AI, Data Security, and the Power of Networking: Lessons from an IT Recruiter

Speaker 1: 0:00

How's it going, john? It's been a while since since we last talked. I mean, I think the last time that we talked it might have been for lunch back in October. So it's great to see you again.

Speaker 2: 0:12

Yeah, you were just about to head over to Germany, i think for the NFL game.

Speaker 1: 0:16

Yeah, yeah, one last going away party for me before I had the kid.

Speaker 2: 0:21

Yeah, absolutely Congratulations again. That's awesome.

Speaker 1: 0:25

Yeah, definitely It's. It's a game changer, that's for sure, as as I'm learning the hard way, yeah my wife and I are kind of right on that edge of.

Speaker 2: 0:35

that's part of the reason why we we moved back, so I'm not probably not too far behind you.

Speaker 1: 0:42

Yeah, it's interesting, man, like it changes so frequently like, right, when you get used to you know, one flow or one like schedule type thing, it changes and it's like, oh, i can't put her in the swing without you know the seat belt on because she decided to like kick her way out and an effort to like get out, you know, and have fun. This is, it's interesting for sure. But you know, john, i start everyone off with getting their background. You know what's your, what's your background? How did you start to get into recruiting? You're the first recruiter I've ever had on the podcast, but I think it's a valuable perspective because there's a lot of bad recruiters out there that give recruiters a really bad name that you know I've had to steer people away from and, you know, discuss what it's like with them and whatnot. Right, and I think this is an important conversation because there's a good amount of my audience that you know they're looking to get into security, they're looking to get into IT, they're trying to potentially even make a career change And recruiters can absolutely help them make that jump. You know it's like recruiters are in on the, on the, i guess, like the back room deals, right, the back room conversations and they can speak on your behalf in ways that we're not able to right, we're not, maybe we're not even skilled enough to.

Speaker 2: 2:17

Yeah, no, absolutely. And first of all, you know, appreciate you having me on, so I'll hit the first part on kind of my background and how I got here. So I've been in the recruiting industry for just about 10 years And I guess it's kind of a combination of both recruiting and kind of technology, professional services. So I've had a couple of different roles, primarily across leadership, delivery, leadership, which you know we call delivery, recruiting. Delivery It's delivery of, you know, obviously, individuals to the clients And then working with the clients and business development, even though I hate the term business development, it's so internally focused, look it's. We want to help clients out, right, we want, we want to help clients solve their problems, fill their gaps, those types of things, right. That's the way kind of I operate. Actually, surprisingly enough, prior to getting in recruiting, i was a high school basketball coach and high school math teacher for a couple of years. So just a funny little tidbit there. But you know, on the side of you know kind of working with recruiters and maybe we can start out just kind of addressing the recruiting industry itself, because I do agree with you, there is a little bit of a stigma and it's deserved, right. I think you know there's, there's a lot of recruiters out there who don't have the candidates best interests at heart. They're most concerned about making money And you know, if they, you know, need to step on a few toes and do a few of those things along the way, like, unfortunately, they're okay with doing that. So that's, that's a stigma and a reputation that you know myself, i and and and my team you know, battle every single day. So I think the most important thing is, you know, i think when you get on the phone with a recruiter, you can tell in the first two or three minutes is this person invested and interested in me or are they just trying to sell a job to me? Right, and the best recruiters are actually recruiting great people. I tell my team their job is to not fill positions. Their job is to find great people and put those people in jobs that are great for them. Right, my, my sales team, my business development team their job is to fill their positions. Right. So we partner together and if our recruiters are doing a really nice job of finding great people and our salespeople are doing a really nice job of finding great clients and great opportunities, then we're going to be ultra successful. So I totally understand where you're coming from. It's, it's a, it's something that I think you know is getting better, you know, than it was, i would say, 10 years ago, but there still certainly is. You know some of those individuals out there, unfortunately.

