Chris Newton is VP of engineering at Immersive Labs, a cyber security company based in Beautiful Bristol. Immersive Labs are one of the South West’s biggest sucuess stories and to date they have raised $189 million, employing over 300 folk across the UK, US and EMEA. Their technology is already helping over 300 enterprises around the world and around 5,000 labs are completed every single day.
In this episode Chris talks about Immersive Labs inclusive approach to recruitment and their new initiative – Cyber Million. The cybersecurity industry currently faces an enormous talent shortage. An estimated 3.4 million security roles are currently vacant, and traditional approaches to recruiting are failing. Cyber Million will help fill these open roles, reducing barriers to entry for job seekers by increasing access to opportunities and uncovering hidden talent. Unlike traditional hiring modes, the program takes a skills-first approach to recruiting.
Transcript
Alicia 0:00
Good morning. Happy Friday, Alicia here. I'm very excited to be joined today by Chris. Chris is the VP of Engineering at immersive labs who are really cool company and Bristol. All things cyber. And today we're going to be speaking about the business investment. There new sort of initiatives sort of platform, cyber million diversity, just I think the whole conversation hopefully will be a really exciting one and just explore in a couple of different different topics. So, Chris, thank you so much for joining me today. Obviously, I've told everyone your name, but can you tell me a little bit about immersive and and what you do day to day and a little bit about yourself as well?
Chris 0:45
Yeah, very, very happy to be here. Yeah, so I worked for Immersive Labs. I'm the VP of Engineering and basis. As part of my role, I look after all of the teams that are building the immersive labs platform. As you mentioned, we're a cybersecurity company. But we focus very much on the human element of cyber. So rather than all the kinds of technical kind of solutions you might have in place to protect your organisation, we focus on what is probably the most valuable part of the whole system, which are the people at your organisation. And really what we've built is a platform that will help everyone from your kind of board and your executives all the way down to your kind of tech workers or people in finance doesn't matter your role, we have something that will help you kind of build and also prove the resilience of the people in your organisation as it pertains to cyber. So yeah, it's all about the kind of knowledge skills and judgement to make sure that you can respond to cyber threats. And there's probably everyone listening to this as it were, cybersecurity moves at a very fast pace. And certainly since the pandemic, it's just in the public consciousness every week, you're hearing of a big organisation being hit by some kind of cyber attack. And we're at the kind of forefront of helping organisations deal with that.
Alicia 1:50
Awesome. You're just Bristol based is its HQ. And is that sort of Yeah. Is that home?
Chris 1:58
That is home. Yeah. So I spent a lot of time in Bristol. I'm actually based in Cheltenham. But I love coming down to Bristol is such an awesome city. And there most of the majority of the company is based in around the kind of Bristol area, we do have another office based in Boston. So we kind of have quite a big strong presence in North America. And we're kind of now going global with the whole company. So over 300 employees, and we do have people in lots of different geographies around the world, as we continue to continue to kind of build the reach of our platform globally. Awesome, which is quite exciting.
Alicia 2:27
Yeah, no, definitely. What, because Immersive over the last couple of years is obviously scaled quite substantially. And they received investment was it Series B investment, correct me if I'm wrong? And and what did that look like? Just so we can share a little bit about that? If we can.
Chris 2:45
So yeah, so I joined just after the company had done a series B. So I've been immersed for two and a half years now. And since then we did a series C in 2021, which was a $75 million of really significant kind of investment round. And that really helped fuel the growth that we've seen over the last couple of years. And we then also actually did a further funding round last October, where we secured a further $66 million of investment. So in total, I think that takes us to about $190 million worth of investment as a company, which is just incredible for how quickly the calibre company has scaled and that level of investment. And it really shows that we've got a product that is really kind of resonating with the market as well.
Alicia 3:22
Yeah, awesome. What inspired you to join to join a Immersive?
Chris 3:28
so my previous company, I worked for juste, actually again, out of Bristol, really kind of cool tech company that saw just incredible growth. I was there just over five years. But actually what really attracted me to immersive was three things. I think the first thing that really stuck out from the very first interaction I had, and then all the way kind of through the interview and recruitment process was the culture, incredibly strong culturally. And I think inclusivity being one of the core values of the company.
