Its Your Training,Get Past The Blaming

It always happens with security officers, supervisors and in some cases managers, you're sitting there wondering why you do not have the necessary skills to progress and further your careers. You ponder over mountains of job applications and each one you like the look of throws a curve ball. Have you got experience in this? Or a knowledge in that? Sometimes I look at role requirements and think.... oh what is that!

As I have been asked time and time again about this issue from people within my industry I thought I would put some ideas down in writing.

Like the internet tells us FAIL, you never FAIL, its a First Action In Learning.

PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLAN

To create a Personal Development Plan is an amazing idea, because you need to know where you want to go in your career. The plan can be as simple or as big as you like, the main thing is to keep it simple. Another great thing about a PDP is it keeps you on track of your career aspirations and lets you monitor your progress.

The plan can be a 3 year plan to career domination, or a 2 year plan broke down into quarters. It could be a small 6 month plan then you extend your plan when you have achieved the milestones you set yourself, the thing to remember is its your plan and you need to stick to it. It is easy to let yourself down so make your plan known to your friends or family and use them to drive you on to success.

As you can imagine there are lots of examples of PDP's on the internet for you to go through. If you can, ask any ex police officers that work with you, as they are a good source to plan a PDP, because they have made a career of doing it.

As I said before it is your plan, you know what you want to achieve and where you want to be, so now is the time to make a road map of how to get there. Above all else it needs to be SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant and Timely).

Below is a video explaing what personal development is and we will move on to finding a mentor!

Your plan, Your life, Your rules, Your goals!

FINDING MENTORS

Finding a mentor can be tricky, this is usually someone more senior to you in your field or someone you think you can look to for guidance or bounce ideas off. The mentor/mentee relationship should be professional with a clear idea of what you are both expecting from it. People are more open to being a mentor nowadays, but they are not obliged to be, but remember picking a mentor can be tricky. I have provided a link below which is only a few minutes explaining How to get a mentor from a TEDX talk by Ellen Ensher.

After you have finished watching Ellen, we will move on to courses and training.

COURSES/TRAINING

Courses, potentially the number one concern for security professionals, "my company doesn't put me on courses to progress." Which would be nice if they did but they don't have too, it wasn't in your job description or offer letter and you still took the job. But we have bills to pay and families to feed so lets get on about what we can do to sort this out.

Now, the essence of this article was guidance and not a put down on what we should have done, but guide you to what you will potentially do in the future. Believe it or not there are security companies who are actively investing in people, and clients that stick a little money aside for courses for the team. Useful if you are on the bigger sites with budgets but not if you are on a one man site in the middle of nowhere.

So, what to remember, firstly the main effort is YOURS and YOURS alone. You have to source the courses, expand your productivity and knowledge then find out what you need. Going back to the PDP this will keep you on course and you can mark your achievements along the way. I will now point you in the direction of an online platform which can give you the skills and knowledge for a fraction of the price of the other courses.

Udemy- an online company that lets professionals in their fields upload courses and you can subscribe and pay for their knowledge, do tests and get a certificate at the end. There are IT courses on there that cover the fundamentals of the exams which you can then go and take. These courses will enhance your knowledge about subjects that are useful in your day to day working life and open your eyes to various elements that were out of reach from you. These include Business Continuity ISO22301, ISO 27001 risk management, you know all these courses you would have thought were out of reach are now in your grasp.

Example of other courses cover business skills, risk management, IT security, Ethical hacking, Comptia security + and many more. You have to remember though this website is like paying for the texts books and NOT the exam fees. I think you can slap the cost on to your mobile phone bill but be careful on that route.

The reason why it is heavy on the IT side is because our industry is heading to a converging moment where we will need to learn these skills as manned security and you will need to keep up to progress.

Disclaimer bit: I have used Udemy in the past but there maybe other online course providers who do similar programs so do your research.

My bit of advice is, do not quit on your progression and learning is a life long commitment. Read everything you can from LinkedIn articles and read professional publications, join an institute and find a mentor that way. Build your own future and lead your own destiny. You are only as good as you believe you are and through the darkest days the light is just around the corner.

NOW GO AND MAKE IT HAPPEN!

#learningisearning #beyourownsuccess #planyourcareer