THE CAREER COMPASS

Career advice from the recruiter's desk  |  by Luke Gough

Issue #71  |  Tuesday, 21 April 2026

Hey everyone,

Welcome back to The Career Compass. Today I want to dig into the part of the job search most candidates under-prepare for, and the part hiring managers weigh most heavily: the cybersecurity interview.

Let's get into it.

60% of organisations say the skills gap is now their #1 workforce challenge, overtaking headcount for the first time. Source: SANS 2026 Cybersecurity Workforce Research Report

Translation for you: hiring managers are not hunting for more bodies. They are hunting for people who can do the job on day one. That single shift changes how you need to interview in 2026.

The most common feedback I hear back from hiring managers in 2026 is not about technical skills. It is about communication.

Candidates are turning up to SOC and GRC final-rounds with Security+, SC-200, a solid home lab on their CV, and still walking away empty-handed because they cannot explain how they would use what they know when it actually matters.

That gap, between knowing something and being able to explain it under pressure, is costing candidates interviews every single week.

Here's the thing. Cybersecurity interviews in 2026 are not about what you know on paper. They are about whether you can think out loud, make decisions, and show the hiring manager you would not panic the first time an alert goes sideways.

The SANS 2026 Workforce Report dropped this month and it changed the game. For the first time in the report's three-year history, skills gaps overtook headcount shortages as the single biggest problem in cybersecurity. 60% of organisations say their teams cannot do what is needed. 27% have already had a breach tied directly to that capability gap.

Let's be honest. That is terrifying for security leaders. But if you are a career changer or a mid-level professional trying to level up, it is the opening of a lifetime. Hiring managers are under more pressure than ever to stop hiring people who look good on paper and start hiring people who can actually demonstrate skill.

Which means the interview has become the single most important part of your application. More than your resume. More than your certs. More than your LinkedIn headline.

After 15+ years of placing candidates across Australia and the UK, here is what I see separating the candidates who get offers from the ones who do not.

When a hiring manager asks how you would triage a suspected phishing alert, they are not looking for a textbook response. They want to hear you think. Walk them through what you would check, in what order, and why. The candidates who do this well do not memorise answers. They tell small, specific stories. Something like: last month in my home lab, I built a detection rule for impossible-travel sign-ins, here is how I would apply that same thinking here. That kind of answer lands every time.

In the last issue I covered how to build a cybersecurity portfolio. The interview is where that portfolio pays for itself. Bring a printed page, a GitHub link, a one-page write-up from a lab exercise. I have placed candidates who got offers specifically because they handed the interviewer a PDF of a risk register they wrote or a SIEM dashboard they had configured. It changes the entire conversation from tell me about your skills to show me how you think.

Most candidates ask bland questions at the end of an interview. What is the team culture like? Snooze. The candidates who stand out ask sharper, operational questions. What does success look like in the first 90 days? What are the three biggest security risks on your roadmap this year? Can you tell me about the last time a junior analyst in this team got promoted, and what they did to get there? These questions signal that you are already thinking like someone inside the team.

If you are interviewing for Australian roles, know what is happening in our regulatory landscape. The Essential Eight. The SOCI Act. The Metricon Homes ransomware case from this month. Hiring managers here expect candidates to know the local context, not just quote NIST. When I coach candidates before an interview, I have them spend 30 minutes reading the latest Cyber Daily news. It always pays off. Have a look what is happening in your region.

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Last edition I broke down what Anthropic's Claude Mythos meant for your cybersecurity career. Since then, OpenAI has shipped its own answer: GPT-5.4 Cyber.

GPT-5.4 Cyber is a purpose-built variant of OpenAI's flagship model, tuned specifically for defensive security work. Think SOC triage, alert summarisation, malware reverse-engineering assistance, vulnerability analysis, and detection-rule drafting. It is aimed at blue teams who want an AI copilot that actually understands the security stack, not a general-purpose chatbot.

Why it matters for your career: the gap between candidates who can use AI-powered security tools and those who cannot is widening fast. If you can walk into an interview and show you have actually worked with one, you stand out. Every week another security vendor ships an AI copilot, and hiring managers are already asking about them.

Full breakdown dropping on YouTube this Sunday. I will walk through what Claude Mythos and GPT-5.4 Cyber do, who they are for, and how they will affect cybersecurity hiring. Keep an eye on the channel.

Most people trying to break into cybersecurity are all aiming for the same roles; SOC analyst, pen tester, incident responder, and it’s making the entry-level market brutally competitive. But there’s one cybersecurity career path hiring managers are desperate for right now that almost nobody is training for: Identity and Access Management (IAM).

In this video, I’ll break down what IAM actually is (in plain English), why it’s now one of the highest-demand areas in security, the key tools employers want (Microsoft Entra ID, Okta, CyberArk, SailPoint), real salary ranges in Australia and the US, and a step-by-step plan to break into IAM even if you’ve got zero experience.
If you want a cybersecurity career with strong job security, high pay, and far less competition — start here.

New videos every week on cybersecurity careers, certifications, and what recruiters actually want.

Pick three common cybersecurity interview questions. Write your answers on paper, no more than 200 words each. Then record yourself saying them out loud. Aim for natural, not rehearsed. The goal is not to sound polished; it is to sound prepared.

Questions to start with: Walk me through how you would respond to a phishing alert. Tell me about a time you had to explain a technical risk to a non-technical stakeholder. What is the difference between a vulnerability, a threat, and a risk?

Thirty to sixty minutes. That's it.

If you are preparing for interviews and feel like there are pieces of the bigger picture you are still missing, the Cybersecurity Job-Ready Blueprint connects the dots.

It is a step-by-step guide built from 15+ years of placing candidates. It covers the exact path from zero to job-ready: which certs to get first, how to build proof of work, how to write a resume that gets past ATS, and how to approach applications like a recruiter. Everything you are interviewing about is already in there, broken down the way a recruiter would teach it.

Get the Cybersecurity Job-Ready Blueprint here.

As always, keep levelling up your career.

Best wishes

Luke
Career Coach | Cybersecurity Recruiter

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