Who TF is The Certs Guy?!
“I have the CISSP” *applies for CISO positions* — 24 year-old me.
“I’ve been studying the Security+ for 4 months, taking it soon inshAllah (God willing)” — My best friend, 8 years later still not certified 😂
“I’m a CISSP, basically a Doctor of Cybersecurity now” *Updates LinkedIn Header* — Every CISSP after they get certified
LOL.
Look, let’s cut straight to the chase.
My name is Iman Ghanizada, and I’m authoring the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect book with McGraw Hill. I have 14 certifications, and it took me an average of 9 days to get each one. I got my CISSP at 24, putting me in the top .5% youngest CISSP holders. I passed some certs just by sitting on the exam. I lead the cloud security transformations for some of the largest partnerships at Google Cloud. And I want to tell you why you need to get certified and show you how to get certified in 28 days or less.
Why I’m doing this
After I landed the book deal with McGraw Hill, I shared a very short post announcing the book with a little bit of my background.
That one post (here) garnered hundreds of thousands of views across social media and over a thousand messages from friends, family, colleagues, and total strangers.
I’ve been so occupied with the book activities and haven’t had time to express my gratitude, but WOW!
Hearing voices from all over the world tell me how inspired and encouraged they were from reading one brief snippet of my life…
How they decided to pursue a more fruitful path for themselves.
How they never imagined seeing someone from my side of the world authoring a major book, let alone, for the top certification in the world.
During that moment of reflection, I had a realization.
If I can help inspire one person to seek a better life for themselves and their family, then please, let me do everything in my power to help.
I always thought helping meant starting a massive non-profit before making any impact.
But in reality — it started with a few words.
What does that mean?
That means being more involved in the community, sharing more insights, writing my strategies and tips to help you grow in your career, generate more income, become a better leader…
I was born in the States, but my parents came from a war-torn country where hope is the only thing left. They worked their lives off for me to have the opportunities they didn’t…
It would be such a shame if I didn’t use my new platform as an Author to help more.
So, in return, you have to promise me that you’ll take the insights you learn here and help other people who need them.
Just help one person. If you help one person land a more fulfilling job or career path, that has a domino effect.
Technology has the power to make this world habitable for all 8+ billion people, so why can’t we leverage the wits of everyone to pave our future together?
I think certifications are great, but not for the reasons you may think.
I am a big believer in certifications.
But I can tell you first hand that I’m not hiring anybody just because they have a certification.
Matter of fact, I’ve turned down plenty of candidates with certificates before.
However, I’m still going to explain why you should overwhelmingly be for certifications and put that argument to rest…
You should get certified and embrace a culture of reinforced learning. If your emotions and past experiences don’t believe in it, the data does and the most innovative companies in the world do.
I’m writing about this in an upcoming blog post, so subscribe and stay tuned!
*This blog also allows me to be even_more_casual than the book.. so, these are my thoughts, unedited, raw and uncut.*
Before that, I want to give you a rough series outline for some of the content I’m planning on covering over the next few months.
Series Outline
Here’s a rough outline, which will undoubtedly see some iterations along the way.
If you have any recommendations or requests, please share in the comments, and I’ll add them to the backlog (which hopefully won’t stop getting prioritized like a dev team who knows their jobs are getting shipped offshore)
Outline —
1) Who TF is The Certs Guy?
2) Why you should get certified.
3) How to pass any IT certification in 28 days or less.
4) How to pass the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect in 14 days or less.
5) How the heck I wrote this book and why it’s different than the rest.
6) How to pass the CISSP in 28 days or less.
7) The best resume to get hits.. keep it simple.
8) Why diversity friggen matters & here’s evidence.
9) How to make it to FAANG.
10) How to become a better leader among your team, career tips, etc.
11) Your digital identity — create your brand and drive influence.
I want you to be involved. This is OUR community.
I want this to be engaging and I want to crowdsource the knowledge here.
So if you have any interesting bits of knowledge you’d like to share, please post them in the comments below and I can share them on my blog posts.
They can be jokes, ridiculous things you’ve heard your coworkers say, or bytes of wisdom from your life experiences.
The idea is for this blog to embody a representation of you — there’s probably some knowledge you have to share with the world from your experiences too. I’ll use this platform to share your wisdom too!
Speaking of sharing — please share the posts you love.
The more shares, the more people who see things, and, hopefully, the more knowledge we can share with the world.
Lastly, if you loved this blog post, please (YouTube Line) Like and Subscribe below! If you didn’t, tell me in the comments, I can handle tough feedback, and I’ll use that as data to improve.
*Lastly lastly, if you want to become a Google Cloud Architect or want a powerful reference guide about the life of a Cloud Architect, pre-order my book!
