SOURCE Boston 2011: Two views on infosec interviewing, hiring

Lee Kushner and Lenny Zeltser will offer some advice for hiring managers and job seekers at SOURCE Boston next week.

By Taylor Armerding

April 13, 2011 — CSO —

It's one thing to be a capable infosec professional. It is something else to be capable at managing your own career -- knowing how to land the right job yourself or, as a manager, to spot and hire the kind of talent that will improve both your organization and your career prospects.

So a bit of enlightened self interest might be all the motivation necessary to attend a presentation by two experts in the field titled, "Across the Desk: Different Perspectives on InfoSec Hiring and Interviewing," at SOURCE Boston, which runs April 20-22 at Boston's Seaport Hotel.

The presentation, Thursday, April 21, at 10 a.m. in Plaza Ballroom A, will be the first collaboration on the topic for Lee Kushner and Lenny Zeltser. Kushner is president of Freehold, N.J.-based LJ Kushner Associates, an executive search firm dedicated to the information security industry and its professionals. He is also co-founder of Infosecleaders.com, a website for information security career advice, guidance, and research. Zeltser leads the security consulting practice at Savvis, is a senior faculty member teaching security courses at SANS Institute and blogs on infosec careers.

Also see: Set expectations for a successful a security career

According to the SOURCE Boston website, "the session investigates the perspectives of both sides of the hiring process: the candidate and the employer," and also gives attendees the chance to, "address questions regarding career planning, interviewing, position selection, the selection of career investments, compensation and negotiation."

Much of that, Kushner says, can be summarized as helping both employer and prospective employee to avoid wasting time.

The problem with those on both sides of the hiring game not being clear about their expectations, he says, is that both employers and candidates can, "waste a lot of time on something that has little chance of closure."

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Both sides, he says, "can forget what the other side is thinking."

The result, after considerable time spent, is that jobs go unfilled.

Zeltser says that spotting a bad match is harder than it sounds: "Sometimes we convince ourselves that the candidate or the employer are a good fit because some aspects of the match are attractive to us, while we ignore the less-desirable attributes.

"For instance, the candidate may like the compensation package and ignore the heavy travel component of the job, coming to regret taking on the job later. Or, the employer may like the candidate's technical skills, and not pay attention to the person's inability to present security concepts to a non-technical audience."

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