TRU Staffing Partners’ Founder and CEO Jared Coseglia welcomed webinar participants to July’s edition of Eye on Privacy with analysis and predictions for what’s ahead in the data privacy job market. Coseglia was joined this month by Michelle Dennedy, the CEO and founder of PrivacyCode, providers of an A.I.-powered privacy and data governance platform.
Coseglia displayed the slide above as a guide to what the interactive webinar would discuss and began the discussion.
Coseglia: TRU is regularly and rigorously tracking all sorts of metrics in the industry. The points noted above are presented as monthly trends to help job seekers and hiring managers know where the industry stands. The metrics presented here are updated from the 2024 Data Privacy Jobs Report and can be downloaded for free from the TRU website.
The slide below comes from that Jobs Report, which was data collected over the course of 2023. It was a report of what was happening at the CPO level in 2023.
Everything presented here is in real-time. And nothing is timelier than Cassandre Coyer’s article in Bloomberg recently titled: Privacy Chiefs Vanish From C-Suites as Data Threats Surge. I’ve given her a few quotes over the years for her work, and I find her work very provocative. This article was about what is happening at the CPO level. Michelle, for those of us who haven’t read it, what was your take on what this article said?
Dennedy: I think we should ignore the clickbait headline: we aren’t going anywhere. Privacy people are necessary to commerce, community and culture. But I think it was very interesting. It talked about a trend we have been seeing, which is title depression for the most senior privacy leaders. This is a terrible trend. It also felt a little bit personal; there was a bit of an anonymous sort of “we’re not seeing enough here of an existing leader.” But there was a very strong focus on one unique company. It was an interesting read. I read it three times because I know the people quoted, and I took it in defense of friend first, industry second, and then I cold-read it a third time and saw there is this big dispersion happening right now in the profession. We will get those top numbers back up again because it is foolish not to. There’s a lot yet to be done across all roles.
Coseglia: 100%. There is a lot of truth to this article, which is why we flash these numbers up on the screen. What we saw in 2023 was essentially the lowest numbers of CPOs since we have been tracking that role. There is significantly less hiring at that level, but let’s be honest, there is a lot less movement at that level as well.
Dennedy: That’s right. Everyone’s on a first-name basis in data privacy. That’s how new the profession is. We’re seeing older workers pushed out, repurposing of roles at a much more junior level, we’re seeing “get away with it” hiring so we’ll do the least effective thing. And we’re seeing a necessary re-skilling that we will discuss later.
Coseglia: I’ve seen this happen in other industries that we represent. Privacy is in its adolescence, if even that. Whereas cybersecurity and eDiscovery are even more consolidated. I think it speaks to these metrics as shown on the far-right side of the slide.
We see CPOs spending 15 to 25% of their time on A.I., it displays the age-old story of the necessity for upskilling. Michelle, do you think CPOs need to evolve or is there a place in this ecosystem for everyone?
Dennedy: I think there is a place for folks who like to do repetitive, constant work – that was not the case in the early days. It is now. If you love filling out forms, there is a place for you. However, you must evolve if you are going to call yourself a chief. You must fight for budget and there are new and different places to get it these days. You must expand your skillset. You can no longer pass things to your outside counsel and wave goodbye. You must understand the architecture and the supply chain that you are governing. So, it’s a good-news-bad-news story. If you still want to be in the lead, want to get one of these high-paying, very coveted jobs, you’re going to have to step it up. And it will be fun when you get there.
Coseglia: I think so too. Staying in your lane is steady and secure, but for those who have ambition and want financial mobility, you won’t get it staying in your lane. You must think about what you want: stability or mobility. We are clearly seeing that mobility requires reinvention. I wanted to pick up on one of the things you said, and it relates to the center statistic on the slide: In 2023, CPOs spent a good portion of time personally recruiting for their own team members. They weren’t given the budget to use third-party agencies or the ability to add headcount where needed in a lot of cases. What are the keys and where are the places CPOs need to go looking for budget? How do they ask for it? Where are they missing the budget opportunities? What’s been your experience having success with budgets, Michelle?
Dennedy: It depends. The ubiquitous answer is: Follow the business. Every person in privacy should be reading the 10K or any other publicly filed report, regardless of whether it covers privacy. Doing so helps you understand what’s going on with the business and how they are making money. I guarantee that if you have employees or customers, privacy is highly relevant. You need to determine who is most empowered by whatever metric they are covering, learn what is most impactful and what can touch the board of directors.
Frightening stories don’t matter to board members – they care about trends. You need to learn what is trending. How will your work impact what’s happening now? How will it decrease the risk of getting sued? Will it dampen the likelihood of your own team churning? For example, if you see sales get a new CRM system, and you are selling a data-bound product, you are going to see the privacy role be a little point in the supply chain everyone needs to be aware of. You’ll find ways to remove risk from many areas and eliminate irregularities. When you come in as a hero within other people’s KPIs, you’re going to be embraced with budgetary opportunities.
Coseglia: That’s incredibly wise: “you’ve got to follow the business, not just the regulations.” I think many job seekers are chasing the regulations. They are trying to stay abreast of everything on a global level and they feel that the knowledge they have can be broadly applied to any organization. It’s not just a matter of getting skills and certifications, it’s a matter of being able to translate that into the business impact, well above and beyond compliance requirements, and having a dialog with stakeholders wherever possible. Those are the types of people that firms are investing in. We hear this from a lot of people trying to break into the business: How do I stand out? How do I separate myself from other candidates? Michelle has made the point of how you can stand out and immediately separate yourself from others.
Coming up next: Part two of the July episode of Eye on Privacy covers more exciting trends, predictions from Jared, and Michelle answers participants’ questions and tells listeners how to break into the data privacy industry. To see the complete roster of data privacy jobs currently open, click here.
