As I mentioned in the “whoami” page, I was a 20 year old with high hopes and no experience. To make things funnier, after 4 years of having fun with my friends in a different cities(while attending University), I had to give up on the flat I’ve rented with one of my best friends, move to my home town, and live with my parents, in lockdown, for a couple of months. As you can imagine, that wasn’t fun no more, so I knew I had to find my first tech job.
I knew that I wanted to get into cybersecurity, but, with the little research I’ve done, I had the idea that there are entry-level cybersecurity jobs. Oh boy, was I wrong. There are these kind of jobs, such as Support Analyst, Support Engineer, Junior SysAdmin, but they for sure don’t contain “cybersecurity” in their name. However, the story about entry-level cybersecurity jobs will be told another time.
I started applying to every cybersecurity job on every job search platform(except LinkedIn, I wasn’t into it, funny right?) and with every application there came the same answer. Thank you for applying, see you never.
But I didn’t give up. I started learning on my own, taking different courses and learning different subjects, and I widened my search, to any possible entry-level job in IT. And the calls began to come.
After some unsuccessful interviews, I got a call from a person that later became a friend to me, Andrei from SmartSpot.
The first interview went well. I felt a good energy coming from Andrei, and I felt that he thinks the same about me. The job would fit my goal very well, because it would give me the chance to learn Linux, networking and scripting, essential tools for a career in cybersecurity. SmartSpot had their office in Cluj-Napoca, so I’d finally be able to return to all my friends, and the lockdown was coming to an end, so I could resume my life, come back with a job, and come back victorious.
After the technical interview, my hopes dropped a bit, but were still high. I managed to do a decent job in my opinion, and was waiting for an answer that would have me pack my bags and go back to Cluj-Napoca. However, again, I was wrong. I didn’t do as good of a job as I thought, and they decided to go with another candidate. I got a call from Andrei, he explained everything to me, and gave me good advice regarding the industry. I took and apreciated the feedback, felt down for a bit, got my head back up and continued searching.
Some time passed, some more negative answers, or no answers at all, and no hope of returning to my life in sight. In one Thursday afternoon, though, everything changed. I received another call from Andrei.