Speaker 1: 5:05

Yeah, it's, you know, and it sucks too right, because, as as someone that was trying to get into just IT overall, right right out of college, you know I'm trying to find a job. I got student loans They're going to kick in soon, you know and the easiest way for me to do it is through a recruiter, and I don't know anything about recruiting Like I have no clue. You know, luckily, or well, i guess, yeah, because my first interaction with a recruiter was actually pretty negative. The guy you could tell that he had certain like quotas to make and he had certain things that he had to meet on his end that he wasn't telling me that you know like pay, for instance, right, i requested one you know pay amount and then he submitted me like way lower or something like that, like it was totally different. It came back at a totally different level. He's like, oh, you got the job, but it's like considerably less than what you wanted and I felt almost like pressured into taking it. You know, like that was the most insane part. I felt extremely pressured into taking it, like, oh, i just did all this work for you on the back end, you know like, and I'm the type of person that's like you know, you do work for me, i'm going to work for you, right? So, like now, i feel, you know, maybe overly invested in this situation, and it's like man, what do I do here?

Speaker 2: 6:39

And I'm not surprised to hear that at all, joe, because I've heard stories like that before. You know what I always say and the approach I always take is, as a recruiting agency right, our job is to make sure that we are finding the best opportunity, like. I want you, joe, your experience to be that the recruiter that you're working with should feel like your agent, just like an athlete or a entertainer or whatever would have an agent. Right, i want you to feel like they have your best interests at heart, because the better you do and the more you advance your career and the stronger the relationship you're able to build over time, the better it is for both sides, right. So I don't ever want anybody to take a job. That's not a great job for them. There's just no reason to, especially if you're in security. You have the pick of the litter once you're in and established. If you're good at what you do in security, you're going to always be able to find a job, always. That's not changing anytime probably not in our lifetimes, right? Yeah, so I think you know. What I always tell is I want to make sure you have the best and all information you need and all the unknowns are eliminated for you to make the best decision for yourself and for your family. That is what I truly care about, and whether that means you take the job that I found you or my recruiting partner found you or not, it doesn't matter. I want you to make sure you're in the right position, and my job is to make sure you have all the information you need to do so.

Speaker 1: 8:12

Yeah, that's a I mean, it's a refreshing perspective that you take. you know, on the field, to be honest, you know, like, typically I don't go through recruiters anymore, right, like companies typically just reach out to me. Yeah, if I was in the situation you know, and I've told you this before if I was in the situation where I needed a recruiter or you know, whatever it might be like I'm going to you or one other person and or one other person you know and that's out of that's out of everyone that pings me, it's you know like, it's like you know you guys are the only two people that I even refer people to. you know, because you and this other person, you're just straight up good people, straight shooters. you're going to tell me the truth every single time, no matter what it is good or bad. you're going to give me guidance. I mean, i've reached out to you before before. I like started a job at a company that I didn't get through you And I was like Hey, do you know anything about this company? Do you know anything about this team? Do you know anything about this hiring manager? You know, because, from my point of view, you know I want to make the best decision possible. I go into, you know, going like working for companies with the mentality of okay, can I work there for five years? Do I see myself there in five years? If not, it's probably not a fit. You know, like just plain and simple, right, and so I try to do all the research possible that I can. Of course, you know, is there is there a certain point in someone's career that you feel is very valuable to have a recruiter, or can people use recruiters throughout their entire career? Is that valuable? What's the trade-offs?

