Intro: 00:01

Are you ready to know what you don't know about Privacy Pros, then you're in the right place.

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Welcome to the Privacy Pros Academy podcast by Kazient Privacy Experts, the podcast to launch progress and excel your career as a privacy pro.

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Hear about the latest news and developments in the world of privacy.

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Discover fascinating insights from leading global principal.

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Professionals and hear real stories and top tips from the people who've been where you want to get to.

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We've trained people in over 137 countries and counting.

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So whether you're thinking about starting a career in date of privacy or you are an experienced professional, this is the podcast for you.

Jamal: 00:57

Hello, everyone. I'm really excited to be speaking with you about the five steps that you need to take or the five secrets to landing your next highly paid privacy role. So with that said, let me tell you a little bit more about me. My name is Jamal Ahmed and I'm a privacy professional and I have a vision. My vision is that my little daughter Amy, who is seven months old now, and she's growing so fast, is going to grow up in a world where every woman, every man, and every child has the freedom to choose what happens over their personal information. And therefore, my mission is to empower every organization on this planet to adopt honest privacy practices so we can really fulfil that vision. So that's the reason I set up Kazient Privacy Experts. I was like, you know what? I'm going to go and conquer the world. I'm going to change. I'm going to help every single organization there is in the world. Very quickly, I realized no matter what I did, even if I did this and I work with a different organization every single day for the rest of my life, then it would still be a drop in the ocean. And I realized what we need to do is we need to build a community of professionals with the same mindset who all buy into the same vision, and we need to go and do this together. And that's why I set up the Privacy Pros Academy so that together we can create an army of world class privacy professionals who will then help those businesses, those clients, the organization that they're working for, to adopt those honest privacy practices. And together, we have a really good chance of fulfilling our vision. I want to inspire all of you to take consistent action so you can really go and fulfil all of your potential that you know, that you have inside you. And for whatever reason, you feel stuck and frustrated where you are right now and you can't actually figure out where you're going wrong to go and achieve those ambitions that you but what I want to do is I want to tell you about some of the things that were holding me back. And the first thing that really I thought was holding me back and not getting the interviews and not getting the roles when I first wanted to pivot into privacy was my lack of experience. I was convinced that because I didn't have the experience as a privacy professional, because I hadn't been doing this for years and years and years, I would never be able to make it as a privacy professional. And that, I realized, was my first self-limiting belief. I was holding myself back through my own understanding of my lack of experience. And I believe that experience was the number one thing that people were looking for when it comes to hiring privacy professionals. I can categorically tell you today that's not the case. And let me give you an example of that. Forget about myself. Let's talk about Mojisola, one of my mentees. And if you go through my LinkedIn recommendations, you'll actually find her and her story and exactly what she went through. So Moji was a business analyst. She was somebody that had done a decade worth of business analysis, and she was looking to pivot her career because she got to the stage in her career where she no longer felt challenged, she no longer felt inspired. And it was just hard work, just waking up, up and wanting to go and do the same thing day in, day out, getting passed over, promotion, not being acknowledged, not being given the reward that she thought she would get if she turned up to work every single day and then a good job. So Mojisola had a strong experience of business analysis. She had done really well in the career to get up to where she was, and she was also on a very comfortable and generous pay package.

Jamal: 04:23

But the challenge was missing. The reward was missing, the fulfilment was missing. But when she first spoke to me about joining the program, one of the things that she was worried about is, Jamal, I've worked very hard to get to where I am, and I have a lot of responsibilities and commitments. I don't want to start again at the bottom. I understand I'm not going to go in at the top but I don't want to start at the bottom. So we really worked on the five steps that I'm going to tell you guys about later on to really help Mojisola pivot and get a role as a privacy professional. And not only did she get a role as a privacy professional, but if you go into LinkedIn profile, you can see that her first role into privacy was at director level for a multinational organization with a six figure salary. And this is somebody with no previous experience as a privacy professional, with strong experience in other places that actually managed to pivot successfully. And it's not just Moji. Moji had lots of business experience. Let me give you another example, and I speak about Tahir all the time because he's so inspiring, so Tahir joined the program last November. He is now a data privacy manager for a multinational company as well. And when Tahir joined the program, he didn't have a CV, he didn't even know what LinkedIn was. He actually had no professional experience. In fact, he'd spent all of his life working in the family business, which was an Indian restaurant. And then once he got sick and tired of that, after I think about twelve years, he became an Uber driver. And that's what he was doing up until he got his role as a data privacy manager. So he had no educational background, he had no professional experience. In fact, he didn't even know how to speak to people on the phone because it's not something that he'd ever done or was ever required to do other than taking orders. So how did Tahir pivot his career from being an Uber driver to going all the way to becoming a data privacy manager? And now you can see that anything is possible. Regardless of your lack of experience. You still can do really well in a data privacy career. If you follow the proven methodology, which I'm going to go into in a moment, if you have experience, if you have strong experience, then you should be getting really excited because you're already way ahead of where I started, you're way ahead of where Mojisola started, and you're way ahead of where Tahir started. So if we can do it, there is no reason why you can't do even better. All you need to understand is where you're going wrong, what recruiters are looking for, and what is the five secrets that you need to implement to position yourself as the go to authority. The second thing that was holding me back, and the second thing that holds a lot of other people back is the educational background. Some people think, oh, you know what, I'm not a qualified lawyer. I haven't even done some kind of legal LLM or MA or anything at university, so maybe I can't make it, maybe the highest roles are reserved for people who have a legal background. And I can categorically tell you that is absolutely not true. And in fact, most people that come onto our programs are trained lawyers because one of the things that the trained lawyers struggle with is they're brilliant at understanding the theory. They can write white papers, they can write thesis on it, but what they struggle with is how to translate that information to the business in a way the business understand, in a way they can actually operationalize that theory. So whether you're a lawyer and you have a legal background or not, that's not going to hold you back from being able to thrive in this industry. If you have those legal background, if you have those certifications, then again it's only going to push you ahead of everyone else because you can demonstrate you have the legal training as well.

