Visa for Engineering Graduate with Cyber Security Specialist CISSP, COSCO MICROSOFT CERTIFIED

[Apl]

I have 4 years of University Bachelor Degree, 8 years of experience Cyber Security and CISSP, Microsoft Azure, Cisco certification. Please suggest what are my chances of getting PR Visa.

[Apl]

*CISCO

[Ausvisitor]

4 hours ago, Apl said:

I have 4 years of University Bachelor Degree, 8 years of experience Cyber Security and CISSP, Microsoft Azure, Cisco certification. Please suggest what are my chances of getting PR Visa.

The problem you have is that Australia treats these roles as part of the IT grouping that has quotas (on top of the general visa quotas) so you need really high points totals to get a visa. You don't say what you think you would have in terms of visa points, but anything below 85 (higher if looking for a 189 visa) is unlikely to be successful.

 

On another note, I've interviewed nearly 50 people in the last 6 weeks, almost all of them had those certifications, and we only made 2 job offers (despite having many open roles) and one of those didn't even have those quals.

If you have a good job where you are (which you should with those certs) don't necessarily think it will be better here, I don't think Australia is as desperate for those skills as people think

[Ausvisitor]

I need to add some more colour to my answer above as I've had a few PMs asking about it.

The key part to the CISSP is the fact you need 5 years relevant experience to even take it, this is far more valuable than the actual qualification.

I know many people (I have them working for people who work for me) who started the exam learning and took the exam in under 6 weeks from start to finish, and the average time for anyone we put through the certification if we need qualified people is 10 weeks.

When you look at those numbers, why would we hire someone we don't know just because they have a piece of paper when we could instead spend less time and hassle just allowing one of our already trusted team to get certified (answer is simple - we wouldn't).

I'm not saying there isn't value in the CISSP qualification, there undoubtedly is, but it isn't the silver bullet to unlocking employment that it is touted as. 

Simply put, it's nice if you've got it, but whether you have it or not would not influence a hiring decision. So you need to be good at everything else and not have the "attitude of entitlement" that seems to be attached to CISSP holders (for the avoidance of doubt, I too have this certification it has not changed what I do day to day one bit, I just needed it once for a client pre-requisite).

Its certainly good to be able to prove you have these skills, but the market is awash with people that either have the cert or comparable experience and as a result the demand to hire those people is weak at the moment and that's if you can get through the visa process in the first place.