The White House urges Cyber/IT sectors to focus on skill-based hiring

The White House is now encouraging skill-based hiring to connect more cybersecurity and IT professionals with relevant jobs 👩🏻‍💻💡

From a recent press release, the National Cyber Director shared an initiative to build a strong cyber workforce through skill-based hiring and earn-and-learn opportunities such as apprenticeships. 

This is HUGE for IT and cybersecurity workers, with the first big change being a transition to skill-based hiring for the 2210 series, which represents IT workers in every federal agency and a majority of the federal IT workforce accounting for nearly 100,000 jobs. 

The federal government has also committed to making similar hiring changes to skill-based hiring in IT and cyber contractor roles beginning with the Department of Energy. 

This is the biggest push I’ve seen in the transition away from traditional educational pathways, giving more opportunities to those who may have gained their technical skills outside of a typical college education. 

While many private and public sector companies are slowly transitioning to more flexible educational prerequisites for their candidates as well, I think this is going to become a much bigger trend now that even federal agencies are moving in this direction. 

With the huge growth in tech bootcamps, online courses, and even self-taught individuals in the past decade, I think this is going to be one of the big steps into the future of accessible education that ACTUALLY comes with great career opportunities. 

Read more about the press release on the official White House website here: https://www.whitehouse.gov/oncd/briefing-room/2024/04/29/press-release-wh-cyber-workforce-convening/

I also recently published a related video on getting a job with a cybersecurity certification and my list of top 3 beginner cyber certs here:

Hope this could be insightful! Have a great rest of your week.