It's not lip service, like I've worked at companies where inclusivity is kind of something they kind of stick on the side, they have a strategy or a policy, but it doesn't really it's not really lived and breathed. But it truly is immersive. So I think yeah, the first thing for me was like the culture is incredibly strong. I think the second thing that attracted me was the product.
So I think we have an absolutely kind of market leading product really kind of cool tech and platform that underpins it. And I love the kind of technical challenges that we're kind of solving and also solving problems that no one else has solved kind of in the market, which is a really exciting kind of place to be. And then the third thing is is kind of purpose so I joined during the pandemic. And I think really at the start of the pandemic is when you saw the kind of targeting of cyber attacks, the social engineering, the fishing, like all of this stuff kind of went nuts. And I think we started to see like really regularly big companies being hit by big cyber attacks, whether it's data breaches, whether it's confidentiality kind of being breached, and stuff being kind of shared generally we're also seeing attacks on that critical national infrastructure starting to happen more regularly.
So, Immersive's mission is to help companies deal with those type of threats, and it's a really kind of strong mission and purpose of the company that yeah, it was kind of third factor that really kind of was inspiring me to come and join immersive labs, and everything I hoped and thought about the product, the purpose and the culture has proven to be true. So yeah, absolutely love working with
Alicia 5:15
Amazing, probably leads me on to like the perfect question, because you mentioned quite a bit about purpose. And obviously, you're here today on the Tech for Good southwest podcast. And we speak to companies, individuals, investors, charities, in the Tech for Good space. And I think people think Tech for Good are charities or companies that are focused on maybe sustainability. But I fully believe like a huge I'm a big advocate, and I'm really interested in security and cyber, but I don't think people realise how that that definitely falls into the Tech for Good sort of realm. Because yeah, without it, everyone's flub, that's not get on to what, what would happen. But what does Tech for Good kind of mean to you?
Chris 6:01
So definitely means a couple of things. For me. I think, ultimately, it's about how do we use the power of kind of technology and innovation to make the world a better place. And I think you touched on it, like sustainability. And climate Tech is a big part of that, like we have an impending climate crisis. And it's going to rely, I think, on private companies and innovation in that space to really drive the change, as opposed to relying on governments who are pretty slow to act with this kind of stuff. But I think it's also any tech that kind of makes that a more equitable society, which I think is a really important thing in this day and age where we still don't have enough progress in certain areas, or just any tech that's basically helping improve people's lives.
I think that's one of the things I'm really excited about with Immersive at the moment is that we've just launched a brand new initiative called Cyber Million. And that's really why I'm here today to kind of talk about that. And it's a really kind of exciting, but also incredibly ambitious project that we've just launched. And really, we are trying to help get a million people into entry level cybersecurity roles over the next 10 years. So really ambitious, really big goal. And it's literally just kicked off in the last month when we kind of launched this project.
Alicia 7:04
Cool. Let's dig into that. Because I'm so excited. And for people listening, I said to Chris, I said, I don't want to know about it. Before I really want to like find out right now. So tell me all about what you're planning to do. And like you said, It's bonkers to hear like saying we're going to get a million people into cyber over the next 10 years. How are you going to do that.
Chris 7:28
So there's a couple of things here. So just kind of like lining up the problem. So as things stand globally, there's over 3 million cybersecurity roles that are open and not filled. And those 3 million roles are in positions which are going to be helping organisations kind of deal with the ever evolving kind of cybersecurity landscape and threats. Now one of the things that we fundamentally believe as a company, and this is really comes down to the founding of the company by James Hadley and his kind of views is that the typical process of recruitment and hiring for any type of role with tech skills, but especially in cybersecurity is broken. And it's broken, because typically, companies are putting prerequisites around degrees or certifications. And it's really raising like the barrier to entry for the normal people out there who want to come to apply for these.
So we are flipping that whole thing on its head. So cyber million is basically powered by the immersive ads platform. And what we're trying to do is uncover hidden talent that we take a skills first approach. So if you prove your skills on the immersive ads platform, and you will do that by being curious, by showing analytical thinking by problem solving, by using perseverance, and by doing self research, it's a skills based approach. So the way that that kind of system works is that it's literally opened globally to anyone. We're kind of focusing initially on the UK in the US and the European markets.
