Kudos To Our Newest Tester, Abdelaziz!
- marketing60147
- Sep 25
- 3 min read
I want to give kudos to our newest tester Abdelaziz Omle “Abdel”, who is worthy of a rare public display of affection from yours truly.
Abdel may not have been with us for very long but he’s already impressing us with his enthusiasm and can-do attitude. His sunny disposition and willingness to throw himself into whatever task is thrown at him is commendable and appreciated.
He’s come to us as a recent graduate, gaining a first-class honours degree in cyber security at Leeds Beckett University. That’s impressive for anybody, but let’s take into consideration that Abdel only landed in the UK in March 2015, fleeing Aleppo, Syria via Lebanon and Turkey with him mum and sisters leaving his dad behind for the following two years. He couldn’t speak English when he landed. He’s fluent now.
But that’s not all, this started from his approach on LinkedIn whilst working part-time at M&S. We invited him for an interview, where it was clearly obvious that he was prepared. He knew who we were, what we do and importantly why he wanted to do what we do. He’d brought in with him his project from Uni, a vulnerable web application that he’d built himself (very DVWA – watch out @Ryan Dewhirst). He ran through it with me and Dan with passion and enthusiasm.
We usually do two interviews. We knew there was no need. We don’t regret bucking our process. In fact, he’s moved onto (supervised) client work quicker than expected.
One Compliance has been in business since 2018, we’ve regularly interviewed to give people a “foot in the door”, “leg up” or whatever you want to call it, we’ve employed several graduates over the years, and we will continue to do so. As you can imagine, we have interviewed a large number of “entry level” people too, with various degrees of frustration but that’s a whole other ranty blog. Let’s use this one to highlight some of the positives and, if any “entry level” people are reading and struggling to bag a role. Be like Abdel (and Dan* for that matter)- here are a few takeaways:
Do your background checks
Do some research on the company you’re interviewing with- What do they do? Read their website, their LinkedIn, maybe even their companies house.
Understand who’s who and have they been in the press recently?
Come prepared
What relatable skills do you have?
What projects have you worked on? (opensource, community?)
Are you involved in any community activities?
Do you have any evidence that supports what you’re saying?
Think about what your future looks like
Before you ask about “progression” – think about what your “progression” means to you – where do you want to be? What do you need from the company to make that happen?
And then and to paraphrase John F. Kennedy:
"Ask not what the company can do for you, ask what you can do for the company." Which goes back to demonstrating your value and why you think it’s specifically relevant.
Abdel demonstrated all of these things to Dan (another one of our testers) and I during the interview process, which is why he beat all the others, most of whom, didn’t do any of what I consider, the basics. Most people seem to be overly relying on ChatGPT to write introductory emails / CV’s and it lacks the ever so desirable authenticity that the modern day demands.
It’s probably worth pointing out that Dan also came to us after leaving university. His approach was, in this day, pretty novel too.. but that’s another story for another time.
For those of you trying to break into cyber security, good luck and if you’d like any help or advice, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn:
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