I recently graduated and I’m aiming for my first full-time security role. I’m 25, and my path took a bit longer than some of my peers, so my priority right now is getting employed sooner rather than later.
Early in my career, I was advised to explore different areas of security, and I followed that advice. My experience now spans internships and projects across cloud/compliance, security engineering (compliance-focused), product security, network orchestration–related work, and a recent AI threat-modeling assistant project, plus additional security-related programs and volunteer work.
The skills feel transferable, but my background is broad rather than deeply specialized in one area. I do have a network and I’ve spoken with people, but hiring feels slow and unclear, so I’m trying to be intentional about what actually leads to employment fastest.
Much of my work has been preventative, qualitative, intern-level, or NDA-bound, so common resume advice like “add metrics” doesn’t translate cleanly. I’m trying to optimize for getting a job soon without derailing a longer-term security career.
For people who work in or hire for security roles:
What roles or titles tend to hire early-career candidates the fastest? If you were in my position and needed to get hired soon, what would you focus on? How would you position broad early experience so it’s marketable to hiring managers?
Happy to share anonymized resume bullets if helpful. Appreciate any advice. Thanks for reading :)