I see this all the time and I know you do too.

I always see people complaining, saying, you know what?

I've been trying for five years to get a job and I've got so many certifications.

I got a degree, there's no opportunity in this field.

And I look at their profiles and I instantly go, Yep, I know why you can't get a job.

This field, it's a very good, it's a very challenging field.

It's very competitive.

You know, if if it were easy, none of us would have jobs because it would just be saturated with people.

So this field does weed out those that don't really want to work that hard.

So you have to work hard to be successful in this field.

Today's tech job market is about as competitive as it's ever been, between the flood of people joining the market and the emergence of AI everywhere you look.

Why wouldn't they start using AI if they can automate a ton of stuff and they don't have to pay them and then it stays up 24 hours a day, 365 just about doesn't cost them any benefits.

They don't take weekends, they don't get sick, they don't do.

They do a lot of stuff.

In this video, I'm going to break down everything you need to know to be successful in the career field.

From certification skills, job applications, networking, LinkedIn, you name it.

We're going to cover it today in this video.

Two things that will keep you from being successful.

The 1st is if you don't have good motivation, hey, because it's going to be hard.

Like if anything worthwhile is hard, you need the motivation.

And the second thing is you need a plan and you need to stick to it.

Look at your life, right?

And this is how you avoid the burnout and say, OK, I want to dedicate time to learning this thing.

With that said, let's dive into the very first question I get asked all the time.

Do you still need certifications or do certifications still matter in 2026?

I think gone are the days where you could just be a paper IT pro.

Well, and that leads to my next question.

Do you think IT certifications in general, not just COMTIA, still hold the same weight as they used to 510 years ago?

So I can't speak from a hiring manager standpoint.

I can speak from a training standpoint.

And based off the training industry, you have so many companies out there right now that are trying to to provide complete solutions, right?

These LMS platforms, they continue to have a massive popularity with major companies.

In fact, right before I let my last employer, Lockheed was one of them, right?

And if you look at a company like some of these big companies like that, these LMS, and the reason I mention the training aspect of is because what does the training platform provide?

If you look at what the training platform is providing to the people that are doing the hiring right, they're still asking for certifications.

However, however, they're looking at a complete solution which doesn't just include certifications anymore.

They wanna see things like, you know, the management, the integration, the visibility over the process.

And that is a full process, whether it is a process from sitting the class, learning the technology or it's, you know that maybe the end goal is certification, right.

But we're still seeing a lot of that, right.

And there's a there's a high demand for that as well.

And I'm not saying that the market isn't over saturated with it, but there's a still a high demand, especially if you look in the government sectors, they really remain highly relevant there.

Yeah, especially with a lot of the initiatives that are still going on to that are requiring these certifications.

100% I literally just before this, we hopped on this call here, I was doing a coaching call with someone who is in the, you know, in the government sector looking to move into cybersecurity within the government sector.

And I was like, well, you're gonna have to get the Comtia security plus kind of going back to Comtia.

But like, sure, in the, here in the US, if you want a government cybersecurity job, I can almost guarantee you one of those requirements is going to be the security plus like you, you just, they won't even look at you, you know, yes, they, most of them will like, well, we'll give you 6 months to get it, but sure.

And honestly, when it comes to government jobs, like you might as like someone else, the other people that are applying for that job likely already have that certification.

And if you can't check that box that you do, you're going to have a lot of more of an uphill battle.

That's a great point too.

And that's one of the things that, you know, going back to my days when I was, you know, doing mentored learning.

And in fact, the advice that I got from my instructor, really I'm just taking it from an instructor that gave it to me, one of my mentors that said, when you have certain certifications, you might have a single one, but some of the other ones that you have shorten the pool of people that you're competing against when it comes to that job, right?

And that's why I do believe they are relevant today.

Is it still possible today to land a job in cybersecurity without like any other?

Like just jump straight into cybersecurity?

No help desk, no networking?

Is cybersecurity still a field that you could just jump directly into?

See this is AI have a mixed answer to this one.

So my answer is yes, but it's going to be a uphill battle.

So and it's also going to depend on your organization you're jumping into and how well their onboarding process is.

So with my jump into cyber, I've been now with, we'll call it 4 orgs counting the military I've been in, right?