Jamal: 07:55

o increase his salary by over: 20000

Jamal: 09:59

This is absolutely not true, because every time I go on LinkedIn, I'm congratulating at least three people on a daily basis. And if you go on the job boards and if you go across the LinkedIn data privacy roles, I can see that there is an abundance of roles. So it's not that and it's not a numbers game, right? One of the biggest challenges I have to get my mentees to overcome is they believe it's a numbers game. And what they'll do is they look for every single job and they'll spend half an hour every single day, or an hour or even longer than that, applying for three to five roles every day. Some recruitment portals have made it so easy. There's something called one click apply and they think it's a numbers game. And if they apply for enough jobs, eventually they believe somebody's going to give me a call back. Now, unfortunately, that strategy is not going to work. There is no quality and there is no thought process. So I'm going to demonstrate to you exactly what you need to do to land your next high paying role. So this is it. Get some, get a pen out, get paper out, and let's have a look at this. The number one thing you need to do is demonstrate how you bring more value to the table than anyone else, right? That's the number one thing. Demonstrate how you bring more value to the table than everybody else.

Jamal: 11:07

Number two, you have to position yourself as the only credible candidate for the role. And number three, you got to use a little bit of FOMO. Right? What is FOMO? Fear of missing out. You have to make them feel that if they don't hire you, they're going to lose out on an opportunity to have you join their team. So you might be saying, yes, Jamal, great. I love that you want me to demonstrate more value than everybody else. I love that you want me to position myself as the only candidate for the role. And I love that you want me to make them feel like they're missing out on a good opportunity by not signing me up the moment they've heard everything I had to say. But how do I actually go about doing that? What are the actionable steps I can take to stop getting the results I'm getting and start getting offers on those high paying roles? So I'm going to tell you the strategy that Adhnan used to actually land that. Before we get to that, there is something very important we need to understand. And the challenge, I find, is not enough privacy professionals understand how the recruitment process actually works by putting themselves in the position of the person doing the hiring. So we're going to put ourselves into the position of the people doing the hiring so you know exactly what they're looking for. And if you know exactly what they're looking for, you know how to tailor your answers to make their job so easy that they can say, yes, yes, this is the person that we want to shortlist for a second interview, or this is the person we want to offer the role to first.

Jamal: 12:35

So here are the top three things that you need to understand. Number one is you need to demonstrate you’re competent. Right? They need to understand that you're competent, that you can actually do the role you've applied for. How do you demonstrate that? Number one, what you need to do is look at the job description and tailor your cover letter and tailor your CV or your resume, whatever you want to call it, to the job description. And you want to use specific examples of where you can demonstrate where you've actually done that already you're doing it, or you have the transferable skills to be able to succeed in each of those elements of the role. The number one problem I see when people are trying to show they are competent is they will talk around stuff, they will give some vague answers, they will not ever address the key points on the actual job description. The other challenge is, sometimes job descriptions are written by HR, which means that they don't actually understand the privacy role. What the hiring manager is looking for and what HR put out often can have a mismatch. So I would encourage you to connect with the hiring manager and connect with the recruiter before you even put your application in. And say, I saw this role, I'm really keen, I wanted to get a little bit more information, can we have a quick chat? And every single time I've encouraged somebody to do that, the recruiter, the hiring manager is very happy to talk about this role because the business has a need. Remember they're struggling, they need to feel this and the quicker they feel this, the sooner they can move on to their business objectives. So find out who is actually managing the recruitment process. If you can't get in touch with the hiring manager, sometimes they'll be quite senior, they won't have time to speak to anyone and everyone who just wants to apply for the role. But the HR, the recruitment people, it is their job to make the recruitment process easier for the candidates and also for the organization so they can hire the best talent. So that is how you're going to demonstrate competence to get your initial call back. Your CV should not be something that you think is going to get you an offer. If you're writing your CVs as if you get the offer from the CV, then that's exactly where you're going wrong. What you need to understand is the purpose of your CV is nothing other than to get a call back. So you need to give them enough information with enough punches to demonstrate, yes, this person is worth speaking to. And then on that screening call they would ask you to either talk through your CV or they will ask you a few specific questions. And at this point all they're trying to do is get a feel for how you present yourself. And if during that point you can hold yourself, you can compose yourself, you can give really strong evidence for why you are worth giving a first stage interview. You will see that they invite you for that first stage right so the whole purpose of your CV, of your cover letter is to get that screening call or get that initial call.

