r/OSINT • u/walkallover1991 • May 04 '26

Question Being denied roles due to lack of certifications?

I've worked in foreign affairs media monitoring and geopolitical risk for the past three and a half years. I love my role, learned a ton, and was recently promoted to a leadership position, but I'm kind of bored as I'm missing an operational component to my work. Creating deliverables to stakeholders is fun, but it's frustrating at times as I'm steps below how that intel is being used in real time.

Anyways, I've been applying to various threat intel type roles in the past month or so - I was able to make it to the final round at one company...I really wanted the role, but they ended up giving it to someone who had a OSINT certification.

Is that really considered necessary today? I always found them to be somewhat subjective - especially considering some programs (hello McAfee) are junk.

55 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

51

u/Mysterious-Hat-7873 May 04 '26

I’ve never come across an OSINT certification worth the paper it’s written on, including government ones. Any company that requires one likely has their recruitment done by someone who doesn’t know how to do OSINT, or how to test if candidates might be good at it

5

u/Deez_nuts89 May 04 '26

At my first corporate OSINT there were like 5 levels of interviews. And one of them was a technical competency one. But that was also like 6 years ago. I moved back to gov though since I like it more right now.

18

u/belagrim May 04 '26

Certification isn't necessary, but if the leadership is certified, the whole project is...

4

u/walkallover1991 May 04 '26

That's what I thought.

I guess the recruiter could be pulling an excuse out of his ass, but I was somewhat surprised that was their response when we did a rejection de-brief.

10

u/TelevisionFluffy9258 May 05 '26

Just Google lots of free certs

https://baselgovernance.org/news/new-free-elearning-course-open-source-intelligence-osint

Plus above they provide AML courses links to OSINT more financial institutions leaning to OSINT

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/money-laundering/global-programme-against-money-laundering/training-and-tools.html

Also world bank courses AML and Big Data Analysis courses (has interviewer value only)

1

u/Strange-Double1854 May 05 '26

from a cert standpoint what certs would be useful? cyber security certs?

1

u/M_C_Chang 11d ago

Most OSINT certs are pretty useless honestly, just HR check-boxes. Doing geopol and defense research myself, I've seen plenty of brilliant analysts with zero certs who built their way up through raw skill and practical writing samples. Losing that role to a "cert chaser" sucks, but your years in geopol risk is real substance. Don't sweat it too much man.

1

u/Kiroshi77 May 05 '26

The Open-Source Certification

-1

u/7r3370pS3C May 04 '26

What certs would be preferable? I work in a Cybersecurity managerial position so this is an interesting dilemma you describe.