A career of choice


Not chance


qualification to acquire a particular job position- apart from at entry level to get an SIA licence.


Certainly, organisations have their own standards and requirements when hiring, but as an industry, there is no agreed upon training/qualification structure. When I started


looking at a course to do a few years back, I didn’t know where to start; even when I finished a Level 6 diploma in Security Management, I wasn’t quite sure what to do with it, and even worse, I didn’t know who to ask.


Organisations like the Security Institute, IFPO, ASIS & the BSIA are doing amazing work to push professional development, but do we perhaps have to take it one step further and formally link qualifications to levels?


A maze of opportunities


Many organisations and individuals – both professionals and academics – have attempted, and some succeeded, to map out pathways. Organisations have also individually created paths up, down and around their own company, but there is little consistency across the sector and certainly no agreed upon framework that we can use to start promoting the industry as a whole.


that involves prolonged training and a formal qualification.


Although we have a number of certified qualifications within the industry, there is no agreed upon, set requirement that one must achieve a particular minimum level of


A First-Class Politics grad may have absolutely no interest in a career pathway from frontline SIA licence holder to Security Manager/Director, but they may well be interested in working as part of an intelligence team protecting business assets on the West Coast of Africa from piracy and terrorist attack. Chances are that during their careers advice session, security wasn’t high up on the ‘jobs you should consider’ list.


Teachers, career advisors, employability agencies and every other type of individual or organisation that influences the career choices


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people make, do not have a magic ball – they need to be informed of and have access to clearly defined career routes in order to be able to share that knowledge.


What we need is a set of clearly defined pathways, with required skills, knowledge, qualifications and experience attached to each role and level. This information must then be formulated into an easy to use, easy to search,easy to navigate tool. We live in the digital age – we basically need a Wikipedia for careers in the security industry. We need individuals to not only visualise the type of role they would be interested in pursuing, but easily establish how they can get there.


A tool like this could be utilised in classrooms, universities, job fairs – even internally within organisations to help HR teams hire in the correct skill sets and build development plans for their current teams.


In light of the current economic situation, high levels of unemployment and reports of skills shortages across both the physical and cyber industries, our sector has a unique opportunity to attract a whole new diverse pool of talent.


An opportunity that we should not miss out on


Frontline SIA operatives would no longer have to view their current role as just a job, but rather as the first step in their career, building valuable skills and experience required for their next step up. When people have something to aim for, their energy, motivation and desire to perform or even outperform significantly increase.


So it isn’t that we need to create career pathways, it’s that we need to clearly define them, present them in a user-friendly format and shout from the rooftops that as an industry we are open and have a myriad of career opportunities that require individuals from every profession, walk of life and background to help our industry succeed in becoming a career of choice, not chance.


Houdah Al-Hakim Founder & CEO Quick Click Security


www.quickclicksecurity.com


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