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Welcome to The Career Compass — Edition #56
Hey everyone,
If you’ve been thinking about starting (or advancing) your career in cybersecurity, this week’s edition is packed with insights you won’t want to miss.
Cybersecurity continues to dominate the headlines, from major cloud outages to data breaches impacting millions and with that comes opportunity. The demand for skilled professionals who can secure, investigate, and protect digital systems has never been higher.
In this edition, we’re breaking down:
The top 5 free cybersecurity courses you can take right now to kick-start your career,
The latest news and trends, including the recent AWS outage and Qantas data leak,
Our Cyber Career Spotlight on the growing role of the Cloud Security Engineer
A deep dive into Applicant Tracking Systems (ATS) — what they are, how they work, and how to make sure your resume actually gets seen.
Whether you’re actively job-hunting, exploring a move into cybersecurity, or simply staying career-ready, this issue will give you practical knowledge you can use immediately.
Let’s dive in.
Video of the Week: Top 5 FREE Cybersecurity Courses to Start Your Career in 2025
If you’re looking to begin a career in cybersecurity without spending money, this video picks out five excellent free courses aimed at beginners. It focuses on building real-world skills, covering foundational cybersecurity topics so you can hit the ground running.
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News & Trends
1. Major Cloud Outage: Amazon Web Services (AWS)
On 20 October 2025, AWS suffered a large-scale global outage that disrupted a wide range of apps and services worldwide. The fault originated in the US-EAST-1 region (Virginia) and was linked to internal DNS issues and error rates within AWS’s internal networks.
This outage underscores how dependent many organisations (and millions of users) are on a few cloud infrastructure providers and how a single fault cascade can ripple across digital services.
Implications for cyber careers:
Cloud resilience & disaster-recovery skills are increasingly vital.
Understanding underlying infrastructure (DNS, regional architecture) matters.
For job-seekers: roles around cloud security, incident response, reliability engineering are likely to gain in demand.
What to watch: how companies respond, shift to multi-cloud or hybrid architectures, and security implications of centralised cloud infrastructure.
2. Qantas Airways Data Leak
The airline has been at the centre of a serious incident: personal data of approximately 5.7 million customers was released after a breach of a third-party call centre platform. According to reports, the records include names, email addresses, phone numbers, postal addresses, dates of birth and frequent flyer numbers but not credit card, financial or passport data.
Cyber-security experts are warning of a “second wave” of scams and identity-theft risks stemming from this leak.
Implications for cyber careers:
Emphasises the importance of vendor/third-party risk management in cybersecurity roles.
Data protection, incident response and forensics remain high priority areas.
As a job-seeker: highlight awareness of supply-chain risks, data breach response and compliance.
What to watch: whether regulatory or legal consequences follow, how public and private sectors update their controls, whether more companies proactively assess third-party exposure.
3. Career & Hiring Trends
The cybersecurity job market continues to boom: roles aren’t just “pen-tester” or “SOC analyst” anymore. There are many pathways: policy, architecture, cloud security, risk translation, etc.
Meanwhile, hiring practices are evolving: one trend is the ubiquitous use of applicant-tracking systems (ATS) and AI in recruitment. A recent investigation found flaws and biases in some ATS usage.
Candidates should be aware: aligning your resume to keywords, formatting for machine parsing, and clearly showcasing relevant skills is more important than ever. (More on ATS below.)
Remote/work-from-anywhere roles, flexibility and global hiring are also increasingly standard.
What to watch: whether organisations shift more hiring budget into cybersecurity, how AI in hiring changes the candidate experience, and how job-seekers adapt to the changing hiring landscape.
Cyber Career Spotlight
Role: Cloud Security Engineer
Why pick this role? It ties together two mega-trends: cloud infrastructure (see the AWS outage above) + cybersecurity. According to guides, cloud security specialists are among the fastest-growing roles in 2025.
What they do:
Secure cloud environments (e.g., AWS, Azure, GCP) including identity/access management, network controls, data protection.
