Hey everyone,

Welcome back to The Career Compass. This week I want to talk about the one piece of evidence that is making the difference between candidates who get interviews and candidates who don’t in 2026. It is not your certs. It is your proof of work.

Let’s get into it.

Almost 9 in 10 cybersecurity professionals say their organisation has suffered a breach, missed alert, or delayed incident response directly tied to a skills gap.

Source: ISC2 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study

What it means for you: Hiring managers in 2026 are not nervous about credentials; they are nervous about competence. They are paying for proof you can actually do the work, not proof you studied it. That changes how you build your job-search assets this year.

Here’s the thing. The candidates I see being placed into SOC, GRC and cloud security roles in 2026 do not have more certs than anyone else. They have one thing on their CV that makes a recruiter stop scrolling. Proof of work.

Here is the pattern I keep seeing in junior cyber CVs. Two candidates with the same paper credentials. Security+, maybe SC-200, eighteen months of self-study, a stack of TryHackMe and HackTheBox rooms. The first one has a public GitHub with even one half-finished project, a clean README, and a write-up they can talk about for ten minutes. The second one has a Word doc full of certificate screenshots and lab badges. The first one gets shortlisted. The second one does not. The certs are not the difference. The visible proof of work is.

Here is what hiring managers in 2026 are actually scoring you on.

1. One specialism, one project, done well

Pick one direction. SOC, GRC, cloud, AppSec, threat intel. Not all of them. Then build one project that proves you can do bounded, real-world work in that lane. A SOC candidate does not need ten Splunk dashboards. One good detection, properly documented, beats five half-finished labs every single time. Hiring managers are looking for legible skill, not a smorgasbord.

2. A public, organised GitHub

This is non-negotiable in 2026. Your GitHub does not need to be impressive on day one. It needs to exist, have your real name, a clean README, and at least one project you can talk about for ten minutes. If you cannot show a recruiter where your work lives, the recruiter cannot show a hiring manager. Most candidates I screen do not have one. Be the candidate who does.

3. A write-up that explains your thinking

A short blog post or LinkedIn article on what you built and what you learned beats a list of tools every time. Hiring managers in 2026 want to see how you think, not just what you ran. 600 words. What you built, why, what broke, what you fixed. That is what makes the difference between knows the tools and ready to do the job.

4. Tie it to something real

The strongest portfolios connect a project to a real incident or threat. Pick one CVE from the last 30 days, build a small detection or test scenario for it, and write up what you found. Suddenly you are not a junior asking to be hired. You are someone showing what you would do on day one.

So, where does this leave you? If you have certs but nothing public to show for them, your problem is not the market, it is the proof. Fix the proof and the interviews start coming.

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If your cybersecurity job applications aren't getting responses, your cybersecurity resume is likely the problem, not your skills. With 15 years of experience, I've seen countless resumes rejected in under 10 seconds because they aren't optimised for the applicant tracking system (ATS). This video will guide you on how to create an ATS resume that recruiters will actually see, boosting your chances in the competitive cybersecurity jobs market.

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

Cert spam at the top of page one.

Most junior cyber CVs I screen open with a row of cert badges and logos eating the most valuable real estate on the document. Recruiters often spend less than ten seconds on a first pass, and that opening space is where they look for one concrete result, not a logo wall.

Fix: list your two or three highest certs in one clean line, by name and date, then use the space you free up to name one project you built and one thing you found, broke, or fixed.

"Walk me through how you would investigate a suspicious login alert." This shows up in lots of SOC analyst interviews. Most candidates jump straight to tool names. Hiring managers want structured thinking.

Simple framework that lands every time:

(1) gather context - who, where, when, what device.
(2) Compare to baseline behaviour.
(3) Look for related signals - failed attempts before, MFA prompts, unusual downloads after.
(4) Decide and document - dismiss, escalate, or trigger the playbook, and write down why.

Drill the framework, not the tool list.

This week, pick one breach from the news section above and write a 500-word recruiter-style summary on LinkedIn. Cover what happened, what was missed, and which one control would have stopped it. 30 to 60 minutes of work.

Tag #cybersecurity, post it, and add the link to the projects section of your CV. That is now public proof you can analyse a real incident, which is exactly what hiring managers want to see in 2026.

If certs alone are not getting you interviews, the missing piece is almost always the proof of work. The Cybersecurity Job-Ready Blueprint 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.

The portfolio module alone can help career changers go from no replies to multiple first-round interviews in under 30 days.

Get the Cybersecurity Job-Ready Blueprint here.

Thanks for reading and as always, keep levelling up your career.

Luke

Career Coach | Cybersecurity Recruiter / YouTube channel

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P.S. If you take on the Weekly Challenge above, hit reply with your post link. I will feature the three sharpest summaries in the next edition, with a link back to your profile. I read every reply.

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