But our our ultimate goal is to make this a truly kind of global programme. But effectively, anyone can go and sign up to the cyber million programme, you will get access to the immersive ads platform, and a set of content that will take you effectively like on a career path towards some entry level cybersecurity jobs by going through and completing those labs, which are basically challenge based testing your skills, improving your cyber knowledge, when you get to a level of completing the labs that are required as you can then start to apply for the jobs that are on the platform.
So we're really kind of at the very early stage of this. But some of the feedback we've had already from people like everyday people out there who are just looking for something new, maybe they've never worked in cyber, they definitely don't have a degree or certifications related to it, they can actually go and get access to the platform and build their skills and demonstrate those skills through the platform to a prospective employer, which is just really, really exciting. So the whole aim is to increase diversity in the industry and reduce the barrier barriers to entry into the cybersecurity world because there's such a need for more talent to come through. And you're not going to get it through the traditional paths of degrees and certifications.
Alicia 9:51
Well, okay. When you say I'm just going to break that down. So first of all, like you said, like that is going to increase diversity Within not only cyber, but like just tech as a whole, which is incredible. And you say anyone like so someone who's got absolutely no computer skills? Well, I think everyone has some sort of a computer skill in this day and age. But someone who works in Mercedes Benz as a car salesperson, never done anything to do with programming or software, for example, would they be someone that could actually get involved in this, so anyone,
Chris 10:33
literally anyone, so it's open to anyone 16 years plus. And ultimately, we were the kind of the way that the platform works, it will guide you through the kind of levels of difficulty getting harder as you go through. So we will teach you some of the kind of basics of cybersecurity, we'll teach you some of the theory, but then we'll really get your hands on in a realistic environment. So the thing that I kind of platform does really, really well is it will put someone into a very realistic web based environment, that is going to be what they'll find, actually when they come into the real world of cybersecurity job.
So actually getting hands on with the tools and the technologies with the cybersecurity threats that they'll actually be facing when they go into the real world. So we think there's no better way to prepare someone for that entry level job, because there'll be doing things through the platform that they'll actually be doing day to day in their role as well.
Alicia 11:21
Do you think this could Is there a plan and and I might ruin the plan, if I'm saying this, but like kids are like for schools, because obviously 16 Plus is great, but everyone knows that that next gen. And they've come up in school education necessarily hasn't changed for a long time? And is there any interest in going or, or plans to go into the education system as well.
Chris 11:48
So I would absolutely love to I mean, that's that's not the kind of current goal of cyber million, but it's very much about getting people into jobs. So that's why the kind of 16 plus kind of years thing is there. But I think engagement with schools and communities around kind of STEM and certainly at those earlier ages. And that's really where the diversity kind of split starts to happen. Right? I think the stats show that between the ages of 9 and 13. That's typically when girls are kind of moving away from STEM based subjects for various factors that kind of exist, I think some very systemic problems exist there. So I would love to see more focus around that kind of STEM age as well. And I think our platform could provide the vehicle for that as well. And we do do some activity in the STEM space. But it's not a core part of what we're focusing on at the moment. Because I think, as I mentioned earlier, that kind of over 3 million kind of job gap skills shortage we've got today such a huge problem that we need to try and help solving now. And that's really where our focus is right now.
Alicia 12:39
Yeah, it's I never knew there was there was that money. It's actually scary to think about when you say that the jobs on the platform, is it going to is it just going to be jobs working for immersive labs, are you open to partners as well.
Chris 12:55
So absolutely open to partners. And in fact, we're going to be reliant on those partners to have the jobs available that people can apply for. So yeah, and one of the things we are looking for right now is more employment partners. So we're hoping by like widening out the reach, getting visibility of what we're doing it immersive with this programme, that we're going to incentivize more employers to come to us with jobs they want to put on the platform, and then support getting more diverse talent into their pipelines for for the roles that they're trying to fit in cybersecurity.
So they're one of the key people we're looking for as employment partners, we obviously want more candidates to come and join up and sign up to the platform and start working through the content. And one of the things I think the most warming and positive things we're seeing is people going on to LinkedIn and just sharing their experience of using the platform. The fact that building relevant skills that are really going to help them in their kind of like future endeavours is really, really incredible. But the third thing that we're also doing, and this, this really goes back to the founding of immersive labs, like seven years ago, when James founded the company, we were built around something called Digital cyber academies. And that's where we work with veteran organisations, neurodivergent communities and other kind of underrepresented groups to give them access to free access to our platform.
