Dive Brief:
- Skills-based talent practices, such as mentorship programs, personalized learning and skills-informed workplace planning, can lead to more than $125,000 in ROI per cybersecurity employee hired, according to a March 12 report from Women in CyberSecurity and FourOne Insights, a research and advisory firm.
- Mentorship and personalized learning can particularly benefit employers by increasing retention up to 18%, per the research — of note considering high demand for cybersecurity professionals.
- Despite these benefits, “no top-performing practice is used by more than 55% of organizations,” WiCyS said in a press release, meaning employers have significant opportunity for talent investment.
Dive Insight:
The research highlights what other studies focused in industries beyond cybersecurity have also said: L&D is key to both retention and fixing skill gaps.
"Cybersecurity leaders often talk about talent challenges in abstract terms," Will Markow, research director at FourOne Insights, said in a statement. "This research puts real numbers behind what works. Skills-based practices are not just better for workers. They materially reduce hiring friction, improve retention, and deliver clear financial returns for organizations operating in an increasingly constrained labor market."
Employees consistently say in surveys that they would remain longer at companies that invest in their training. Workers surveyed by Express Employment Professionals also said they believe employers are passing over competent candidates out of an unwillingness to train them. However, employees hired based on promise tend to perform better than those hired for skills alone, Gartner survey results from March 2025 showed.
Another report from The Conference Board and OneTen noted that many employers also rely too heavily on traditional credentials over skills — though this requires any skills-first hiring programs to be a companywide project rather than an HR one, researchers said.
Any many companies may err by hiring based on “vibes” and not on skills, an April 2025 report from Textio indicated. Rather than hire workers with the best-fitting skills or experience, many organizations end up hiring candidates they deem “most likable.”
