion perseverance those are all traits that we're always looking for when we hire people and and i think you're absolutely right getting back to your earlier comment that you should find mentors and you should get an education and that education doesn't have to be a college degree we've had n number of guests on this show that have actually talked about that topic most people are looking for that are is someone motivated are they willing to learn are they driven and do they have a passion for what it is that they want to progress towards in their career goal if that's the case then you've got great claim and you can then then mold it well you know you know just on that like there's so many companies who can't compete with the top banks you know like this is what people get so fixated on is like oh i want to work at disney or i want to work at nike or i want to work you know goldman sachs and that's great you know we all do but you know sometimes that's not the route sometimes the route is you have to go and work for a dark rhino or a you know a 20-person company or whatever it might be to to go and get there you know there might have to be these stepping stones you know in your career where you have to go and go and do something you maybe didn't imagine doing you know you might have to go and be an i.t manager or an i.t administrator and then make that step in and i think you just need to work out what's them stepping stones and the great thing i find is and this is what fascinates me and what i constantly study is like you know everyone you know the famous thing is like i want to be a cso you know when they're starting out that's where i want to get my career to in 25 years okay what's the stepping stone well the great thing is is there's no direct line there's not there's not a straight line to see so and that's what people forget people are like well i'm gonna go to goldman sachs i'm gonna go up through the ranks and i'm gonna get to see so like nine times out of ten it doesn't work that way you know you have to take on opportunities and you have to go and get mentors and people forget there's this whole iceberg effect where there's so many other things under the water that you can't see that's holding the iceberg together and just because the top of it looks beautiful that's where everyone thinks that people just end up once they get into that and a lot of people forget that like a lot of people when they get into these companies they just forget that that's you know you need to keep mentors you need to keep training you need to keep you know meeting new people you know and there there's a lot more to it like you're saying and i think you know companies like you know like yours will give people a lot more exposure rather than being siloed in a large organization and that's where people transitioning in need to go i need to go and talk to you because i'm hungry i just want an opportunity i want to learn i'm willing to do whatever it takes that's where that's where the focus needs to be and you know we've seen well let me ask you this do you think um people quit because of money is that the primary driver is is that why they want to go to a goldman sachs or a it's a good question you know citigroup or i mean the primary reason people quit is because they're managers like you know we can't get around that like that's still the number one driver of why people quit you know they're they're upset their managers are upset the politics you know the things that come um internal of a company that's the first thing the the second thing is is everyone looks for that pay increase and in cyber you can unfortunately get 10 to 20 percent salary increases which has been aided by companies not allowing not being allowed to ask what you're currently making and that's where companies rely on us for salary information in terms of how do we value these these this talent because you know we we can give them that outside resource and actually help them uh better understand what someone could be making um and that's been a real hard graft for companies to understand so that's that that is the second thing why do why do people go to a goldman sachs and whatever um i think it depends on where you are in the ladder um it definitely has a bit of you know esteem you know there's there's a lot there that's you know brand name uh you know you get to they give you they give you a hoodie you know you've got a badge that says goldman sachs like it's everyone's little bit of dream to have on their linkedin you know a little bit of pride um you know if i think about my family you know my family expected me to stay with a company for 35 years you know that sort of thing you know large organization that i was just going to stay in and be a number you know that's that's that's how my family grew up and there's a lot of family pressures there that come with that that is the reason that people go to that um i think money is one of a few objectives and i think that brings us into retaining staff of like how do you retain staff there's a lot of things to consider there's a lot more than just than just money so uh and that's exactly where i was going with this because like and i'm just going to pick on dark right now because we are a smaller company you know we're 21 22 people actually we we just we just added another so 23 as of this podcast but one of the things is that there's a quality of life because you know from a salary perspective i think we're pretty equitable relative to what the market is is doing but there's a lot of quality of life things that you get at a smaller company that you can't get there's a lot of flexibility you can bring your dog to work if you needed to you know if you needed to bring your child to work you can do that there's a lot of if you needed to disappear for three days because there's something happened no one's going to penalize you uh over that but i think also more importantly we do some very interesting projects on the government side uh on the even in the private security side and some of our folks have had top secret clearances uh we're specialized and i think that gives you uh that might give you a range of exposures that you're not gonna get at a much larger organization where you're just an analyst or a red team or a blue team member or whatever your role is in their cyber security environment and and we've seen that uh from a retention perspective that we we've been very fortunate that we've been able to keep people we've lost several but we've by and large been able to keep folks i think i think just on that i think you know