Every organization I've been in has had a pretty like pretty, what's the word I'm looking for tedious onboarding process that gave a really good granular experience of like from start to finish of what I needed to do to be successful.

But the caveat is, is a lot of those times where it's all, it was all self-taught.

I would have like a, a mentor or a buddy that I was assigned that I could ask questions to if I was stuck.

But it was kind of like a, hey, look like onboarding takes about two months.

We're going to put you in this like dev environment.

It's going to be a bunch of mock cases.

We're going to then kind of slowly work you to that before you actually throw you on prod or production, which is like your live environment that actually is doing the real world stuff.

And then what I would do on those situations is I would just go in and like I would absorb all that training and knowledge and just get into the procedures.

And that way I knew like, hey, look, like if I as long as I follow these procedures and then also in add in my root cause analysis, that's my end goal for all these cases.

That's my end goal for using these tools and the more, the more adaptable 1 can be to jump right into a job role that maybe they've been a stay at home parent for a while.

They were doing a job hiatus.

They went and traveled.

They want to get back into the industry and maybe they've they, they do a killer job on Airview and they they get that chance from a hiring manager.

It can't happen.

But the caveat is right now, I think within the job market, it's just really rough right now.

There's still so many of the job like the shadow jobs and it's, it's such a, you'll get hit up by recruiters for you're the best candidate, you get the resumes and then you just get ghosted or you'll immediately within like a week or two, get the rejection e-mail and they went with a internal hire.

It's, it's hard.

And that's where I think networking really comes into play of like getting to talk to folks within this organization and maybe within your city or state you're in and going to meetups and making sure that you can kind of find that way in to show people the passion you have into cybersecurity that can help you land that role.

So is it possible to go right into cybersecurity to be successful?

Yes.

However, there's going to be some self motivation, a good procedure and training platform that you'll hopefully have at that organization and just asking questions and making sure that you fully understand what you're doing.

Jumping into something and like trying to assume that you understand a process half heartedly will cause errors and mistakes, but that will then possibly get you terminated or written up or put onto a PIP because you thought you knew the processes.

But if you're going too fast and not asking those questions at the time where you can at that the onboarding process or while you're still in training, once you have production, that's your tears.

You're knocking down real servers.

You're you're taking people offline, you're blocking legitimate applications.

That's causing a whole org to do manual signatures for the entire day.

There's a story behind that that we'll talk about later.

But there was a short article that one of my colleagues posted where it's like you have college students that are using AI to generate their resumes and their cover letters.

That's then going against your place of work.

You're trying to get into their AI, their AI that's looking for AI generated resumes and cover letters that then no one is getting interviews and no one's getting pulled for it.

Kind of any type of like job placement or even like a first round interview.

So the one thing I think that's kind of sort of happening is a, a slight reliance on AI too much and not enough of the human factor.

So just like you and I probably did this back when we were initially starting off or maybe pivoting to a new role, doing that research, understanding the company you're trying to go to, what their goals are, what their priorities are, and actually taking your time to craft a strong cover letter and resume that meets all those requirements and that you're actually a strong fit for.

And then doing your homework, doing your research.

When you do get that, hey, you are, we'd like to bring you for that first round, looking up who you're talking with, looking up what the organization's goals and values are, and making sure you're coming prepared and being the best candidate for that role.

Since we're talking about AI making our jobs easier, here is one thing I've learned the hard way.

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All right, let's get back to this week's episode.

I think certifications and education are just as important.

I think many places are still looking for that four year degree and maybe a certification here and there.

But that's one thing that some folks are missing as well as they're getting Security Plus, which may be back five years ago was the foundational certification to get in the door for an organization.

But we're now at a point in time, I think where the entry level position has really become more of a, I'd almost say mid level, it's title.

Because when any type of entry level position comes into the organization's pocketbook saying, hey, we need to hire some junior analysts, they don't go to recruiters, they don't have to.

They can post a job and within two hours they're going to have over 200 applicants trying to fight for this position.

And I think the best thing that people can do to really stand out to these next roles is just making yourself the best candidate, doing your homework on the organization, making a strong and really sturdy foundational resume with cover letters that you're taking your own your own time to kind of craft rather than using AI.

Because by doing that, you're only hurting yourself fighting against the algorithm when these companies are also using AI for detection to kind of figure out who's the best for this role.