Speaker 2: 10:08

Yeah, absolutely So. I think there's. I would say there's different phases right Of how you'd want to interact and how you'd want to work with a recruiter. It's possible as a college grad or even a master's grad right to to partner with a recruiter. The reality is, though, that the majority of organizations do an okay job at hiring entry-level candidates, and they don't want to pay agency a fee right in order to find those candidates right, Because they're basically investing in somebody they know is wrong, So they're not getting a whole lot of previous experience. They're not really necessarily going to get someone, most likely who's going to hit the ground running. They're going to have to teach them, invest in them, all those things. So they don't want to pay an extra you know percentage on top of hiring that person right to find them. So I would say that the majority of the roles that we see and we get with our organization are kind of, at that, like three to eight years of experience range. Right, It's a, it's a range. Think about this logically right, So you have, say, a security team, right, And on your security team you're probably going to have a manager, some sort of leader, right, You might have like a lead, you know, technical architect or whatever, but then you need, like the vast majority of that squad, to be engineers, administrators, the people that are actually executing on the work. Right, That's your three to eight year bucket Now it might be, for some people a little bit less than that, for some people a little bit more than that, but, like, that is the vast majority of what a technical team is going to need to be able to execute. And then you might have, you know, a junior green person that you're developing and building it, bringing up, but you don't want to have four or five people that you have to hand hold along the way, right? So that's the population in which organizations really need And, because it's the most prevalent, it's the toughest to find right. So I'd say, right around that range is where you want to try to lock yourself in and start building a relationship with a good one, or maybe two recruiters, right? People that you know. The first time you chat with them. They may not have a job, but guess what? they follow up with you, right? Because they realize that you're a great candidate and somebody that they want to build a relationship with. And they want to try to find something that's right. For If, the first time you talk to somebody, they ask you one or two questions about yourself and then try to sell you on a role that is, you know, not relevant to you, probably not somebody that's worth, you know, maintaining a relationship with right, but if you find somebody who's great at what they do, they're going to provide you access to a lot of opportunities. And they're going to also and you, you, you mentioned this right, you know you call it the backdoor dealings They're going to be able to get your information directly in front of hiring Right. Like that's the value that you get. You could go apply on LinkedIn and be a part of, you know, the 40, 50, sometimes 100 other applicants, or you could be one of one or two individuals that that recruiting agency is going to present to that hiring manager. So to me, that's a huge value, right. That can be added. Once you get past that like eight, nine, ten year range, especially if you're in leadership, then it starts to kind of shift a little bit to more of what I would consider to be executive search, right, and that executive search is going to be now we're starting to look for, you know, senior directors, vps, cisos, right, those types of individuals, and that is much more of a, i would say, a search that organizations are going to basically operate like that client's HR department. For that individual search for what might be, you know, one month to six months right, depending on what it is. So while it's okay and you could still maintain a relationship with a recruiter at that point, you're probably much more likely to have somebody reach out to you who's working on a specific role at that point, because there's few and far between jobs and there's not as many you know really really capable leaders that can fill those positions as there are kind of across the board. So hopefully that gives you just a little bit of kind of the continuum across from where that's at Now. Does that mean that somebody that's a 20 year vet, that's still an engineer can't work with a recruiter? Absolutely not. Like that's totally fine. You can certainly continue to partner with a recruiter to advance your career and find new opportunities. But I would say kind of that continuum is probably the standard of what we typically see.

Speaker 1: 14:32

Yeah, it makes sense. You know when, when, when I think of like back backroom dealings, right, like I remember the credit bureau that I was working at. I mean, you were there just as much as me and I was in the office every day. You know, you were, you would, i had that. That was the craziest part. I was like what? This guy has a badge, does he work here? You know it's, it was funny. but you know, i kind of got to see a lot of that, especially like with my manager you know that you were working with. He did a huge amount of that right. So like he had trusted people and if those trusted people referred him someone, it was like automatic. you know, okay, we're going to fast track him, i'm going to talk to him. It's going to be a light discussion, you know, just let's just meet the HR requirements and get him in the door Right. That was kind of that whole mentality And I've personally experienced that a couple of times and it's always it's always very interesting, right, like seeing where people you know find out who you know and things like that. You know, i tell people all the time that at least the security community in Chicago is very tight-knit right. Like all the CISOs know each other, like every single one of them know each other. And so when you're going to get onto an interview with a CISO typically like the final round of your interviews if you're an engineer, a more senior engineer like they all talk to each other And they all bring to each other like, oh, i wonder if I can offer him more money than you. You know like they all talk trash to each other. They all like mess with each other, like, oh, i just took Joe from you, you know good luck. Like I felt like my CISO at my last job, i felt like my CISO knew the day that I had accepted the offer Right. I felt like he knew that And I didn't tell him it was several weeks, you know just by how he was treating me. And then, after I start my currency. so I was like, oh yeah, i know him very well. You know I was giving him shit. when I pulled you I was like, oh my God, you know, like it's that sort of stuff that goes on, that, from my point of view, you never really see Right.

