Cybersecurity Contract Positions

[Andymt927]

Hello,

I am wondering if getting contract positions in Cybersecurity is a good gateway to getting a full time position and if they provide a lot of good experience. These are the pros/cons I can think of, but I'm sure there are a ton more so please comment whatever you can think of.

Pros:
- A lot of remote work

- Tend to be higher paid

- Experience with different companies/industries

- Not as many job applicants

Cons:

- No guarantee full time position

- Might not have full benefits

- Continually looking for the next contract

In my situation, I do not need medical insurance as I am married and on my wife's plan. I am having a hard time finding an 'Entry' level position.. Any advice or contribution would be greatly appreciated!

[Early_Adopter]

Contracting worked well for me after leaving the army twenty years ago.

Contracting relaxes the commitment an employer need invest so may well be easier to find, and as long as you are getting a fair compensation I don’t think it matters too much.

With three years experience in cyber security and a CISSP why are you looking for entry level jobs - do you feel you might have over qualified? Or are they asking for technical skills you don’t have? I’ve seen experienced friends with no CISSP struggle to find the right role - but only because they were choosy.

As an aside I’ve never met a CISSP with only three years work experience in cyber security, not saying they don’t exist just that they are rare beyond my admittedly limited* experience:

https://www.isc2.org/certifications/cissp/cissp-experience-requirements

*Once I’ve met every single person who holds CiSSP I shall revise this. 😉

[Andymt927]

I worded my original post wrong and just fixed it. Sorry about that!

Thank you for your response. That helps clear up some concerns I have about contract positions. Did you notice if it was harder to get a full-time position after the contract work, or did hiring managers see it as a positive? 

[Early_Adopter]

NP, I realised after I’d finished, but by then I’d invested a couple of minutes so was committed… 😛

I’ve hear that about contractors as a perception but frankly I don’t think it holds too much water(I’ve been a hiring manager three times) and a contract role that fitted the skill set was always though of as a plus vs not having one and there was an expectation that contractors would change roles more rapidly so exposure to different environments was expected. Better you have a lot of contract roles than a lot of FY roles in a narrow time slice.

Also work towards CISSP you have the experience and get Sec+, Google “CCSP” (oooh er those letters are a collision and vendor certs for the tools the people you’d like to work for/with use.