This YouTube short video popped up on my playlist the other day. It was posted by a fellow marketing a cybersecurity course about five months ago and begins with him saying:

“If you don’t have any cybersecurity experience but are looking for a free and quick way to add some experience to your resume, let me show you how.”

Let me emphasize, "If you don't have any cybersecurity experience...". He then proceeds to display some of the training offerings at Tenable Education. Tenable is the company behind Nessus, a market-leading vulnerability scanner, and the Tenable One Exposure Management Platform. In the video, he suggests completing the first two free courses: Tenable One Introduction and Tenable Vulnerability Management Introduction. He doesn’t mention that you must register with Tenable using an email address to access these videos. He doesn’t say Tenable offers many free other introductory product education courses. My issue is with what he suggests next.

“Go to ChatGPT and type add Tenable One and Tenable Vulnerability Management free training courses to my resume. Then copy and paste the results to your resume.”.

I understand that this person is a very active YouTube creator. As of January 2025, this video has received 3,500 views and over 100 comments. This creator offers an online course and wants viewers on YouTube to watch his content, follow the links in the comments, and sign up for his paid course. However, this approach is not practical.

Followers who watch a couple of introductory videos on a top-selling solution provider's website and then rely on ChatGPT to add that to their resumes are setting themselves up for failure. This may work if the intent is to get past an HR person and make it to a list of job candidates receiving interviews. But how can a job candidate cite Tenable or Nessus ‘experience’ from watching two videos? How long would it take in a technical interview before the candidate’s real ‘experience’ was exposed. Once exposed, how much longer would the interview continue?

Do the right thing. Be honest on your resume. Building real skills and experience takes time and effort, and you want the interviewer to appreciate that.