Jamal: 15:28

Once you've got that initial call, then you just want to demonstrate that you have the competence for them to be able to put you in front of the hiring manager or put you in front of the first stage of the recruitment process. So number one thing is competence. Number two is motivation. Once you've given them enough for them to believe, yes, this person could probably come and do this job, the second thing they look for, and this is something they're going to look, second part of the process, which is the first day interview, is your motivation. And what they want to understand is that you are motivated to do the role that you've applied for, but not just that. And you're motivated to work for that specific company. So sometimes they might ask you something like, why have you applied for this role? Or why are you leaving your current role? Or why do you want to work for us? And a lot of people say, well, I'm looking for new opportunities or something, whatever it is. But that's not what they want to hear. They want to hear why you've been compelled to apply to work for that company. So you need to go beyond the basics of what's on the website, what's on the job description, and you need to find something that's going to set you apart when it comes to showing them why you're so motivated to work in that role, in that company. So that's where you need to understand what your values are as a person and how those values are aligned with the businesses values. You might even do what someone like Adhnan did, is go and have a look at some of the social media posts and have a look at some of the speeches or some of the articles that they written. Now, Adhnan did something very well. He would go and have a look at all of these things, and then when they ask him questions about motivation, he would bring the fact that he read an article on how he actually resonates with the values, or how he resonates with what the CEO had said. And this makes them smile and makes their eyes light up because they can see you're not just someone who's just applied for thousands of jobs and you're just happy that you're sitting in front of them. But you've actually looked into the company, you've looked into the values, you looked into how this role is going to help you, and how you're going to be offered a chance to serve their customers and their stakeholders. And you can talk about that with some credibility. So that's the second thing you need to demonstrate is motivation, right? So number one is competence. Number two is motivation. And motivation is not just why you're motivated to apply for this role or why it's motivating you to leave your current role right now. But why are you motivated to do this role? And then why are you motivated to work for our organization? So that's the second thing.

Jamal: 17:56

And the third thing you need to demonstrate to get hired. The third thing that the recruiters and the hiring managers are looking for is your cultural fit. And this is often what they look for in the final stage or the second interview before they make you an offer. So the first initial screening, your CV, your screening call, your cover letter, your LinkedIn profile is going to talk. They're going to help you understand that you're competent. You might get some technical questions. In the first and second stage, they just want to make sure that you are competent. Second stage is second stage of the process, which is your first interview, is all about really demonstrating your motivation and then what they're also going to be looking for, the final thing that you need to show is your cultural fit. How well will you gel with the people who are already on the team? How well will you gel with the people in the department? How well will you gel with the company culture? And that's what they're looking for. And when it comes to cultural fit, it's difficult to know from the outside what the culture is like. But there are some common things that you can demonstrate that will show you then exactly you are the person that they can't afford not to have on the team. And what you need to demonstrate is the growth mindset, right? So there's two things. There is the fixed mindset and there is a growth mindset. You need to demonstrate you have the growth mindset. And if you're not sure what I'm talking about, about fixed mindset and growth mindset, there is an amazing book by Caroline Dweck and she talks about mindset. And this is one of the things that we actually spend the first month on in the academy or the accelerator program is the change and the shift in mindset. So what you need to demonstrate is you are somebody who possesses and comes with a growth mindset. And if you can demonstrate the qualities of a growth mindset, you will 100% fit into every single organization that is really looking to make a difference, make an impact, and really give back to their staff and make them feel valued.

Jamal: 19:50

So number one is competence, number two is motivation, and number three is cultural fit. Those are the three things to demonstrate to get hired. And this is what everybody does. I'm passionate about data privacy. Why are you so passionate about it? Well, because I care about people's rights. That's the same boring answer they hear day in, day out. Their eyes will gloss over. They might even do an eye roll when they hear that because they’re fed up of hearing this. Everyone comes and says, I'm passionate. You need to not show them your passionate. You need to demonstrate your passion. Because when they've looked at your LinkedIn, when they've looked at your CV, they should be able to see this. And one of the things that you will notice that I get all of my mentees to do, regardless of which program they're on, is talk about privacy. I tell them to talk about privacy on their LinkedIn. I get them to tell them to interact with other privacy professionals and we talk about community in a moment. But I really get them to show their passion. And I don't really describe it in a way where I'm saying, hey, show your passion, because it's going to show for themselves. And what I ask them to do is whenever they've had a training session with me, whenever they've listened to a podcast, whenever they've attended a webinar, is to just jot down three to five key takeaways. Because guess what, if I'm a recruiter or when a recruiter or a hiring manager looks through your profile on the application, they can see, wow, this person is talking about all sorts of privacy stuff. They must really know their stuff. But above that, I can see they are really passionate about what they're doing because they're taking the time to create valuable content. And if they see that other people are finding value or dropping useful comments, people that are really senior in the privacy industry, which is why I get you to tag a guest, they'll be like, wow, if other people see something in this person, then there must be something about them, right? We need to get on a call with them. We need to bring them in and see what they have to say. And this is how you demonstrate passion. This is how you demonstrate that you are going to be more valuable than other people that they bring in. And this is the kind of thing that gets them curious to want to know more. Who is this person? What is so special about this person that everyone is commenting on their post? Or why are they talking about all of this stuff? They must be really passionate. Let's find out what their story is. Let's see what they have to say. Bring them in for an interview. Some people will actually get offered interviews and roles for job roles that doesn't even exist on the actual market yet, just because somebody has seen that they're really passionate about this and they know there's a role coming up, right? And if you don't believe me, just speak to anyone in the academy and you will see within three months of the program how many recruitment opportunities they are magnetically attracting to them. And that's exactly where I want every single one of you to be. I don't want you to have to ever apply for a role again. I want you to be in a position where recruiters are bombarding your inbox on a daily basis, asking if you're free for a chat about an opportunity that's coming along. For you to be able to do that, you need to follow the five steps. And the first step to show passion is so easy. I make it so easy for you guys. I mean, I'm going to share with you exactly what I get the guys and the girls on the Privacy Pros Academy accelerator program to do without you having to spend any money with me whatsoever. So the number one thing you do every Tuesday, we release a podcast and I do my best to go and find the best privacy professionals in the industry to come and share their ideas, to share their thoughts, and to describe their journey to you. So you can find inspiration and you can learn from their lessons and you can use that, what you're learning when you're speaking to your peers, when you're speaking job at interviews.