people people make large businesses complicated i think our organizational design makes it incredibly complicated um i think you know the great thing is is when you're a small business is you feel you have access to them people and i have a lot of time for executives who you know keep that door open as they get bigger and i think scaling is you know from working with venture capitalists scaling is is one of the hardest challenges you will ever have because often you lose people during that journey because people become less engaged or or whatever the reason is and i think engagement is like such a key term because you know i'll give you an example the blues allen hamilton you know commercial team um the focus on the private sector the great thing they they do is is they have the mid mid-level um i suppose managers as we'd call it you know historically they bring them to the executive table quite often and for me that's engagement that's allowing diverse voices to come to the table and make sure that everyone's being listened to and heard and i think that's such a simple thing and that's when we come back to the original point of be leaving soccer to come into cyber you know i was at the executive table and i still wasn't getting listened to you know like i was part of that executive team and still not getting listened to it matters it matters people want to be listened to people want to be heard you know we're seeing that with the with the black lives matter movements and and some of the other diversity pushes right now people want to be heard people want to be valued and that comes back to engagement for me you know and that comes back to my original point of why people leave of like the manager is the normal reason or a leader is the normal reason why people leave because they don't feel listened to they don't feel trusted you know whatever that value is that's that's what needs to be corrected and people there's a number of companies and i won't name them uh on here but there's a number of companies that rely on money by paying people more money to try and keep them rather than actually focusing on well how do we develop them how do we you know how do we uh you know seek out that person to make sure that they feel valued and they go home you know feeling worthy and i think that's i think that's so crucial and you know what i would say to anyone who's looking for a new position is do your due diligence on the company like really understand like do they understand people do they actually do people first because so easy so easy for me to go go away from here go on to powerpoint put these values on on a slide and send them out to every candidate i work with and say i am people first i'm i'm uh i will make sure i develop you but actually go through examples like you know who who was the last person that came into my level you know can i go and speak to them or you know who come into my level where are they now like two years down the line like have they been promoted how are they still at the company you know actually go and ask these questions and for me you know every interview is a two-way interview and that's a great way of the great way of treating it is like that's how it should be because you want to be heard if it's all one way in the interview you're probably not at the right company if you if you want to feel valued and be worthy it should be a conversation i think that's a real gem right there every interview is a two-way interview and that is absolutely correct and and people do want to be heard uh if if people don't feel a part of the process if they don't feel like they can really have some control over their contribution their contributions are valued they will leave but when you scale what changes so if when you're going through hyper growth and i could envision that happening at some point for us and i can see many startups i've been involved with many of them there is that stage where you need to scale from 20 to 500 people and you need to do that in the course of a year any thoughts or advice on how that process should be viewed yeah i've had good experience around this you know i i've watched it first hand i've watched companies like i say go through to ipo or be acquired um and i've been part of them journeys not not in-house but as a recruiter helping companies uh scale we've got a few projects that we're currently doing in the security space to you know where they've got their series a or series b and they want to get to that ipo and we help map them out and and i think firstly it's the most fascinating thing to do for me because it's so exciting um every candidate will want to speak to that company because everyone dreams of getting a little bit of you know stock or equity equity sorry in hope that it ipos ourselves and that's where the money is for for any you know normal person like you you and i right you know that's that's what we aim to do um is actually is actually you know build something um and so it's i think that's the first thing is that candidates get excited by it the second thing is what changes on you on your actual question um i honestly think people over complicate it people think that they have to change it it's no different like you know all you're doing is adding more heads and and what happens is then you need to make a decision on well you know how many how many employees to to people and i'm always looking at this from a school perspective so if we if we consider a um let's say an elementary school you know or a middle school let's say so middle school fascinates me because there's so many elementary schools that go into the middle school but like you know a middle school on average is about 14 to one to kid to teacher now when i talk to a lot of organizations they're looking at more six to eight to one so i'm constantly studying this analysis because i want my i want my children to have more access to their teacher now if you're 14 to 1 that means you're in a that means you've got a problem because for me because that means you you're gonna have to either be the loudest the naughtiest or or whatever it is to get that teacher's attention and that isn't necessarily right and that that's how we have to think about organizations is like we're talking about engagement you need to think about how many how much access has that person got to their manager how much does that team have what size does that need to team need to be you know because we want to keep it efficient we want to keep it lean we want to make sure that there everyone's been enabled to make the right decisions and the