Who Could You Be in Cybersecurity: Career Archetypes in Cybersecurity
Who Could You Be in Cybersecurity: Career Archetypes in Cybersecurity
Exploring a new industry for a career can be incredibly exciting as it opens up new possibilities. There’s always a thrill when venturing into uncharted territory and what it could mean for your personal and professional growth (and your income potential. Ahem.)
Cybersecurity can be an exciting industry to consider joining, and it may have been on your radar a while. There are many different types of careers in cybersecurity, with thousands of job openings in every state across the country, according to Cyberseek. Globally, the industry is growing quickly, with recent numbers showing a 26% year-over-year increase in the need for new cybersecurity professionals. Those are interesting numbers for someone looking to launch something new.
Yet, entering an industry with huge growth potential isn’t an automatic win, much as we’d all love to pull that lever and hear the coin rain down. You’ll still need to gain an understanding of different roles and responsibilities, figure out how your current talents can transfer, identify what gaps in knowledge you’ll need to fill, and somehow chart a course for your future without a map.
If you suspect there’s a better way, you’d be right. It involves understanding how people of all backgrounds can show up and add value in many ways in cybersecurity, so you can unlock your unique potential to do the same. When you put your values and skills at the forefront of this search, you can see how you might fall into a certain group, or archetype, have the flexibility to make choices that will land you closer to where you want to end up.
In this blog post about archetypes in cybersecurity, we’ll explore the following:
Moving beyond traditional career planning
The challenges of career planning in a new industry
Breaking cybersecurity careers into archetypes
How the archetypes can help map a career path in cybersecurity
Moving Beyond Traditional Career Planning
Traditional career planning says to pick a job you can see yourself doing in the future, then take safe, predictable steps to get there. It might include researching training programs, pursuing relevant education or training, then getting out to bank some practical experience. This approach worked fine when people wanted to do what they saw others in their networks doing for years.
For example, if you wanted to become a doctor, you’d explore degree programs in the field of medicine, begin your education, and eventually choose a specialty. But this approach assumes you know the available job roles, what would be expected of you, and the program of study needed to get there. It may be completely irrelevant to new industries. In fact, the future of work is full of jobs that don’t even exist yet.
What if the work you’re most curious about doesn’t seem to follow a linear path? Or you aren’t quite sure which roles would be a fit for what you know you could bring to the table? It can be overwhelming to choose a career path when you’re just learning about the industry and different disciplines. And if you target just one focus area, you may miss out on valid opportunities that could get you moving in the right direction.
With a more holistic approach, you can move beyond trying to compare specific positions and instead look for alignment in skills, motivations, and values. These are your superpowers, and you bring them into every role you take on. When the rest is unknown, you can lean into these to help you find opportunities that share commonalities with your dream roles.
Challenges of Career Planning in a New Industry
While planning a new career is exciting, a limited understanding of the industry’s inner workings can make it tough to visualize a clear career path in cybersecurity. Trying to compare potential roles, progression opportunities, and required skills can feel like putting together pieces from several different puzzles at once. That’s a one-way ticket to getting stuck, and you’ve got too much to do to stall out.
Some industries are more dynamic than others and offer constant change due to technological advancements or market trends. This can ramp up opportunity, while also driving down predictability. For example, cybersecurity has shown tremendous growth, yet an acknowledged skills shortage affects over half of organizations.
How will the industry shift to address this challenge? What types of careers in cybersecurity will hold the most potential in the next few years? Nobody has a crystal ball, and even experienced professionals don’t know what the future holds, so these nuances may be out of reach for beginners. For example, how can you predict what you’ll be good at if you’re just getting started?
Even if you gain familiarity with an industry today, there’s a good chance that new roles and career trajectories will emerge over time. Knowing you’re curious about cybersecurity is just the first step, and you’ll need more than just a few job postings and recent industry articles to help guide you. A better strategy is to consider what you already know about your strengths and the type of work you know energizes you.
Breaking Cybersecurity Careers Into Archetypes
One way to group roles within cybersecurity is by archetypes. An archetype is defined as a group of people with shared characteristics. (Remember, we’re talking tapping into your known powers, not industry experience.)
While you may not always be able to visualize your career path in cybersecurity, you can assess which group you feel most aligned with and where there’s room for you to shine. From here, you’ll be better equipped to recognize opportunities that best showcase your skills, even if they’re in focus areas you hadn’t imagined yourself exploring.
Let’s take a high-level look at the four archetypes we see in cybersecurity:
Advisor
Advisors love learning and being the ones people rely on for the latest updates and information. In past jobs, you may have loved being in the know (without being a know-it-all) and being able to influence the decisions of others with what you’ve learned. You may already have shown an aptitude for breaking down complex ideas for others in past roles.
Builder
Builders love to design and implement solutions that help solve problems. Sound familiar? You may like tackling issues and finding clever ways to get around obstacles. You may have demonstrated a knack for quickly picking up new technical skills in past roles.
Conductor
Bringing order to chaos is the siren song of conductors, who feel called to help ensure everyone is on the same page and working toward common goals. You may have demonstrated this in small ways in your current role, but the ability to pull everyone together into collaborative action can grow into a career that makes a huge impact.
Detective
Knowing how to unravel complicated situations and respond calmly when crises arise are key qualities of detectives. In addition, deep curiosity, the ability to stick with a problem until you’ve sorted the answers, and the need to make a difference often drive this group. If you’re usually working to figure out why something happened while others are still busy reacting, this could be you.
When common motivations and qualities are broken out in simple, accessible ways, it becomes easier to broaden your horizons and identify positive steps forward.
How the Archetypes Can Help Map a Career Path in Cybersecurity
Once you’ve identified the archetype that most closely aligns with your motivations and values, you’ll better understand where you might fit in a complex industry. It’s like when your map app suddenly comes back online. You still may have never been to your destination, but when the map works, all you can think is “road trip!”
Understanding your cybersecurity archetype can give you the language to connect with others who may be able to mentor or guide you, so they can understand how to help or connect you with opportunities. Instead of your eyes glazing over from research, you’ll be digging into possibilities that spark genuine curiosity and identifying skills gaps you could start filling. Most importantly, you’ll be able to focus on pursuing roles that match your archetype instead of targeting a single path forward.
Your first cybersecurity role might not be what you first imagined it would be. You don’t need to be able to visualize your entire career in cybersecurity today. But you can gain deep insights into diverse pathways uniquely suited to your strengths and chart a course toward roles that would fill you with purpose and drive.
Ready to see what’s possible for your career path in cybersecurity? Take our career archetypes quiz and see which archetype resonates with you.
