I believe if you want to stand out in cybersecurity, you need to have strong communication skills and only careing on the hard skills only, but the soft skills too. This is why I decided to share my notes, maybe they are useful to you too!
Make Your Mess Your Message: Meaning share your challenges and difficult times with others in a way they can learn from them and be more productive in their lives.
Do not be afraid of your vulnerabilities (not in cybersecurity domain >_<) and insecurities, but be strong enough to embrace them! On the other hand, sharing too much information about you with people is optional and up to you, so if you are not comfortable, do not do it!
To really connect with people, you need to be genuinely authentic with them and show real interest in them. Nothing replaces a human connection, make that call instead of texting them..
Public Speaking:
Be prepared and do your homework before the speech as you will do much better in that case.
Know your audience, why they are coming here and what they want to hear? If you are giving a technical speech in BlackHat, it is different than giving it to university students!
Do not read from a script, it shows less engaging and authentic to people, but if you want, at start, you can have an index card showing the key points you want to present and make eye contacts with attendees.
On stage, look for the people who really seem interested and paying attention, and try to give the speech to those people and look at them, not who are looking down at their phones.
If you have some difficulties in enunciating some words, try to write them down and practice pronouncing, for example: “nice” word, you would write it “niice” adding one or two vowels, so your jaw movement in “i” is higher, taking more time in your words (like the pausing technique), and removing aaah’s, eeh’s and filler words like “you know” in every sentence.
Deliver your message in a storytelling way especially if you can include a personal experience in it.
Make your statements concise simple declarative ones, and do not chase rabbits to deliver your message.
Finally, before giving speech, talk to yourself positivity as “you got this”, and pose in a confident way like Superman 😊
