Mick LaGassey
My client Mick got laid off as part of a North American engineering team downsizing.
Laid off → federal SWE role in 1 month
My client Mick got laid off as part of a North American engineering team downsizing.
We worked together for a month, and he got hired for a federal software engineering role with zero cybersecurity experience.
The hiring manager told him exactly why they chose him over more qualified candidates.
It wasn't his Java skills or years of experience.
It was his ability to break down a problem, design a solution and explain the tradeoffs out loud.
They said: we can teach you cyber security but we can't teach you how to think.
Before joining the program, Mick had been job searching for 3 months.
He was getting interviews but wasn't passing them.
He had solid coding skills. But every time an architecture question came up, he froze.
That's because he spent 4 years at his last job in maintenance mode.
Knowing the stack inside and out, but never being challenged to think bigger.
That comfort zone almost cost him his next career move.
Once he understood how to structure his thinking around system design, walk through tradeoffs and architectural decisions, he aced the next interview and got an offer.
“We can teach you cyber security but we can't teach you how to think.”