Introduction

• Reflection on a recent episode and a LinkedIn quote about the importance of hands-on experience.
• The universal applicability of the quote: "Never underestimate the importance of hands-on experience when it comes to securing your dream job."

The Power of Certifications and Classes

• The value of studying for certifications and taking classes in your desired field.
• Benefits include understanding industry jargon and verbiage.
• The importance of creating projects during study to simulate real-world experiences.

Gaining Hands-On Experience

• Personal anecdote: Starting a cybersecurity business and offering free services.
• The significance of creating content like forums, newsletters, and podcasts relevant to the area of study.

Real-World Experience vs. Book Knowledge

• The difference between reading a book and applying its knowledge.
• How real-world experiences create talking points for interviews and resumes.
• The challenge of bridging the experience gap, especially when making a lateral transfer in industries.

Creating Your Own Path

• Personal journey: Transitioning from IT architecture to cybersecurity.
• The combination of studying and real-world application.
• The metaphor of creating your own path: Waiting for someone to pave the way vs. taking initiative and building it yourself.

Conclusion

• The importance of proactivity in gaining experience.
• Encouragement to create your own real-world experiences and not rely on others.
• The quickest way to bridge the experience gap is to take charge and create opportunities for yourself.

Takeaway:

Remember, when it comes to bridging the experience gap, the power lies within you to create, innovate, and pave your own path to success.

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I want to take a second to add to the Bridging the Experience Gap

podcast that I recently did because I saw something interesting on LinkedIn.

There's a quote and it says, never underestimate the

importance of hands on experience.

When it comes to securing your dream job in cybersecurity and you could change

cybersecurity to whatever you wanted.

Got a lot of comments, a lot of reposts and a lot of likes.

It wasn't mine, it was somebody else's.

But it was interesting because my comment was when I was studying

for those certifications, so in the previous podcast, and you've

heard on the hire drive, one of the things I encourage you to do is.

Study for some type of a certification or take classes in the area that

you're interested in going into.

Because it not only helps you with the jargon and the, and the verbiage,

but when you're studying for those certifications, what you can do is create

projects to create those real world experiences for yourself and your clients.

So one of the things is, Our question somebody asked is, what are you

doing to gain hands-on experience?

And I said, well, I'm doing, when I was doing cybersecurity stuff,

a, I created my own business.

Doesn't matter if I have any clients.

I created my own business and I gave free work to organizations, family, friends,

creating content and forums, newsletters, podcasts, very relevant to the area study.

When you're doing that, you are creating a real world experience.

So it goes beyond, Hey, I got all these certifications.

Hey, I'm taking all these classes.

Hey, by the way, I also did a onsite vulnerability assessment,

penetration testing or physical security analysis for a law firm,

or I've created, I create, you know, podcasts based on cybersecurity and I.

Talk to industry leaders and things like that, that's real world

experience because companies are gonna ask you, what have you done?

Or tell me about your latest, whatever.

And if you've created your own business and you've got that in LinkedIn and

you've got that in your resume, you can, those are talking points now, right?

So it doesn't matter what your area of industry, if you've

helped friends find jobs.

And you've coordinated or you've updated their LinkedIn profiles for

them and you've helped them to start posting, being more active on LinkedIn,

getting out there, uh, teaching them how to use AI to update their

resumes and to submit it to companies.

That's talent acquisition.

You're doing what recruiters are doing, right?

You're scanning, you're looking at people, you're helping them, you're

trying to place people in different jobs.

You're doing it for your own business and you might be doing

it for just family and friends, but that is real world experience.

If I'm just reading a book, that's just me reading a book, that's me learning.

That's me taking certification tests.

That's me demonstrating that I understand the material, but if I take something from

that book or those lessons, or the classes or YouTube or whatever, I start to do it.

That creates real world experiences, that creates a bullet point,

that creates a talking point.

And that's something that you absolutely can and should use in

an interview session because it is very difficult to bridge the gap.

And I think I see a lot of people saying, Hey, I'm in this particular area, and.

I would like to do similar work, but I wanna go into a

slightly different industry.

So you wanna do a lateral transfer?

In my own experiences, I've had tons of experience with it and

architecture, all those type of things.

Windows, active directory, you name it, right?

But I wanted to bridge that gap into cybersecurity.

I had to look back to what was I currently doing that made sense to bridge that?

Should I start my own business?

And then start to do, like I said, this free work and pro bono and

start to do things so that I could get hands-on experience to do that.

Those created talking points, studying that helped.

And so it was a combination of studying and actually doing that real world.

So I think in this particular episode, we'll just keep it short here.

You can bridge that gap, and you can do it simply by creating your

own real world experiences, right?

So you're trying to get to something else.

You're trying to do something else.

You're trying to transition into another job, another field, another area.

How do you get real world experience?

You create it, you pave the path.

There's two ways.

I'm looking at a field.

I can wait for someone to come along with a mower or a crew or a team and

build me a path, and I can walk to the other side and that that would be akin

to waiting for a manager, waiting for a company to give you a helping hand to

just give you that start, give you that one chance that you really need to see

beyond that, Hey, I know this person could do it, but I'm gonna help 'em out here.

That can happen, or, You can get a little weed whacker or a shovel, and

you can knock down those weeds, right?

You can mow that lawn.

You can do whatever it is that you're doing and build your own

path to get to the other side.

At the end of the day, when you're on the other side, it was real world experience.

Either way, you do it, but you're gonna have to start creating that

for yourself if you wanna move on.

You don't want to rely on others to do that for you.

So when you're trying to bridge that gap, think about what it is in your day, what

it is in your life that you can do, that you can learn from a course or a class

or anything to create some real world experience and not rely on something

or somebody else to do it for you.

And that is the quickest way to bridge the gap.