There’s increasing buzz around the security industry regarding how difficult it is becoming to find people to fill open cybersecurity positions. Part of this I think is a broken system for aligning talent to the right roles. This isn’t just a security industry problem however and is covered to a certain extent in this WSJ article: https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-people-who-apply-for-jobs-by-showing-up-11658360546?st=ueomum72tmpus1p&reflink=share_mobilewebshare.
Part of the issue for our industry in particular is that there is indeed a talent shortage. Many people are trying to solve this challenge in different ways, to include technology companies now investing in providing training on their platforms as part of college curriculum and beginning to discuss concepts around apprenticeship programs. I’ve seen first had that an apprenticeship type of approach can be highly effective in security, but for these programs to truly work it’s important that organizations couple the ”technical’ aspects of security roles with ensuring that the candidates can demonstrate creative thinking skills to go along with the technical knowledge. It’s great to have the technical knowledge when work tasks are well scripted and to establish a baseline of knowing what to do and how things work, but we all have seen that one has to be able to apply that knowledge in unique ways and constantly evolve in order to stay effective.
In 2012 I had the unique experience of standing up a brand new consulting organization. We had ~30 people when I started and within 6 months we grew the organization to 150. Granted we had it a little easier at that time as it wasn’t quite as difficult to find people with the right skills, but the amazing thing was we had over an 80% success rate with the people that we hired. I attribute this monumental feat to a few things; first we had an amazing leader with a clear vision for the hiring process (kudos to Jim Tiller), secondly we had an outstanding talent acquisition team who were great at connecting with candidates in (get this) live conversations, and third we had laser focus on ensuring hiring managers were allocating the proper percentage of their day to the hiring process. But I think the secret sauce in our success rate was our consistency in finding creative problem solvers. We hired people who were confident in figuring stuff out and didn’t rely on them having every conceivable skill…and it worked.
To this day, I continue to rely on my ability to spot those creative problem solvers and have coached/mentored many people who started with no background in security whatsoever to where they now are having successful careers in this space. It’s been phenomenal to watch each of them grow and have success. I believe if the security industry wants to solve this talent shortage, we need to start looking more for those creative problem solvers and stop making it a ‘skill’ shortage. Give the problem solvers the support and structure to figure the skills out and they will do it.
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