How to assess cybersecurity skills during the hiring process

Resumes and certifications will only take you so far when you're making a cybersecurity hire. They confirm someone has done the work to get credentialed. But how can you tell how a candidate performs when the problem is unfamiliar or the pressure is on?

The only reliable way to find out is to test for it. A practical cyber skills assessment gives you objective evidence of how a candidate thinks and works before you make an offer.

Resumes and certifications are one signal among many

What credentials can and can't tell you

Certifications carry real weight. According to the 2026 ISC2 Enterprise Security Training Trends report, 87% of security leaders say they play an important role in professional development. But only 34% use certification requirements as a primary driver of skills needs. Most are looking elsewhere for a fuller picture.

A resume gives you some of what you need:

• Where someone has worked and for how long
• Which tools and platforms they've been exposed to
• Whether they've pursued certifications or formal credentials

It won't tell you how they perform under pressure, how they reason through an unfamiliar problem, or whether they can do the specific work your team needs done.

The bit you should know: Credentials tell you where someone has been. Your assessment tells you what they can do.

Skills-based challenges reveal what interviews miss

The difference between explaining and doing

A technical interview tells you how someone explains a concept. A hands-on challenge shows you whether they can work through one they haven't seen before.

Kevin Woods, VP of Cybersecurity at GuidePoint Security, shared in our Cyber Talent Series podcast that he gives candidates his technical interview questions in advance. He wants to see who shows up ready to have an intelligent conversation. When a candidate gets the questions beforehand and still can't engage with them, that's a signal.

What a live assessment reveals

Hands-on challenges in live environments show you things a resume never could:

• How a candidate approaches a problem they haven't seen before
• Where they get stuck and how they work through it
• Whether they understood what they did, and whether they could do it again

That's particularly relevant now. A completed task in isolation doesn't tell you much in a hiring environment where AI tools can do a lot of the work.

The bit you should know: Performance data from a live assessment gives you something a resume and interview can't provide: evidence of what a candidate can do.

Build your hiring criteria from your current team

The case for a skills index

When executives are asked how they quantify capabilities in their teams, the honest answer is usually that they don't. It's hard. Without that data, hiring stays subjective.

A skills index built from your current team changes that:

1. Your strongest performers become the benchmark
2. Assessment results give incoming candidates something concrete to be measured against
3. Hiring decisions become defensible: grounded in data rather than instinct

Use your existing team as a baseline

If you've been running skills benchmarking with your existing team, you already have a baseline to hire against.

The bit you should know: Hiring gets easier when you have skills data on your current team. Your strongest performers are your benchmark.

Curiosity is a hiring signal too

How leading security teams screen for it

Multiple security leaders on the Cyber Talent Series have made the same point: curiosity is a hiring signal, and your assessment should be designed to reveal it. You can build tool knowledge. You can't easily build someone's instinct to figure things out.

Two approaches worth borrowing:

Rob Fuller, cybersecurity leader and SkillBit advisor: Uses a rubric that weights curiosity and out-of-the-box thinking alongside technical instincts. It's the same eight questions for over two decades, designed to reveal how candidates think rather than what they've memorized. 

Jose Ramos, Head of Offensive Security at Uber: Picks a line from the candidate's resume and pulls the thread. Then strips away a familiar tool and asks them to solve the same problem without it, to see how they think when they can't rely on what they know.

What curiosity looks like in a live assessment

Candidates who are genuinely curious explore further than the minimum required. Asking them to explain their reasoning after a challenge shows you how they think and whether they understood what they just did.

The bit you should know: Curiosity shows up in behavior. 

Still have questions?

Why do live virtual environments matter when assessing cybersecurity candidates?

Candidates solve real problems in real conditions, with detailed data captured on every action. It also limits the usefulness of AI tools, which is relevant when you're trying to evaluate whether a candidate genuinely understands the work.

Can non-technical hiring managers evaluate a cybersecurity skills assessment?

Yes. Detailed performance data from a structured assessment gives non-technical recruiters something concrete to work with, without requiring them to evaluate technical output themselves. Engineers don't need to be pulled in to interpret results.

How does a hands-on cybersecurity assessment fit alongside a traditional interview?

They're measuring different things. The assessment gives you objective performance data. The interview gives you context: how someone communicates, how they think out loud, whether they're a fit for your team. Both have a role.

Put skills at the center of your hiring

Credentials and interviews convey part of the picture. A structured cyber skills assessment gives you the rest: objective evidence of how a candidate performs before you make an offer.

SkillBit's hiring assessments put candidates through hands-on challenges in live environments, with detailed performance data for every hiring manager. Book a demo to see how it works, or get in touch to talk through your hiring needs.

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