Why Are So Many Cybersecurity Jobs Not Being Filled? And how it could benefit you!

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs next year. So how can you snag one of those open positions? It is not as simple as it seems. The number of job openings depends greatly on location. The skills or certifications required to get the job can be surprising.

Figure 1-

The Cybersecurity Heat Map (Figure 1) is a great tool to use when searching for what kinds of cybersecurity professionals’ employers are looking for. You can narrow down searches by state, public or private sector jobs, and even see supply and demand ratios.

You can also use the map to see the top job titles in each state. Figure 2 is a great chart that shows you what categories of cybersecurity the job openings are in such as operate and maintain or oversight and governance. You can see by the size of the box, how many job openings there are in that category. The exact number of openings is listed at the bottom of the box in bold numbers. Figure 2 is the chart for the whole country, but you can also view a chart for each individual state.

Figure 2-

One of the most useful parts of cyberseek.org is that you can look at the number of openings in each state that request certificates. As a broke and overworked college student, it can be hard to commit hundreds of dollars and hundreds of hours toward a certificate. If you do have the time and money which certificate will give you the leg up on finding a job?

Figure 3 can help you choose which certificate to pursue. This chart shows you the number of certificate holders, how many openings request that certificate, and the ratio between the two is shown in the circle. The red line shows you how many people hold the certificate and the blue line shows you how many job listings request that certificate.

Figure 3-

Figure 3 is for the whole country, but you can break it down by each state as well. If you were looking for a job anywhere in the U.S. your money and time would be best spent getting a Certified Information Systems Security Professional certificate which has the lowest ratio. If you know the state or states where you want to work, you can focus your time and money on a certificate that will make you stand out as a good candidate for the job.

I encourage you all to check out this site and explore all the options and data within the map!

https://www.cyberseek.org/heatmap.html

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