right communication and whatever the values are so for me that's what i'm always considering is have we actually got the right strategy and for me that starts back at the center part of the business so we're the values the operations have we got the right people um plan in place like you know talent development hr you know all the all the bits of operations and some of this you can outsource some of this you don't need some of some people you can group up into one but you certainly do need that plan because otherwise people are going to join um they are going to leave very quickly and that won't help you get to your target numbers so you need to invest in the individuals you need to make sure you're taking time to on board that individual and bring that individual up to speed very quickly and then help them to then help others who are going for a similar experience of onboarding in when you're doing that it's uh you know it's a real team effort um and you know unfortunately that's why vcs tend to tend to invest in people that have done it before because they understand what they're doing but i honestly do believe ceos or our founders or executives anyway over complicate this because i think it's actually a lot simpler than what it needs to be and i think there's a number of steps you need to go through in order to be successful with it let me ask you this in that cycle in in hyper growth how do you how do you maintain what you were doing as a smaller company where you are hiring for cultural fit and hiring for personality attitude and then knowledge i mean that that's kind of the way we do it but because we want to make sure that they will be a good fit in the company not just that they're a great engineer but they're gonna be a good fit with the people that we have uh how do you maintain that is there or is that where things get lost and that's where you end up having people leave uh well i think if you i think if you look at a company let's come out of security let's look at a company like doordash who have accelerated you know gone through gone through the roof in terms of their growth doordash obviously the pandemics really help them but if you talk to anyone at doordash um as as like one of our you know one of our um you know clients really like it's it's for me it's um uh it's the values are still there the values are still there from day one like the the executives have never changed their values so even though they're this large organization where you know individuals there's a lot more individuals there's a lot more restaurants they're serving too there's so many more delivery drivers like they've got all this complicated like it from the outside it looks like a very complicated business their values and their core have never changed and that's that is the underlying underlying thing with all these businesses if you look at disney you go back to walt disney's values bob iger you know has never changed you know even though he's been you know obviously he's retiring now but even though he's been there for last 20 years you know barb eight has never really come away from the values of what walt disney put in like and that's why i'm saying like people over complicate it people think i need to do what netflix are now doing you're not you're not there you're not at that and you know netflix have you know netflix still focus on you know as they always have done from a small company getting a players that's all netflix care about is getting the best people to get on the boat so everyone's heading in the right direction and that's that's that's where i think people over complicate it is they get so invested in this people part and they actually just need to keep it simple and just need to focus on what work to get us here today let's keep focusing on that where else do we need to innovate and bring on ideas obviously we do need to keep changing to move forwards but the core of the business should really stay the same unless it's not working there's one question i get every candidate i work with to ask at the end of an interview and that is very simply is there anything that i haven't covered that would help you make a make a decision in this process you know like because people go away and they think they've done a good job and i get it all the time i'll ring up the candle after the interview and they'd be like yeah great yeah i did okay you know got everything answered and then i get the feedback and they're like well they didn't cover this and they didn't cover that and you know i'm not too sure they really dealt with this question well like them individuals them hiring managers will have them concerns on the call they don't just think about them after like you know like they will they will be thinking that in their head they will probably have made a note of that so make sure you clarify that is there anything that's that you're not sure on you know just make sure you get clarification at the end and it's difficult question to ask you know a bit like you know uh you know actually trying to get feedback on the end of the call as a candidate you know people don't like asking that but like ask it like you know just you know don't be afraid to you know show that you want it show that you want to learn or you want to get better you know push for that feedback you know on the call don't just rely on us as well do you think it's okay to put people under pressure in an interview it's a really good question i i've looked to this a lot mainly because of my soccer background right you know if you're if you're um you put it down to like you know if we compare it to soccer or the navy seals let's say i'm a big supporter of of how they do things you know within the seals but you know i i think for me you know like they are constantly you know you know we talk about this in soccer because we still don't do it that well but like we're constantly trying to replicate real life situations like the seals will do right you know everything is trying to replicate that to get people in a mindset and a mentality of where they of where they need to be and i think we're you know in security we're actually coming away from that and then we're expecting people to behave in a certain way when these incidences happen and and i do a lot of work in instant response it's a real fine balance for me because i think canada experience is crucial i think speed of process is crucial and i think a lot of people are designing these technical practices especially around coding to test people's knowledge um you know penetration testing used to be notorious with technical