Enhance Hiring with Skills Assessments

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

List various types of cybersecurity skills assessments.
Identify the legal considerations associated with using assessment tools for hiring.
Share implications of skill-first hiring for job seekers.

Pre-Employment Assessments

A pre-employment assessment is like an audition. Just as an actor showcases their most relevant skills to prove they are right for a certain role in a play or movie, a pre-employment assessment allows a candidate to demonstrate their skills for a specific job or work role. In both contexts, the performance is evaluated based on how well the individual executes the task.

Pre-employment assessments enable objective demonstration of skills. For example, instead of a response to the question, “Walk me through your process to investigate a potential threat,” a pre-employment assessment would provide the candidate with access to a lab environment containing a SIEM, mock systems, and network traffic with intentional security vulnerabilities. The candidate's task would be, “Using the tools available, locate the source of the compromise, the extent of the breach and create a summary report of your findings.”

A person gesturing toward a cybersecurity skills assessment bar chart displaying scores in various skill areas.

Pre-employment assessments are popular in cybersecurity hiring. Companies use them at various stages to evaluate candidates’ skills and determine if they are suitable for a specific role. Some companies require candidates to complete an assessment before they submit a formal application. This helps narrow down the pool to those with the necessary skills.

Others use assessments after an initial interview, to confirm a candidate’s skills and gauge their problem-solving abilities in real-world scenarios.

For example, if you're looking for a cybersecurity architect, pre-employment assessments can help you assess a candidate’s proficiency in designing secure networks, along with skill in cloud security, especially for cloud service providers. SDLC assessments can help you evaluate the candidate’s knowledge of software development. And persuasive skills testing enables the candidate to demonstrate their degree of assertiveness, ability to influence others, and conflict management skill.

If you’re looking for a cybersecurity risk manager, you can use pre-employment assessments to test their proficiency in cybersecurity risk management and assess their skill in analytical thinking, decision-making, and problem-solving. Depending on the industry, you can also test knowledge of cybersecurity compliance. With predefined criteria, you can also use risk management case studies to assess a candidate’s ability to identify assets, threats, calculate risk, and suggest security controls.

Here are common pre-employment assessment types that can comprehensively assess a candidate’s skills before or after the application process.

Assessment Type	Focus	Skills the candidate can demonstrate
Technical skills	Cybersecurity operations leveraging hardware, software, and firmware to build, secure, protect, and defend networks	Writing and modifying code, analyzing logs, evaluating incidents, troubleshooting hardware and software applications, identifying malware, hardening systems, testing security
Nontechnical skills	Cybersecurity governance leveraging tools, frameworks, and relationships to manage risk and guide the secure use of systems	Applying risk management principles, managing regulatory compliance, choosing threat modeling techniques, executing policies, reengineering processes
Cognitive ability	Problem-solving, critical thinking, and adaptability	Analyzing complex scenarios, identifying patterns, and proposing creative solutions under pressure
Personality traits and work style	Motivations, communication style, and collaborative approach	Alignment with the company culture, teamwork preferences, and potential for growth
Situational judgment (These are often scenario-based)	Decision-making and prioritization within cybersecurity situations	Choosing appropriate actions, demonstrating sound judgment, and aligning decisions with risk appetite

Typically, technical and nontechnical skills assessments and some cognitive ability tests often work well as early screening tools. Hiring managers can also make use of cyber ranges and immersive simulations to assess technical skill. Personality, work style, and situational judgment tests are sometimes best saved for later stages, alongside in-depth, face-to-face interviews.

Assessments work best along with reference checks and other evaluation methods to create a holistic picture. When using assessments, it’s important to explain to candidates the purpose and type of assessment to manage expectations.

Legal Considerations

When using pre-employment assessments for cybersecurity hiring, prioritize compliance and fairness. Here are key areas to address.

Job relevance: Ensure assessments directly measure skills and abilities essential to the specific role. Avoid screening based on factors unrelated to job performance.
Inclusivity: Assessments must be inclusive and not unfairly disadvantage candidates based on protected characteristics (race, gender, disability, and so forth).
Validation: Assessments should be reliable, meaning they consistently measure what they’re designed to measure. Use vendor-provided validity data, or consider professional validation services for custom tests.
Data privacy: Comply with relevant regulations, such as the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) for EU candidates or the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in the US.
Transparency: Inform candidates about the assessment process, why it’s used, and how their data will be handled. This builds trust and ensures fairness.

Consult with your human resource department or employment law specialists in your region for the most up-to-date and tailored guidance.

Implications for Job Seekers

As more organizations embrace skills-first hiring, job seekers need to adjust their strategies as well. Education, certifications, and previous experience are still useful, but the focus now is on what you can do–not on what you have accumulated. This means that along with providing the required certifications, a candidate also needs to demonstrate that they have the required skills.

Therefore, prioritizing hands-on experience through projects, simulations, capture-the-flag events, hackathons, or even volunteering for a local nonprofit to gain practical skills is a good strategy. Documenting everything and showcasing their work through a portfolio, blog, or code repository like GitHub can improve their candidacy by providing potential employers with tangible evidence of their work and will highlight the potential value they can bring to the team.

By actively demonstrating their skills and tailoring their abilities to meet an employer’s unique needs, candidates can not only set themselves apart in the competitive cybersecurity job market but also accelerate their career trajectories.

In this module, we've explored how the skills-first hiring approach complements traditional methods, empowering employers with tools to identify, recruit, and select the most skilled professionals to strengthen their cybersecurity teams. Prioritizing skills broadens the talent pool, accelerates hiring, and introduces perspectives crucial for securing critical digital assets and achieving business goals. Simultaneously, job seekers gain access to a wider range of opportunities aligned with their skill sets, paving the way for fulfilling careers as cybersecurity professionals.

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Enhance Hiring with Skills Assessments

Learning Objectives

Pre-Employment Assessments

Legal Considerations

Implications for Job Seekers

Resources