Speaker 2: 16:51

Yeah, it is, and that's that doesn't surprise me at all, especially in these pockets. Right Of technology, right, you have security, you have cloud, you have app dev, you have, you know, product and project management, a lot of those senior leaders across the board, especially in a tight net market. They all know each other. Now what's going to be interesting to see is over the span of the next, you know, three to five years, as there's been an increased appetite for remote workers And, and even at the executive level, not as much as you know, at the engineering and kind of individual contributor level, will those, will those kind of circles like kind of mesh across from geographical regions, right, like, and and it already does, you already see it happen across industries, right, so you know, say, for instance, you know credit bureaus, right, like, not a lot of them out there. I'm sure the CISOs from each of those, regardless of where they are, know of each other or know each other right?

Speaker 1: 17:50

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 17:51

And same thing in healthcare. Same thing, right. So now is you know, the individual markets kind of mesh across with kind of remote work and be interesting to see kind of how that dynamic plays out over time.

Speaker 1: 18:03

Yeah, that is a really good point that you bring up. But you know to kind of circle back to recruiters. You know you mentioned a successful recruiter being someone that you know they want to get to know you more than anything else you know, and that that was probably the one thing that I always appreciated with you. I felt like I was just talking to someone that you know, wanting to be friends just straight up, just wanting to get to know me, right, and it made me more open to you, and the people that were on your team had that same mentality, they had that same kind of process as well, and so whenever you guys would call, i would always pick up the phone like no matter what I'm doing, you know, even if I'm busy at the time, like I'll text you and be like Hey, i'm busy, i'll call you in 30 minutes, something like that. Right, that's the sort of relationship that I always appreciated more than anything else, because it builds that trust, it builds that rapport, without you having to be like, oh, i got this great role, you know, and constantly pitching me roles. It's like, man, we're already in security, we're already being pitched nonstop, right, correct, you don't need to be pitched even more. You know like, let's build something.

Speaker 2: 19:21

Yeah, it goes back to what I said earlier. right, you can tell very early on if somebody has a genuine investment and interest in being a value add to you or if they're trying to make you a value add to them. Right, it's very easy to tell, right? So, you know, i've always the teams that I've always worked with, i've always preached, like look, get to know your people. Right, resumes, linkedin, all that stuff is out there, you know. You know what's not out there, what's most important to Joe in his next job, what's the thing about his job right now that if he could change, he would change it right, what would it look like for him to get into his ideal situation? right, those are the things that are not on your resume, they're not on your LinkedIn, but those are the most important things and the things that matter most to you. So they need to matter to whoever you're working with as a recruiting partner, because then, joe, i can call you and I can say hey, joe, remember, you know, eight months ago or whatever it was, we were having lunch and you told me, like, man, i'd really love to find an opportunity where and I remember you saying this in the past like where I can get into cloud security engineering, like I really want to get into the cloud, like it's the future of all technology. I mean, this is we're talking six, seven years ago now.

Speaker 1: 20:35

Right, and I remember eventually, right, you found a role that you know wasn't with me, but you found a role that got you into that right.