Design and implement cloud-native security architectures, monitoring and incident response.
Collaborate with DevOps and infrastructure teams to embed security early.
Recommended skills/certifications:
Familiarity with major cloud platforms (AWS especially, given its market share).
Knowledge of networking, IAM (Identity & Access Management), encryption, cloud-native tools.
Understanding of cloud security frameworks (CIS, NIST, etc).
Certifications: e.g., AWS Certified Security, Specialty, (depending on region) and other cloud/security credentials.
Why it’s a smart choice for 2025:
Demand is high and continuing to grow.
Opportunity to work across industries (finance, healthcare, government, etc) because nearly all sectors are migrating to or relying on cloud.
Strong career progression into senior roles (Cloud Security Architect, CSO with cloud focus).
How to get started:
Take foundational courses in cloud (AWS, Azure) and security basics.
Build hands-on labs: spin up cloud instances, configure IAM, simulate vulnerabilities and remediations.
Add cloud-security projects to your portfolio and showcase them on your résumé/LinkedIn.
Network with cloud/security professionals and consider internships or entry-level roles (e.g., “cloud security analyst”).
ATS: A Thorough Breakdown
What is an ATS?
An ATS (Applicant Tracking System) is software used by organisations to manage the hiring process, from posting jobs, collecting applications, parsing resumes, ranking candidates, through to scheduling interviews.
Key functions
Automatically collect and store applicant data (resumes, cover letters, responses).
Parse resumes: the system reads structured/unstructured data and standardises it.
Keyword matching & filtering: resumes are scanned for keywords, skills, years of experience, education etc.
Candidate tracking: moving from stages (application → screening → interview → offer) and allowing recruitment teams to collaborate.
Reporting & analytics: measure time-to-hire, source effectiveness, funnel bottlenecks.
Why it matters for job-seekers
Many companies will never manually open your resume; if your application fails the ATS filter you may never get to a human reviewer.
To increase your chances: tailor your resume to the job ad (use matching keywords), use a clear, simple format, avoid overly designed templates that ATS can’t parse.
Consider including a “skills” section with bullet-points matching the job description, and ensure your job titles/experience are clearly described in standard language.
Avoid using uncommon fonts, icons or images in your resume, some ATS struggle to read them.
How ATS are evolving in 2025
Increasing use of AI/ML to score, rank and predict candidate fit.
More transparency and fairness concerns: investigations show bias or unintended discrimination in some ATS usage.
For global/remote hiring, ATS integrate with assessment tools, video-interviews, chatbots and digital credentials.
Summary tip for job-seekers
Read the job ad carefully and reflect the language used (especially key skills, tools, certifications).
Keep your format simple, headings standard (Experience, Education, Skills).
Use keywords naturally – instead of “Responsible for cloud security” say “Cloud security engineer: IAM, AWS, encryption, monitoring”.
Submit early (some ATS give ranking by submission time).
Follow up with the recruiter where possible, and build your LinkedIn/profile so that even if your resume is parsed, the human reviewer can verify your credibility.
Career Compass Challenge of the Week
“Confidence Reboot” Challenge
This week’s challenge is all about how you show up in interviews, meetings, or even day-to-day conversations.
Here’s your task:
Record yourself answering one common interview question — for example:
👉 “Tell me about yourself.”
Watch it back and focus on your tone, body language, and clarity, not just your words.
Ask yourself:
Did I sound confident and natural?
Was my story clear and relevant?
Would I hire me based on that answer?
Refine it and try again. Small improvements here can make a huge difference in real interviews.
Pro tip: You don’t need fancy gear, your phone camera works perfectly. The goal isn’t perfection, it’s awareness.
Goal: Strengthen how you communicate your story. Because confidence isn’t built in the interview it’s built in practice.
Thanks for reading, and as always, keep levelling up your career.
Best wishes
Luke Gough
Recruiter / Career Coach / Founder of The Career Compass
P.S. Remember to share The Career Compass with your network, and let’s work together to empower more careers!