You know, there's a lot of good things that you just unpacked there and I, I want to make sure and touch on all of them.

But the first thing that really stood out to me and I think is personally kind of a hot take in the industry is you said security plus doesn't matter anymore.

And I hopefully I, I caught that the right way.

I'm not twisting your words.

No, you're not wrong.

And it's like no, no, no, no shame or like mud on CompTIA, right?

Like I, I, I went through the CompTIA, the plethora, I went through the, the, the battle blogs of all that up through their security acts.

It's great material, it's good information.

But the entry level role and even talking to Ryan Murray, who's our state system here in Arizona, it's just, there's so much risk now when it comes into hiring junior analysts for these positions.

You have all these compromises.

You have ransomware is still up and coming and growing year after year for incidents that are happening and for young analysts to come into a role.

I feel like Security Plus that used to be that good foundational certification.

Really it's just not cutting it anymore.

They're needing an additional advanced level certification to bolster their knowledge if they don't have the actual job experience of working inside of that actual environment.

And that's where it comes into like the home labs, the Tri Hackney SoC level 1 certification, blue team level 1, the hands on ones actually give you lab environments to mess with that allows you to come at those interviews saying, hey, well, what experience do you have?

Well, other than my labs I built in school or my home lab, I've also done these certifications that have like live data inside a SIM that I actually got to play with and write reports and go through vlogs and actually do full thorough reports on to make sure I can kind of line up what your company needs.

And that's an analyst that's gonna be able to do a good, solid investigation.

I really harp on this a lot.

I'm like don't be just get a job ASAP.

And cuz if you wanna work in cybersecurity, like almost every like entry level IT job has some component of cybersecurity.

Cuz if you work in helpdesk and some like clicked a virus or I, I clicked a phishing link or something, that's like you're, you're doing incident response.

And then you will be like executing part of a playbook or something.

And you can like spin it on your resume and such.

So you should like as you're saying, you should try to work as soon as you can.

That is really, I think golden advice there.

And I kind of want to dive into that a little bit deeper, especially the people that are new and like they're wanting to get that, you know, their big break into the tech field in general.

You know, whether it's the the goal, the long goal is cybersecurity or if it's networking or whatever, you know, what are some things people can do other than just trying to lay in that basic entry level job that they can do to give themselves an edge to amongst the competition?

So in my opinion, like entry level cybersecurity is is kind of like kind of like mid level Iti made this thing called the employability framework.

Any job when it comes to like getting hired, you only have to really care about two things.

Like the first thing is like actually getting an interview and the second thing is passing the interview.

And then then you have a job, right, Get the interview.

If you want to be like as competitive as possible, you just have to look at what a bunch of different employers will care about.

Like some people care about certifications, some people care about degrees, some people care about experience.

You should try to work to like fill those areas.

So you might do some research.

They can watch your videos and see like what's what's popular or what HR knows about in terms of certifications and try to get those certifications.

And then because WG exists now and you can get a degree like kind of quickly for like kind of inexpensive, it might be worth doing that just so you can take care of like that portion because some people care about degrees, But if you don't want to get a degree, you have to like make up for in other areas.

So like you can have like a really strong portfolio, right, with some really like relevant projects and articulate all of those things really, really well.

Make some experience on your resume.

Like if you are I don't, I won't show my course.

I'll I'll do like another another way.

So for example, if you being like, oh, I'm a cybersecurity content creator slash cybersecurity evangelist and you make a bunch of educational cybersecurity content where you teach people about the labs that you did and you post them on like LinkedIn and YouTube.

And then you make like your own like company or something.

You say like cybersecurity, like content creator and you have tangible like links to the stuff that you've done.

That's way better than not having anything on your resume at all.

And it's something that you can do yourself.

It helps a lot for for sure.

So just I guess to answer your question, look at look at the stuff if people care about like degrees, certification, etcetera, experience and then think about what you can do and just do that thing really, really hard.

And then of course, make sure your resume is like ATS compliant, like, you know, all those, all those things.

Now, once you've figured out which certifications and what skills you need to study, how do you actually go about studying those skills efficiently?

There is a lot to learn and this field is constantly evolving.

So how do you create a plan and figure out what to study, when to study, and how to study to retain that knowledge?

That's.

What we're going to answer next.