Speaker 2: 20:44

So if I could come back to you and I could say hey, joe, look, i have a great opportunity to one of my clients guess what? It's a cloud security engineering role. It's not just a standard run-of-the-mill engineering that matches the skills that are on your resume. It actually is something that is taking you where you want to go, your next step in your career, to advance, right. So, like, that's the most important thing, If a recruiter is not asking you, hey, what do you want? What are you looking for? You know, yeah, your skills that you have right now are important, but what's more important is what are your goals? Like, where do you want to take your career? Where do you want to go? That is where they can provide value to you because they can scan the market and find the right opportunity for you at the point in the career your career of where you're at.

Speaker 1: 21:27

Yeah, it's a really good point. You know you bring up something really interesting and I didn't think about it. You know at the time, right where I was in a situation where I hated working on the technology that I worked on. Is that the credit bureau? So you know the technology right.

Speaker 2: 21:49

Yeah, we won't say it.

Speaker 1: 21:51

No, i don't want the lawsuit. But you know, to this day, i avoid places that have that tech And all I wanted was to get into cloud security at that time, right, that was my only goal. But the only thing that I would get calls for was for this tool because it was in high demand. Not many people had experience with it. If you were someone that knew how to log into it, right like people were giving you a call like, oh, you want to deploy this thing, it's like dude, that is the last thing that I want to do. But you know, i never got that from you, and the people that I never got that from is the people that I still talk to today, because it's like you're not hearing me. I don't want to work with this technology. I want to go a different direction.

Speaker 2: 22:46

But, joe, i can get you $5 more an hour, don't you want to take? it Like oh it's just, i understand, i feel you. It's got to be tough.

Speaker 1: 22:57

I mean, when I started consulting, i mean people would offer me insane amounts of money like student loan, paying off money right, to be a consultant for them on this tool And I, literally I hated the tool so much that I accepted my student loans over working with that tool. Okay, like, that is, that's how bad it was. It's just, it's crazy, you know, like, but to take it back? right, let's say I do want to jump into cloud security? right, let's take it back six, seven years ago. right, i wanted to jump into cloud security. I didn't have any cloud experience. Well, this is kind of where the recruiter comes in, at least in my experience And they're able to fill that gap of you know what, was it 30, maybe 50% of what you're missing on your resume. they can step in and fill it and be like, hey look, he has deployed these technologies all over the place, he understands the fundamentals of it. you know, like you can. you can talk to hiring managers in ways that you know. honestly, i can't right, because I'm kind of locked into the question that they ask And if I start rambling on an interview, it may get into my head like, oh, i'm talking too much or I'm talking too little, i'm not going into enough detail. things like that. You kind of fill in that gap, which I've always found to be really helpful, and whenever I'm looking to kind of make that change, make that jump in my career, like I need someone to fill that gap in those backroom dealings right, that's how I call them. Yeah, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 24:44

And I think for sure and I mentioned this a little bit earlier one of the major benefits that you should get from having a recruiting partner is access to these hiring leaders, right, and that access is in the form of and you're talking all about it, right If I have a profile like yours, right, and I'm not just going off a resume, i'm going off the relationship we've built, i'm going off the conversations that I've had with your peers or your leaders or whatever about, hey, this is a really great resource. Whatever it might be, i can get on the phone, or it used to be sitting in front of much more than so. Now it's in this type of capacity, right, virtually than it was three plus years ago, but I can sit down with that hiring manager and I can say, hey, look, i know Joe has minimal experience in X, right, but I promise you, based on what I've heard from his manager or whatever, he can certainly make up for it, and he's actually in the process right now of getting a cert. He's getting a cloud security certification, right, or something like that right, i think this individual is worth the conversation, right, and that's in addition to helping to set you up for success as you go through that process, right? What the true value you should get out of me is I can get you in front of that hiring leader, Whereas otherwise, if you just sent your resume in, if it's lacking a lot of those things, you're most likely not gonna get a conversation with that hiring leader, right? And then it's on you, right, i can help with the, get you set there and land the foundation right. But I know if I could put you, joe, in front of any of the hiring leaders I work with, i know you're gonna close the deal, so I'm not worried about that. But yeah, that is, it's a huge, huge plus. And organizations once again, i mentioned this at the beginning when I was talking about entry-level candidates they're not in the business of paying a premium for individuals that aren't gonna come in and probably hit the ground running. But, like I said, if you can share some of the ancillary things and hey, maybe it doesn't look like he has an extreme amount of this on his resume, but these are the steps and things that he's going through. He's got a home lab, he's got this. whatever The guy really loves tech and you know he really wants to get into this, he'll be a great investment for you, right. And that's where you can kind of get around some of those, you know, i guess, gaps in your experience.

