Ayana Dunlap changed careers and increased her earning potential over the course of a summer — and she did it without a bachelor's degree, or spending a dime.

In June 2020, after hotels and restaurants shut down at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Dunlap was laid off from her job as a senior sales manager at the Hilton Garden Inn Tysons Corner in Virginia.

Suddenly, the hospitality career Dunlap had dreamed of having since she was a teenager seemed "impossible" to return to.

"I spent years working in the same industry and building up my career, only for the pandemic to put it on an indefinite hold," Dunlap, 30, recalls.

Dunlap says she was worried her job opportunities would be limited without a bachelor's degree. She has an associate's degree in business administration and had exclusively worked in hospitality up to that point.

A few weeks after Dunlap was laid off, one of her friends told her about a free online course that she had seen advertised on Google: a 15-week IT support course from Per Scholas, a national tech training non-profit headquartered in New York.

As part of the program, Dunlap received three certifications: A Google IT support certificate, CompTIA Security+ certification and CompTIA Network+ certification. Another benefit: Per Scholas partners with employers across the U.S. to recruit and recommend candidates from their boot camps for open tech roles.

Dunlap started the program in August and graduated in November with an offer for a hybrid job as a tier 2 technical support engineer at designDATA, an IT services and consulting firm headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland.

She's now been working in tech since 2020. Currently, she's the vice president of operations and information technology at the Bank Policy Institute, a public policy, research and advocacy group that represents U.S. banks in Washington, D.C.

Dunlap earns about $125,000 a year in her role, according to financial documents reviewed by CNBC Make It — a salary that she says would have been "unimaginable" at this point in her career, had she stayed in hospitality.

The most important skill that helped Dunlap land a six-figure tech job without a bachelor's degree, she says, is cybersecurity.

Companies have an 'incredible need' for cybersecurity skills

With more companies moving online, cyberattacks are on the rise. The FBI has seen a 300% increase in reported cybercrimes since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

As the threat of cyberattacks grows, so does the demand for cybersecurity experts. 

In fact, the Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that the number of cybersecurity jobs will grow 32% in the next decade — much faster than the average for occupations overall.

Dunlap says she's seen this demand first-hand anytime she's searched for a new tech job. "Almost all of the descriptions mention cybersecurity skills as a requirement or bonus," she notes. "Hiring managers have told me how impressed they are that I have the Comp TIA Security+ certification." 

The Comp TIA Security + certification, which Dunlap received as part of the Per Scholas program, validates that someone has the baseline skills needed to pursue an IT security career, including risk management and threat response.

The cost to obtain the Comp TIA Security + certification can range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars, according to Comp TIA's website.

Other organizations and colleges, including Google, Amazon Web Services, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, offer comparable cybersecurity certificates at a lower cost. There are also free training programs, like the Per Scholas one that Dunlap received her certification from.

Cybersecurity professionals are needed across all industries, but there's a particularly urgent need in financial services, health care and government, Lisa Gevelber, Google's chief marketing officer for the Americas, told CNBC Make It in November 2023. 

"Employers are really struggling to find people who are comfortable working in cybersecurity, but there's this incredible need and demand for people with these skills," she added — and they're willing to pay six figures to land this talent.

The median salary for cybersecurity analysts is $112,000, while the median salary for cybersecurity managers is $164,070, according to BLS data.

"If you have to choose one skill to learn, to break into tech, you can't go wrong with a cybersecurity certification," says Dunlap. "Cybersecurity is everywhere, it can transfer to so many different industries. It's opened the most doors for me, and made the biggest difference in my career." 

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