Now hiring: IT pros with soft skills

A number of the over 700,000 open cybersecurity positions have requirements that make little mention of tech:

• “Excellent oral and written communication skills,” read a recent listing for a cybersecurity analyst position.
• The ability to “look at problems pragmatically to provide insight, ideas, and help set priorities on how to execute accordingly,” a post looking for a cybersecurity engineer reads.
• The capacity to “convey complex technical security concepts to technical and non-technical audiences, including executives,” company seeking penetration testers requested.

IT leaders are looking not just for hard, fast expertise, but soft skills, too, like knowing how to communicate and interact with others.

“For a number of years, cybersecurity teams have been building up their technical capabilities,” said Joe Nocera, partner leader for cyber risk and regulatory marketing at PwC. “They’ve been looking for things like analytics. They’ve been looking for knowledge of certain technologies, particularly things like identity and access management. But for the first time ever, we’re seeing the importance of really understanding the risk to the business, and therefore getting cybersecurity professionals that can speak the language of the business.”

Now cutting, now hiring. The “PwC Pulse Survey: Cautious to confident” had seemingly opposing findings: Companies are both looking for—and letting go of—employees.

• 81% of CHROs indicated that they’re reducing their workforce. (Plenty of tech companies this month already have.)
• 44% of executives still plan to drive growth by hiring talent with specific skill sets—most notably the kind required to defend against cyberattacks, an area that 52% of surveyed executives are “very concerned” about.

That cyber talent, however, has lately involved more than just understanding standards and knowing one’s way around a SOC, SIEM, or SOAR.

A separate April 2021 survey from PwC found that just around half of surveyed CISOs shuffled their teams and placed security pros on product-development and business teams.

“So, understanding what’s going to come next in our business, and how do we understand the security implications,” Nocera told IT Brew.

A “soft” serve. Companies are looking to grow their business digitally, through technologies like cloud services, remote-work setups, and automated customer service.

Such “digital transformation” requires a hybrid role, said Dave Wagner, senior research director at Avasant Research, one that supports a very “business-focused IT department,” and calls for both people skills and technical skills.

“It’s a very different IT department than we had even, say, five or 10 years ago,” Wagner told IT Brew in August.

Avasant Research released a 2022 report that revealed an increase in IT budgets, despite economic uncertainty.

Andrea Swanson, a service desk engineer at the consultancy POINT, sees non-tech skills like communicating technology and risk management strategies with CIOs, CISOs, and VPs—the kind that employers increasingly seek on job boards but can’t be easily taught—as “very important” to the industry.

“Soft skills are something that come with time and experience,” Swanson told IT Brew.—BH

Do you work in IT or have information about your IT department you want to share? Email [email protected] or DM @BillyHurls on Twitter.