Speaker 1: 27:06

Yeah, that definitely makes sense. You know I always tell people that. You know my goal when I was trying to get into security overall right, was make myself as competitive as possible. You know, check as many of the boxes right off the bat as many as I can, because I want as few questions about you know, my skill level, about you know, whatever it might be on a technical basis, i want as few questions of that as possible because it should be more of a discussion around. You know, a personality fit And like for my latest role. You know it was exactly that right. Like I had one phone call with the CISO, my current CISO and he's like oh, okay, we're going to fast track. You Like there's one more call. There's typically like five more calls, but there's only one more. It's going to be with the architect And I get on the call. I expect it to be like extremely technical. You know, because this is an architect, he probably wants to grill me on some things. He has like one technical question And I was like what's the catch? Because this is really easy. You know, like this is a really easy question. Like where are you going with this? And he goes no, i just want to make sure that you know what this tech is Like. Yeah, i know what the tech is Like. I've deployed it, you know, i've done it, you know before and everything like that. Right, it's just, it's about filling as many holes, as many gaps, as you possibly can, and a recruiter can absolutely do that. You know, it's a shame that recruiters get such bad reputations, you know, and you got to like really put work into finding quality recruiters like yourself, you know.

Speaker 2: 28:53

A reputation doesn't come from nowhere, Joe. There's a reason why there's the reputation, right, and I do think, like I said, i do think the industry has gotten better over time. It's a lot less used car salesman than it was 10 years ago, but there is. You know, there's good and bad ones out there, like anything, right, there's good and bad security engineers out there, right, you have to put the work in to find really good security engineers, right? Just the same way you have to do in the recruiting space. So, like I said and I mentioned this a little bit earlier but my advice would be you know, if the recruiter tries to pitch you a job that is not a fit for you in the first call, then cut ties right away. If they tell you that they don't have anything for you and then at some point they follow up, that's a really good sign, right? That's a really good sign, especially if they took time on the front end to get to know your wants, your needs, what you're looking for those types of things I think that's the best rule of thumb is is how much time are they spending asking about you And not just hey, do you have this skill, do you have this skill? But what do you want to do? Where do you want to go. What do you want your next job to look like? That's a really good sign, and probably somebody that you can spend some time building a long-term relationship with.

Speaker 1: 30:03

Yeah, there's actually a couple that you know. Now that you say it like that, it just comes to mind, right. There's a couple that I've probably been talking to for maybe five years, right, and every six months they just reach out to see how I'm doing And they, you know, it sounds like, you know, we never, like stopped talking. You know they're like, they spend, you know, 20 of the 30 minutes catching up, you know, and then, like the last time is like, hey, like I don't have anything for you right now, but you know, if something comes up, you know I'll reach out. And I always appreciate that a whole lot more than people just straight up reaching out and be like hey, i have this role, you know. That doesn't tell me anything about you?

Speaker 2: 30:48

Yeah, you know exactly, Yep, not totally.

