Real-world tasks, automated insights, and scalable assessments transformed how Turkey’s largest SOC identifies top talent
About the Organization
Türk Telekom, Turkey’s leading telecommunications provider, not only delivers broadband, mobile, and digital services to millions—but also operates one of the country’s largest and most advanced Security Operations Centers (SOCs).
As cyber threats continued to evolve in complexity and volume, so did the organization’s need for skilled cybersecurity professionals. However, meeting this growing demand presented a new set of challenges—particularly in the technical recruitment process.
The Challenge: High Volume, Low Visibility
Hiring for cybersecurity roles requires more than scanning resumes. You need to know:
- Can this person solve real problems?
- Do they understand tools, protocols, and threat detection techniques?
- Can they operate under pressure in real-world scenarios?
Unfortunately, Türk Telekom was facing a series of limitations in this space:
Key Challenges
- Too Many Applicants: The growing number of candidates made it difficult to identify top talent without significant manual effort.
- Lack of Standardization: Inconsistent evaluation formats led to unreliable comparisons between candidates.
- Time-Intensive Processes: Manual screening and interviews consumed excessive time and resources.
- Low Transparency: Without session recordings or measurable data, it was difficult to ensure fairness and traceability.
The result? Bottlenecks in recruitment, potential loss of high-potential talent, and unnecessary workload on HR and technical teams.
The Solution: A Hands-On, Automated Assessment Platform
To address these pain points, Türk Telekom partnered with CyberExam to implement a streamlined and scalable technical assessment process—built for the realities of cybersecurity hiring.
What CyberExam Delivered
- Cloud-Based Lab Environment: Candidates were assessed via browser-based, sandboxed environments. No installation, no setup—just real problem solving.
- 52 Questions Across 4 Tasks: Each task was designed to reflect real-world responsibilities of SOC analysts, including log analysis, detection techniques, and threat response.
- Recorded Sessions: Every evaluation session was captured to ensure fairness, reviewability, and auditability.
- Automated Reports: Performance analytics provided a complete view of each candidate’s strengths and areas for improvement—without needing manual scoring.
Key Benefits
Accurate Talent Identification
Real skills. Real assessment.
Hiring the right cybersecurity professional requires more than just theoretical knowledge—it demands problem-solving ability, analytical thinking, and the capacity to perform under pressure. With CyberExam’s scenario-based assessment model, candidates were placed in simulated cybersecurity incidents where they had to respond as if they were in a real-world environment.
Unlike traditional interviews or written tests, this hands-on approach revealed not just what candidates knew, but what they could actually do. It clearly distinguished candidates with strong theoretical knowledge but limited practical ability from those who could truly perform in live SOC conditions.
Efficiency & Time-Saving
Faster, smarter hiring decisions.
Manually evaluating hundreds of applications is time-consuming, exhausting, and prone to human error. CyberExam fully digitized and automated the assessment process, dramatically reducing the workload for Türk Telekom’s HR and technical evaluation teams.
Thanks to the platform’s automated scoring engine, each candidate’s performance was analyzed and reported instantly. This allowed technical teams to focus only on top-performing candidates—cutting hiring timelines from weeks to just days.
The result:
- Less time spent,
- More actionable insights,
- Better hiring outcomes.
Transparent & Fair Process
An objective, traceable, and consistent evaluation model.
In cybersecurity hiring, fairness and consistency are essential. CyberExam ensured transparency by recording all assessment sessions, enabling full visibility for review, auditing, and feedback.
These session recordings provided accountability and clarity during appeals or final decisions. They also helped maintain consistency between evaluators, especially when comparing candidates for similar roles.
With CyberExam, Türk Telekom didn’t just strengthen the technical side of hiring—it raised the ethical and procedural bar as well.
Data-Driven Decision Making
Decisions based on data, not intuition.
CyberExam’s detailed performance reports gave Türk Telekom’s technical teams a comprehensive view of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses—delivered through visual analytics, success rates, and task-by-task breakdowns.
These insights went far beyond a simple “pass or fail.” They enabled the team to answer deeper strategic questions such as:
- What technical areas are most challenging for candidates?
- Which candidate best fits which role?
- What is the overall skill level of our applicant pool?
This data-first approach made hiring decisions more consistent, confident, and aligned with organizational needs.
Results at a Glance
| Metric | Outcome |
| Total Duration | 5+ Hours Per Candidate |
| Tasks | 4 Hands-On Scenarios |
| Total Questions | 52 Practical Questions |
| Environment | 100% Cloud-Based |
| Reporting & Analytics | Fully Automated |
The Impact
The collaboration empowered Türk Telekom to:
- Hire with confidence based on real, measurable skills
- Reduce overhead in the technical hiring process
- Ensure fairness, transparency, and auditability across all candidates
- Make faster, better, and more strategic hiring decisions
Ultimately, CyberExam didn’t just simplify the process—it elevated the standard of what technical hiring could look like.
Final Thoughts
In cybersecurity, what matters most isn’t what a candidate claims they can do—it’s what they can prove under pressure.
With CyberExam, Türk Telekom redefined its approach to technical hiring by placing practical skill at the center of recruitment. As cyber threats grow more sophisticated, so too must our methods for identifying the defenders of tomorrow.
Want to build a more effective cybersecurity recruitment pipeline?
Let’s talk: cyberexam.io