Author: Stephen Walker and James Foushée
ISBN No: 9780 128001042
Review date: 11/12/2025
No of pages: 224
Publisher: Elsevier
Publisher URL:
http://store.elsevier.com/product.jsp?isbn=9780128001042&pagename=search
Year of publication: 22/08/2014
Brief:
Security Careers, third Edition: Skills, Compensation, and Career Paths, by Stephen Walker and James Foushée. Published 2014 by Elsevier
price
£60.99
A review of security industry careers is another fruit of a partnership between the publisher Elsevier and the Security Executive Council (SEC), a US-based research and advisory services firm for risk mitigation.
If you go in for a security career, you are up against a lack of, or splinters of, information. While the industry is all the time getting its act together about sharing and spreading and demanding best practice, in security management as in many other fields of work it can be hard to know what’s best for your career. What’s right for one might not be right for another. Who’s to say what is the going rate for a job or if it is wise to take a sideways career move, or even a break or what might appear to be a backwards step. That can be true of many management fields besides security, risk and loss prevention.
Hence, though it comes from two American authors, the third edition of a book, Security Careers: Skills, Compensation, and Career Paths is so welcome as a source, whether you are approaching security management as a second career after the military; someone already in corporate security asked for advice or looking to mentor or put something back into the industry; or for corporations looking to hire (who, and where and when?). For without data – which harks back to the book on security metrics praised in the September print issue of Professional Security – how can someone make sensible judgements based on supply and demand of personnel? And how does the ambitious manager know who to benchmark themselves against?
Early on the authors offer a dizzying list of their own – some 65 ‘next generation leadership’ qualities from presentation and communication skills to both the security (physical and IT) and management side (understanding of corporate culture) of security management. Just knowing your stuff on security it seems is not enough; you have to be something of an all-rounder, besides an expert in some things. The chapter on ‘managing compensation – factors that influence compensation decisions’ might not interesting rather than useful to the UK reader compared with the American, solely because it talks about American affairs. However the American security head as much as the UK one has to come up with a pay scheme and budget, and here is the place to learn about how to go about it. Likewise with the chapter on job description, whether for a security executive or someone of a lower level, or a specialism such as trainer or compliance officer. The book does offer more than 40 graphs to give some numbers and an idea of how pay is going up or down in the States for various security job descriptions.
Interestingly the ‘career resources’ pages while largely about North American associations does have some UK bodies, such as the Fraud Women’s Network, IPSA and indeed Professional Security magazine. As this book is rather pricey it may be a specialised one – for those in the field of security recruitment – for a UK audience.
Security Careers, third edition: Skills, Compensation, and Career Paths, by Stephen Walker and James Foushée. Published 2014 by Elsevier. ISBN 9780 128001042 Pages: 224. Visit www.elsevier.com.
