Top 6 IT skills employers are looking for
6 hot and sought after IT skills
By Diane Barrett on Thu, 06/10/10 - 7:16pm.Last month Dark Reading posted an article by Kelly Higgins on Six Hot and Sought-After IT Security Skills. Based on interviews with hiring managers from recruitment firms, the IT security job market is booming and here are the top six skills employers are looking for:
1. Incident-handling/response
2. Compliance know-how
3. Risk management
4. Business acumen
5. Government security clearance
6. Leadership experience
I find this interesting in that several articles I have read recently state that employers are no longer looking for the alphabet soup behind a candidate’s name. Instead they are looking for the real-life skills and business knowledge a candidate can bring to their organization.
I have enough industry certifications to probably fill two lines if I would list them all. I rarely use them with my name and my business cards list what I deem the three most important. Perhaps it’s because as our experience grows we can stand more on experience than letters behind our name. Perhaps it’s because they have been overused.
One trend I have been seeing is that candidates now not only list their certifications after their name, they list their college degrees and any organizations of which they are a member. For example, Joe Black, Masters of Science, Information Systems, Bachelors of Science, Network Engineering, MCSA, MCSE NT/2000/ 2003, IEM, IAM, Network +, A+, MCT, or Joe Black, A+, Net+, ISSA, ISACA, A.A, business. Yes, we should all be proud of our accomplishments, but it’s no wonder employers are no longer impressed by the letters after our names.
Certifications are an important part of our industry. Due to mandates, certifications are required for positions such as those doing work for the government. How we showcase what skills we garnered from those certifications is just as important. Certification is by no means the be-all, end-all. Being able to bring real-world experience to an organization is just as important. According to David Bump, portfolio manager for security certifications for Cisco Systems' Learning@Cisco program, we're moving more from certification on products to certification on job roles. He may be on to something.
- About Author Expert: Security certifications
Diane Barrett has been involved in the IT industry for about 20 years. She spent 7 years in software development before becoming involved in education, security, and forensics.
Diane has a MS in Technology with a specialization in Information Security and is currently working on a PhD in business administration with a specialization in information security. She holds many industry certifications including CISSP, ISSMP, MCSE, CCNA, several from CompTIA, and is a Digital Forensic Certified Practitioner.
Diane has been doing contract forensic work for the past several years for Forentech, LLC in Phoenix and security assessment work with various other businesses. She has either co-authored or been the lead author on several computer forensics and security books including ExamCram2 Security+, 2nd Ed (2008 objectives, Computer Forensics JumpStart, Computer Networking Illuminated and Virtualization and Forensics. She regularly presents at conferences such as Paraben’s Forensic Innovation Conference and Digital Forensics, Security and Law.
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