Speaker 1: 30:51

So, john, you know, if you had to recommend, you know, maybe a skill set of field of expertise that people should go into and try to start to pivot into, maybe either to get into tech or to have a successful career in tech what do you think that that would be? Because you're seeing it from a very different perspective. Right, these roles open up. Probably a lot of them are requiring the same sort of skill sets, same kind of tool experience and whatnot. What are those things And how can you know my listeners kind of better prepare themselves for those things?

Speaker 2: 31:32

Yeah, so I mean, obviously the big thing that has been going on for the last few years is anything that's you know software defined right, anything that is you know security as a service, those types of things right, anything that you can automate a lot of those manual tasks. It's becoming more and more prevalent. It started, you know, on the infrastructure side. It's probably started on the software side, then it shifted over to the infrastructure side and then it's expanded into the security side. Another thing that obviously is such a huge piece is anything tied around kind of data and data security. I mean, just, you know, open up the Wall Street Journal, you know, or whatever it is that you read right, there's an article every single day around. You know, what is the government doing looking at data? Are there going to be increased regulations? I mean you have a lot. You know different states that have different standards. If you can really become strong and somebody that can make sure an organization's data is protected, you know that is of utmost importance, and I'm probably not saying anything that's going to be a shock to anybody, right? You know the cloud security was the buzz years ago. Now it's a standard. I mean every organization is operating the cloud in some capacity, right? So I would say you know anything that you can get. If you can increase your skills from an automation standpoint, right. Whether that's you know utilizing something like you know Python or you know Ansible, more on the infrastructure side, but it does overlay a little bit Anything from an automation around security. Taking away human error, taking away manual tasks, those types of things. It's going to make you incredibly marketable to organizations, right? Everybody cares so much about automation because it increases accuracy and it decreases time, right? So, and then you know just really getting involved in anything around data security, whether that's data privacy, data governance. It's not as much of the technical hands-on engineering maybe as you can get in, you know threatened vulnerability management or things like that. But like even IAM, you know, and those types of things are, you're never going to be. Let's, let me just put it this way In the next 15, 20 years you're going to have absolute demand for your skillset.

Speaker 1: 33:58

Yeah, absolutely. You know, it's funny when you bring up like data security. I have a friend that somehow found his way into IT, right Like he was, like you know, the smartest person in his school, whatnot Like one of those really smart, like bioengineering or chemical engineering degrees, one of those extremely hard degrees that I didn't even consider in college, You know. And he, you know, was doing a lot of big data work, right, and he was working on how to secure you know, petabytes of data right, and figuring out what the you know what was vulnerable in the data, what was sensitive, what he should be paying attention to, how to best secure it so that it could be, you know, rapidly accessed. But that wasn't like his you know, main job function. That was almost like a side project for him at work And there was no one dedicated to it except for him. And he asked me he's like, you know, should I get into this field? It seems like it might be a little, a little hot, you know, like all I saw was dollar signs.

Speaker 2: 35:09

Just a little hot, This guy.

Speaker 1: 35:12

This guy has no clue. Like Google will pay you, you know, half a million dollars to do that. Like they'll pay you half a million salary with millions in stock. Like, just to do that.

Speaker 2: 35:23

Like yeah, you probably get into this For sure.

Speaker 1: 35:26

Yeah, right, and it's wild, you know, and some of the recommendations that I tell people, you know I've said it before definitely, you know, big data security is one of them. Another one I would say is even like AI security, you know, because we're seeing a lot of different like AI's, you know, pop up right, that seem to be very smart, seem to be able to, you know, deduct things and reason things and whatnot, and it's only going to get more. It's only going to get more intense, right, like there's only going to be more AI's because we've kind of already opened like Pandora's box with it, Like we're not putting that thing away, you know at all, right, yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:13

And so the interesting thing, though, is like it's also almost, in some ways it's a brand new field, right?

Speaker 1: 36:20

Yeah.

