Never Miss An Episode | Subscribe Now
Home
Shows
ShopAboutWork With Us
Creative Mastermind
CyberCreatorCon2023
Never Miss An Episode | Subscribe Now

May 26, 2021

Clever Hiring Practices w/ Andy Ellis

by Cyber Ranch

Listen Now

Clever Hiring Practices w/ Andy Ellis

May 26, 2021 • Cyber Ranch

00:00:00

Show Notes

With us today is Andy Ellis, operating partner at YL Ventures, former Akamai CSO and newly inducted member of the CSO Hall of Fame. We're here to talk about nonstandard hiring practices and how Andy has built an amazing team using nonstandard approaches. Andy began his career in cyber ("I remember back then, you know, we didn't call it cyber, but I think we've all given up and, and that's now the name for our career field.") as an Air Force ROTC cadet, spent 20 years at Akamai, and joined an advisor program at YL Ventures. Andy found a solution that addresses hiring needs and the talent shortage, while also building a very clever and very innovative team. For new roles, look and see if you have somebody who's almost senior that you can promote to do that job. And backfill the almost senior person instead. Try not to hire senior people, try to hire the most junior person you can get away with and promote everybody up the chain. The real trick is to figure out how your HR and finance teams are going to operate and play them off against each other. Now that we have covered your promotion from within strategy, let's talk about hiring some folks for certain roles on the team that at a glance would make no sense at all for a CSO. And yet is really, really effective and repeatable. Andy’s flagship is hiring librarians. There is an entire career field dedicated to managing libraries and learning technical language to be able to do that. Everyone is in the business of publishing a report about their data, right? This is just taking technical data and technical jargon and making it consumable to people who've never seen this data before. There's an entire industry that does that. We call it journalism. So, we hire journalists to come in and be those storytellers. Hire teachers. Put a teacher in a position and to learn how deep do they need to go on a daily basis, and then make sure they get one level deeper. Because you're always going to have problems if you teach exactly to your domain knowledge. So, make sure your domain knowledge is always little bit deeper than whatever your job requires which is usually going to be sufficient to keep you out of trouble. To wrap the show up, Allan asks, “Why aren't the rest of us catching on because this is some amazing stuff that every single hiring manager in cyber could benefit from.” According to Andy, the simple answer is it's expensive, and it takes a lot of time to do right. Allan asks, “What keeps you going in cyber?” Andy answers, “I've always seen myself as improving the systems that I walk through, that when I encounter a system, I want to tweak it and figure out what makes it work and make it work better." Key Takeaways 1:24 Andy shares his background and how he got to cyber 3:12 Working for a venture capital firm 7:12 Hiring and building a team 12:26 The abnormal hires that just make sense 15:46 Clever role adjustments 17:10 More nonstandard hires 19:03 Confused? Whose confusion is it? 21:02 The academy 24:42 Putting a teacher in 25:21 Budget technique 27:09 Why isn’t everyone hiring this way? 28:30 What keeps you going in cyber? Links: Learn more about Andy Ellis on LinkedIn and Twitter Follow Allan Alford on LinkedIn and Twitter Learn more about Hacker Valley Studio and The Cyber Ranch Podcast Sponsored by our good friends at Axonius
Read more

Recent Episodes

View All

November 29, 2023

12 Questions for 12 Guests LIVE! at CISO XC

by Cyber Ranch

Allan takes the show on the road again, this time at his all-time favorite conference: CISO XC! He asks a unique question of each guest, who represent a great deal of breadth in our industry: Dave Belanger, CISO at Bestow Insurance - What is the most...

Listen Now
November 22, 2023

American Thanksgiving Holiday

by Cyber Ranch

Howdy, y'all!  Allan is taking this week off to spend time with family and to give thanks for all the wonderful things in his life - including y'all! For those who don't track it, there is no Cyber Ranch Podcast four times  a year: American Thanksgiv...

Listen Now
November 15, 2023

Cybersecurity Awareness Month CALL TO ACTION - The Conclusion!

by Cyber Ranch

Warning, there might be some naughty language in this one! The challenge was issued!!!! Allan teamed up with TWO other podcasts to take on the insufferable marketing that floods the cybersecurity industry in the month of October! Who won??? "Won"? Th...

Listen Now
November 8, 2023

SEC/SolarWinds Legal Analysis w/ Evan Wolff

by Cyber Ranch

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Our guest today is Evan Wolff, partner at Crowell & Moring, and Allan's favorite cyber attorney.  Evan has led and managed 100s of investigations including cybersecurity, data breach, insider...

Listen Now
November 1, 2023

Defining Budgets with Tim Rohrbaugh

by Cyber Ranch

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  That’s Tim Rohrbaugh, Founder/Principal at DefaultDenySec, former CISO for JetBlue Airways, advisor, investor: yup!  Another Cyber Ranch guest with an awesome history!  Tim and Allan were chattin...

Listen Now
October 25, 2023

The New SEC Regulations with Jack Powell

by Cyber Ranch

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  We're joined today by Jacqueline (AKA “Jack”) Powell, CISO at Allianz Life and former Deputy CISO at Hanes.  She has also consulted, and has worked at Chevron, General Dynamics, and SACI.  Jack h...

Listen Now
October 18, 2023

Building Excellent Teams w/ Kymberlee Price

by Cyber Ranch

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  That’s Kymberlee Price, strategic security consultant, Black Hat content review board member, former Sr. Director of Product Security at New Relic, former Principal Security Manager at Microsoft ...

Listen Now
October 11, 2023

Bad Behaviors: A Better Way LIVE! with Chris Tillett

by Cyber Ranch

Chris Tillett is a well-known figure in our industry.  He is in product management and R&D at Palo Alto Networks.  He is also a great guy, funny, and can wield the snark quite well.  He is the perfect foil for Allan Alford as the two of them take...

Listen Now
September 27, 2023

Permissions Management w/ Ron Nissim

by Cyber Ranch

Howdy, y’all, and welcome to The Cyber Ranch Podcast!  Joining Allan this week is Ron Nissim, CEO @ Entitle.  Yes, this is one of our rare shows with a vendor as a guest.  Why?  Because in this case, the vendor was more highly informed than any of Al...

Listen Now
September 20, 2023

The Cybersecurity Efficacy Gap w/ AJ Grotto

by Cyber Ranch

Allan is joined by AJ Grotto: William J. Perry International Security Fellow and Founding Director of the Program on Geopolitics, Technology and Governance at Stanford University.  He also serves as the faculty lead for the cyber policy specializatio...

Listen Now