Introduction: Why Entry-Level Cybersecurity Hiring Feels Broken
The demand for cybersecurity talent has never been higher, yet employers and graduates alike struggle to connect. According to Kaspersky, nearly half of companies report that it takes more than six months to fill a cybersecurity position (Kaspersky, 2024). For early-career candidates, this means months of waiting in fragmented hiring processes. For employers, it means critical security roles remain unfilled at a time when threats are escalating.
Cybersecurity is not optional. Organizations in finance, healthcare, government, and tech all depend on secure systems to operate. Yet entry-level hiring is bogged down by outdated signals—CVs, generic tests, and long interview cycles. Graduates often feel their real capabilities aren’t being seen, while employers complain of mismatched skills.
This mismatch creates churn, inefficiency, and risk. In a world where ransomware attacks or phishing campaigns can cost millions, the inability to quickly and fairly hire capable junior engineers is a systemic problem.
At Talantir, we believe in a simple reset: evaluate capability through real work samples, not just promises on paper.
Current Frictions in Early-Career Cybersecurity Hiring
1. Application Volume
Cybersecurity jobs are in high demand. Reports show that graduate-level tech roles can receive over 100 applications per vacancy (Prospects, 2024). Employers are left to sift through large pools of CVs, often resorting to keyword filters. This process hides motivated candidates who may not have the “perfect” degree or keywords but do have practical ability.
2. Time to Hire
The UK average time-to-hire is 4.9 weeks from application to offer (StandOut CV, 2023). In cybersecurity, delays are even longer: Kaspersky notes that 48% of companies take more than six months to fill positions (Kaspersky, 2024). This is unsustainable when organizations face constant, evolving threats.
3. Skills Mismatch
Employers regularly highlight a gap between what graduates know and what roles demand. The CIPD Labour Market Outlook reports that more than half of employers face difficulty finding applicants with the right skills (CIPD, 2023). In cybersecurity, the gap often lies in hands-on readiness: students may know theory but lack practice in penetration testing, SIEM tools, or responding to live incidents.
4. Poor Signal Quality
Resumes rarely capture what matters in cybersecurity—like how a candidate investigates an intrusion, prioritizes alerts, or documents vulnerabilities. Interviews often reward confidence, not competence. Employers risk hiring people who can talk about security but cannot act under real-world pressure.
5. Assessment Drift
Even when employers use assessments, they often drift away from practical tasks. Candidates may face abstract puzzles, psychometric questionnaires, or theoretical multiple-choice tests. These exercises filter quickly but do not reflect day-one tasks such as analyzing suspicious logs, patching misconfigured servers, or escalating incidents.
Why Cybersecurity Engineer Roles Are Hard to Evaluate Early
Cybersecurity is uniquely complex to assess at entry level because:
- Interdisciplinary skills: Cybersecurity combines network knowledge, coding, compliance, and soft skills like communication. Few graduates excel in all areas.
- Rapidly evolving tools: Threat landscapes and tools (e.g., Splunk, Wireshark, cloud-native security) evolve constantly. Graduates may study outdated curricula.
- Unclear titles: Job postings use labels like “Cybersecurity Analyst,” “Information Security Engineer,” or “SOC Junior,” with overlapping but inconsistent expectations.
- High stakes: Security errors have direct business impact, making employers highly risk-averse in hiring.
As a result, firms often restrict hiring to candidates from certain universities or with costly certifications (e.g., CompTIA Security+, CISSP Associate). This narrows the pipeline and excludes talented candidates without financial resources for certifications.
The Alternative: Work-Sample Evaluation
Imagine if, instead of being judged on CV keywords or abstract tests, candidates demonstrated how they would handle realistic security tasks. That’s the idea behind work-sample evaluation—short, authentic tasks that mirror day-one responsibilities.
For cybersecurity engineers, such work samples might include:
- Analyzing a short log file to detect signs of intrusion
- Writing a basic script to automate password policy checks
- Prioritizing alerts from a mock SIEM dashboard
- Drafting a two-paragraph incident report for non-technical stakeholders
These aren’t time-consuming exams—they’re manageable tasks that reveal how a graduate thinks, solves problems, and communicates.
Why this approach works:
- Students: Get a fair chance to prove practical skills, not just certifications.
- Employers: Gain reliable signals about readiness and motivation.
- Universities: Align teaching with industry-relevant exercises, bridging the gap between study and work.
Organizational research confirms that work-sample tests are among the most valid predictors of job performance. In cybersecurity—where mistakes are costly—this evidence-driven approach reduces hiring risk.
Talantir’s Perspective: Capability-First for Cybersecurity
At Talantir, our model is built on capability-first hiring. Students practice job-based cases through structured career roadmaps, then showcase their skills in challenges aligned to employer needs.
For cybersecurity engineers, this could mean:
- Roadmap cases: simulating phishing email analysis, configuring firewall rules, or documenting vulnerabilities.
- Milestones: completing multi-step projects such as securing a cloud environment or responding to a mock data breach.
- Challenges: employer-aligned tasks like prioritizing incidents, producing reports, or investigating suspicious traffic.
For students: This provides clarity and confidence. They graduate with portfolios that prove ability in real tasks, not just abstract coursework.
For employers: Instead of filtering 100+ CVs per role, they review profiles of candidates who have already demonstrated capability. Deep profiles include insights into how candidates approached tasks—how they noticed, structured, and decided.
For universities: Cybersecurity-focused roadmaps can be embedded into degree programs without extra teaching load. Career services gain analytics on readiness and can show evidence of student employability.
The outcome is a system where all three groups win: students gain visibility, employers gain confidence, and universities strengthen their role in employability.
Conclusion: What If We Evaluated Real Work, Not Promises?
The current approach to early-career cybersecurity hiring in the UK is failing: too many applications, slow timelines, mismatched skills, and weak signals. At the same time, the urgency of filling roles has never been greater.
Work-sample evaluation offers a practical reset. By focusing on short, authentic tasks, employers can spot motivated, capable candidates faster. Students get fairer chances to prove their readiness. Universities close the loop between classroom and workplace.
What if we evaluated real work, not promises? That’s the question Talantir puts at the center of early-career hiring.
Explore how work-sample evaluation can reset early-career hiring standards.