uh assessments as part of the interview process um so i think you need to consider anyone who's who's considering their their interview process or recruitment process needs to consider is this time efficient for candidates who are incredibly busy and often already in the workplace secondly is this a good candidate experience so actually get candid feedback did that did that actually keep them engaged how does that not necessarily compare to competitors because i think you can innovate and be a leader and be disruptive from that perspective but like how does that compare in terms of their feelings their emotions towards the company does that does that make them feel they they want to um you know want to join the company sorry and then i think the third thing is does that you know on the flip side does that give you the trust and confidence that this is the right person you know and i think that's where you've got to find the balance there's a very very fine line of balance of getting this right and often companies get it wrong because they focus too much on themselves and not enough on the candidates and on the flip side you know people are so desperate to get candids they put it all onto canada experience but it's got to be a you know a flip side and i think you know in soccer if we're looking at a player we we do it from freeways if we haven't we either watch them so we see them live see them replicate actually you know how do they fit into our team you know what's the characteristics that we're looking for for a player in that position do they fit that we then back it up with analysis so i heavily data usage in terms of does that match to a player that we currently have in the team and then the third thing is often we might be able to bring them into our environment and then see how they settle in from a culture a social standpoint you know a personality standpoint and how that overall fits into where we're looking to head so we you know we have free uses of that and if you can try and replicate that into security in terms of actually giving people insight and and providing that level of detail as well as replicating what a what a person might go through uh in that process then i think you're on to a winner and i think you can really stand out actually from a canada experience standpoint as companies have done uh you know they're very very often you your disney's and and and a variety of other companies sometimes small companies you know in the instant response world um cripsis are a clear leader in in how they do canada experience got a lot better over the last couple of years but that's come from innovating and trialing and getting feedback and going again and you know it does take time but i think it's trying to balance them three things in that triangle which can really you know if you get the center of that triangle you can really be effective for cyber security companies is there have what has your experience shown you as uh strategies that might have worked really well or not so worked so well in uh providing a great experience for the customer base uh and for the employees that's a mouthful yeah yeah i i know that it's a loaded question no it's a really good question um you know i spend a lot of time you know listening to listening to people and and reading and and i think the you know the you know it's his it's his new ceo you know he was former ebay and he was saying that you know when he got into i think it was etsy you know that they had a lot of things that were very easy for their for their for their employees um to to carry out and do their jobs um they didn't want to do the hard stuff which would have actually improved the customer experience and i think there's i think there's a fine balance between it all because you don't want it too hard on your employees because then they're going to leave but ultimately you know without without having customers you don't have employees like and that's where sometimes we get we get so fixated on there there is a real fine balance when i worked in soccer it was all about that i'm lucky to work here you know that was the mentality i should be very you know there's hundreds of people that want my job you know so you should just take it and be happy there was a lot of gratitude and and that's fine like i'm always grateful for having an opportunity but but at the same time like i want to feel valued i want to i want to understand that people understand that i come with a lot of value i i should have you know anyone deserves to be in that job they've been given that job for a reason you know because they they clearly was either the best candor or the best suited or however they look at it and that's how people should believe you know i'm i'm a big believer in the reason that we don't have a diverse white workforce is because often the most diverse candidates don't believe they actually value that job and tend to ignore that job advert and just go past because they go well i'm not good at all these things and often a white man white man will look at a couple of things and go yeah i can do them two things out the ten so i'm good enough for the job and and often a woman will look at them ten things and go all through the ten and go well i can't do one of them but i can do the other nine so i'm not going to apply so funny enough my last four placements have all been women um you know there's it's been uh i have a lot of success in that we have a lot of successes start in may because we have a lot of programs that do mentoring for women and we get access to a lot of candidates um and the last four have been women um there's two bits to this this answer the first is i had a woman who was easily easily good enough for the role she talked herself out of it over a week um she'd gone through the interview she flew through the interview by the time it came to um by the time it was a week away a couple of days away from like the final step of the process she she talked herself out of the process she like i could tell i was talking to her and she was like yeah i've had a look at the job description again and just like i'm not too sure i'm not like i think i think i really miss the mark on one of these things and i you know i don't want to foul like you know and and stuff like that and she talked herself out of it so much that i just said to the client i was like look i think you need to have another chat with her and just re-clarify and they had a chat and they you know ended up agreeing to go separate ways and she was against you know people that were that were better than her not that