I graduated UniCyber Cohort 01 on a Saturday. I had a job offer by the following Wednesday.
That's not typical — I got lucky with timing, and Rashid (who teaches the Crypto & IR week) happened to forward my writeups to the CRDB hiring manager. But the writeups are what got me the interview. That part wasn't luck.
What the writeups did
The CRDB recruiter told me she had never received a CV from a fresh grad that included technical writeups. She didn't understand them — she sent them to the SOC lead, who called me directly.
The SOC lead asked me to walk him through my Wireshark Karaoke solution. I had written it up in detail, so I could. He offered me the job at the end of the call.
What I'd tell Cohort 02
Write up everything. Even the challenges you barely solved. Especially those — explaining your thought process when you were wrong and then corrected it tells an interviewer more than a clean "I solved it immediately" narrative.
The certificate matters. The leaderboard rank matters a little. The writeups matter the most.
I'm on the hiring committee for the next CRDB intake. We're specifically looking for UniCyber graduates. Do the work, write it up, share the link.