David Craggs: There we go, okay. So, welcome, welcome more.
David Craggs: So… I want to… this is something I've been working on the last few months.
David Craggs: And it's… Partly mindset, it's partly operational.
David Craggs: And this is what I hope will be some small way of me helping everyone that's affected.
David Craggs: Hello, Bianca.
Bianca Jian: Hello, sorry, I'm…
David Craggs: We're literally just starting.
David Craggs: So, no problems. So, this is…
David Craggs: me trying to do what little I can to help everyone else affected, because I love you guys.
David Craggs: and this is what little I can do.
David Craggs: So my agenda for today, I want everyone here to know that they are valuable. I'll extend that to the people that are watching the recording.
David Craggs: And I want to do what small thing I can do to help everyone here. I don't have a network over east that I can contact. I barely have a network in Perth, frankly.
David Craggs: So, hopefully this will help people find some direction.
David Craggs: And or help… how people can show off their value to a potential employer.
David Craggs: So, disclaimers, I'm not an expert. This is just something I've picked up in the last few months. I'm not going to say, oh, like, I can do career coaching, I… can't.
David Craggs: I also can't guarantee this works.
David Craggs: This is just what I have been researching, how I've been thinking about things, and it's what I am doing, so if it doesn't work.
David Craggs: I'm in the same bucket.
David Craggs: So, what is a personal brand?
David Craggs: Really, a personal brand is your reputation.
David Craggs: How do people perceive you?
David Craggs: What do you want to be known for?
David Craggs: What do people associate with your work?
David Craggs: And what skills do you have that can help an employer achieve their business goals?
David Craggs: So, when we say… Your personal brand is all about selling yourself.
David Craggs: Think of selling yourself as how you inform a potential future employer, how you can help them achieve their business goals.
David Craggs: In exchange for money.
David Craggs: Because capitalism.
David Craggs: So a lot of the personal branding, also leans heavily into if you were doing, like, a consultancy thing. There's a lot of overlap. Obviously, well, maybe you want to do the consulting thing, that's… that's up to you. But really, it's like, how can we help a future employer?
David Craggs: In exchange for money.
David Craggs: So, some familiar examples people are likely familiar with. Oprah, Steve Jobs, Marie Kondo, and Jamie Oliver.
David Craggs: People, when you hear these names, you have an association with what that person stands for and the work that they do.
David Craggs: Other people might have, personal brands that are off-putting to some people. We'll come back to that.
David Craggs: So…
David Craggs: what we really want to do, we want to be intentional. We want to make intentional decisions about our brand.
David Craggs: Otherwise, people will still form opinions, but you will have less influence over it.
David Craggs: So, even if you haven't seen my LinkedIn or my
David Craggs: My website, or anything like that.
David Craggs: The people I work with, you guys, have an opinion about me.
David Craggs: Paranoid.
David Craggs: Insufferable Linux open source guy, things like that.
David Craggs: these are not… I'm not saying they're not true, but it's not necessarily a LinkedIn briefing.
David Craggs: But it's not what, you know, I necessarily want potential employees to think of me. I want them to think of me as, you know, a security engineer that is focused on, development teams and things like that.
David Craggs: Yeah, Shiny Framework Laptop Owner, yes.
David Craggs: And we really want to go deeper than job titles. So… and this is where we come into the mindset stuff.
David Craggs: Think about the collection of skills and experiences that make you unique, and they give you a unique value proposition to a potential employer. Hello, Polly.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: We found a room.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: We've got it till half past 1.
David Craggs: I'll give Polly. Okay, sit there, Polly.
David Craggs: I will continue on, and Polly can catch up in the, in the recording.
David Craggs: So, yeah, so we talked about…
David Craggs: We want to sell ourselves in what makes us valuable to an employer. So, think about all your skills and experiences. It can be in your career, and it could be outside of your career as well, that make you unique.
David Craggs: So, some things to think about. So, what do colleagues ask you for help with?
David Craggs: What really excites you?
David Craggs: And how do you provide or create value? Again, we talk about business value.