she knew this uh in terms of coming from bigger companies or or more experience and stuff but she was still their number one candidate and they kept telling her that and that still wasn't good enough because of the job description and sometimes that can really hurt well and you know one point i would make on the person who talked herself out i think anyone who's listening one thing that if you want rapid and great career and advancement and this is just my advice is you have to get comfortable with going into getting out of your comfort zone you just must i would say go for the harder job go for the one if you can take it that you think you're the least qualified for because you are going to grow astronomically and if you carry that self-confidence it is going to get noticed and the cream always that's how you get to the top it's often mind-blowing like you know where you're in rooms that i you know i really shouldn't be in or or meetings i shouldn't be in like i don't you know i wouldn't never say that i deserve to be in there but i think you know one of my favorites is is the theater production hamilton because they focus on the room where it happens um and that really fascinates me because you know that's exactly where we all want to be we all want to be in the room where it happens and that's that's where it comes back to what i said about booze and hamilton about getting more people to the top table to hear their voice because they want to be in that room and that's that accessibility you know and and for me you know like i want to be in that room and i need to be i don't want to be the smartest person in the room and that's that's fine for me i don't want to be the smartest person in the room i want to feel a little bit uncomfortable in these in these rooms but that that way i know i'm always growing i'm always you know i'm always looking at the next steps and that's what i say to anyone in security is that's how you need to be you need to be that learner you need to be that questioner you need to be that adventurer you need to be that person always challenging always wanting to grow wanting to go to the next level for me that's where it starts they're the types of people that i'm looking for at uh you know for for my clients because they're the ones who i know are going to be a little bit more successful in security so you're in a position where if you're not comfortable with the uncomfortable um you're going to have a very difficult time of it and it's you're not going to enjoy it it's not going to be a fun fun experience and you got to enjoy what you do life is too short absolutely absolutely yeah and that's a great point right there is like you you do need to enjoy what you do and that comes back to the soccer stuff like you know i i love the game i i have a lot of time for people in the game but like there was times when you know i i didn't enjoy it and i wanted to try something new i wanted to [Music] you know i felt like i'd achieved quite a lot which i don't think ever helps in a short amount of time and and i felt like you know i didn't know where to go next and i think that's why i wanted to try something different but i think yeah i think enjoying it is such a crucial part but let me quickly come back to your original question of organizational strategy and yeah so coming back to my previous point of when i was on etsy you know like for me we have to and that's what i was coming to is like we have to sometimes do the challenging stuff and the hard stuff for for the benefit of our customers because you can't do it without doing the customers and you know there's a real there's a real combination now i find is like you know what used to be what used to happen was customer numbers you know uh employees numbers you know and then suddenly there was this real value for customers then suddenly there's real value for employees which i think we're going still through the value for employees and i think we just started to see a flip again on the value for customers and for me it's um is is it's that value add like constantly i'm constantly saying like what do i with this client today i've got this client meeting what's the value add that i'm gonna get because it's no longer for me recruitment is it sounds ridiculous traditional recruitment is redundant like there's too many companies doing it it's too many competitors everyone's trying to do the same thing it doesn't work after a while because companies should get fed up with the same pitch time and time again but what does that do to me like if customers are not engaging with me that then makes me feel worse so that's where i think there's a real like there's a real balance from an organizational strategy right and strategy perspective and if you flip it back to walt disney walt disney focused on giving his employees the best environment to work in because he knew that was going to affect their relationship and the way their output to the customer and that that's that's what i focus on is like how do i how do we add value as starting may that we're that we're going to enable our staff to go and to go and service our customers better and that's where the focus needs to be is like we need to constantly think what's the value add how do we enable our staff to be better what technologies do we need to give them what development do we need to give them how do we need to communicate and manage them and that's where organizational strategy has to focus is how do we enable our staff to go and do that now for netflix coming back to them it's about having the a players having the best people and and that's fine like you know that will work because i now trust in netflix security and our trust in netflix product and our trust and that that's what it is for them it's the confidence and trust in their product that comes from having the best employees that's all driving towards each other and doing that and i think you can i think you can correlate all of this and what ends up happening often in organizations that fail is that you have these silos so you have hr over here talent acquisition um you have sales over here products sort of in the middle you know like you need to bring this all together because candidate attraction affects all of this you know recruitment affects all of this retention you know so the hr and operations function needs to be at the center at the heart of all of this because it needs to enable the business to actually develop and grow and that's where that's where i think organizational strategy has to start is on your employees and then on your customers and