How to Get Hired in Cybersecurity, Regardless of Your Background

In this chapter, we are going to cover the tips and tricks on getting into cybersecurity as well as helping you to find the right job, with common interview questions based on job skills.

Keep in mind, regardless of how many certifications you have, or how good your honors degree in university was, you will start your new job most probably from the bottom and you need to work your way up. There is no shortcut. The first step toward choosing any career must be identifying your core strength. If you are not a developer and you don't like coding, for example, don't force yourself to become one. This chapter will give you a holistic overview of how to secure a cybersecurity job from scratch. You will be equipped with knowledge of how you should proceed with your job search.

This chapter will take you through...

Getting into cybersecurity from a technical background

Having prior IT knowledge and skills will be always a plus when trying to get in to cybersecurity. If you can write a code, reverse engineer a piece of software, or at least understand the basics of networking, OSI layers, and so on, that will surely be an added advantage.

Having a technical background does not mean you should have an official degree or certification, but could instead mean that you have a few basic skills that you gained from your hobbies.

If you don't have those skills now, you should atleast know how to gain those skills since you've read every single chapter of this book.

Cybersecurity jobs to target

Technical cybersecurity jobs require a detailed level of computer knowledge; however, here's the good part: much of the work you do will be learned on the job. Therefore, don't let a desired skill (outlined in the job description) deter you from applying to certain jobs. As you'll read later, there's a difference between required skills and desired skills.

Just as for non-technical cybersecurity jobs, there are a variety of different technical cybersecurity jobs. Some job titles include the following:

• Chief Information Security Officer (CISO): CISOs have a whole range of responsibilities, ranging from hiring IT experts to support their work, to providing leadership and training to those less skilled than them. They will also manage individuals, ensuring they are focusing on the right areas of strategy at the right time.
• Security...

Getting started in cybersecurity with a non-technical background

Don't worry if you have a non-technical background. You don't even need to find a technical position if you want to work in the industry. Having a non-technical background means you probably won't have coding and development skills; however, it's possible that certain coding or development skills aren't even necessary to be hired.

Cyber risk analyst and technical writer are just two examples of non-technical cybersecurity jobs. These are positions you could obtain with skills you might already have. For example, a college degree may be the only thing required for an entry-level policy analyst position. If you're an avid writer and have a grasp of grammar, starting as a technical writer isn't a bad idea to get your foot in the door.

As discussed before in Chapter 9, Knowledge Check...

Transitioning from your current technical role

If you are currently working, say as a Microsoft Exchange administrator, focusing on email security could be a good start for your cybersecurity career. Or if you are a system administrator and you have good know-how of operating systems, digital forensics could be your next job, after gaining the required skills, though.

Based on LinkedIn, 89% of surveyed professionals would be interested in hearing from a recruiter, and with this in mind, transition from your current role should not be too tricky. Again, based on LinkedIn, there are roughly half a million cybersecurity job openings in the United States, with a projected need of 1.8 million additional cybersecurity professionals to fill the workface gap by 2022.

When we look at the Asia-Pacific region, there is a shortage of 2.14 million, and Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have...

Your journey from first contact to day one at work

Candidates think about their next career destination or alternatives for a career. To that end, discussions with family, suggestions from friends, and acquaintances are very important. Candidates search for information about career opportunities and potential employers on the web, at career fairs, at company presentations, or other information days. This is just the beginning of the entire job-hunt journey. There are many milestones that a candidate can cross while looking for jobs and the entire process demands a lot of work and perseverance. The following diagram is a good illustration from Kinesis on how a candidate's journey looks:

This diagram provides us with an overview of your journey from day one to the first day of new job, courtesy of Kinesis Inc. You can download the poster version free from its website: https...

Job interview types

A job interview is a formal meeting in which an applicant is asked questions to determine their suitability for a particular job. Job interviews can be conducted face to face, or via phone or video, and could be one-on-one, in a panel, or as a group interview. But no matter what the format, every job interview can be structured in three different ways.

Structured interviews

In structured interviews, the questions are planned and created in advance, which means that all candidates are asked the same questions in the same order. This will make it easy for a recruiter to compare candidates answers and hire the right talent.

This is what a structured interview comprises:

• Set of questions
• A scale
• Grading and...

The view from a hiring manger or recruiter

So far, I have covered how you can improve your chances of getting a job. To make this chapter more valuable, I wanted also to add the recruiter's views on talent. You can also check out Chapter 11, Expert Opinions on Getting Started with Cybersecurity, where we asked some questions that can help you to learn from some known industry experts. Being a recruiter might look easy to you, but they have many tasks to do, such as finding talent like you in a short time frame, while there is a huge skills shortage in the market:

As you can see, they have a pre-defined score card, so make sure to read the job description carefully and try to find common ground with it to prove that you are the right candidate.

Based on the McKinsey Global Survey, 82% of Fortune 500 executives don't believe that their companies recruit the most talented...

Popular job search websites you should know

As I cannot list all the Fortune 500 companies' career websites, I highly recommend you keep a close track on the companies that you want to work for. If it has alerts on new job openings, be sure to sign up. If you are not sure which company you want to work for, you can keep an eye on the following websites:

• Glassdoor: https://www.glassdoor.ie/index.htm
  
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com
  
• CareerBuilder: https://www.careerbuilder.com
  

In summary, to find a job, you have to look for it, or you have to have an advocate/referrer who will recommend you to the hiring manager or HR. If you follow the recommendations in this book and get the right lessons from our experts, you will get a new job very soon.

Good luck!

Summary

There is a big talent gap in the cybersecurity job market. Recruiters are having difficulties finding the right talent, and the talent gap is opening new doors for anyone who wants to be a cybersecurity professional, regardless of their background.

This chapter has gone through the current needs of the industry; it covered what people need to do to find their desired job. The chapter also covered the recruiters' perspective and what they do when they hire talent, and it gave recommendations on how to get hired, from writing the best CV to passing the interviews. It ended by covering how to get hired in some top companies.