Last February, I finally got a job. Without going into a lot of detail, I got it by leveraging some contacts that I had where I used to live in NC. The number of interviews that I had from applying for jobs in LinkedIn, Indeed, and direct applying was absolutely tiny. Of course, as soon as I started doing the series of interviews for this job, I got calls for four more interviews, because that’s just how things work. I make it a rule to never speak about a current job, just that I have one. If you really want to, you can find me in LinkedIn and see who I’m working for.

In January, I passed my Security+ certification. It was both easier and harder than I expected. So much of that certification is just terminology, a lot of it is silly and redundant in my opinion. I took the practice exam multiple times until I felt ready and then the actual exam had a lot of stuff that wasn’t in the practice material which made feel like I was only going to pass by the skin of my teeth, but I actually passwd with around 90% which I can’t complain about. Now I’m looking at what to study next. I had my heart set on studying to be an OSINT analyst. Those jobs just don’t exist unless you:

  1. Have security clearance TS/SCI
  2. Have police experience
  3. Are willing to start over at near minimum wage working for a PI firm.

Sure, there are exceptions, but they are very hard to find and will usually go to people with experience in the intelligence or police fields. Now I’m looking at Cyber Threat Intelligence. Are there jobs there? I don’t know. Is it what I want to do? Well, kinda. It does have a lot to do with OSINT, but more focused on Cybersecurity.