Jamal: 23:23

In fact, if you look at Sara, who joined my program in November, she says when I go to these interviews, I just find myself repeating stuff I’ve heard on podcast and the recruiters and the hiring manager, they're all smiles. I don't even know where it comes from. So these things that you're picking up, you're absorbing, will subconsciously be in your mind. And when the right opportunity comes along, you'll find yourself just speaking stuff that makes sense and that's going to position you as somebody who's passionate, somebody who's an expert, someone who is the right cultural fit, somebody who's really motivated to do this role. And it's going to demonstrate how competent you are. So passion is the kind of bonus thing that I wanted to share with you on top of competence, motivation and cultural fit. Now, those are the three things the recruiters want to know and hiring managers look for. The final thing I want to share with you is the five secrets that's going to help you to thrive throughout your entire career, no matter what stage you're at. So the first thing we need, the first secret is clarity. I can't stress just how important clarity is. When you speak to somebody, when someone speaks to you, when someone gives you instructions, when you ask questions, someone gives you an answer, you will get frustrated or you will not believe they know what they're talking about, or you won't have a clear idea that you need if there is a lack of clarity. So the problem I find with lots of privacy professionals, or the mediocre ones anyway, is when someone asks them a question at work, when someone asks them a challenge, what they'll do is they'll regurgitate an article or they copy and paste an article or some guidance note and send it as the answer. But that doesn't really help the business who is not privacy trained to understand what that means and what they're supposed to do. They could. Have gone on Google and done that. So why are they going to pay you 70, 80, 90, 100 000 thousand pounds to copy and paste stuff that they could have got for free or they could have got themselves? Where you come in with the value is by providing that clarity of what they're required to do as an organization from the business point of view. So when you ask something at work and you’re put on the spot, most people will just blurt out a random bunch of jargon, not sure they've understood themselves completely either. And it gives no clarity to the other person and you have no clarity. And the reason you might find yourself doing that, if you're guilty of that because I know earlier on, I thought, you know what, if I memorize all 99 articles, I'm going to be a badass privacy pro, right? But let me tell you, it doesn't work like that. You will not get hired for the best roles. The best roles look for people who are great communicators and who can communicate clearly what the business needs to do, how they need to do it, and what's at stake if they don't, and what the benefits are if they do. For you to be able to get that clarity, what you need is a really thorough and comprehensive understanding of the actual regulations. And that's why one of the things I do when you sign up to newsletter is I give you a copy of my easy peasy guide to the GDPR. And this one thing is the thing that changed everything for me in my career. But I explained to you guys at the beginning, I wasn't getting any interviews, I wasn't getting hired, I wasn't definitely not being asked to attend any awards or to be speaking for any of the media publications, but the moment I set some time aside and I studied every single one of those 99 articles on the recitals. And I said, you know, what I want to do is I'm going to translate this stuff. I'm going to translate it in a way where I can explain it to my mom or my nephew or my niece. And that's exactly what I started doing. I took the GDPR articles and then I condensed them all into one or two paragraphs with a few short points. And now what I found was when people were asking me questions, when I was getting involved, when I was getting phone calls back for roles, I could explain this stuff in a way that made complete sense to everyone. And actually, Albert Einstein says, if you can't explain something simply enough, then you haven't understood it well enough. What you need to demonstrate is that you have the understanding, which means you provide clarity. So you break all of this legalese, you break all of the jargon down in a way where everyone can understand. So the first thing you need to do is have a look at the easy peasy guide. If you subscribe to the newsletter, or if you're already subscribed to the newsletter, then this is something that you get as a link in your welcome email. So take advantage of that because at the end of this month, we're going to stop giving that out because we're actually doing a version number two where we're publishing it and it will be available in all major bookstores.

Jamal 27: 54

So get the easy peasy guide. You don't have to spend the three or four months that I did breaking it all down, rewriting it, writing it again. I've made it easy for you. You've got the official text, you've then got the summary. And once you put that in in place, once you get familiar with that, then you know exactly what you need to do. In fact, some of my mentees, they say what they do is they pin this to their desktop or they have a copy of it that they printed out. And when they get asked those questions and when they need to save time and they need to refresh, they go look at it and it really makes things so much more easier for them. So get your hands on that, read through it, and make sure that you're able to also implement taking complicated information and explaining it in a way that anyone can understand. So that's the first thing you need is you need to demonstrate clarity. Now, clarity also comes not just from understanding the regulations, but also understanding the interpretation of that. So it's the lawmakers that write all of these rules, but it's actually the courts that interpret what this means. And the reason people need people with legal backgrounds, the reason why they believe that only someone with legal background is going to be good enough for the role. And the reason some people hold themselves back is because they need someone who can interpret what the legalese means from the courts. So what I then did is I looked at all of the key landmark case summaries to help with the understanding, and I summarized all of those into easy peasy guides as well. So you've got all of the case summaries. Sometimes it's like 30 pages, sometimes they're in different languages. Actually, the Court of Justice one are all in English. But what I've done is I've taken all of the key facts away, key information, and I've condensed it into like two or three sides. So you are left with clarity. And now when the business or when your client or when a recruiter asks you about a certain thing, you can sound like the expert. You can say, well, the regulation says XYZ in an easy peasy language. And you know what? There was actually a case at the Court of Justice which gave us further clarification. And basically this is what happened in the case. This was what the court said and this was the outcome, which means this is the way it applies to the business. Now, how many of you have gone to an interview where you've been asked technical question? You are able to explain the relevant part of the GDPR without using article five and article six and article 13, but actually what it actually translates to and then back it up with some kind of a relevant case summary. If you haven't been able to do that, then say yes. Because if you're doing that, then you should not be here, you should already be thriving. But if you haven't been able to do that yet, then these are the things that's going to put you apart from the rest of the competition. When you naturally speak with case summaries, you're able to bring relevant information authorities in, you're able to explain the GDPR in a language that even the recruiter who is not part of the privacy world can understand, it’s really going to put you in a good position. But what you also need to demonstrate to them is, well, what's the cost of getting this wrong? And this is where the Enforcement Action Summary is coming.

