Year on year, cyber security budgets for organisations have increased dramatically, as you can see from Gartner’s research, this is because it’s fundamentally necessary to keep them running smoothly and successfully.
One of the most effective ways to invest in security is by hiring, training and enabling cyber security employees internally to protect your systems. Although, it’s not as easy as it sounds due to a global issue which we are currently facing.
Across the world there is a skills shortage of cyber security professionals. According to the UK government’ website 64% of cyber firms have faced problems with a technical cyber security skills gap, either among existing staff or among job applicants. 25% say that such skills gaps have prevented them to a great extent from achieving business goals. A common question we are asked is: how can we bridge this gap?
In order to ensure your business goals will be achieved it’s important to implement a robust cyber security recruitment strategy which will enable you to attract and retain the staff you require. We’ve put together a list of tips and tricks for cyber security recruitment below to help you achieve this:
- Advertising: In most cases advertisements focus on the services a candidate is required to provide. Although these are key details, the focus should be on what your organisation can offer the candidate in return for these services. Team culture, benefits, interesting projects, learning and development opportunities etc. will all attract more responses to your adverts than a long list of chores which need to be completed. It’s especially important to do this for cyber security positions as candidates have a huge number of roles to pick and choose from.
- Look internally: For the equivalent amount of time and money you may be able to train a member of staff to fill the skills gap you have internally. We’re sure they’d appreciate the extra qualification too!
- Planning in advance: There’s several reasons to start looking for candidates early. First of all, you have ample time for notice periods and don’t have to rule anyone out who can’t start soon enough. Second, as there’s less candidates around, you’ll have time for more candidates to come onto the market and apply. Thirdly, if the candidate is replacing an employee there can be a hand over period of a week to get the new starter up to speed.
- Don’t hesitate: If you think a candidate is a great fit then likelihood is someone else will too. We recommend a 3-stage interview process, an introductory call, a formal 1st stage interview focusing on technical capability and a final stage assessing cultural fit. To keep the process short and sweet there’s a few things to consider: remote video calls for interviews are easier for both parties to take part in, moving diaries around to align availability, scheduling interview days, cut out unnecessary steps and communicating feedback quickly between interviews will all greatly improve the speed of your interview process.
- Stand out: If you want to secure the talent, it is empirical to be better than the competition. Communicating effectively with the candidate, providing detailed feedback, taking what the candidate wants into consideration, company benefits, competitive salary, well written adverts, thoughtful interview questions, being honest and getting them excited about the opportunity through your own enthusiasm are just a few ways you can do this.
If you would like to have an informal conversation about cyber security recruitment, with no obligations, feel free to contact us anytime and our professional team of recruiters will be happy to help you.
