What to highlight first in your resume?
I see lots of people who get this wrong, to be honest.
They start with their weak spot in their skillset,
weak set, or in their resume.
Let's say, some people start with their education.
Okay, if you are in Harvard,
or if you have excellent grades in Oxford University,
you should put it first, that's for sure.
But if it's just a normal university,
or even if it's not related to computer science,
or cybersecurity, or malware analysis,
maybe you should leave it for later.
If you have experience in big companies like
Facebook, Google, Microsoft,
you have worked on really interesting projects
like Zero Day in Google,
or you have related interesting projects,
you have one on wars in that company
that you have worked in,
then you may highlight that first.
But, if that's not your weak spot,
and it's not your strong spot,
then you have to leave it for later.
Now, most important for malware analysis
is to show that you have the practical skills.
Everybody's showing certificates, grades,
a list of skills that they think they have,
or they just write it on their resume,
but you need to show them
that you have practiced these skills,
that you really have it,
and you have the proof of that.
And the way to do it is to actually
have a malware analysis report,
highlight it as the first thing in your resume.
Let's say, for me for example,
I did an analysis for WannaCry,
and with this analysis,
it helped me to get lots
of different jobs
and at the end I worked in Symantec, in a team,
and this team was actually created
just after Stuxnet attack.
It was created just for this attack
and for similar attacks after,
and there was the best kind of it,
for working in this team.
So, for you, you need to highlight your best asset,
which is your malware analysis skills.
You need to highlight that you have the skills,
you have practiced it, you have mastered it,
and you have the dots in the malware analysis report
including the link to that report.
And think about this.
Your resume will not only get to the manager,
it will get to the HR as well.
And HR's, they don't really understand malware analysis
that much, and even if the manager
is really scanning the resumes,
he may not really have the time to look at your report.
First, you need to look at the job description,
exactly as the, then take all the key words,
all the things that they want from you,
or skills they want from you to have
and list all of these skills inside your project spot.
Let's say, you did an analysis for WannaCry malware,
you see that they want you to have skills,
in only debugger, and only the pro,
then write that you did static and dynamic analysis,
using different tools including IDA Pro,
OllyDbg, and others.
They want you to know your signatures,
or how to add signatures.
Then say that you have wrote a signature
using Yaros and it's included in the report.
They want you to have, let's say Python script.
Then you say that you have wrote a decryption,
for the string, using in Python,
and you have reversed the algorithm,
you have wrote a script to crypt
to reverse this algorithm,
and the code is available on github, with that link.
They don't have to click on these links,
but they see all the key words
that are in the job description
are included inside your own resume.
Then, for the HR, they just see that all your skills
are included in your projects.
Not only the skills, but in your project.
You should also have a section for the skills
that has the same skills that are required
in the job description.
And be honest, don't lie.
If you don't have the skillset,
just don't include it.
This will hurt you later on, in the next interviews.
However, if you have the skills that are included
in the job description,
include all of them inside your skills part
and inside the project.
If it has passed HR and they see that all the skills are
included inside your project, inside your skills,
that means you are very relevant to this company,
then it will pass to the manager.
The manager after, will see that you have the skills.
You have practiced the skills
in your malware analysis report.
This means that you are the one
to be at least interviewed
and to be at least to see if that person
really is like his resume, or not.
Then you get to the next level,
and hopefully to the job after.
So, think about that.
You have to wait to include your strongest points
and it should be that you have practical skills
in malware analysis,
you have proof that you have wrote
a malware analysis report with that,
or even a project, and you have all the required skills
in the job description included in your resume.
That's it for this video,
and see you in the next video, bye-bye.