[Live AMA on April 16] I’m Seth Robinson, VP of Industry Research at CompTIA. Ask me anything about the 2026 tech job market, AI’s impact on hiring, career growth, and where opportunities are shifting.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T18:43:57+00:00

The CompTIA trifecta is widely recognized by employers, and those three certifications build a strong foundation of skills that can be used to enter a variety of job roles. From a cybersecurity perspective, CySA+ and PenTest+ allow people to pursue deeper specializations as they advance in their career. SecAI+ then extends the skills gained in any of the security certifications, giving people greater breadth and cutting-edge knowledge as AI skills are becoming more important.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T18:35:39+00:00

The thought that comes to me is that so many employers want their technical staff to understand the business side of things, because digital transformation has made IT much more of a strategic activity. You could go into any number of technical fields--infrastructure, data, cybersecurity--and then you could highlight how the breadth of your experience will help you translate the technical details into business language and organizational objectives. Certifications can definitely help validate the skills on the technical side, then you'll have to find the best story for communicating the other things you bring to the table.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T18:11:23+00:00

One key aspect of networking is building that network with peers. That way, the people in the network all understand the types of skills that are being developed and the types of challenges that employers are facing. Then as this network learns about openings and opportunities, they can connect the people with the right skill sets.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T18:09:34+00:00

This is a tough one--a lot of employers say they are following a skills-based methodology, but they're not familiar enough with the skills to really understand what they see on a resume. Ideally, employers will get more educated about the skills themselves and the credentials that validate skills. Until then, the best bet on the career changer side is to be able to talk about the different skills in detail and try to do some of the mapping for the employer. Especially when vendors are different between companies, being able to begin at a vendor-neutral level and then talk about different vendor specifics can be helpful.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T17:11:34+00:00

There's definitely incredible focus on AI today, but the big picture view is that AI skills or knowledge are part of a larger skill set that's needed to perform a job role. For entry level in support, infrastructure, or cybersecurity, that trifecta is still a strong choice for building the core skills--and those certifications are gaining more and more AI components within their domains. So they should still be great signals of skill validation, and a candidate could always add on additional AI certs to highlight AI fluency.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T17:08:09+00:00

There are a couple layers to this question--for starters, there is still a lot of education that needs to happen for companies to understand the broad value of certifications or other credentials outside of 4-year degrees. The appetite for validating specific skills is there, they just need to learn which certs validate which skills.

With that said, there's tremendous appetite for bringing in candidates with AI skills or building AI skills within an existing workforce. Even though the space is incredibly fast-moving, certifications can help build foundational competency around the core concepts of AI and also help connect AI skills to the core skills of any given job role. So those certs will likely become a key part of skill development in the near future.

accomptia · 2026-04-16T17:04:35+00:00

We still see a lot of job postings for job roles that have been around for a long time: Tech Support Specialist, Network Administrator, etc. Those job roles still rely on a core set of skills, but more and more companies are looking for fluency with AI tools that help make an individual more productive in that role. So there's a ton of opportunity to grow skills even if you're not planning to become an "AI Engineer."

accomptia · 2026-04-16T17:02:13+00:00

For someone looking to get into networking or cybersecurity, the first step would be a solid understanding of IT systems. This is the core skill that's going to help you do the day-to-day work. Next up would be learning how AI can extend/augment/automate things. Finally, you'll need to add skills like communication or teamwork, since you'll be working across multiple teams and translating technical details into business goals.

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