Mitigating the migration of qualified professionals to the dark side
The statistics are out. There is going to be a skill shortage in the very near future. Security Ventures has predicted that there will be about, 3.5 million unfilled positions by 2021. However, if you look at the current trends, it is the complete opposite. In Perth, Hays recruitment placed an advert for a “Cyber Security Analysis”. By the end of the week, this position had over 106 applications and 361 views. In Melbourne there is a job for a middle tier position as a Cyber Security Manager. This job has 94 applicants. If we head over to New York, there is a Cyber Security Sales position with 378 applicants. If cyber security skills are in such high demand, why are there so many applicants for a range of cyber jobs? More importantly, why are we continually encouraging more people in this field, when the current people can’t even get jobs? Who has to gain from the ‘alleged prediction’ and what happens to the people with a skill set they can’t get a job with?
In 2014, CISRO made a prediction that the industry will be short of more than 1 million professionals. We can clearly see that this is not the case. According to John McAfee, there are two job openings for every qualified individual. Maybe the individuals that are applying for different roles are not qualified? Or maybe, the industry does not know what they want. If you look at some current job ads, you will notice a request for a cyber superhero with certificate of every acronym that is listed in the ‘cyber acronym dictionary’? And while you think that this would only fit one individual, I can guarantee you that this job had 121 applicants. Obviously, a number of cyber superheros in the world…Click here to read full article.