So we're looking for more of those types of organisations who don't just work with the community of underrepresented people, but also provide some supporting services around that. So that could be CV writing, that could be interview training, that can be a whole host of support that they can offer. But then leveraging the power of cyber million and the platform that we've got to help them get into those entry level cyber roles, because maybe just getting the skills isn't enough actually to get them through the door through the interview process and into those companies. So yeah, we've we've seen some really great engagement from tech vets is one of the big ones kind of veteran organisations, and they don't just like give access to the platform, they do all those other services as well, to kind of are like the real value add to really help those people get into jobs.
Alicia 14:42
And sorry, have you said that it's free for sort of candidates to use?
Chris 14:47
Absolutely. Yeah. Be free to read your content.
Alicia 14:50
Awesome.
Yeah. Unbelievable. I mean, there's, I don't know anything else like that. So leading the way. And yeah, I'm actually really excited to have a go myself, why not?
Chris 15:03
Oh, you definitely should? Oh, yes,
Alicia 15:06
I am, I'm going to I just wanted to talk about like diversity of see being a VP of engineering, you're at the head of creating more diverse teams and technology. Obviously, I've worked with immersive labs for a little while. So I know how important it is to you. But how immersive labs have had so much success in hiring real diverse folk in the business from gender, I know that the team is really focused on sort of neuro diversity from underrepresented backgrounds, you name it, but how have you had such success in in hiring diverse folks into into engineering departments?
Chris 15:49
Well, I think it goes back to something I mentioned earlier, which is, if it's more kind of lip service, if you're not fully committed to like creating a diverse organisation and inclusive culture, then it's never gonna work. And I think that's one of the foundations that all of this is built upon all the success that we've been able to have across the company, but specifically in engineering roles as well, is that that culture existed to start with. So that makes things a lot easier.
But I think really, it's really thinking about every single stage. So from the sourcing of talent all the way through to the onboarding process and beyond having to think about how you're going to make that more inclusive. How are you going to cater to the needs for neurodivergent? Individuals? How are you going to ensure that every type of individual in your organisation has the right support in place, and the right accommodations and flexibility to make it work for them? So that goes through to thinking about like, how do you even write job adverts in the first place, reducing the number of bullet points down to a bare minimum, so it doesn't put off typically, women will look at the full list of things that would if I didn't take all of those boxes, I'm not going to apply. So reducing that down to some more kind of generic point so as to increase the chances of people applying for those roles, thinking about your interviews themselves.
So one of the things we've tried to support is having gender balance interview panels where we can. So we've done a load of interview training internally, we started with all the women in the organisation who wanted to get involved in that training, but we've opened it up to everyone across the company as well. So there's just all these things kind of add up to I think making it more welcoming to every type of individual and therefore leading to diverse hiring. So as a result of all of that, since the kind of being at immersive for two and a half years, we've over doubled the size of the engineering department. And I think 39% of those hires are women just as one kind of metric to kind of give you there. And what that has actually led to this is by far the most diverse kind of engineering team that I've ever worked with, it is also the most high performing as well. And that diversity is kind of pervasive through every single level of the organisation within engineering.
So all the way up to senior engineering managers down to kind of apprentices and junior engineers, we have that diversity kind of running through. And it isn't absolute joy to work with a team as a result of that, and really seeing the power of diversity in action. Like I've been a big advocate for many years now. But I don't see why every organisation would not be investing in diversity, because it makes for better outcomes for the business.
Alicia 18:01
100%. Yeah, awesome. Are you hiring at the moment at Immersive?
Chris 18:06
We have got a number of roles. Yeah. And you can go to our careers site careers.immersivelabs.com. And check out all the roles. We're hiring in Bristol, we're are hiring in the US, I think we've got loads of different roles that we're hiring for right now, in other locations around the world as well. Awesome.
Alicia 18:19
I probably know this answer, because we spoke about the 3 million gap. Sorry, 3 million jobs and the gap, but what change would you most like to see? And what do we need to do to get there?
