Blog

Winning my first CTF and first leads for an internship

What I've been doing

It's been a while since I posted anything, and to be honest I didn't have any positive stuff to share. I felt very depressed for the past few months over not having found an internship yet. It was especially hard for me since my Cybersecurity training finished, I mostly just stayed at home isolated with nothing else to do than studying by myself and applying.

In order to find that internship, I even cancelled a trip to Asia that I planned to do with my girlfriend. I figured I would miss a lot of opportunities and events to find an internship if I were gone. Also, I would definitely not have enjoyed a trip where I would feel the guilt of not having found anything, and would constantly think about it. This is very regrettable as I've been looking forward to finally have a trip to Asia since a few years ago, especially since my supposed Erasmus was cancelled due to covid back when I was still in translation. It is what it is.

Constantly receiving dozens of automatic rejection mails, or even not getting any feedback just weighed on my morals. I definitely knew it wouldn't be easy to find an entrance to the cybersecurity market, but I was naive enough to think I would be able to get to the interview step at least once. Almost all of my fellow cybersecurity trainees, if not everyone, managed to at least get to that step, and even past it. So me and my friends are still wondering how I still haven't got an interview and what are the differences between my applications and the others'. To this day, I still haven't found a clear answer although I do have a few theories:

• Me changing my education path a few times. It's true that I started as a CS university student, to going to School 19, to majoring in translation for a few years, before coming back to IT in a Cybersecurity training. This is something that probably scares a lot of recruiters as they probably think I wouldn't be able to stick around for too long.

• Not having any diploma despite being a uni student for a few years may also be problematic. Some of the recruiters said to me they don't even care if it's not an IT related degree, as long as I have a university diploma. That means that me not being able to get my bachelor degree in translation because of 3 classes that I didn't pass has a huge impact on me being hired. This feels very absurd to me, especially since the classes I didn't pass were NOT even related to translation.

• Luck. It is cruel, but it wouldn't be surprising to me, depending on the workload or the mood of a recruiter, that one resume could be overlooked and rejected while another one could pass the first step despite both resumes being equivalent in terms of skills and experiences.

I also naively thought that all the skills I have learned, all the certificates I earned, as well as the really nice Cybersecurity bootcamp I attended in the Belgian Cybercommand would help me fill these gaps in my resume, but I guess it is not enough.

Distracting myself from being depressed

Of course, I cannot give up as I really need to find an internship, and a job. But sometimes, you gotta take a break so you don't end up becoming insane and burn out from endless rejection mails. This is how I managed to cope during these past few weeks.

Japanese musics

During these hard times, I was able to discover very fine Japanese songs that I would put on loop during the whole process of searching for an internship. I even got the idea of publishing this playlist on Youtube under the very explicit name of "i just want an internship". This got a few tractions thanks to YT algorithms, and I'm glad that I was able to make a playlist that some people could like, and even relate to.

Metaphor: ReFantazio

I recently managed to finish Metaphor: ReFantazio! I've been waiting for this game to release since I got into the Persona series in highschool. Finally after 7 years of waiting, I managed to get my physical copy of Metaphor: ReFantazio and play the game. Although the game is not flawless, the experience didn't disappoint. It certainly didn't help me improve my sleep schedule, but it helped me relax and forget for 2 weeks about the not so good situation I am in. Also, it has been such a long time since I managed to find a moment to play such a long game (+100 hours). I'm currently not in the mood to go for a New Game+ to get all the achievements, but maybe I will in a near future.

A ray of hope

Last week I attended two events where I had the opportunity to meet a few companies. How awesome it felt to finally be able to have a discussion with the people rather than receiving a straight-up rejection mail. They were all super nice, very receptive and I could feel their interest towards me and my profile. I did not expect that and I was pleasantly surprised. A few of them told me they were gonna contact me this week, and I will have my very first interview coming up this friday for a company I really want to work with! How exciting!

And cherry on the cake, I participated in a CTF with a few of my friends and some people that I met for the first time. I definitely came with the mindset to perform as best as I could, but I was not expecting reaching the first place. It felt amazing to finally win a CTF and a competition in general. The first prize was a Flipper Zero, and I'm so excited to try it out once I order my microSD card.

Conclusion

Things are getting better for me, and I'm starting to be motivated again. Hopefully, my future interviews will go well, otherwise I will keep on grinding as per usual and I will find that internship. If I keep on trying, there is no reason I wouldn't be able to get it.