Have a plan, like plan out your studying.

So and like Full disclosure, I, I was, I was actually thinking about this, I've been thinking about this a lot lately for myself, because right now I'm in a place where I'm not studying as well as I used to study.

And I and I was thinking about OK, like why is that Is?

Is it because I'm older?

And the answer to that is no, but I'm like, OK, why am I not studying like I used to?

And, you know, I, I thought about it and part of it is that I don't have quite honestly, the same level of necessary motivation, right?

You know, if, if you are in a job that you absolutely hate and you want to get in IT, you're going to be motivated.

If you're working for a job and this is, you know, that's, that's the sort of negative, negative motivation.

There are a lot of companies that have rewards programs, you know that that are going to that are going to financially reward you for getting relevant certifications.

That's a great motivation.

You need to find your.

Motivation.

Yeah.

And I mean, you know, it was honestly that part of it was easy for me for almost 30 years because I had to have certifications in order to make the paycheck doing what I wanted to do.

So the there's two parts to this.

The first is find your motivation, right?

Like why are you doing this?

And if you don't have a good reason to do it, if you're just doing it because you're like, I heard cloud was a good way to make money, that's that's not going to get you there and you're not going to, you know, if you say, hey, I've played around with God a little bit.

I went and.

I watched some videos, you know, and, and this looks really cool and I, I went and this guy Tracy on, on this really cool video podcast episode said that I could go and get this trial account and get some free stuff.

And I did that and I played around.

I was like, this is what I want to do.

You know, if, if you have that moment, like I did over 30 years ago where I was talking to my wife and she's like, what do you want to do?

And it was clear, right, that's going to be your motivation.

And like, hopefully it's cloud because cloud's cool, but maybe it's cybersecurity, maybe it's, you know, networking, maybe it's nursing, right?

Like, but you got to find your motivation.

And, and I think a positive motivation, something you find you want to do is better than a -1 that's 1/2 is set a plan.

And like one of the things that I used to do when I was studying for a certification is I would go and I would I would download all the certifications are going to publish a list of objectives.

And I would literally take that list of objectives and I would drop it into a spreadsheet and I would break it out.

So I had every possible certification on a separate line and that was my map, right?

And then I go through and, and certainly as I was more experienced, I would go through and be like, OK, I know this in my sleep.

I know.

And I would knock off the ones that I didn't that I already knew.

And I knew I'll look at these, but I don't necessarily, you know, need to dive into them, right?

And then I would say, OK, here's, here's the rest of what I need to know, right?

And then I would use a structured learning tool, right?

Like an online learning platform.

If you learn off of books, I actually used to just take the training manuals because I could learn that way because again, it would be 10 pages and go play with stuff, right?

But you know, find a structured curated path, but then plan your time, right?

And it it you, there are two things that will keep you from being successful.

The 1st is if you don't have good motivation, OK, because it's going to be hard.

Like if anything worthwhile is hard, you need the motivation.

And the second thing is you need a plan and you need to stick to it.

Look at your life, right?

And this is how you avoid the burnout and say, OK, I want to dedicate time to learning this thing.

And I've done research online and it says that on average, it's going to take me 40 to 60 hours to learn this thing.

OK, How do I fit that into my life in such a way that I'm going to do it regularly?

Because if you don't do it regularly, you're going to forget stuff and you end up wasting a lot of time relearning the same thing, right?

How am I going to have the time so that I can, I can do this regularly and it doesn't negatively impact my life?

Like, and I'll tell you, for me, that's easy.

I spend an embarrassing amount of time scrolling Reddit.

OK, I can really easily substitute time and do something productive.

So it's easy for me to find that right.

If, you know, I am working a 60 hour a week job and I've got young kids at home and, you know, my wife and I are both working all the time, that time's going to be harder to find.

I'm going to have, and honestly, I'm going to have to have a conversation with the people that are going to be affected by it, right?

If I'm married, yeah, I'm going to talk to my spouse and I'm going to say, hey, I really want to do this.

And it looks like I'm going to need to spend realistically to get this done and to stay motivated, I'm going to need to spend an hour and a half every night or I'm going to have to spend 2 hours on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and a couple hours on Saturday.

Can we make this work right?

Because it, you know, kind of alone with planning, if you don't plan it into your life right, then it's going to cause friction that's going to make it not work.

