Everyday tradecraft, OSINT, and job hunting
I started writing this as a post for LinkedIn to say “Hey, I can do this stuff and need a job!”. Then, it turned into a kind of write-up of my current job hunting experience: using intelligence to land a job in the intelligence industry (or anywhere).
Everyday tradecraft applied
I am looking for the next role in the intelligence and security arena, have done interviews, tests, and several informal calls, building my network with love and patience. Opportunities will come, I know. Yet, I cannot live on fresh air, therefore I am continuously searching for other openings in the meantime, which is not an easy task (add some restrictions and generalised business hardship everywhere to the recipe, and serve cold).
It happens that traditional means such as Indeed and Glassdoor, or even LinkedIn, are not enough in this historic moment, so I have to resort to some OSINT (and this is funny — since I am using the skills I would apply in the job in… order to find that job — isn’t it?).
So, at a strategic level, I map the area going through Google Maps, Wikimapia, and Bing; with Maps, you can select “Nearby” to tailor the radius of your search. I check for various businesses and their locations, filtering them according to my needs and possibilities (those are my intelligence requirements if you want), and plan my collection process (planning and direction are at the core of the cycle!).
Well, I will be the customer of my own intelligence product, at the very heart of the process.
Then, I make a nice dataset (a simple spreadsheet will do the job) and start filling in info (emails, phone numbers, business hours etc.). This happens — let’s say — at a more tactical level: I start digging deeper to pivot from companies to officers, check incorporation dates, other related appointments; check through websites to find additional information to verify and validate my previous data during the processing and exploitation phase (are those guys trustworthy? Any insolvency? What are people saying on marketplaces, forums, and social media?).
This can take some time: some of the owners and managers are on LinkedIn, some just on Facebook; some companies have undergone several cosmetic changes, some others simply are quite small and have left little records.
I gather information, record them, and move to other pivot points (a name, a comment on a social media, a link etc.) in what is a feedback-styled, iterative mechanism, where collection and analysis cannot be totally separated.
At this point, I need more than online publicly available information (PAI).
I decide to resort to the beautiful art of walking to places and checking by myself: you can tell a lot from a shop-window and its flyers (owners, managers, team members, the overall quality level of services/products etc), and, if confident enough, there is always another store next to that door. There you can talk to people.
With the excuse of buying some mobile data or a newspaper, just throw in a “Nice place there, too bad it’s still closed!”. The vendor is only waiting for an excuse to chat, feeding some new info into my collection-validation process. Feels like HUMINT!
Okay, it is not proper HUMINT, as the rapport built on that occasion will be, indeed, occasional, with little pre-work, recon, and no follow-up. Nonetheless, it is the basic, underlying concept: identify a source, understand it, build trust, even ‘become another person’, obtain information. This is something you can do online with sock puppets and fake personas during real investigations, indeed, but there are offline treasures you cannot find across social media (and this also applies to job hunting AND investigations).
I like that.
“Give me a person, and I will converse”.
Conclusion
I am actively applying basic intelligence principles to my job hunting. Trial and error, of course. I start from my goals, which I set as my ‘customer’s intelligence requirements’, and prepare a plan. Once the strategy is set, I then start collecting information from all available sources, not limiting myself to online avenues. People out there are my favourite sources, real places can tell you a story, or give away details on which you can pivot for further research. This collection-analysis process is iterative and dynamic. When information is collected, verified, corroborated with additional evidence, then I can support my decision-making process with some intelligence (I found place A, they work in industry B, it seems they are lacking this C, and I have it, so I will use this information to tailor my approach/application).
This is the final product for the customer (myself, in this case).
Alternative conclusion
This is what I am learning to do and want to do. If interested in OSINT support or anything intelligence-related to boost your decision-making processes, let’s talk!
Resources
Jason Blanchard’s video explains how to social engineer your dream job on LinkedIn, while Intelligence101 is a great blog on intelligence, definitely good as a study companion. Finally, there are various platforms to use and check companies/officers: this is far from a real list!
- Jason Blanchard’s “How to Hunt for Jobs like a Hacker”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Air1c697tjw&ab_channel=BlackHillsInformationSecurity
- HUMINT 101
http://www.intelligence101.com/the-ultimate-guide-to-human-intelligence-humint/ - Websites:
a) https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/
b) https://opengovuk.com/
c) https://opencorporates.com/
d) https://www.endole.co.uk/products/company-search/
e) https://www.checkfree.co.uk/
