Transcription
Hey everyone, welcome back. I want to go over some details of what the current situation is with the cyber security job market now. Before you hit the comments and start saying, "Oh, this guy is just fear-mongering, he's just, you know, telling you that there's no cyber security jobs," that's not what I'm doing. What I am doing is telling you the reality of what the certain situation is right now with cyber security, and I have proof. Right? I'm going to go over all those details right now with you guys.
I want to explain that I'm not saying that there's no jobs out there; there are. It's just not as many as you think there is, especially if you're going on LinkedIn and all these other job platforms. Now, the reason why is that because you're going to see people posting about, "I've applied to a thousand jobs and one for one I've either gotten rejected, ghosted," and that's pretty much it. It's either a rejection or a ghost. Um, if you do come across people who say, "Oh, I landed this, you know, new role doing this and that," that's like the 1%; those are the lucky ones. And I'm not saying it doesn't exist; it sure does exist because 1% do exist, right? So out of the 99% that people are applying for all these jobs, you're seeing the postings, and you're seeing that, you know, there's over 100 applicants; that's just being modest. Right? They could be 500 applicants. It just, the fact that it says over 100 applicants just shows that there's a large quantity of people looking for jobs.
And the reason being is, and I'm going to prove it to you, it's the current market, the current situation, uh, political, uh, these federal job cuts. And you're probably going to say, "Well, that shouldn't affect the private sector," right? Well, the private sector is being affected the same way; actually, they're cutting everyone's cutting, and you can't avoid that. If organizations are downsizing, cutting, reducing cost overheads, you know, unemployment is going to go up, and that's going to go across every department. And if you're saying, "Well, cyber security, there was a prediction that, you know, even I did the video, there's a prediction that they're growing," yeah, they're growing, but you're always going to get a roller coaster; nothing ever goes up straight up, right? Even the stock market, there's ups and downs, right? So let's get into the details of what's going on right now.
I have, in the past, I'm going to tell you right now, applied to many, many USAJOBS, and this is the website for it, all federal jobs. Now, for every job that I applied to, even though uh, I never heard from them in between whether I was accepted for an interview, which I've done once, or rejected, for every position, it was a mass email that came in, right, not too long ago, telling me the position has either been closed, uh, they're no longer considering any uh, fillings for this position, or the the role has been cancelled. Right? And I was like, "Okay, well, that's interesting." They all came in at one time, and of course, it has in part to do with the current political situation that's going on, uh, especially with the DOJ agency that's, you know, cracking down on fraud and abuse and whatever spending.
So with all that being said, apparently there's still jobs at the Department of Homeland Security, which is pretty interesting in my opinion, but look at the pay: Advanced Technology Security Specialist, starting at 85,500. Okay, that's fine, right? But how secure is this at this point? Like, you don't know; I don't even know. But my point is, CISA being one of the agencies that provide cyber security education for organizations, government, uh, entities and whatnot, right, followed by many, I just want to show this article here: More than 130 positions have been cut from the Department of Homeland uh, security uh, Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency, CISA. So DHS and CISA, more than 130 cyber security positions were cut. I mean, just think about that for a second. As of February 14th, that was just last month, not even a full month yet, 130 positions. So what I'm saying is there's another 130 people looking for cyber security jobs, one out of the many that you're trying to apply for, or the same ones that you're applying to practically. And the agency oversees defense of civil, a civilian federal network and coordinates information sharing between private industries and government. Wow, right? So what does that tell you right now? Like, it it's unbelievably crazy times right now.
You know, we hear one side of the story, no more than a year ago, that cyber security is booming, which it is. I mean, a lot of vendors, companies, organization security-centric companies, you know, always always come up with trends. You know, when when Zero Day was out, everyone was using that terminology; now everyone's using the terminology of AI throwing into cyber security. There are still influxes of people on, you know, social media platforms telling you that, yeah, you know, you can get a cyber security job and you make six figures, and all you need is to learn or get this certification. Well, it's not always the case, and it's going to be some downtime right now. And I'm going to be really honest with you that times are rough, uh, especially in the cyber security market now. That's just cyber security; I mean, every department, every IT guy is going to feel it, especially if you're a a programmer, a developer, you're going to feel it because you're getting the short end of the stick because of AI, right? So the technology is evolving; certain things are being eliminated, close to elimination, or, you know, removed or just obsolete, right? I mean, just think about this logically, and what I'm what I'm in my mind is like flashback in the, I believe early 2000s, Flash was the hottest thing in the world. I learned it; I studied it; I was like every night I would stay up building these like flashy Flash, you know, logos and intros and all that and implementing it into my homepage or my HTML, embedding it, and I made Flash games; I did all that. Now look what happened; all that skill, all that time, all that investment, that self-study, self-taught books, materials, everything that I I could get my hands on to understand how Flash was built and worked, garbage, right? I feel that applies to everything, obviously.
