Less Interest in Certifications

Learning new skills is an important path for individuals in 2020. Earning certifications to prove those new skills to potential employers is much less important, judging from the courses users are taking at e-learning platforms like Cybrary.

"Our use has shifted to 80% preparing the career path now and 20% certifications," says Cybrary's Corey. "Hiring managers have been consistently telling us that they tend to not take the certifications very seriously, and they want to look for skills," Corey says. And in a time of economic uncertainty, individual students also seem much more interested in learning new skills than in learning the very specific knowledge required to pass certification exams.

However, interest in certification courses hasn't completely gone away. "Cybersecurity as an industry is transitioning to a skills-based world as opposed to, in my opinion, a certification based world," he says. The emphasis going forward, he believes, will be on the skills a candidate can prove rather than a certification the candidate can show.

(Image: dizain VIA Adobe Stock)