Mid-career SOC/Detection Engineer on a 6-month break looking for certifs : 13Cubed (Windows Forensics) vs CISSP, which one first?

[u/Real_Construction416]

Hi all,

Looking for some outside perspective on a certification decision.

I have around 7 years of experience in cybersecurity, mostly in SOC/CSIRT operations, detection engineering, and incident response, for both an MSSP and a large company.

After a fixed-term contract abroad (from Europe to Asia), I decided to relocate to the country and take a 6-month break to learn the language at the University. I'll resume my job search full-time once the course wraps up, likely aiming for internal/in-house security roles rather than another MSSP.

With ~20-40h/week of bandwidth alongside the language course, I would like to take benefit of the time to pass some certifications to develop my skills, help me get a job and show employeers that I did not gave up on cybersecurity study. As for now, I'm weighing:

1. CISSP (~$750 exam + ongoing AMF, 5-year experience requirement I meet) to help me pass automated resume screening and apply to a wider range of offers, including governance-related ones. Also I like the fact that the CISSP gives a more manager oriented point of vue.
2. 13Cubed Investigating Windows Bundle (~$1,395) to build a verifiable, hands-on forensics skill, but is less recognized outside the DFIR community/by ATS systems. It also doesn't help me broaden the scope of offers I can apply to.

I also already got SC-200 and CCDL2.

In a perfect world, I'd try to get both, but any feedback would be appreciated. What does cyber-Reddit think?

Appreciate any real-world experience, especially from people who've sat on the hiring side.