And so those are the things that I would do find your motivation and make a realistic plan that that you look at and it'll fit with your life.

Oh, and by the way, the kind of, you know, the, the quick, you know, go direct whatever is do not pass, go collect $200, whatever that that saying is, is if you're working for a company that supports it, because not only will you have positive motivation, but talk to your manager and see if you can get some time during your work day allotted to actually doing preparation right 100.

Percent.

There are companies that will do.

There are companies that won't, but there are companies that will do that.

And and you know, you, yeah, you, you miss every shot.

You don't take right to to quote a very famous sports person.

But yeah, get the motivation, get the plan, execute the plan, get the certification, continue your career.

It's funny because it's like I have a mentee I'm doing right I'm talking to right now and he's wanting to get in the project management, but then also possibly now leaning to get into more cyber specific.

And he's prior military and he has his VA benefits, but he's contemplating going to this.

Like I'll call it a boot camp, but it's a school allegedly.

But 30 grand to get like all these certifications and I'm like, you could do that or I'm like, if you just have some good self motivation, like you can sit down and probably pass your SEC plus in three weeks.

Yeah, right after that, if you do a hard good study session for probably another week and a half, two weeks, you can probably see why I say, cuz I really go hand in hand.

You can then pivot onto like project plus, like, I'm like, that's the thing.

Like paths are different, right?

Some people really need that organized structure, college aspect where there's a professor, you have dedicated deadlines, assignments, essays.

There's a punishment or something that happens if you fail to do something compared to the aspect of, hey, if I just do this on my own, I can do whatever I want.

But some people need that structure because without it, they're never going to get something done.

And that's one thing I really press on.

A lot of my folks, I mentor, it gets silly.

I kind of give homework.

I'll say, hey, look like, well, let's think up in 30 days.

Here's some challenges I want to have you do though do.

And so like I know I was mentoring one person during December last year.

I'm like, hey, look, advent of cyber is happening here.

Try hack me.

I want you to do the entire advent of cyber.

And in January I want us to link back up on a call and I want to hear your thoughts on what you thought about the advent of cyber.

And that was the only test I wanted them to do.

And crazy enough on January he came back and did it and I'm like, awesome man.

And it's always a good feeling when you give those like little and one, it gives you a it can show you how dedicated someone is when you give them the advice of like, hey, look, this is what you should be doing to be successful.

It worked for me.

It's worked for others.

I give them the advice to doesn't work for everybody, but it's just a way that's going to make you get better and come back from the information you're going to get.

Try Hackney's advent Cyber does such a good job at giving a nice spread to of like red team, blue team, GRCCTI, open source report writing.

So you get to touch a little bit of everything.

Crazy enough.

Two months later he did end up getting a project management job for I can MSSP, which made me super happy.

That's awesome.

But yeah, it's ideally just like figuring out what's the best way for you to learn is one thing to within this field and whether that's school, whether that's a boot camp, whether that's self pace, whether that's joining a cohort, whether that's getting on to.

I know you offer also training and stuff with your website Dakota for kind of progression resume review, mock interviews, mentorship finding what fits best for your schedule in your career is what's going to make you successful and grow that not able to just tell people time management because it just takes it took me a year to get into this industry.

Now anyone will tell you you can't rely on just skills to break into the field.

You need to network with people.

You need to have connections.

So often in tech, it's not what you know, it's who you know.

And knowing how to build those connections successfully can be a lifesaver and help land that first or next job in the field.

That's why we're going to break down in this next section.

So I'll tell you a story.

So I had my business.

I founded my company in like 2000, somewhere around 2010 or 12:00.

Somewhere in between there and hindsight's always 2020, I built a company.

It was great company, and then I sold it.

Here's the lessons I learned as I was built in my business.

I wasn't worried about who I was and my brand, but what I was worried about was my I wanted everyone to know my company's name.

You know, my company name, my company name, my company name, my logo.

I mean, I did radio, I did TVI, did Google ads, I did social.

I did everything you could do.

And I posted about this not too long ago when I sold my business here about a year and a half ago, two years ago, I went through this like career identity crisis.

You know, it wasn't a midlife crisis.

It was like a career identity crisis.

And what I mean by that is for the last 10-12 years, all I had been doing was advertising my company.

