Originally Posted by grok
Originally Posted by aphexx13
I've completed my course in cyber security analyst and received my certificate from google. I've hit a roadblock I wasn't expecting. first I'm 52 and I have no experience in cyber security. 2nd there are a lot of people with a college degree and they are young coming out of college. I feel defeated and im not sure how to proceed to get a job in this field.

I can speak to this some. For my company I was the task lead (for five years) of our team of 10+ providing engineering and technical expertise to a high-speed government office. I was responsible for hiring approvals. Because of need, we ended up with three cyber security personnel on our team.

We follow the qualifications listed by role if you look up: DoD Approved 8570 Baseline Certifications.

Don't feel defeated. You have life skills as much if not more important. The degrees and certs are qualifiers yes, but not the most important things. For me, in candidate evaluations: A cyber security certificate was just an entry qualifier. A degree was not required, but indicated some additional theoretical knowledge was likely. Neither one shows the person I was considering is actually competent at their job we are hiring for. Someone who is 52 will likely:

- know how to operate as part of my team,
- they will know how to get things done independently,
- they will be able to independently solve the cybersecurity process problems for me...reaching out to others as needed,
- they will know when to come to me to fix something and when to go out / independently learn on their own when they can do it themselves,
- they will be able to figure out how to pick up new knowledge when needed without me holding their hand,
- they know how to network laterally with their job peers and up/down as needed.

All these things are more important than certs. I could send almost anyone to get certs.

Start applying. Talk to how you can work on solving your team's and your boss's cyber security problems. That is what they care about. Not your certs or degrees.

Originally Posted by aphexx13
i don't even have a emergency contact.

For me, it has been a very odd feeling as I have switched all my emergency contacts to D19.

g

thanks for the advice and support I really appreciate it.