Jamal: 30:41

So the next thing I did was to really make it easy for my mentees to position themselves as world class experts is take the enforcement actions and summarize them so we could learn which principles were breached, what actually happened for them to get enforced, what were the mitigating factors, what were the aggravating factors? And what are the lessons I can take away from that so I can better serve my clients so we don't have to make those same mistakes. Now, some of the times I look at aggravating factors and I'll have a look to see if my clients are doing something similar and find ways to mitigate against that. Other times I look at the mitigating factors and I say, look, this is good practice. The regulators clearly like this. This is the kind of thing we should be implementing. And when you go through an interview, when you're in front of a hiring manager and you can confidently talk about the clarity that you bring with what the regulation says, back it up with a relevant interpretation from the highest court in Europe and then give them some practical examples of where people have made mistakes and what you've learned from them. There is no way they're going to let you walk out that room without making you an offer. Right? So that's the first secret that you need. You need clarity. The second one is confidence. A lot of people struggle with confidence sometimes because you're nervous, sometimes because it's an interview, other times it's because you're suffering from imposter syndrome. I'm going to give you a couple of tips now to demonstrate confidence. But before I get into the hacks for confidence during the interview process, the best way to get confidence is to get yourself a mentor, right?

Jamal: 32:16

A mentor will help you to build, grow and develop your confidence by running through the things with you. But this mentor that you go and find is some, it should be somebody who has already achieved what you are looking to achieve. They should be somebody who brings a positive mindset, they should be somebody who's invested in seeing you fulfil your potential and has the time and the energy to give you more than just words of encouragement. Right? One of the biggest challenges I had at the beginning was when I was looking for mentors on LinkedIn and other places, everyone said yes, we'd love to mentor you because humans just want to help and you'll be surprised how many great individuals there are. But at the same time, because privacy is so challenging, because people have lives, they have husbands, they have wives, they have children, they have other commitments, they have hobbies and passions and they want that work life balance. Sometimes it becomes difficult to commit to giving that time to somebody. So what I found was if I then invest in mentors, then I create an attachment with them and it's actually better because they can hold me accountable and I can hold them accountable because I've actually invested in one of the programs. So find yourself a mentor, find an expert in data privacy, somebody who you can look up to, somebody who is recognized, somebody who is well known. Because then when you go to interviews and you say oh yes, by the way, and you drop in by the way, one of my mentors is XYZ. If it’s somebody that's well known, if it’s somebody who's done a TEDx speech, if it’s somebody who's giving conferences, the hiring managers and the recruiters, if they're in the same space, they will definitely know who they are. And that's the other reason I encourage my mentees to tag me in their posts so that they can show they have the association with me and they get to leverage of anything good that you see I'm doing. And by the way, I just want to plug in anything good you see coming from me isn't anything special I've done. I've just adopted these things, I've done my best and God has taken care of the rest. And there's nothing stopping you, all of you, from getting even better successes than what you've seen me do. Because you guys have already got better education than me, a lot of you will have more experience than me and a lot of you will just be in a position now where you're ready to pivot all of that value that you bring to the table. And that should give you confidence because you've already achieved so many things in your life, you are already where you are and you would have taken some success to get it. So to really get confident, remind yourself of all of the achievements that you've had, no matter how big or small they are. One of the things I get people on the accelerator program to do is to do journaling. Every day one of the tasks they have to do is they have to journal what their win was for that day, whether it's big or whether it's small. But then they're going to bed every night feeling confident, feeling like a winner. And when they wake up, they are the king for the queen of their own confidence and their own destiny the next morning. So this is how we build confidence. We focus on our wins, we stack our wins, we celebrate our wins and we celebrate other people's wins.

Jamal: 35:16

And a mentor will help you to position yourself as an expert, because you're with an expert. One of the things I find people struggle with at the beginning is writing on LinkedIn and it's like, I don't have the confidence to write because I'm worried about what people might say, I'm worried about making a mistake. I'm worried that if I tag someone, they won't respond. And then when they do these stuff consistently for a week or two, and then they get people responding, they get industry leaders coming and commenting, it takes their self esteem from here to here, right? That is the best way to get your confidence up is to do something consistently and see the results. OK, so that's the second one is confidence. Find yourself a mentor, an expert, somebody that is already being where you want to be or is already there. And somebody who people actually respect, who people listen to when they speak, who people find value from. Because that's the kind of mental you want to be, because you want to aspire to be like them and actually you want to stand on their shoulders so you can move even more ahead and you can come back and give back and mentor somebody else. So, first, secret clarity. Second, secret confidence. The other thing you need to think about is confidence isn't just about what you say, it's also about your body language, right? One of the things that we speak about in the exploration program is the art of communication. I'm not going to get into all of that, but I want to give you something very simple. There are three parts to our communication. Number one is our body language. 55% of our communication is our body language, 38% is our tonality and just 7% are the words. And people get so caught up and so nervous about what they're going to say, they forget about how they're going to say it and they forget about their body language. And the number one tip I can give you for instant confidence to come across over the other phone is first of all, stand up, right? Stand up. Stick your chest out. What you find is, because you're on a desk or a computer, your shoulders might be a little bit hunched. That's going to impact your body language and you're going to feel like that. You want to feel good you want to feel confident. So the first thing I do is take your shoulders up and you throw them back. It's as simple as that, right? So that's the first hack. The second hack or the second tip about confidence is make sure you smile when you speak on the phone because you can really hear the smile on the other end of the phone. And remember, we want this person to want to spend more time getting to know you, to see if you're going to be right for the organization or not. So by smiling, it makes you sound a lot more warmer and it subconsciously gives them the impression that you'll be a great cultural fit. And the third hack I can give you is to make sure that you remind yourself of something amazing that you've achieved before you answer that call, before you go into the interview. So you already go in there feeling the feelings of confidence. And one of the things that I teach in one of the programs, one of the exercises we do is what we call a grounding exercise, which is where you can actually step into what we call your circle of excellence. Now, we're not going to do that here today, but what it is, is basically you can pick to feel the way you want to at any given time if you just anchor yourself to that state. Any of you are familiar with Neuro Linguistic Programming or people like Tony Robbins, you will know this is so powerful and so effective. And this is the thing that really helps me when I'm delivering speeches at conference. Although I'm super anxious and nervous at the same time, there is no way anybody can tell what's going on because I bring the feelings I want to bring. So I can feel good, I can feel powerful, and I can feel like I'm on a roll. All you have to do is think of a time when you felt confident and all you do is close your eyes, go back into that time, see what you saw, hear what you heard, and let those feelings amplify in your body and you will come out energized feeling confident. So those are my three hacks for how to get instant confidence and demonstrate confidence straight away. And it's not about just you demonstrating confidence. It's also about giving the recruiter, the hiring manager confidence, in making a decision to progress with you, or to make you an offer for those high paying price roles.