Now when I sold my company, well, who the heck's Mike Miller?

You know, who's he associated with?

So what I realized was that over time, when I started building my brand and who I was, you know, when I started mentoring, when I started just spilling my stories on LinkedIn, my success stories, my failures, because I've had more failures in life than I've had successes.

But when I started being transparent and just vulnerable and telling those stories, people started connecting to me.

And what I've realized over time and most people, I wish more people thought like this.

When you build your own brand, right?

When you build your own community.

The company that I'm with now is a company who bought my company.

I stayed on with them and serving in the same capacity.

But if for some reason they ever decided they don't like me anymore and they got rid of me, my brand, I don't lose my brand.

It stays with me, right?

So yeah, I always tell people if you build your brand and who you are, it doesn't matter if you're selling used cars or T-shirts on a corner, you're going to have an entire community that's ready to support what you're doing because you've built those trusted relationships.

So what happens is 95% of people who come to me are people who are one either trying to get into the field, but you'd be surprised that most people who come to me or people that have been in the field for 10 years are being taken advantage of it.

Their job, got laid off or lost their job.

And they're saying, Mike, I need help finding a job.

And I said, OK, let's connect.

Can you send me a link to your LinkedIn profile?

Oh, I don't have one or I haven't updated it in three years.

Now think about this.

We don't wait until we're in a car accident to call Allstate and pick up an insurance policy.

LinkedIn or your personal brand is your career or what I call your career life insurance.

Why do we wait until we lose our job or till we're in a bad situation and then we go, oh man, I better make some connections.

That's backwards.

Why do we do that exactly?

There's nothing wrong with having things on deck.

Obviously you know if you love your job you shouldn't be interviewing for other jobs.

But right to have that Bank of recruiters that have been messaging you for a month keep those connections alive.

If anything else, COVID taught us a lot, right?

It did.

Can't take anything for granted.

Any of us could lose our job at any time.

I see this all the time and I know you do, too.

I always see people complaining, saying, you know what?

I've been trying for five years to get a job and I've got so many certifications.

I got a degree.

There's no opportunity in this field.

And I look at their profiles and I instantly go, Yep, I know why you can't get a job.

And I'll go back to it's that analogy of you can have all the sort of occasions in the world, you can have a college degree, whatever you have, but we're all salespeople.

We all have to be able to have the ability to sell the knowledge, skills and wisdom that we have.

So you got 5 certs, you got 10 years of experience.

You are that red shiny Corvette that you're trying to sell.

Problem is, people are there, that red shiny Corvette, but they can't sell that Corvette because it's parked in the back of the lot and it's got a tarp over it, right?

That's the equivalent of having certifications, 10 years of experience, but not having a personal brand.

You're not going to sell that car unless you shine it up a little bit, put it on the front of the lot.

OK, so you know you have to have a LinkedIn, but you, you spun it up, you did all this stuff.

Your first engagement with people was you.

You have something for me.

People people a lot of times do not enjoy feeling used and that can get that feeling when their first interaction with you is I want something from you.

I would never start off with reaching out to an organization with I want something from you.

I would start off with I've been I've seen your org, I've seen I followed your LinkedIn profile.

I think you guys are doing an amazing job.

I'm really inspired by the work that you do there.

I'm going to I've learned a lot from what you do.

You you tell them why you think there are something that's cool, right?

And not in an ego stroke way.

You know what I mean?

That that also has an has a stink to it that you don't want to throw on.

It's it's, you know, kind of butt kissy and you don't want to do that.

OK, You want to be sincere and genuine.

So don't just throw out something to XY or Z company because they're in the space.

Actually follow them.

Go look and see what they're doing.

Check out their website.

Go you, you have this is work.

It is not a magic genie that you rub the bottle and he pops out and goes, can I get you a job?

That's not how LinkedIn works on wishes.

Some all powerful.

Genie.

OK, that's just, I'm sorry, it's never done that.

But generally this is not how you go about things.

So you want to be genuine.

You want to be sincere so that when you do reach out and you sell them these things that it comes across as actual sincerity.

And it just just wanted to say thanks.

Would love to connect so that I could more closely follow.

And you know, every now and then maybe I'll I'll reach out to you done.

And you just walk away.

Maybe you hear something back, maybe you don't don't worry about it, right?

