The SANS Institute has launched CyberTalent Assessments, a new management tool that helps to validate the skills of information security professionals. As part of a recruitment process, CyberTalent Assessments helps Recruitment and HR professionals and recruitment agencies to save time, reduce administrative efforts and increase the pool of qualified candidates.
Powered by Global Information Assurance Certification (GIAC) based exam questions, SANS CyberTalent Assessments can provide benchmarks across many information security domains including Communications Security, Internet Security, Networking Concepts and Operating Systems Security.
“A typical recruitment process for a skilled information security professional is a complex and time consuming task, even if the recruiter is a subject matter expert,” explains Tom Carver, Director – SANS CyberTalent, “CyberTalent Assessments help recruiters with many of the industry’s challenges such as the global shortage of skilled professionals and the exponential growth demand for InfoSec skills. It also helps their recruitment process cutting down on the administrative burden of CV review, short listing and 1st interviewing. Finally and most importantly, the CyberTalent Assessments offer the best way to accurately verify the job applicant’s technical knowledge” says Carver, concluding “it provides that information in easy to read format where the applicants’ skill levels can be compared to each other.”
Carver highlights the ease of use of the system “The CyberTalent Assessments are a timed web based assessment; organisations can send the assessment link to candidates wherever they are. As soon as the assessment is complete the recruiting manager can compare and contrast the participant’s results in a variety of formats whether online, in PDF or excel.
“Typically recruiters look for key words on a CV, or if not a particular certification or training qualification” explains Carver “however with this tool you can widen the criteria as the assessment will drill down to actual practical InfoSec knowledge and cut straight to those suitable for the job whether they have the words or qualification on their CV or not.”
Over 48,000 students have gained GIAC certifications worldwide and CyberTalent is able to draw on thousands of reference questions from an assessment framework that is continually evolving in line with the security and regulatory landscape.
Leading up to launch, CyberTalent has been piloted by a large multinational energy company, a major EU institution and large organisation within the defence sector. “We are delighted to bring this product to market and see it as a game changing tool for the InfoSec recruitment industry.”
On a final note Carver adds “of course CyberTalent Assessments can also be used to assess existing InfoSec staff as part of a training needs analysis and we look forward to working with our clients in this capacity too.”
