The Strategic Advantage: How Veteran Capability Imprints Redefine Success in Cybersecurity Roles

In the complex tapestry of the job market, military veterans represent a talent pool with a distinct pattern of skills sought by businesses.? Unfortunately, understanding which of these skills are critical to a business and the degree to which veterans hold the capability to perform them are often unrecognised and therefore represent a missed opportunity for business, veterans and the customers we serve.?

What are Skills and how do they differ from Capabilities, you ask?

In my experience, I’ve found it useful to define a ‘Skill’ (the human vs. technical ones) as what is required to be performed within a role in a specific work environment and a Capability to be the degree to which a person naturally can perform a Skill.?

A Skill can be measured through observation.? Capabilities cannot be observed because they are aggregations of behavioural preferences that indicate whether a person has a strong preference for performing a specific skill or not.?

It is for this reason that managers often misinterpret what candidates can do because of our biased and subjective interpretation of resumes and/or observations within interviews.?

An example of a Skill is 'Working with Teams', often important in today’s business environments.? Whether a person has the capability to effectively work with teams will be informed by their preference for or against, behaviours such as sociability, patience, flexibility, and liveliness.?

Therefore, the ability to consistently measure and objectively ‘observe’ a person’s preference for these behaviours is important to determining a veteran’s ‘Fit’ to the jobs we have available in the Cyber area.

Enter the transformative power of @AbilityMap.?

Over the past 12 months, we’ve partnered with AbilityMap to define the critical skills needed for effectiveness within our ANZ’s Cyber Veterans team and identify the distinct Capabilities available within our cyber business.? The research is ongoing, but the findings have been insightful.

It's about aligning innate talent and untapped potential with market demand.

What Skills Drive Cyber Excellence?

Using AbilityMap’s technology platform, we’ve gone about defining a success profile for cyber professionals in ANZ.? It involved applying the solution to define:

1. the Skills that experts WANT,
2. the strongest Capabilities consistently that our high-performing team members HAVE in our cyber team, and
3. reviewing that evidence and making an informed decision about the skills we NEED to satisfy our customers.

AbilityMap’s Capability Assessment – an ‘Imprint’, produces a reliable record that captures the unique capabilities (also referred to as competencies or attributes) and thereby identifies the potential of individuals to perform effectively in different work environments.?

Each person is unique.? It is much like a fingerprint, revealing one's ‘Capability’ identity. For veterans, these imprints are not just reflections of their past roles but are beacons guiding their future in the civilian workforce.

Using the above methodology, the top four skills we identified as required for our ANZ Cyber Team are:

1. Solving Problems,
2. Accepting Responsibility,
3. Coping with Pressure and
4. Working with Teams.?

The Capabilities that our group of high-performing Cyber professionals HAVE strongest in common are;

1. Operating Independently,
2. Solving Problems,
3. Handling Authority and
4. Working with Words.?

Interestingly, AbilityMap advised us that another client project they completed with a 200+ ANZ Cyber team had a broadly different set of Capabilities in their performers, but that 'Working with Words' was also identified as critical to effectiveness within the group.

The advantage for veterans is clear:

Where traditional resumes may fail to articulate the depth of their experience and managers may likely unintentionally misinterpret a veteran’s capabilities, AbilityMap Imprints translate the behavioural attributes of military precision, leadership, and resilience into the language of skills that corporations need.

It's about aligning innate talent and untapped potential with market demand.

But why should companies care?

In a world where adaptability and soft skills are increasingly valued, veterans bring a wealth of these, often underutilised, assets to the table. By understanding the Capability imprints of veteran employees, organisations can unlock a treasure trove of loyalty, efficiency, and problem-solving acumen and, more importantly, determine the degree to which these attributes are playing a critical role in work effectiveness.

Future of Work is about human adaptability, self-discipline, collaboration and empathy – all enduring human Skills.?

For veterans transitioning to civilian careers, I invite you to connect and contact me and consider creating your Capability Imprint.

It's more than a tool; it's a strategic ally in showcasing your unique value proposition to potential employers.

And for the companies out there, it's high time to look beyond the resume and recognise that the Future of Work is about human adaptability, self-discipline, collaboration and empathy – all enduring human Skills.? (The technical Skills are changing every 6 to 18 months!) Embrace the depth of talent that veterans offer through the lens of human skills (and Capability Imprints).

The competitive edge you've been searching for might just be in the extraordinary experiences of these individuals.

Let's start a conversation on how we can better integrate veteran skills into our workforce. Share your thoughts, experiences, or questions below.

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