Check on it from time to time and see, hey, you know, notice that the you guys did this just kudos engage with their posts, Not just not just like how I liked that.

Take two minutes, hit the comment button and go in there.

Add value.

And here we go again.

I'm right.

I'm giving you guys, I'm telling you right this, this is this is the pennies in the penny jar.

And eventually as it's just a little penny, it doesn't doesn't add up to much, but eventually the thing will be overflowing with riches.

OK, this is you putting pennies in the penny jar.

This is you sticking that that money in the LinkedIn savings and trust so that you can make a withdrawal from it one day.

OK, so you hit that comment button and you say not cool post.

This was awesome.

But this is a this is a really great post.

I got a lot out of it.

I like this, this, this and this give a couple of reasons for why you're making a comment of this is what I found value.

This is the value I found in this post and highlight it and how it affects you in what you're interested in and what you're doing and why you think they're doing a good job.

That is a valuable comment.

And if you're doing that consistently, whenever you see something that you generally can engage with, you engage absolutely.

And you're not doing it with just them, you're doing it with five 1050 other organizations.

It's called networking.

Man, Dakota, I feel like, like, are you in my brain right now?

Exactly.

Bro, right, it's called networking.

OK, so this is this is what you're doing now we, we don't want to make you think that well, I've done I've got my 50 or 5 or 10 or whatever you're doing and now job.

OK, here we go again, right?

Stop.

Recently I was talking to someone and and it came to me the idea of how like what a good analogy for LinkedIn is, is like that of a garden.

OK, when I have a garden, I want fruits, I want vegetables out of my garden, right?

That's the purpose of me planting the garden was for sustenance to sustain me, not a flower garden, obviously that's just pretty, right.

But I want I want something I'm going to put in work and then I'm going to get a product out of it.

Think of LinkedIn as your garden.

You have to tend it everyday.

You can never just go, well, I put the seeds in the ground.

I can't wait for the apples to show up.

I mean, it might happen, right, But that's a poor plan to actually making sure that you get apples out of your garden one day.

So what do you do?

You tend your garden every day.

You spend some time, just mark off some time.

Maybe maybe if you say I want to spend an hour on LinkedIn today, we'll do 10 minutes in the morning, 10 minutes at your at your morning break, 10 minutes at lunch, 10 minutes late pending in the meeting.

So I want to spread it out that way.

You're, you are consistently on the platform.

The, by the way, LinkedIn likes it when you stay on their platform.

They're big fans of that.

The algorithm is watching.

And if you are consistently within their platform, it's going to yield higher returns for you.

You are tending your garden, you're pouring water on those seeds, you're putting fertilizer on it, you're covering them when it's cold.

You're doing all the things that is necessary to ensure a bigger and better and more fruitful harvest, which is what it's for.

Engaging with your colleagues and coworkers, engaging with people that are in the space that you want to be in, and not just in a way of Gimme, Gimme, Gimme.

That's so try hard.

People do not like try hard.

And you know, I, I can, oh, yeah.

No, 100%.

But you know what?

I always, I already can hear the comments.

I already can hear the, the haters and the comments.

Like, of course.

Well, I don't, I don't have time for that, Daniel.

And I shouldn't have to do that much work.

And I need a job now.

And you know, how is that gonna help me now land a job?

And like for me, my answer is, well, if you not like, you're already too late.

You know, if you're in the spot where you're looking for a job now, you know it's it's too late that this ship has sailed.

Yeah, that's unfortunate.

Unfortunate.

Yeah.

This is something that this is part of building a successful career.

This is like, hey, now you've got a job.

Oh, I'm not going to touch my LinkedIn until I need another job.

No, that's not how it works.

But you never know what might happen, especially, let's be honest, in some uncertain times we might be in right now.

Like, you know, I, I know plenty of people, you know, like you, you know, that, you know, had to like weren't planning on necessarily, you know, changing jobs or whatever.

And.

Not at that moment, no, I was not.

No.

And but, you know, having those connections and building up that network and networking with people, I'm sure that played a role in you landing on your feet and.

You know, excelling in your career, you know, this is something you have to constantly be doing if you especially if you want to grow in this career field.

Let's be honest because.

Yeah, it's absolutely true.

I don't know if I'm a Unicorn.

