One of the key changes in the administration’s recently announced Federal Cybersecurity Workforce Strategy which will aid agencies in filling those jobs is setting standards for such work, OPM has said.
“A relatively new field, cybersecurity lacks standard job titles, which makes writing and reading resumes difficult for both job seekers and hirers. Designating and implementing commonly used titles will facilitate communication between job seekers and employers and mitigate common unemployment challenges where qualified candidates are simply not being matched with job openings,” an official said in a post on the CIO Council site.
“Ensuring that everyone is speaking the same language and instituting widely-recognized standards will enable the cybersecurity field as a whole to grow and mature,” the post said, touting the use of a tool that “provides mix-and-match, modular job descriptions that can be easily plugged into job descriptions and posted to job boards.”
OPM said it also is working to increase awareness of alternative hiring authorities and is examining ways to streamline background investigations and security clearance processes. “OPM aims to position federal agencies as places where a cybersecurity professional can easily transition in and out of throughout a career that is also punctuated with stints in the private sector or non-governmental organizations, for example. We hope this will be especially attractive to the generations of the workforce that prefer such flexibility and freedom of movement professionally,” it said.
Over the next year, agencies meanwhile are to partner with academic institutions “to develop a foundational cybersecurity curriculum that will help expand cybersecurity education across the nation. Creating a robust pipeline of cybersecurity professionals is only one tactic used in this strategy, as it seeks not only to standardize and institutionalize cybersecurity curriculum, but also cybersecurity as a critical area of human capital,” it said.