And the one thing I want to go over is that, you know, I'm not going to dive any more deeper into this, these numbers, the CyberSeek heat map, you know, total uh, cyber security job openings, over half a million positions, right? National to uh, 2025, total employed cyber security workforce, great, but these numbers are reducing as well. It looks like a lot, but as more people are coming on to the unemployment and looking for jobs, it's it's not that much to be honest, 400,000 jobs across the entire US, and organizations are still letting go people on top of that. Organizations are still reluctant to potentially hire people to fill these positions because the longer they sit vacant, the more they start realizing like, "Do we really need this?" I know someone who recently landed a new cyber security job only after being let go, and the funny story is that now that he's hired, it's one organization, couple hundred people, one security guy; they're treating him like the IT guy, security, SLGC, writing out policies, making sure the firewall rules are all intact. How many security guys do you need for an organization of a of a specific size? Is it really just one cyber security guy for 200-300 employees? That's a tough call. Like, can he even call out sick? And if he does, does he get reprimanded for it? But in any case, cyber security right now, the jobs are there, definitely there. I'm not saying that it's not, and don't again bring up the whole I'm fear-mongering; it's reality. I'm taking data that's publicly available, and I just want to show you guys right now. Supply of cyber security workers are very low; it says this right, cyber security workforce supply and demand ratio, a 2.3 national average. What the hell does that mean, right? What does that mean? That there's not enough people to fill these roles, or are organizations reluctant to hire because they're uncertain about their, you know, profits by the end of the year, right? They they don't know what what's going to happen.
I just want to keep in mind that, you know, articles like this, you know, this was only back in March 5th, which was like a few days ago, a national federal agency are letting go cyber security workforces. That has a lot for you to absorb and understand what is going on with the current cyber security market. If these individuals were top talent, getting into, you know, CISA or Homeland Security, you have to be vetted, right? You you had to have had some high-level security clearance; you had to have the experience; they weren't just going to hire anyone that just walked out and said, "Oh, I just, you know, passed my Security+," and put you on the payroll; it doesn't work like that. Like, they really vet you to see how knowledgeable you are, and these are the professionals; these were the individuals that were guiding industries and other government agencies to be as secure as possible. They would lay out the whole cyber security architecture; they would lay out all the application, the processes, the the policies and and help you with all that, how do you remediate, you know, cyber threats and and all that great stuff, right? All the stuff that were free for anyone like you and I to learn from, and it was all publicly available on their websites. Now, with the reduction, the cost cutting, would we ever still get that? Would they still charge you for that? These were taxpayers' money. So I just wanted to share that with you.
Yes, the market is very, very saturated. I may be coming off like, "Wow, this guy is so negative," but it's hurting not just me; it's hurting everyone because your options are limited; you don't have the ability to apply to 10 jobs and get three interviews. I want to make this last comment: More than probably two, no more than two years ago, I was applying to jobs; I would say 10 jobs out of the 10 jobs that I applied to while I was looking, I had at least five interviews for the week, one each day, sometimes even two; crazy times. Now I know people who apply to hundreds every week and nothing; all they get is rejection; they'll send me, me every single rejection email because that's something we share; we we acknowledge that the fact that we're in the same field. Um, and everyone kind of contributes and tests their luck, like, "Hey, I applied to this; I applied to it." Everyone applies to the same jobs, and everyone gets the same rejection. Does that mean no one is qualified? I mean, I'm talking about people who have 10 years' experience, CISSP, uh, a lot of, you know, working with different vendors, different products across the board, and it's not like their resume isn't preeminent; you can see their resume, and you can see that they have the experience; they have the knowledge, and they're definitely, definitely qualified, but yet organizations claim to say there's not enough talent or there's still a lot of cyber security jobs opening, but they're not even hiring. Who's vetting these resumes? Who's looking at them? And if it's AI and they're being automatically rejected, then we have a problem. Or if there's an actual human being hiring or looking through these resumes and actually hiring people, sometimes it could be overlooked. Um, it comes down to, in my opinion, from a hiring manager perspective, which I have done myself, it all comes down to personal preference, references sometimes, and I've said it this, you know, I've said this in the past in my previous videos, uh, you know, "Oh, they went to the same college, or they were from my hometown, or I can't even pronounce your last name, or you you did something or you work for this company that I just don't like." So many factors, and you would never know because that's not things that people would mark down; it's whoever is looking at the resume, the CV, would make that conclusion. You could email; you can call, uh, if you know to follow up if this role has been filled; you may not just ever get an answer.
So yes, currently the market is very saturated; there are more people looking. Now, proofing, you know, I just proved it, right? Additional 130 positions have been cut from the Department of Homeland Security Cyber Security and Infrastructure uh, Security Agency, which is CISA, and a they're all out there now. Whether these individuals were about to retire or whatnot, that's a whole different story, but there are positions being let go now. Whether they backfill it for lower pay positions, possible, because one other trend that's been happening, cyber security roles are not as prestigious as it once was; it's just another IT job. Have fun, everyone. Thank you. Please hit that like, comment, subscribe, and I'll see you guys again really soon. Take care.