Discover your ‘cyber fit’ using the UKCSC Careers Framework Tool

Discover your ‘cyber fit’ using the UKCSC Careers Framework Tool

Meredyth Grant

The UK Cyber Security Council’s (UKSCS) Careers Framework Tool  is designed to help veterans, Service leavers and forces families find their cyber fit. This online career guidance tool provides tailored information based on experience and interest-related information you input.

Transitioning into a brand new cyber career poses daunting questions for job seekers: which roles are available and what do they pay? What skills and experience are necessary? How do my knowledge and interests relate?

Watch this video to explore the UK Cyber Security Council’s (UKSCS) Careers Framework Tool with TechVets’ own Rachael Bailey:

Aligning with your current knowledge or interests, the tool gives jobseekers clarity when navigating the 16 cyber career specialisms, which are based on comprehensive Knowledge Areas within CYBOK (the Cyber Body of Knowledge).

Here’s an overview of the tool and how it can help refine your career planning by removing uncertainty from finding, interpreting and prioritising new cyber career information.

Accessing the tool

Accessible from the UKSCS ‘Careers and Learning’ menu, the Career Mapping Tool creates a personalised career pathway using 19 questions that you’ll answer using three guided response buttons:

‘Unfamiliar’, ‘Some Knowledge’ and ‘Advanced Knowledge’.

It returns 3 potential roles based on your inputs for current knowledge, including detailed information and a suitability match percentage.

The Cyber Career Framework Tool

Clicking on a job opens the Cyber Career Framework Tool, containing information on typical role aspects:

  • Working Life: An introduction to each specialism.
  • Responsibilities: Tasks, job titles and average salaries at different seniority levels.

Similar civilian jobs often carry different titles – use these to focus your job searches.

  • Required skills and knowledge: The personal attributes, specialist skills and core, related and wider knowledge and experience a role may require.

The Tool illustrates how involved your journey to a particular specialism may be,

and details further required and applicable skills.

  • Qualifications – Role-related degrees and training.

At this stage, TechVets members should ask volunteer advisors and hiring managers in the TechVets Discord server about relevant qualifications, what they look for when hiring and other information to refine your planning.

  • Moving On – potential long-term career progression and linked specialisations.

Filtering roles by interest

You can also reinterpret the tool’s response buttons as ‘No Interest’, ‘Some Interest’ and ‘Very Interested’ as a way to filter and assess career paths through the filter of your interests rather than knowledge.

You’ll answer the same 19 questions, but by choosing different inputs based on career interests, you’ll receive different job matches. This could provide a new perspective or inspiration for how you view your career journey when opening the Cyber Career Framework for a job and working through the information provided.

Again, consulting with the TechVets Discord server at this stage can prove invaluable in getting real-world advice on training and first steps.

The Careers Framework Tool isn’t a career planning formula: a job may include parts or all of one or more of the 16 specialisms. But having a helicopter view of potential career paths and what they involve removes much of the guesswork from career planning.

Join TechVets and discover how we can support you into a tech or cybersecurity career

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