then you know then then you can start talking about profit revenue whatever your objective is as a business but you're not going to get that unless you get the right employees in you develop that culture to actually then you know develop your develop your customers and the the last example i would give is the instant response space is really fascinating on this for me because everyone tries to undercut each other on cost you know in terms of with the insurers with the law firms you know to make sure they're getting that work and that's great but you know a point there's going to be quality of work so who's hiring the best individuals to go and carry out that quality of work and it's the quality of service it's communication with customers it's actually managing the customers for a difficult process you know it's a very emergency you know it's a similar of you know it can be a you know another version of the terrible 9 11 or 7 7 events you know it can be at that level for companies that are going through that not knowing not never knowing what they've been through you know it's a bit like kovid you know it's that sort of level experience so it's all them things that come in and that comes back to the actual talent on the ground doing that job and and that's where i think organizational strategy needs to focus is on you know purely you know that uh the strategy and tactics you know from a people perspective if you put the right processes in place with the right people then the outcome is going to be the best that it could have possibly have been yes right so you got to design for that that doesn't happen by no way that is it's engineered in companies that i've seen be successful with it um they very much engineered thought into their customer cycles with whatever good or service they were delivering and that brings me back to the operation like for me operational excellence is at the center of every business because you know i know a lot of services businesses that are failed because you know you have the best people but then you but then you put in the wrong processes or the wrong technology and that doesn't enable them to then be successful so it is a very fine balance of what you said there you know like trying to balance out but yeah if the processes aren't right you're you know you're spot on like you're just going to hinder the people and if you're strangling the people the people won't be there so then you'll lose the good talent that you've already invested in now i know we're coming up on the hour here and we're grateful for your time commitment don't want to keep you too much over but i got to ask you 2021 what do you forecast for cyber security do you think it's going to be a good year better year than 2020 then 2020 or it's never you know i would never say it's it's ever a good year for security when when when you see you know obviously the solar winds is the latest one at the everyone's sort of um you know fingertips right now in terms of what we're dealing with but i think um yeah it depends on the objectives i think from a recruitment perspective it's always a it's always a um buoyant and excited exciting market you know i think globally i think i think there's so many more companies hiring there's so many more opportunities i think there's a lot of different programs coming out to allow people to enter and transition into the industry i think if i was to pick out key areas that i think i see high growth in for the next year or two it'd definitely be product security um cloud security is still you know at the forefront of everything right now and will still maintain that i think i think they're the two core areas i think you know other ones to highlight is instant response is still going through the roof because we can't deal with the instances uh the amount of them still and i think from an internal perspective on top of that is detection response on the flip side is like actually building that in and how we work on that you know if i if i was going to make a bet on any services line right now i would say you know have a look at detection response um or um or devsecops you know they're they're the two options that i'd probably say you know invest your time in um if you're not already you know doing them um and like i said a lot of service lines are you know really focusing on you know product security and cloud security as they are mainstays with a lot of the cso issues and carl let me ask you this as a parting um is there anything you'd like to plug are you going to be making any appearances are you going to be on any podcast shows or anything that you would like to let all the audience know about that's coming up here yeah so we we do um i mean we do a lot of this but mainly we do um a lot of uh you know sort of white papers and research projects um so i think we've got a couple coming up one in product security one in instant response which shows you an insight into that industry from a candidate or a hiring manager perspective so if you're if any listeners or watchers are considering going into them areas or want to understand them areas definitely watch out for them because i think they're downloadable files from either you know our linkedins or our websites so feel free to connect with me and when they come live i think at the end of this month and the start of next month them two come out i think they're really great papers to look at what hiring managers and what people in in the talent space are saying about what's going on in them sectors but also see what candidates are feeling like because we have a research at the back that really suggests you know what candidates are going through in that sector and and how it's being improved to you know make it a good career for anyone you know looking to work in that side of the security space and if any of the listeners want to get a hold of you is there an email you want to give out or how should they contact you we'll put links to your linkedin profile in the show notes yeah of course yeah my linkedin's uh my linkedin's a good place to start uh on my linkedin uh is normally my um i have my cell number or email if you can't see it on there um then then yeah feel free to uh feel free to reach out and i'll send you my email nonetheless but uh yeah always a good place to start fantastic well carl thank you so much for joining us on this friday afternoon it was a wonderful conversation likewise we deeply appreciate you being here i hope you have a fantastic weekend you too thanks for your time

2021-02-22 12:49

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