Jamal: 39:23

All right, four, seven, eight method. If you ever find yourself feeling anxious, if you ever find yourself feeling nervous, if you ever find yourself feeling stuck for words or feeling uncomfortable or even if you just want to go to bed and switch off and be able to get a peaceful night sleep without having all of these ideas in your mind. All you need to remember is the four, seven, eight method. So the four stands for a count of four, seven stands for a count of seven, and eight stands for a count of eight. So what you do is you breathe in through your nose for 4 seconds and then you hold your breath for a count of seven and then 8 stands for exhaling. So you exhale for a count of eight. When you have this sense of calmness, it's so much more easier to think clearly and be confident. The third thing we want is credibility, right? We need credibility. How do you demonstrate credibility? Well, a lot of people will say, well that's easy, I just need to go and pass a multiple choice questions and have letter CIPPE. That's a world class credibility. That gives me world class credibility. And you know what? If you said that two years ago when nobody knew what these certifications were, when a few people had the certification, it would have been enough to separate you from everyone else, right? Now, yes, the IAPP certifications will give the credibility that you have a piece of paper, but that's why they want to speak to you. And when they speak to you, if all you've done is get some answers that you found dumped somewhere or you've just read the book and then had passed exam, then you will lack the clarity and the confidence to be able to present your credibility. So credibility comes with achieving more than just a piece of paper that says you've got a badge or a qualification, but you actually need to be able to demonstrate you have the credibility to operationalize the theory. You have the pragmatic know how to really solve the business's challenges in a way where you're not just saying, no, we can't do this, but you're looking for how can we do this respectfully, how can we do this compliantly? And when it comes to credibility, your personal brand, the things you've achieved, the things people see on LinkedIn, the conferences you've attended, the panellists discussions that you've had, the questions you've asked, the community you have, the network you have all of those things help to make you look more credible and help to evidence that you are the most credible candidate and they can't afford not to have you. So we need to look at your personal branding. How do we develop your personal branding? So that's not that difficult. Just look at what I've done on LinkedIn. I post consistently. This week has been a little bit challenging for me, so maybe not this week, but most of the time you will see that I make myself available for opportunities and I do that by magnetically attracting those opportunities to me, right? I don't apply to go on TV, I don't apply to speak at a conference, I don't apply for roles, but they're being sent to me. And for those of you who are in one of my programs, you will know that I then share those opportunities with my network.

Jamal: 42:26

Because people actually recruiters that I've worked with, people like Adhnan, people like Sara, people like Moji, they come to us first and say, who's going through the academy because we've got some opportunities. So all of this stuff helps demonstrate credibility. Being part of the right groups on LinkedIn, being part of the right conversations, contributing powerful, valuable content. It shows that you are somebody who they can take seriously, somebody who is credible and somebody who is actually valued and respected by their peers, right? That's one of the other reasons I encourage you to tag guests, tag me on LinkedIn because it increases how somebody perceives you as a credible person. And all we're interested is in making sure that those recruiters, those hiring managers, those conference producers see you as somebody credible and they want you to be a guest or they want you to be a panellist. And as soon as you do one and you can demonstrate all of these things, then you'll see how easily one thing leads to another. And if you apply these lessons consistently, there is nothing stopping you all from having amazing careers and also being able to give back once you've achieved some of your goals as well. So credibility is also around communication, right? If when people speak to you, they have no idea what you're talking about, if you don't demonstrate that you can communicate with stakeholders, then you will not get those roles, right? I can't tell you how many times I've had individuals say I've been passed up for promotion. And when I say all the feedback, they said, well, they didn't think I could engage with stakeholders because it's not something I've done in the past. I couldn't demonstrate that I can give presentations. Communication is the number one reason why people get passed up for promotion. Because people don't believe they will be credible in the boardroom or they will be credible in front of the relevant stakeholders. So by demonstrating you have the best communication skills, or you have highly honed communication skills, it not only helps you to show your clarity and your confidence, but it also adds to your credibility. So that is secret number three. There's one other thing I want to add. I know I've given you three points.

