Hands-On Skills Now Key to Landing Your First Cyber Role

ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Hiring Trends report indicates hiring managers increasingly prioritize hands-on experience, entry-level certifications, and non-technical skills (teamwork, problem-solving, analytical thinking) over formal degrees, with 90% open to candidates with only prior IT experience and 89% to those with only entry-level certs, while 81% still consider degree-only candidates; organizations report onboarding entry-level staff in 4–9 months at $1,000–$4,999 and commonly assign entry roles documentation, alert/event management, reporting, physical access controls, and user awareness, and junior roles backup/BCDR, intrusion detection, alert/event management, frameworks, and penetration testing, based on a survey of 929 hiring managers across Canada, Germany, India, Japan, the UK, and the US.