Career Advising Tools for Cybersecurity roles

The Cyber-Ready.mk platform was also developed as a practical tool to support career counsellors and teachers in this process. It provides an overview of different cybersecurity profiles and professions, the skills required, possible educational pathways, and opportunities for further development.

In this context, we are publishing the developed and piloted career development instruments, prepared as practical support for career counsellors in secondary schools in their day-to-day work with students. These instruments are designed to help identify students’ interests, potential, and developmental directions, with a particular focus on profiling for cybersecurity job roles.

They include questionnaires on interests and professional affinities, tests on values, abilities, personal characteristics, and learning styles, as well as self-reflection exercises through which students can better understand what they do best, which activities motivate them, and whether they are more inclined towards problem-solving, analysis, investigation, or working with technology.

By applying these tools, students can more easily recognise themselves in specific cyber profiles. For example:

• an interest in analytical work may point towards the role of Cybersecurity Analyst;
• an affinity for investigation and incident response may point towards Digital Forensics;
• an interest in creative system testing may point towards Ethical Hacker / Penetration Tester;
• and a tendency towards risk assessment and management may point towards Cyber Risk Specialists.

Their use enables a more targeted, structured, and informed approach to career guidance, helping students to better understand opportunities for education, skills development, and future professional orientation in the field of cybersecurity. These instruments represent an important step towards strengthening career guidance capacities and improving the connection between education and the evolving needs of the labour market.

The instruments were developed in line with the BIPO methodology and the Holland RIASEC model. The Battery of Instruments for Professional Orientation is a standardised psychological instrument set used for:

• career guidance,
• vocational orientation of students,
• assessment of abilities, interests, and personal characteristics.

Our instruments are domain-specific, focused on cybersecurity, and directly connect interests, skills, and motivation with concrete professions in the field.