Jamal: 44:41

I've talked about certification, I've talked about personal branding, I've talked about communication. But there is a bonus I just want to add. And if I don't, I'll feel bad because it's something all of you need to know. Your achievements. Your achievements highlight your credibility further. And if you have little experience or you haven't achieved much in your privacy career so far, don't be disheartened. Your achievements are everything you've ever achieved in your life, right? Those are the achievements. Those are the things that you should be talking about. Those are the things you should highlight. Because to be able to achieve, you have to be a high performer. And being a high performer requires soft skills. And those soft skills are very transferable. And when you listen to the hiring managers and the recruiters and industry leaders, what they talk about is the soft skills being so important as part of the decision making process on who they're going to make their offers to. And Samara Starkman, who some of you may know, she also does lots of training and teaching in Canada. She says, Jamal, I don't call them the soft skills. I say they're the hard skills because it's hard to find candidates who already come with that to the table. So communication, your achievements, not just your privacy achievements, but all of the achievements with the transferable skills, highlight them and show how that actually is transferable into the role that you're applying for. So, for example, you might say, well, you know what, one of the achievements I'm really proud about is how my football team won the tournament. And you might say, well, what's playing football got to do with it? And you say, look, the thing I'm really proud about is as captain of the team, I was able to motivate my team to have a plan and execute that plan in a way where we could get the end outcome even though we were under a lot of pressure. What that shows is that, yes, you are somebody who is seen as a leader. You can lead a team, you can get people to buy into your mission, you know what it takes to hit the objectives. And you've also shown that you're a team player as well. And although this achievement was not related to privacy, organizations want people who can deal with other players in the team, who can deal with other stakeholders who know what needs to happen and what the roadmap is to get there and then to be the one that cheerleads everyone to get there too. So any example, and I just made it up on the top of my head, right? But you can go and you can look at your achievements. You can look at your CV, you can look at your journals, whatever you have where you noted down your achievements and now spend half an hour a week identifying how you're going to use that to sell your credibility moving forward at interviews on your LinkedIn post in all other places. So we spoke about clarity, we spoke about confidence, we spoke about credibility. We've got two more. One is confidence. I'm going to keep that very brief because I covered a lot of it earlier. And the second one is community. And I'm going to come to community last. Okay, so competence, this is actually being able to do the work. So you can talk the talk, but can you actually walk the walk? Do you know how to do a data protection impact assessment? Can you capture effectively a record of processing activities? Can you map that data without annoying the business and asking them, 101 questions. Can you speak to an interview stakeholder in a way that engages them rather than go with a laptop and a spreadsheet and try and fill in and sound like a robot, right? These are all of the things that you need to demonstrate where you're competent at and actually you have pragmatic solutions and a unique approach to doing these things.

Jamal: 48:02

And we teach all of these things on the accelerator program, but for those of you who are not on the program, then what you need to understand is how can you show them that you have Pragmatic solutions? Not just, yes, I know how to tick the box and do the job, but how do you know how to do the job better than anyone else? How do you know how to pragmatically implement these things in a way that is going to be pain free for the business and you're not going to come up with lots of resistance? How can you do this in a way where you're not getting complaints to your manager about how you're slowing things down and interrupting them from getting a vendor on board, right? How are you going to create privacy notices in a language that everyone can understand without sounding like a legal contract? Which is the problem we see with a lot of these things. So this is what you need to demonstrate is your competence, not just that, yes, I know how to tick the box and I can do this, but how can you demonstrate your competence far exceeds anyone else who they want to speak to? How do you operationalize that theory and implement it in a way that is better than how anyone else is doing it? And one of the things that you'll see from what you see from some of the things that we do is we show that we are going to do that. We show our competence, we say we make everything easy peasy, right? Who wants to do things the hard way when you can do it the easy peasy way? So that's exactly, I give you full permission to borrow easy peasy and say how you make these things easy peasy for the business, how you make these things look easy peasy. Because when it comes down to it, it actually requires more intelligence and more effort to make things simpler rather than keep them difficult. And if you can demonstrate that you are competent in making things easy and simple, then they are going to know that they cannot afford not to have you on their team. And what you also need to demonstrate, the final point I want to make on this is you need to show the interviewer or the hiring manager that if they were to be lucky enough to hire you for the team, you can actually hit the ground running.