Chris 18:33
So I think going back to the reason why cyber million was was kind of envisioned by James the founder and what we're trying to achieve. So this dependency on degrees and certifications is just a really kind of exclusive, like exclusionary approach to thinking about hiring in your organisation. So moving it to be more skills based. And actually, there's so much hidden talent out there. I would love other organisations, not just immersive, but be thinking about ways how can you uncover hidden talent, because ultimately, that makes all the organisations that hiring that talent better.
Like, I'll give you an example of something that I really love it Immersive. So we talked about diversity. But we've also got a lot of people who switch careers much later in life. So they've gone on a like an AWS restart course or they've done one of the ones with like, makers, Academy and all these kinds of things where they just thought, you know what, I want to do something different with my life. And they are absolutely smashing it since they've come in. So I would like to see anyone not being put off by pursuing a career in Tech because they don't feel they have the experience or the certifications or the degrees. Like there are doors that will be open to you, especially with more companies take the approach that immersive have, which is actually your experience, whatever that may be. Whatever you did previously coming in here is going to benefit us in ways that we can't even understand right now. But we believe it will benefit us because we have that diversity coming in. So yeah, that that is what I would love to see is opportunities being created for people who typically wouldn't get There's opportunities with a more outdated and outmoded way of thinking about hiring.
Alicia 20:05
A rogue question to throw into the mix- What's your thought on AI?
Chris 20:09
And I love it.
So I mean, there's, there's, there's pros and cons with any technology like this. I think as a company, we're fully embracing it, it's changed the way I work. I typically I'm using chat GBT most days to kind of just help optimise and with my productivity, there's definitely concerns about the kind of long term path this may take. The impact on cybersecurity is still kind of being worked out. Like is this going to make social engineering attacks more sophisticated and easier for anyone to kind of put together, there's a whole range of kind of ethical stuff that sits in there. But the thing I think we need to do is embrace the change, because you can't stop it, it's coming. I think it's going to help enhance many jobs, it's going to augment lots of things that we do, and I think it's going to change some jobs.
But with any kind of big change like this, there's going to be new opportunities created as well. So I guess my advice would be don't, don't shy away from it, like learn more about it understand how it might be able to actually improve or optimise the things that you do on a day to day because it's so now general purpose, it can pretty much help any type of role that you may have. So yeah, I've been fully embracing it. My teams have as well, like all of our engineers are now using AI coding assistance, which basically just help improve their productivity.
Alicia 21:23
Yeah, I'm with you. And I think, and this is just from a personal interest, I'm really interested in how AI is going to affect obviously security, because it's still, that's such an important space. Maybe that's for that's for another nother day. Thank you so much, Chris, where can people find you? Where can people find out more about cyber million is on the immersive website? Yeah, where? Where is there?
Chris 21:45
Yeah, a few different ways. So either go to immersive lamps.com. And actually, one of the things if you do go to our homepage at the moment is you'll find our AI challenge while you were talking about AI, we have a free challenge where you have to basically beat chat GPT and get to level 10 By getting it to give you a password. And it is very addictive. I am stuck on level seven and accused me dinosaur facts. I'm literally driving me mad. But yeah, everyone should go and check that out. Because it's a really fun challenge to kind of look a little bit more about AI and how you might be able to get past it to get passwords out of it. So that's really exciting. But in terms of cyber million, either go to Ms. labs.com. We actually have a dedicated website to cyber million.com If you want to go and check that out. And we're also on LinkedIn. So if you really want to care about what's going on and beyond kind of on the pulse of what's happening with cyber million, then follow the hashtag cyber million on LinkedIn. And you can find that and that's where people can find me as well. Yeah, Chris Newton. You can find me on LinkedIn.
Alicia 22:39
Awesome. Thank you so much. That was awesome. I think yeah. So much just for people to go and have a look at and get stuck in. I'm so excited to follow the cyber million journey and see how it progresses. I think yeah, it's a game changer. And yeah, kudos to you.
Chris 22:57
Thank you. We hope so.
Alicia 23:00
no, definitely. Thank you so much Chris. It's been been amazing.
Chris 23:04
Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks, Alicia.
Alicia 23:06
Thank you.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai