Welcome to the final video in this course.
Can you believe that we have been together now for twenty five hours.
That is such a long time.
I don't want this to end in this really hurts but this is what I really wanted to share the last kind
of piece of advice and this is just the going away video and I want to talk about life advice and career
advice and a lot of this stems from a blog post that I wrote talking about my journey into infosec.
I'm going to link it in the references.
Please go read it if you're interested.
You don't have to is not obligated but please read it.
It talks about how I went from an accountant to my first day on Help Desk to my first day as a pen Tester.
And I did that in two years time.
So if you're thinking man how can I do this.
How long is it going to take me.
It depends on your effort right.
And it depends how long you how much time you can dedicate this how long you've already been in the
field.
There's a lot of little factors but if you want to read my journey I think it will be useful for a lot
of you.
So with that here is my career advice.
First thing is you should always set goals and stay motivated.
So when I talk about this I talk about setting goals however it makes sense for you.
So for me I like to study.
That's part of this job is you're always studying and if there's some topic that I want to do while
also the date for it like say an exam for example there's a certification exam want to take.
I'm going to go ahead and book that exam for that certification and say I'll do it a month out.
Well that'll put pressure on me to get that done in that amount of time.
I love having that pressure.
I love feeling against the wall because that helps me study the most and I actually even did that with
this course.
It is December 22nd today and I said on public social media I'm going to have this course finished wrapped
up by December 30 first.
And I felt a lot of pressure a lot of late nights doing it.
You know I'd been up for 4:00 5:00 6:00 in the morning recording these videos but I set that deadline
for myself and I wanted to stick to it.
So I always set goals for yourself and stay motivated and falls into this do not be complacent as well.
You got to keep motivated in this course to be successful.
Don't be complacent.
I've met many good people in jobs and they're happy in these jobs don't get me wrong.
But they're they're still working the job that they had five years ago.
They they aren't you know they're not doing anything to move up and you know if somebody wants to stand
helpdesk for five years 10 years that's them.
You cannot be that person if you want to be an ethical hacker and you really can't be that person in
life if you want to continue to move up in your career and be successful.
It's okay to be complacent.
It's OK to want to stay in the role if you're incredibly happy there but for a lot of us that have this
mentality that make it into this field we do not have that complacency.
You just cannot have it so absolutely stay motivated.
Always want something more.
Be hungry stay hungry.
Want more.
Never feel satisfied completely.
You can be happy about achievements but don't always feel like you've you're there there's always something
more to learn.
Right.
There's always something more to learn.
You don't know everything.
Don't act like you know everything.
So that's really my harp on this and I won't harp on it too much more.
So let's move on to the next one where you don't you should never be afraid to apply for a job that
you're unqualified for because you're gonna be unqualified for every single job.
The requirements on job postings are ridiculous.
They're absolutely ridiculous.
I would still to this day never have a job.
If I looked at the job requirements and took them seriously.
If you find a job.
Interesting.
Just go ahead and apply for it.
What's the worst that's going to happen.
They're gonna send you a rejection letter OK.
That's fine.
But you never know what's gonna happen until you apply.
And I have found amazing job opportunities that I did not think I would ever get calls back for simply
because I applied.
And you have to you have to apply or you're never gonna get that job.
So don't look at a job description and just be like yeah that's that's not for me I'm never gonna get
this.
So what you might be right but so what if they reject you it's just a rejection letter.
It's not a big deal now let's say that you do get to an interview.
There's a couple of things that I really want you to focus on when you're in the interview.
One is always be willing to admit that you don't know.
Don't be the person who sits there and tries to guess at questions and just say look I don't know the
answer to this but I am willing to learn.
And if you say that entire interview it's going to look so good for you.
I'll give you an example.
There was a interview that I had that was for a network engineer position and I was coming off help
desk.
I was working network administration but I was working through Cisco more Iraqi type work which is all
on a gooey interface.
And this shop specifically was a CCMA type shop a Cisco command line type of shop and I had no experience
with that whatsoever.
So a lot of these questions that they were coming at me with were questions I had no answer to at all.
And I told them I said Look I don't know the answer to this but I I'm going to learn it I will learn
it for you.
And this is something that comes up in interviews too is you might have an interview where you don't
know the answer to a question always write it down if you don't know the answer.
Write it down because guess what.
And the second interview they might ask you that same question again to see if you actually went back
studied it and came back having additional knowledge that you didn't know from the last time.
And this also falls into place with be willing to prove yourself.
There are multiple jobs not only the job with the network engineer but my first job as the Help Desk.
I had zero experience zero certifications whatsoever.
I was unqualified for that job.
And I told them I said Look I really want this job I'll take less money let me prove myself to you that
I am the right candidate for this job.
And sometimes it takes saying that to an employer to have them to take a chance on you.
I've I've taken less money.
I've said I've said you know I don't know I've I've proved myself in many situations.
And that's really you gotta you gotta get your foot in the door.
And then you can work and worry about working your way up.
So always be willing to prove yourself.
Always be willing to admit your flaws and your honesty is going to take you very far in life.
Now when you're looking for jobs you should always determine what you want from a job and only apply
to those that meet your criteria.
The more I grow up in this field the more picky I get.
I would not take a job anymore that was not remote.
I would not take a job under a certain salary.
I would not take a job that required me to have a poor work life balance.
Life is too short.
You should take those criteria into account.
Don't just apply to anything and everything.
A lot of people take this and I think it's a mistake.
Your job you should be patient unless you are completely broke and you absolutely need to get something
right now.
Then I would be patient with your choice.
Make sure that the choice that you have has a good manager something that you want to do and something
that you're going to be happy at.
The happier you are in life the better you're going to feel the better your work's going to be everything
around you is going to be better right.
You got to make sure that the job you're going to work for is the job you really absolutely want.
Don't just take it for the title.
Don't just take it because it's a job unless you absolutely have to.
Now with that out of the way you should always strive to be the dumbest guy or girl in the room always
if at any point you feel like you are the smartest person in the room.
It is time to move on from that job.
You should always be in a situation where you are learning something if you're not learning it's time
to go.
OK.
And if you surround yourself with talented people and let me tell you this field is full of talented
people and there's a lot of career fields where they're full of talented people soak up that knowledge
ask them questions learn and then be at the same time be the person who is willing to share that knowledge
back to the people below you as you move up.
But you should always strive to be the dumbest guy or girl in the room because it will take you really
far in your career and you will learn so much from so many smart people.
Lastly network network network I went to business school for six years and the one thing that I took
out of every single class was to network with people when I was getting into the field of ethical hacking
and penetration testing.
A lot of it came down to who I knew.
I've had multiple jobs now in this field because of who I knew.
Join a discord channel.
Join a slack channel.
Make friends.
They could be virtual friends but if you prove yourself to people you make these connections.
You never know these seeds that you're going to plant when they're going to grow when they're gonna
pop up and when they're going to pay their dividends back to you.
So always meet people you know you don't have to be an extrovert to do this.
Just go out there and try to make friends in the industry.
Just be somebody that people know and you're going to find that doors open for you a lot quicker and
there's going to be a lot more doors open for you.
So I hope this advice is useful for you.
I really hope you enjoyed this course.
I'm going to miss you guys.
Hopefully you know I see you around you leave you know leave feedback for me let me know if you love
the course.
If you hated the course I'm always open to it and criticism helps me grow so I'm always welcome to that
as well.
So you know look at the bonus video if you haven't already check out some of the resources that I have
available out there.
There's a lot of free resources a lot of things that I do out there that are completely free to you
and just you know helps towards getting people into this field and in you can stay in contact with me
as well.
So I'd love to hear from from former students current students etc. So thank you so much for for being
on this journey with me for twenty five hours together it's a long time hopefully I haven't annoyed
you to death but I really do appreciate you being here so I am signing out my last video thank you everybody
so much and until next time my name is Heath Adams and I really do thank you for joining me.