Jamal: 50:03

You need to demonstrate you can hit the ground running, but you have the clarity, you have the confidence, and you have the competence to be able to come in and really make an impact on the privacy program, right? So community is our final secret. And if you look at it, actually, community is the one that wraps the other four when you have the right people in your community, they will help you with all of the other secrets that I've shared with you. Your network is actually your net worth. And one of the things that's really important is to have strong social proof. So if you have a community who you are learning with, who you are growing with, who you are also helping develop, then they will naturally engage with your content on LinkedIn or wherever you're creating those things. And that gives social proof, right? This gives recruiters and hiring managers say, hey, people are interacting with them. People are liking the content. They must have something that's going on for them. Let's figure out what this is and if they can actually come and help us. So your network is your networth. Build your network. LinkedIn makes it so easy, like, how many people go on LinkedIn? And it's just easy to connect, easy to go and engage on some of these posts. And then people will start being more interactive with you, and then you can start building those relationships, and who knows where that's going to take you, right? One of the things you can see is, I'm actively working on building my network. Why do I go and find all of these top privacy professionals to interview? Because I actively want to bring them into my network. In fact, I have a signal group that I've created with over 100 of the privacy professionals that inspire me. Some of them are commissioners, others you'd have heard on the podcast, people like Jules, Emerald, Odai, Avishai, Robert Baugh, all of these amazing people that you see on LinkedIn talking about privacy moving things forward, I've created a network of them where we come and we support each other, we share ideas. We've got people from the Information Commissioner's office. We've got two supervisory authorities. There are two members of the European Data Protection Board coming in as soon as they've done their podcast. And this is something that I give access to, to all of my accelerator program mentees. When you join the accelerator program, we put you in that supportive environment. Now, if you're not on the accelerator program or you're unable to invest and it's not right for you, then it doesn't stop you from building your own network. We have another separate community in the academy. Our WhatsApp has over 100 people from all over the world there? Some people will be ahead of you, some people will be the same stage as you, and some people will be behind you. And that gives you the support that you need so you don't feel lonely. You can feel connected to other privacy pros who are on the same path, same journey as you. They will share opportunities, they will bring along opportunities, opportunities to teach. One of the things that we give our mentees opportunities to do is to hold revision sessions. Because one stage, half of growth is learning yourself and developing yourself. The other half is developing others. And you can see I really believe in that, which is why I set up the academy and which is why I spend my evenings and my weekends delivering. Because I know that for me to grow and move further, I need to help others grow and develop others. So we give opportunities to connect, have that personal growth, help others to grow and get that support where you need it. Because when you have that support, you will feel that confidence, you will feel connected and you will know there is nothing holding you back because you've got a powerful environment to bring you forward. So key points for community, your network is your networth. Social proof is so important. If other people see something in you, surely there must be something to you, said the recruiter and the hiring manager. Support. You need that support and you need to offer that support. Personal growth comes not just from educating yourself and finding a mentor, but also from helping others to develop. So you need a community where people are on the same level as you. Some people are ahead of you and some people are behind you. If you only hang around the people who are the same as you, then you will never move ahead because you'll stay stuck there. If you only have an environment, people who are ahead of you, you will then start moving down this confident thing and you'll get imposter syndrome and you won't put yourself forward. And if you only hang around with people who are behind you and who are not achieving the things you want to achieve here, then you're going to not move forward. You're going to stay mediocre and in fact, you just find that these people are then starting to outperform you. So we need an environment where we have all of those things a little bit like what we have in the two communities that I've created. One of our early mentees, she was asked the question at an interview and she'd already had the training. She had been on the Accelerator programme. She said, I don't know the answer to that, but if you give me five minutes, I will get the answer for you. And all she did, she actually said, let me use my phone for a minute. She went on to the community on signal, she put the question in there and within a few minutes she had three experts respond to that. And she said to them, look here, this is a network I told you I'm part of. And I've just asked the question. Obviously I told you I don't know. But these are the experts. They've given me three really useful answers and a resource to go and get more information on that. So when you hire me, you don't just get me, but you get the power of my community. She got a call back straight away on the same day, in fact, 2 hours later with an offer. Right? So this is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I'm saying you need to show them that they will miss out on an opportunity by not hiring with you.

Jamal: 55:38

Right? It's not just words. There are actually techniques and strategies that you can use to make that happen. And these five secrets that we've covered today, we helped you with that. We've summarized how you can bring more value to the table than anyone else. We've discovered how to position yourself as the only candidate for the roles by applying these five secrets. And we've also covered why you need to make them feel like if they don't hire you, they're going to lose out on an opportunity. So the five secrets that we will need to get comfortable with is clarity, confidence, competence, credibility, and community. Those are your five C’s and community wraps around the other four C's. Three things recruiters are looking for when they want to hire you. Number one is your competence, your ability to do the role that you've applied for. Number two, your motivation to do that role for their company, why in their company specifically. And number three is your cultural fit. And the bonus I shared with you is passion. If you can demonstrate those four things in an interview, there should be nothing stopping you progressing to the next stage and getting those offers. And finally, I have five actionable steps I want to share with you that you can implement from today that's going to help you to land your next highly paid private role. Number one, super simple. Get active on LinkedIn. If you're uncomfortable or you don't have the clarity and the confidence right now to start creating posts, don't worry about that, right? Just go and comment on other people's posts. You have an opinion, you have an opinion. Your opinion is valued. You are important. I value your opinion. Sign up for the newsletter. Join the community of people who have signed up to the newsletter. We launched this earlier this year. We've already got more than 500 sign ups without actively encouraging anyone to sign up.

Jamal: 57:27

And I share with you what's been happening, what I'm up to, what's happening in the industry that you need to be aware of if you've missed the podcast and actually give you a summary and why, it's worth you listening to it. And also, for those of you who are more visual learners, don't worry, I haven't forgotten about you either. We take the podcast and we create a Youtube version of it. So for those of you who are visual learners, you can also engage with all of the valuable tips that the guests are sharing. So there's a YouTube channel, and the fifth thing you need to do is find a mentor. So find somebody who has all of the things that I spoke to you about earlier who can help you to get from where you are now to where you want to get to. About two years ago, I set up the Privacy Pros academy because one of the frustrations that I had when I went to training and when I was referring to people on how to grow was when I was going to or referring people to these programs with some of the people there, what they would do is they would try and get as many people in the room as they can, and then they would outsource some lawyer who just writes policies that doesn't actually know how to implement the job to come and read slides to people for like, two days. And people got so bored, they didn't actually discover anything. They felt worse than when they got in there. You know what? I have to actually do something about this myself. And that's why we set up the Privacy Pros Academy, and that's why we set up the Ultimate Certification programs. So if you're looking to get more clarity, more confidence, show how much more competent you are, how much more clarity you have, and join the communities that we have, then the Ultimate Certification Program is just for you. So what we offer is an extended version of the actual certification program, where we're official training partners with IAPP. So it's using the same license, as them but where our one is different is the interactions are very different. It's a lot more interactive and engaging. I break everything down and make it easy peasy. So you walk away with all of the understanding and the clarity and the confidence that you need to really go and thrive in your careers and to make it even more compelling and make it even more useful. All of those easy peasy, guides, the case summaries, the revision guides, the enforcement actions. I give you all of those things so you can get the full, rounded picture and become a holistic and pragmatic privacy professional.

Outro: 59:46

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