It’s time to look at the industry skills gap differently. More and more digital native young people could potentially be coming into the industry with the right skills, but several elements block their progress. Professionals already in place need to smooth the road for them. That might involve changing some assumptions about hiring, but in the end, it could be the solution to the skills gap problem.
In brief, what is the skills gap? Well, there are more jobs than qualified people to fill them. Open cybersecurity positions increased by 350% between 2013 and 2021. That brought the total number of unfilled security positions up to 3.5 million. Today, there are 2.5 million more vacant cybersecurity jobs than there were in 2014.
Reframing the Cybersecurity Skills Gap
So, there’s no disputing that there are open cybersecurity jobs. And desired skills are in short supply. Many people tend to see the latter as the cause of the former.
But that’s just it. These are ‘desired’ skills for that particular job in that company or agency, and they’re part of the skills gap too. They are not skills that are absolutely necessary for someone to land a position in the security industry more generally. Netskope’s chief information security officer, Lamont Orange, agreed when he wrote for TechCrunch that many hiring managers shortchange themselves by looking for professionals who, at one point, trained on all the technologies used by the organization. Preferences such as these are just not realistic. These types of applicants just don’t exist.
That means the people with the power to hire have an opportunity — if ..
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