David Craggs: How do you provide value to an employer?
David Craggs: So, and what we want to do, we want to niche down, because specificity makes your brand easier to understand.
David Craggs: And it's easier for people to remember you, to recommend you, and to know when to ask for your help.
David Craggs: Sorry.
David Craggs: What we're gonna do…
David Craggs: This isn't, like, a activity. I… this is a go away and think about it, because we're not going to be able to do this in 10 minutes online.
David Craggs: So we want to create a positioning statement that is clear.
David Craggs: specific.
David Craggs: Authentic and genuine to ourselves.
David Craggs: And… Built around a philosophy or a point of view.
David Craggs: So, we're not going to resonate with everyone, but that's okay. We want to be memorable to the people and employers that are the right fit for us.
David Craggs: So if we're trying to appeal to everyone, we're not going to appeal to… we're not going to be memorable to anyone. So we want to really niche down, think about what your best skill set can be.
David Craggs: So, here's some bad examples, and I'm going to intentionally steer away from anything that is SecOps or Secory. Certainly, we only have second advisors here.
David Craggs: I don't want to say anything to sort of direct your thinking, it's something that you need to kind of do on your own.
David Craggs: So, we don't want to just say, I'm a recruiter coach, I'm a chef.
David Craggs: I'm a security engineer. These are not memorable, they are just job titles.
David Craggs: So, we can do a bit better by having a niche. So, you might be a career coach that specialises in helping IT workers.
David Craggs: Or a chef that uses local ingredients. Or a security engineer that focuses on helping engineering teams.
David Craggs: So, these are more specific, but still not very memorable.
David Craggs: So what would a good example look like?
David Craggs: I'm a career coach that specializes in helping IT workers regain their direction and confidence after being made redundant.
David Craggs: Do you see how that's memorable? It's specific. It indicates that there's, like, a real point of view and a philosophy behind it.
David Craggs: I'm a chef that focuses on using local ingredients to create seasonal menus that tell a story about where they live. That sticks out in someone's mind, an employer's mind.
David Craggs: I'm a security engineer that focuses on helping engineering teams improve software security practices in a way that supports delivery speed and developer ergonomics.
David Craggs: And how I came up with that is… Shameless plug, Me!
David Craggs: I need to update my, thingy here. So, I help engineering teams improve their software security practices in a way that supports delivery speed and developer ergonomics. Security shouldn't be a checkbox or a gate at the end, it should be an ordinary part of how your team already builds software.
David Craggs: So that is my positioning statement. That is what I want.
David Craggs: A potential future employer to think when they hear my name.
David Craggs: So that… this positioning statement becomes the lens through which everything else is based.
David Craggs: So, you incorporate that into your CV, your website. I do recommend having a website, I'll come back to that.
David Craggs: content you create, I'll come back to that.
David Craggs: And even your very public presence, if you were to do things like present at a conference, or things like that.
David Craggs: But, it is critical that this positioning is authentic and genuine.
David Craggs: If it feels fake, it's gonna be hard to sustain, and people will notice. We don't want to try and be known for something that we're not.
David Craggs: We want… that's why we want to think about all our skills and experiences that make us unique and lean into it.
David Craggs: Sorry.
David Craggs: When it comes to doing CVs, I'm also conscious that there's going to be a spectrum of people that are looking at the recording, or live with us today, that some of us have not been looking for a job and doing CVs in many years.
David Craggs: So, I'm going to assume no knowledge, as it were.
David Craggs: So, when you are brushing up your CV, and listing out all the experiences that you have.
David Craggs: That's how you want to also be working on your positioning statement, because you want to be thinking about
David Craggs: All the experiences you have, Have shaped who you are and the skills you have.
David Craggs: So, if you have heavier backgrounds in particular lines of business, say, whether it be finance, or previous experience in legal teams, or something like that, that's what we want to think about.
David Craggs: when we come up with our positioning statement. So for me, it was all about my experience and my passion for working in development teams and developer ergonomics.
