Post by Joe Vadakkan

To everyone in cybersecurity and tech who got laid off and unfortunately many more to come: Keep your head high. This market is brutal right now. Live trackers are already showing well over 100,000 tech workers impacted in Q1. Cybersecurity has some major ones including one with Cloudflare today. Security companies are restructuring. But hear me clearly: You are not your layoff. You are not a line item. You are not “redundant.” You are a builder, defender, engineer, analyst, architect, operator, and problem solver in a world that still desperately needs people who can secure it. For cyber folks looking right now, don’t just spray resumes into LinkedIn and hope. Do this with precision: Build a target list of 50 companies actually hiring in your lane: cloud security, IAM, SOC, AppSec, GRC, detection engineering, product security, AI security, federal/cleared, healthcare, fintech, utilities, manufacturing. Use niche boards, not just LinkedIn: CyberSN, iSecJobs, CyberSecJobs, ClearedJobs, ClearanceJobs, Dice, Help Net Security weekly job posts, BSides/OWASP/ISACA community boards, and local security Slack/Discord groups. Stop applying cold when possible. Find the CISO, director, hiring manager, or team lead and your vendor Sales Exec - yes the one you don't want to talk, they are the most intuned with what is going on in the industry and enterprises. Pick up the phone, call and Send a short note: “I saw your team is hiring for X. My background is Y. I’ve done Z. Happy to send a 3-bullet fit summary.” Rewrite your resume around outcomes: “Reduced alert volume 35%.” “Built detections for X.” “Led EDR rollout across 15,000 endpoints.” “Mapped controls to NIST/ISO/SOC2.” “Automated evidence collection.” Not responsibilities. Proof!! Post your expertise publicly. One short post per week: What you learned. A detection idea. A misconfiguration pattern. A hiring ask. A project you built. Make it easy for people to see how you think. Don’t ignore federal, defense, MSSP, healthcare, utilities, and mid-market companies. The most visible jobs are not always the best jobs. Many strong cyber roles never trend on LinkedIn. Ask for help directly. Not “let me know if you hear of anything.” Say: “I’m looking for SOC lead, detection engineering, cloud security, IAM, or GRC roles. Remote or onsite or hybrid. 10 yrs + . Can you intro me to one security leader this week?” Join your local BSides, CSA's, Isaca, ISSA, vendor Happy hours, ISC2, beerSecs, Vendors invite people looking for gigs, today they might not have a job but tomorrow they might be signing your PO's. Lot of people have a toxic trait that it wont happen to them and they will survive it. The one's with jobs, be kind , lean in and help. Even if you are not a hiring manager, guide, give people opportunity to shadow, join your network. it only takes one event to be other person's shoes. This season is heavy. No sugarcoating it. Hang in there. We have your back. #cybersecurity #tech #layoffs