CYBERSECURITY JOB HUNTING GUIDE
Moving up
Author: Stefan Waldvogel
Transfer your knowledge into a higher salary
Cybersecurity is a field where many employees change their employers after 3 to 5 years. The primary reason is the salary aspect. Let us say you start a career and get a challenging $70K job. After one or two years, you gained a lot of knowledge, which increases your value in your job.
Now, competitors offer you a much higher salary.
Increase your salary further
You can increase your value if you take valuable certs like GCIA, RHCSA, RHCE, and other high-end certifications. Suppose a company is paying for such a cert, great. If not, try to do some certs anyway. Every year is a salary discussion, and you can use certs to increase your salary. If you pay for a GCIA, this is very expensive ($7,000), but sometimes you earn 30% or more just because of a single cert. If you stay in a company, your salary will (most likely) not jump that much. Try to get a promotion.
If you switch, you can increase your salary significantly, depending on the cert.
Sometimes you try to switch, and you get a counteroffer. Usually, it is a bad idea to take it, because if your company has to shrink the numbers of employees, you go first.
Now, competitors offer you a much higher salary.
Increase your salary further
You can increase your value if you take valuable certs like GCIA, RHCSA, RHCE, and other high-end certifications. Suppose a company is paying for such a cert, great. If not, try to do some certs anyway. Every year is a salary discussion, and you can use certs to increase your salary. If you pay for a GCIA, this is very expensive ($7,000), but sometimes you earn 30% or more just because of a single cert. If you stay in a company, your salary will (most likely) not jump that much. Try to get a promotion.
If you switch, you can increase your salary significantly, depending on the cert.
Sometimes you try to switch, and you get a counteroffer. Usually, it is a bad idea to take it, because if your company has to shrink the numbers of employees, you go first.
- Earning a lot of money is not everything. If you like a company a lot, the coworkers, and work, why should you risk it to make a bit more?
© 2021. This work is licensed under a CC BY-SA 4.0 license