David Craggs: That's how I arrived at…
David Craggs: my positioning statement. It wasn't because, oh, I think this will be good, I think this will be desirable to employer, it was true and authentic to myself.
David Craggs: Yeah, so you think about your passive experience.
David Craggs: And as you narrow down your positioning statement, you'll then start to tweak your CV in order to focus it on the… to highlight the experiences that you want to be known for.
David Craggs: We still will tailor a CV for every job we apply to, to try and show… to try and show off our skills for that specific role, or position description.
David Craggs: But for a generic CV that we have, we want to… that will be on, just public, on our website, for example.
David Craggs: This is where you want to lean in hardest to our positioning statement.
David Craggs: So if we look at my website here, I have a resume button, And, again, I have…
David Craggs: Drop, drop, drop.
David Craggs: I help engineering teams improve software security in ways that support blah blah blah blah blah.
David Craggs: And all the experience I list leans heavy… heaviest into
David Craggs: this stuff. It has other stuff as well, like the time I did, like, an AD cleanup.
David Craggs: But I want to lean heaviest into…
David Craggs: Helping engineering teams in software security.
David Craggs: Ats-friendly CVs. So, AI is in all the things now, including HR. So, your CV needs to be what's called ATS-friendly, so automated systems can read and judge it.
David Craggs: So, simplest way to do this is to use an ATS-friendly template.
David Craggs: Polly linked in our signal group a couple of weeks… a week or so ago?
David Craggs: a whole bunch of templates and online resume builders, they will all make it ATS-friendly.
David Craggs: If you simply Google ATS Friendly Resume Checker, you'll get a whole bunch of stuff.
David Craggs: So, we're gonna do a live demo. Fun. So, I'm gonna grab my resume, and I'm gonna download it.
David Craggs: And I will chuck that into Downloads.
David Craggs: Save… And I've just googled.
David Craggs: ATS Resume Tester.
David Craggs: And we're going to upload my resume and see what it comes back with.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Privacy concerns aside.
David Craggs: I was about to say, yes, we're of course uploading our CV into all these things, and they will be stealing our information.
David Craggs: My perspective on this is that
David Craggs: this is how I want to be seen in public. There is nothing personal or private here, so it… I'm… think of there as a segregation between, sort of, my professional
David Craggs: self, and the private self. So, I'm being public with the professional side of me, not with the…
David Craggs: Personal side of me.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Do you have your mobile phone on your resume?
David Craggs: No, I don't.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Okay.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Just curious what that's common practice in its own.
David Craggs: I do not believe so. I don't even have an email address, although if you use that domain, it… I will get the email. But no email address, no, phone number.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: No, no.
David Craggs: if I was to submit a resume to a, like.
David Craggs: company, applying for a job, yes, I would have the contact details there, but on the public-public thing, not so much.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Yep.
David Craggs: So, this one says it's a 70, that it is good.
David Craggs: And it's got some things that it recommends to fix. I'll come back to some of that stuff later.
David Craggs: This one says 75… how is 75 average?
David Craggs: That's a bit fudge.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Gotta do better, David. Don't… don't… I… we raised you being Asian, not a Beesian, remember?
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Sorry, Bianca, that was an inside joke in the product security team, where Brandon and Chloe… yeah, anyway, they had one of those days.
Bianca Jian: It's okay, speaking as a Besian, I am not, if that is.
David Craggs: This one's a 76.
David Craggs: So I could probably, you know, improve it a little bit, maybe I'll look at doing that in the future. I am probably going to lean into this theme they give us for the resume, LinkedIn.
David Craggs: Helping, consulting people.
David Craggs: I might just chuck them, here's a CV, here's a website, here's LinkedIn, give me feedback.
David Craggs: So, coming back to… Yep, so our CV wants to support our positioning statement.
David Craggs: And we… this is one of the things, that comes up… that will come up a lot in here.
David Craggs: Try and include quantifiable business value or outcomes from your experience.
David Craggs: you don't just want to just say, you know, you worked as a security advisor. Think of instances where the advice he has given has led to the reduction in risk.
David Craggs: Especially if you can quantify that in terms of dollars or time, if you can say, yes, there was X amount of time savings, X amount of dollar savings.
David Craggs: That gives real, evidence and builds trust.
David Craggs: We'll come back to trust.
David Craggs: Are there any questions so far?
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: No, no, you've confirmed a lot of things that I've always been thinking. Thank you.
David Craggs: So, personal branding websites. I don't trust big tech.
David Craggs: That could be another part of my,
David Craggs: personal brand, which would be good if, you know, I wanted to brand myself as, you know, a YouTuber, doing Linux content, but not so much for a professional, please, employer, hire me kind of way.
David Craggs: So, I like having a website outside of LinkedIn and these other platforms.
David Craggs: So, I use an app called Hugo as a static site generator, which is just thrown on AWS S3 and fronted by Cloudflare.
David Craggs: If you don't want to do that, Squarespace, Wix, they're fine. I… yes, they cost $17, $21 a month, I just checked.
David Craggs: Before I started this.
David Craggs: You know, don't feel that, like, no, you have to engineer the solution, no, just, like… I think having any personal website is fine.
David Craggs: I just like having it so, like, LinkedIn can't just have a chuck sad because I don't conform to their algorithm. This is just something I want to do separately.
David Craggs: You can get a… Go on, Pat.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: I was gonna say, FYI, I've seen a couple of…
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: job sites or companies that just say, you know, upload my LinkedIn profile.
David Craggs: Hmm.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Rather than upload my resume, so maybe that's a trend, I don't know.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Just a warning.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Thanks, David!
David Craggs: No worries.
David Craggs: Yes, we do… once we do have our,
David Craggs: information for our CV. We want to basically copy-paste it into our LinkedIn as well.
David Craggs: Sorry.
David Craggs: I have it set so you do have to be signed in. I'm not signed in at work.
David Craggs: But all my experience is here.
David Craggs: We'll come back to the content.
David Craggs: Who's not…
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Lose the room soon, David, FYI.
David Craggs: Alright.
David Craggs: So, you can get a .id.au domain, which is specifically for this kind of personal branding for Australian citizens.
David Craggs: They're a lot easier to come by than, like, a .com or a .net.org sort of thing, so check that out, they're not too expensive.
David Craggs: And again, I think that's better to have, you know,
David Craggs: You know, wigs.id.au, as opposed to wigs.squarespace site.whatever.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Yeah, I'm all over the whole personal domain thing.
David Craggs: Yep.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Sadly, so I'm.
David Craggs: I called… oh, yeah, you were ORG on the internet, weren't you?
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: I've yet to get the legal department from PWC on my back, but it might not… it might not be far away.
David Craggs: So, content.
David Craggs: Content builds trust, it demonstrates skills and knowledge.
David Craggs: So, you can create blogs, videos, podcasts, LinkedIn posts, GitHub projects.
David Craggs: So, what I have been doing, because it fits with me, I have been writing blogs on my personal website.
David Craggs: So, here's my thing about passkeys that I posted late, yesterday. Late last night.
David Craggs: And what I have done on LinkedIn, I have made a post, Well, one whole like.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: That was me, by the way.
David Craggs: No, it was you, because I looked on my laptop where I am logged in.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Alright, we're getting booted.
David Craggs: Okay.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: I'll go… I'll… I'll jump in on pod.
David Craggs: Okay, no worries.
M-VIC-511-L1 - Chapel Off Chapel: Bye!
David Craggs: Okay, I will stall while you guys are moving.
David Craggs: So… Linkedin, you can just do straight posts.
David Craggs: You can also do blogs on LinkedIn, you could do blogs on things like Medium.
David Craggs: I feel, with my distrust of big tech sort of thing, that the solution for me is just having my own personal site where no one… and it's just on S3, no one can deplatform me.
David Craggs: And the content is always there.
David Craggs: It's a static site hosted on S3, so there is… there isn't some server running that I have to think about patching or anything like that. It is as basic and simple and cheap as you can possibly get.
David Craggs: That's the solution that's right for me.
David Craggs: You don't feel that you have to do the same. Again, if you want to, just have a Squarespace site, Squarespace size site. If you want to just post directly to Medium or LinkedIn, that's fine.
David Craggs: It's more important that you're doing… something.
David Craggs: we're not trying to go viral, or anything like that. We're not trying to brag. We're just trying to become…
David Craggs: Seen in our industry, and for a potential employer to
David Craggs: Gain trust that we know what we're talking about.
David Craggs: We also want to provide value to our audience.
David Craggs: So, don't think of it as, oh, I'm not, you know, the expert, I can't help anyone.
David Craggs: So…
David Craggs: you will have some unique hot takes in the industry. So, if we look at my blog post, so I have a thing about how we need to move away from passwords and traditional MFA,
David Craggs: I have… organizations should not force a standard IDE. So these are my semi-hot… let's face it, they're kind of lukewarm.
David Craggs: These are my lukewarm takes on the industry.
David Craggs: You will have your own.
David Craggs: We don't want to be the opposite of that. Yeah, and I mean, for Pat to do a…
David Craggs: a blog post, like, no, this is why we need a organizational IDE. We don't want to just be contrarian for the sake of it, like, what, like, what are your honest hot takes?
David Craggs: A good way to think about it is, what do you wish you knew now, that you wish you… what do you know now, that you wish you knew that when you were, like, 1 to 3 years earlier in your career?
David Craggs: So, what skills do you have that could help someone that is in a less senior role for yourself?
David Craggs: Even if you're fairly new in the industry, I'm talking to people like you that I'm hoping that are watching the recording, Peter.
David Craggs: For example, Xi'an?
David Craggs: You know, yes, you're starting out.
David Craggs: but… or relatively speaking, but what do you wish… what do you… what do you not know 3 years ago? What have you learned recently that you can help someone else learn that is…
David Craggs: Even more earlier on their career journey.
David Craggs: And what can you…
David Craggs: how can you explain in a way that helps someone else? Maybe there's a tricky concept that you think you have a good analogy for that can help someone learning it for the first time.
David Craggs: There's a really good book called Show Your Work by Austin Kleon. It's very short, it's not a novel.
David Craggs: And that goes both into the kind of mindset that you want to cultivate, and talks about this sort of stuff, of how to help someone that's a bit less… that is a bit more junior than yourself.
David Craggs: You don't also have to be an expert. It's okay to be learning side-by-side with your audience. Hello, Steph.
David Craggs: So, it's okay to position yourself not as the expert. It's okay to position yourself, and good, to say, I'm still learning, but here's what I'm learning, and how I'm learning it.
David Craggs: So, if you have just learned how to do some, you know, scene detection, or something like that.
David Craggs: You can then share that knowledge to help the next person who wants to learn this.
David Craggs: And it's okay not to be an expert, and not to position yourself as the expert.
David Craggs: So, all this content builds proof that you know your craft.
David Craggs: And it gives people evidence of how you think, what you care about, and the kind of value you can create. Again, we talk about how do we create business value for an employer that we can give them.
David Craggs: In exchange for money.
David Craggs: Visual identity, this… you don't have to do this, and it's not saying I'm well-versed in, but it is something to consider. So, this is how we build association with symbols, colors, clothing, that sort of thing. So, think Steve Jobs' trademark black turtleneck.
David Craggs: the Oprah O logo, things like that. It can be, like, very simple, it doesn't have to be, like, your logo. If I think to Hilary's sister, she is this, like, short, petite Asian girl, and on her wa- on her wrist is this massive red and yellow G-Shock.
David Craggs: And it is a, like, association I have with her. So it's, like, a big watch like this. This one is navy.
David Craggs: Think of, like, maybe Janita, with Pink Kitty cat.
David Craggs: headphones. Like, that's an association that you might want to lean into. You don't have to lean into them, but, you know, it's something that you can do.
David Craggs: So, I've talked about things like niching down.
David Craggs: And we don't want to be for everyone on purpose, because a brand that appeals to everyone is memorable to no one.
David Craggs: We want to strike a balance between standing out and not being off-putting.
David Craggs: So, you know, maybe… I think in REA, we are pretty, accepting of people that, you know, go against the grain a little bit, and one of the REA values is being your true, authentic self.
David Craggs: So, you know, it's fine to be, you know, an engineer that, you know, never wears a suit and always wears casual.
David Craggs: So… and that's fine, if you want to lean into that.
David Craggs: And you'll be off-putting to some people, but that's okay.
David Craggs: Because… Then weren't the right fit for you anyway.
David Craggs: So… but don't go too far. Obviously, we still want… we're talking about a professional, personal brand. We don't want to be the engineer that doesn't shower.
David Craggs: I must say it's place, yes, exactly.
David Craggs: But again, coming back to Janita's kitty cat headphones, that, you know, that's gonna be off-putting to more corporate environments, but if Janita doesn't want to work in that kind of corporate environment, then that's good. It's pre-selecting who we really want to try and vibe with.
David Craggs: So, the line breaks didn't work here.
David Craggs: So, you want to know what you want to be known for.
David Craggs: You want to make it specific?
David Craggs: Keep it authentic.
David Craggs: Align your CV website and your content to that.
David Craggs: And use everything as evidence of your craft. Anything you create for work.
David Craggs: Obviously not breaking NDAs and things and confidential information, but, like, try and make a blog post about it. If you've done… had something that came up in an audit.
David Craggs: That you can help another person that's learning.
David Craggs: Can you make a blog post about that? Or overcoming an engineering challenge, or something like that.
David Craggs: And that was the last slide. Are there any questions?
Patrick Carroll: I have questions, but more to do with…
Patrick Carroll: This is just an MD file… MD… File, this presentation.
Patrick Carroll: Sorry, I'm completely off-topic here.
Patrick Carroll: Yes. Yeah, but how… how… yeah, so it's an MD file.
Patrick Carroll: How are you actually running the slides?
David Craggs: So, it's an application written in Rust called Presenterm.
Patrick Carroll: Present term.
Patrick Carroll: Because I've had experience with Vi-based ones.
David Craggs: Hmm.
Patrick Carroll: So, literally, you just… oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, I think I'll look at this one.
Patrick Carroll: But the Java-based one was better.
David Craggs: What is Java?
Patrick Carroll: Yeah, unprofit.
David Craggs: I think I'll…
Patrick Carroll: I think I got… I think I got sidetracked by the fact that, look at all these features, and I'm going, you know what, too hard, whew!
Patrick Carroll: That plus, I think the rendering of images was harder on this, or…
David Craggs: you need to be using a terminal that supports it. Like, I'm using Ghosty here. I don't have any images in this presentation. And, you know, that's part of my branding, of like, yeah, I have this minimalism thing, and install terminal command line things, and so I'm not.
Patrick Carroll: Yeah, no, I agree.
David Craggs: momentum.
Patrick Carroll: That appeals to me as well. Okay.
David Craggs: You know, it's not scent, you know, these look at features of, like, you know, slides with exuberant lines or characters intentionally produce rendering glitches to prevent you from holding bad presentations.
Patrick Carroll: present.
David Craggs: This is… this is scent?
David Craggs: by Suckless.
David Craggs: Yeah, this one is presenter.
Patrick Carroll: Resident 2. Okay.
Patrick Carroll: Thank you, I thought that was good. It's inspiring me. I sort of got my guiding statement already, I think, and now I've just got to flesh it out with all the bullshit.
Patrick Carroll: Not all the bullshit, all the stuff I've done.
David Craggs: I'm just gonna end the recording now. Oh, sorry. All good. So, I am happy to do… this was pretty rough.
David Craggs: I'm happy to do follow-up sessions, or, like, do individual things, clarifying concepts. Again, I can't be a career coach, I'm sorry.
David Craggs: But, if you've got follow-up questions, like, I'm happy to help however I can.
David Craggs: End recording now.