Converting string to byte array in C#

I'm converting something from VB into C#. Having a problem with the syntax of this statement:

if ((searchResult.Properties["user"].Count > 0))

{
    profile.User = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(searchResult.Properties["user"][0]);
}

I then see the following errors:

Argument 1: cannot convert from 'object' to 'byte[]'

The best overloaded method match for
'System.Text.Encoding.GetString(byte[])' has some invalid arguments

I tried to fix the code based on this post, but still no success

string User = Encoding.UTF8.GetString("user", 0);

Any suggestions?