Speaker 2: 36:21

Because it's not clearly defined yet. What is AI security and what is Intel? right, there's so many different facets to it. Right, you talk about, you know, a being right in some ways that you need to try to control. Right, but it's got its own mind. It's got access to things that the human brain can't even, you know, begin to fathom, right, so so how do you secure something like that? right, it's going to be very interesting and obviously there's been a lot of talk of a lot of the big tech leaders and stuff about hey, we got to slow down before, you know, we run into some problems with this, because this could become a problem and spiral out of control really quickly. So it's just it's very interesting to think about. Like, it's something that we're all talking about, but it's not yet defined what it exactly meets.

Speaker 1: 37:16

Yeah, I mean, I think it'll even be. it'll get to a point where you see other nation state actors or other hacking groups that are using AI in ways that you wouldn't have expected.

Speaker 2: 37:31

It's scary.

Speaker 1: 37:32

Yeah, the reason why I say that is because maybe 10 years ago at this point, maybe eight years or 10 years ago at this point, google had some version of AI running on two servers and those two servers could only talk to each other. They weren't able to talk to anything else. That was literally the only thing. These two servers figured out at some point in time that the Google engineers were able to see everything that they were discussing between each other. They went and created their own encryption protocol, something that Google has never seen before. no one has ever seen before. They started communicating over that encryption protocol. Google was like okay, well, we'll break it. There's no way that they could have created something that we couldn't break. They couldn't break it. Their only solution was to power off the servers and drill holes into them so that it was unrecoverable. It's so excitingly terrifying.

Speaker 2: 38:31

It's so excitingly terrifying to hear that.

Speaker 1: 38:34

If you want to dive into the military aspect of it. This is like old, new, new, new, new, new news. But DARPA years ago they built an AI that had the sole purpose of attacking other servers. Before those other AI servers could attack back, they would have to patch and adjust their own security automatically with all through AI to prevent that attack from penetrating them. They learned from the attacks that actually got through and adjusted and modified things, and they learned a whole lot about different security techniques just from watching these two computers go at each other. It's like AI security to me is something that it's like take that situation and then build guardrails around it. Somehow. You have to have limits within these AIs When it gets very complex. When you attach an AI to the internet and it has access to all of the knowledge on the internet, how quickly is it going to go through that thing? and then you want to tell it to not do that.

Speaker 2: 39:45

It's like how do you put guardrails around something that doesn't necessarily have a very clearly defined end. It's going to be a very, very interesting thing to track. Obviously, i would say over the next five to 10 years, but we're probably talking the next six to 12 months.

Speaker 1: 40:07

That's the scary part. Some people say like 12 months, some say like five years. You think about it. Both options are not a lot of time. It's not a lot. I think I've talked to one or two people that one on the podcast and one off the podcast that even understand what quantum security is.

Speaker 2: 40:31

I'm not one of them.

Speaker 1: 40:34

Both times those guys were talking miles above my head. I can imagine.

Speaker 2: 40:41

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 40:42

Absolutely Well, john, i really appreciate you coming on. It's always a pleasure talking with you and whatnot. Why don't you tell my audience where they could find you and where they could find your company, and maybe just give them that information so that they can reach out if they want to?

Speaker 2: 41:00

Yeah for sure. The company that I work for is called Birchworks. We do talent solutions across all different kinds of recruiting, as well as a lot of market and industry research on the market in the data and technology space, including infrastructure security and data like data analytics and data science. Please feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn. I would love to have a conversation, even if it's just something like this job where it's just hey, i want to learn a little bit more about the industry and how I can utilize it. Like I said, and I'll continue to echo this sentiment, my job is to go out there and help people succeed, help people fill the gaps that they have. If that leads to business for me, great. If not, i feel great about just being able to be a resource for someone. Thanks again, joe, for inviting me on. I had a lot of fun. It's always great chatting with you and looking forward to grabbing lunch next time in Chicago.

Speaker 1: 42:06

Yeah, absolutely Looking forward to it. Thanks everyone. I hope you enjoyed this episode.