Evaluating Social Engineers

Evaluation vs actual researching of potential employees for social engineering projects (social media|marketing) can be a difficult task, which may seem, on the surface, a fairly simple one.

On the surface, an employer may ask questions such as:

• Is the prospective social engineer well established? Popular? ‘Authoritative’?
• Do they communicate clearly and precisely with their audience?
• Have they secured a degree possibly in media and communications related fields?
• Are their communities and contacts encouraged to interact freely and comfortably with them even in situations of disagreement? If yes, how do you know this to be so? Is the approach different with strangers than with associates?
• Do they execute self reliant leadership skills or are they reliant upon accumulative efforts to stay afloat?
• In what ways may they be reliant upon others? How may their reliance issues affect you?
• When questions, comments, concerns or debate arise, do they approach the situation with transparent, resolution-based, skilled responses which minimize further problems|complaint?
• What is their previous employment history, if any?
• Who is their current employer?
• Are they case by case, reliant upon come and go employers to fill each gap?
• Are they reliant upon SEO | strategic search engine results placement or community support to maintain appearances? Both?

Yes, on the surface, you may think the answers you need are easily located. The answers to these are important, yet may not be located as easily as you might believe.

Researching Social Engineers

Q: Is the prospective social engineer popular|’authoritative’?

Let’s dive deeper..

If the answer is yes, the next questions would be:

• How?
• Why?
• What led to the popularity?
• What maintains their popularity?
• Of the other prospects, what makes them ‘authoritative’? Proof of the pudding..

These are questions which remove simplicity and add a bit of stress. How does one answer these? Isn’t popularity sufficient for your needs? After all, it’s social engineering not rocket science right?

Well, if you’re an employer who’s not concerned with liability and risk, then the answer is yes, popularity is a fast means to filling your pockets. It also means the bigger they are, the harder they (you) fall. Especially in a situation which may involve unresolved debate, for example. Liability potentials may generate costly risk and hazard.

Q: Do they communicate clearly and precisely with their audience?

The answer to this depends largely upon the intended targeted audience. Are you the targeted audience, and a potential income generating source? Or are they actually teaching due to the sheer happiness in giving as opposed to receiving. cough.

Let’s dive deeper..

Verification questions which should follow:

If social engineering is what they are marketing, what are they doing which convinces you of their being skilled with your particular needs?

A person can be knowledgeable about how to land a job while, at the same time, not meeting requirements of a particular job. It’s called the gift of gab. But wait a minute..Isn’t the gift of gab what social engineering entails after all?

…At what cost? This would mean evaluating risks, not gab.

Q: Do they have a degree in media or communications related fields?

Let’ dive deeper..

A degree can be deceiving. A degree, in any field, is by no means the equivalent of skill or expertise. In fact, as history shows, innovative idealists without a degree, have given us electricity (Edison), Ford Motor Company (Henry Ford), Dell, Inc. (Michael Dell), Microsoft (Bill Gates), our 7th president (Andrew Jackson), DreamWorks (Steven Spielberg), and Facebook (Mark Zuckerberg). A degree oftentimes means people know how to read and answer questions according to a set of particulars.

I wonder if Madoff took a social engineering test. Oh wait, he didn’t have to. He had the gift of gab. Which, by the way, the judge would disagree. Thankfully.

Q: Do their community members interact freely and comfortably?

Let’s dive deeper..

In a socially engineered context, this can be one of the most difficult to assess. It depends upon facade vs actuality.

For example, a social engineer could be faced with exposure to unpleasantries if confronted by questions, comments, concerns or debate/disagreement. This ties in with questioning the appropriate handling of debate, leadership skills and potential liability and risk factors which may come into play.

Choosing a Social Engineer vs Liability Considerations

Not too long ago, a blogger complained about being abused | cyberbullied by prominent social engineers. The names attached to the complaints have been removed.

Social engineers have the power to control the information which is displayed and therefore, the employer doing the hiring, also sees controlled content, not content in its entirety. A simple measure to ensure only the ‘good stuff’.

Oftentimes more than one person is needed in social engineering campaigns when things get out of hand. A lot more…

• Adopted links placed in otherwise reputable blogrolls which give valuable link juice (SEO support)
• Guest posts, blog author posts and fabricated reviews (content generation)
• Stifling negative complaints in the SERPs (strategy which entails all of the above and more)

When social engineers use gift of gab, as opposed to actual ethics, the picture is one of actual risk. Human beings feelings are at risk, reputations, jobs and actual dollars are also at risk.

If you’re an employee, be careful to hire ones with specific loyalties to ethics, best practices and transparency. You never know when that one case will be a thorn or an unexpected liability…The Black Swan-The Impact of the Highly Improbable.