You know, we used the word Unicorn.

I don't know if it was a special circumstance.

You are.

Unicorn to us.

We'll get into that conversation here in just a minute, but.

Here's your Unicorn.

I, I feel like all the time and effort that I spent in LinkedIn paid off in dividends right when I needed it the most, right?

And to your point, right, if you're already like, I'm behind the 8 ball, I'm sorry again, LinkedIn is not magic.

And that that's just the unfortunate reality of it.

And I, I, even if you're hating on me, telling me everything I'm saying is wrong, I feel for you.

If you're sitting there going, I need work right now.

I want to get into this right now.

I totally feel for you and I hope you get it.

I hope that you are the, the edge case that parachutes into LinkedIn and it's like Booyah job.

I, I, I am not even kidding, 100 percent, 100% hope that for you.

I'd love to see when that kind of stuff happens because it's like, it's almost like watching a miracle, you know what I mean?

It's like, like, holy crap, Can you believe that they just like you are, you must be a badass.

That's all I can say because that's, that is not normal for most people.

So I again, I am sincere when I say I hope that for you.

If you're hearing what I say and think that it's, it's not the truth, Maybe it's not for you, but I, I have seen it work.

I can say that with 100% confidence and 100% reality that I have literally seen this work.

So you can't say it doesn't.

There are.

There are many paths to the LinkedIn mountaintop or the Job mountaintop, as it were.

This is but one.

It has worked for me.

It has.

I've told this to other people.

It has worked for them.

I'm free here.

I'm not asking for any money from you.

You may lay it at your feet and leave it if you wish.

It's up to you, but I feel like through a lot of observation and experience that this generally does tend to work out fairly well for most people.

So if you are like I, I say right now, like if you're a high school senior getting ready to go into college, this should be your guidance counselor should be like hooking you up in LinkedIn.

Like, OK, let's start your LinkedIn.

Let's get there.

Because I don't care if it's IT, if it's cybersecurity, if it's auto industry, it doesn't matter what industry it is.

There are people on LinkedIn that you need to be in contact with.

And then they need to know who you are, what your name is and how you're contributing to your community and your organization, your environments, Right.

And the sooner you start, if you can't, if you came just today, going, I need a job now.

I yeah, my Linkedin's got cobwebs all over it.

We'll go dust that sucker off.

Get your watering can, get your garden hoe and get get all your tools and get ready to go back to work.

Because that's where you're focusing right now.

And you got to understand that it might not be until the next year's harvest that you get to pull something out of it.

But it's better to start late than never, because the more you just let it sit, the more it's doing nothing for you.

Once you build the skills, you build the connections, there's one more thing that we cannot ignore anymore, and that is the presence of AI in the tech industry.

AI is everywhere you look nowadays, and knowing how to leverage these skills, how to use AI properly as the tool that it is, can really help set you apart from the crowd of people in this industry.

So next, let's dive into what you need to know and be aware of about AI in the tech industry.

What you need to be asking yourself is why would my CEO, why would my CIO, why would my CTO, why would my CIO, my manager, whatever the case is, why wouldn't they start using AI if they can automate a ton of stuff and they don't have to pay them employees, You know, they, they have a one time purchase, which is their access to that AI, right?

And then it stays up 24 hours a day, 365 just about.

Does it cost them any benefits?

They don't take weekends, they don't get sick, they don't do they do a lot of stuff.

So the question then becomes is why wouldn't somebody in charge of an organization starts to automate and use AI for everything that they possibly could?

That's a great question.

And that's the question we need to I, I'm glad you brought that up.

That is the question we need to start asking ourselves because if you were in that position, if you ran the company and the bottom line was the bottom line, that was the thing that was most important to you, why wouldn't you do that?

All you can do is go.

Here's what is most likely going to happen.

Again, what are we doing?

We're risk assessing.

We're doing exactly what we should be doing for our clients and our companies as security people, as IT people, as marketers or whatever it is you do that.

If you found yourself listening to this podcast and going how, how does my role affect this business?

How can I incorporate the best and the brightest tools that are out there, which right now that is AI, and make that a part of what I do so that I'm so valuable.

They, they'll never even think about getting rid of me or letting me go.

Or if I'm unemployed, I'm now super employable because I'm doing something nobody else is doing.

I am pushing the envelope.