5 Reasons Why People Fail To Land Their First Cybersecurity Job

Avoid these mistakes when searching for that first cybersecurity job

Taimur Ijlal
4 min readSep 21

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Source: MidJourney

Cybersecurity industry is red-hot !

Jobs are booming !

And yet .. most people seem unable to land that first cybersecurity job

“I never get a response when I apply for jobs”

This is the complaint I hear the most when I coach them on entering the cybersecurity job market

Despite the demand for skilled cybersecurity professionals booming and news of a huge skills gap .. they hear only crickets once they apply

It can be massively frustrating hitting that brick wall and unable to move ahead to a career you are very keen on !

Through my own two decades in the industry helping professionals, below are a few key reasons I have identified that cause these hurdles

Hopefully they help you in your search for that first cybersecurity job !

1 — Lack of Experience

Let me tell you about a guy named Jack .. He loved Cybersecurity and was eager to start his career

He applied like crazy to every cybersecurity entry level job he could find but every-time the same response

Thank you for applying but this job requires 1–2 years of cybersecurity experience ..

Jack as you can understand got highly ticked off at this but this was because he was going about it wrong

Instead of finding that job that will give you experience .. get it yourself !

  • Start a home-lab or get a free cloud account and start playing around with the security services in it. There are millions of YouTube videos that will teach you how to learn security services by yourself
  • Create an Upwork profile and start bidding applying for simple freelancing tasks that appear .. you will be surprised how many e-commerce owners want a cheap and dirty scan done of their business websites !
  • Inform your friends circle and your linkedin network that you are willing to do a cybersecurity review for free…

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Taimur Ijlal

☁️ Cybersecurity Pro | 🤖 Writes about AI Security | 🚀 Helping you get into Cybersecurity | Grab your free Ebook -> https://cloudsecguy.gumroad.com/l/passive