From the course: Soft Skills for Information Security Professionals

Why soft skills matter

From the course: Soft Skills for Information Security Professionals

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Why soft skills matter

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- How did you land your first job in InfoSec? During my first InfoSec interview, the hiring manager asked me if I knew Unix. I did, and I told her so, and she offered me the job then and there. I'm absolutely serious, all I had to do was validate my technical chops and that job was mine. In an industry that's all about securing information, technical skills are kind of a big deal. I've been through multiple interviews since then, and you know what I've learned? Those technical questions are still there, but they're less pronounced. It's like the hiring managers treat those technical skills as a given, you wouldn't even be in the room with them otherwise. What hiring managers are looking for now are soft skills. They want candidates who understand the technical side of security and have the ability to engage people and help them understand what InfoSec is, and why it's so important. Landing the job is only the first step though. Whether you're working as an analyst, an architect, a manager, or any of the other roles that make up the InfoSec industry, you'll eventually need to interact with other people. The ones and zeros of InfoSec is the easy part. Need to configure a vulnerability scan? Chances are the vendor has a step-by-step guide for doing just that. Need to harden a server? The Center for Internet Security has literally hundreds, if not thousands of pages to show you what you need to do. Need to convince a C level exec to commit the necessary resources to your next InfoSec project? That might be a little trickier. You see what I'm getting at? But if you can dual wheel both the hard technical skills and the soft skills, you'll be a force to be reckoned with. Soft skills are tied to your emotional intelligence. While hard skills can often be documented in a repeatable procedure, you need to tap into that emotional intelligence when bringing your soft skills to bear. You need to understand who you're working with, what motivates them, and how you can find common ground between your goals and theirs so you can do what's right for your organization. More importantly, you're doing what's right for the people who depend on that organization. Chances are you've already had some success in your InfoSec career. I want to help you build on that success and be even more effective at what you do. As Marshall Goldsmith said, "What got you here "won't get you there." Improving your soft skills will help you get where you're going.

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