Welcome to this episode of the Security Clearance Careers Podcast, ClearedCast. Your source for security clearance, intelligence community, espionage, national security, and defense contracting updates, in our exclusive interviews with intelligence community and government leaders.
We have a really exciting event coming up in just a couple of weeks. ClearanceJobs Connect brings together the leading recruiters and security clearance professionals in the national security space for a jam packed day of networking, learning, and connecting with other professionals working to fill the jobs that safeguard our nation.
In cleared recruiting, it really is sort of a balance of where the security clearance process allows you to have candidates to fill your billets. So this is really the only networking event, outside of job fairs, where recruiters are actually networking with recruiters and other professionals in the security clearance space. So I’m really excited and today we’re going to tell you a little bit more about what you can expect from the day.
Katie Keller: So Jill, thanks for joining me for the podcast. How are things going?
Jill Hamilton: Things are going well. Thanks for asking me to be a part of this podcast to talk about our event we got coming up. Always looking forward to this. What? This is our third year, right?
Katie Keller: Yeah. So when we started our first year, we just had the one ballroom. We had a really great lineup of speakers, but it’s grown so much to the third year, so we just keep on outdoing ourselves.
Last year, we had the security clearance and recruitment breakouts, so we’re going to continue with that tradition. But we’re also going to add a clearance jobs user training session. That was some of the feedback that we received. Attendees were really interested in learning a little bit more on how to harness the power of clearance jobs. So we’re going to have experts there to tell you a little bit more about how you can use our platform to reach more candidates, tips and tricks, best practices.
And so, with the keynote that we have, I’m really looking forward to hearing from Tracy Walder, who went from sorority to CIA, CIA to FBI, FBI to educator. She has a book, she’s a writer. And so I’m really looking forward to that keynote on career pathing in the intelligence community. So what are you looking forward to, Jill?
Jill Hamilton: It’s all a really, really great lineup. I have a special spot in my heart for the security clearance segment in that afternoon. Perry Russell-Hunter is just a delight. And it’s going to be fun for me too to see some, like Christopher Burgess is one of our writers, and so he writes for our site. He’s also one of the speakers speaking on insider threat. So that’s super interesting to see that side of the house with the security clearance track. Obviously, the recruiter side, the recruitment is super important while we’re there, but it’s great that we have both tracks that both are integrated together.
But I have to say the keynote, as well as Sue Gordon at the end for me, it’s just interesting. I have the book for Tracy Walder and it’s always fun to read a book where large chunks are redacted. Because she’s telling the story from her time there, and it’s just super interesting. And then to see Sue Gordon at the end.
Her take on national security and the security clearance process and just bringing that together with why we need security clearance reforms and how that’s going to impact hiring retention, and just the vision that she’d like to see for the national security community at large, I think is really, really inspiring and just also down to earth. And she’s just a great approach to everything.
So I am looking forward especially to those two, as well as the security clearance track. It’s all going to be great. It’s so hard to pick. Why’d you make me do that?
Katie Keller: Yeah, we’ve been putting in work putting together this lineup. So after that keynote with Tracy Walder, we’ll have Amy Butchko, who was with us at the first Clearance Jobs Connect. She is going to be doing a fireside chat on how to implement innovative hiring strategies within the intelligence community. She’ll be joined by Cynthia Snyder, the Assistant Deputy Director of Human Capital for ODNI. So that’s going to be really exciting.
We also decided to add in a few more breaks, just so folks can really have that time to network with other attendees. We’ll also hear from our founder and president, Evan Lesser, which I’m always looking forward to. And then our shining star, Tommy Weinert, top five tips to recruiting. He has a lot of experience. He manages and owns his own boutique staffing agency. So definitely has a lot of insights that I think attendees are going to walk away with. Plus is, I’m going to say an expert user on Clearancejobs.com. And I feel like knowing how to navigate our site and really putting in the work. I think sometimes recruiters, they set up searches or the tagging candidates, but it really is, there’s a method or a science, a special formula. So I’m really looking forward to hearing from him as well.
Jill Hamilton: I think it’s really great too. One of the things you’ll see is both industry and government all throughout the event, which is just, you need both in this space. It’s not one or the other, so I think it’s really helpful to see the two working together. When you talk about innovative IC hiring trends, that you have somebody from ODNI, plus somebody from industry, that’s pretty big to be talking side by side on that topic.
Katie Keller: Oh, for sure. And I feel like it’s really a good venue for government to be there and industry recruiters to be able to voice some of their concerns within the hiring process in this industry.
Let’s talk about specifics with the breakout sessions. So the afternoon is going to consist of our breakout rooms. So the security clearance track is going to focus on trusted workforce, security clearance legal updates. So what are you really looking forward to in that breakout, Jill?
Jill Hamilton: They’re all going to be really helpful. The whole security clearance process has gone through some major overhauls lately, and that can be really confusing, the terminology. And it’s also, even the legal update session, what’s helpful in that is it can be easy, I think, as a recruiter to think, “Oh, that candidate, we might not be able to get them to have a security clearance or they might have issues.” But to understand what the federal government is looking for in the process, and the rhyme and the reason behind everything, just makes them smarter in that whole recruiting process.
I would say it’s great session for recruiters to go to. It’s also great for FSOs or anybody who works for both recruiting and for facility security offices, there should be a lot of communication and back and forth between those offices. And so, it can be really helpful, I think, for just understanding everything about that and just how integral everything… Everything has to be integrated working together.
Katie Keller: Well, and I know that especially for the small or mid-size contractors that use our site, a lot of them are wearing multiple hats. So sometimes we do have FSOs that are supporting the recruitment function at the particular contractor they work for. So yeah, all of this is meshing. It’s where all of it meets.
So with that legal update, Perry Russell-Hunter is the Director of the Defense Office of Hearings and Appeals. So giving that update on the appeals process, recruiters are going to be able to position themselves as maybe not an expert in the security clearance process or denials or revocations or what have you, but it is more knowledge, and I think that’s the whole point of Connect.
Jill Hamilton: It’s hard because the recruitment track is so stacked as well. I would for sure struggle to pick because, I would say if you’re doing any proposal recruiting, which if you’re a defense contractor who is not… That you don’t want to miss that and then go to his, but at the same time, they’re both so great. Perry is a delight to listen to. Everything, he just has such deep knowledge of all these different cases. And it’s super interesting to see also how the whole process has grown over the years. Maybe what was an issue a decade ago is definitely not today in all cases. So the whole recruitment side is super stacked as well.
Katie Keller: Yeah. Well, I’m really excited. We’re going to have a panel on OFCCP compliance, which recruiters listening to this I’m sure are aware of what that is. But also pay transparency, which states are starting to pass these pay transparency laws. So whether your headquarter office is in one of those states, or if you do work in one of those states, maybe you don’t reside there, it’s really important to understand the pay transparency laws.
And our panel is actually going to talk a little bit about how implementing some of those practices, even prior to your state passing some of those, can really avoid time-wasting conversations in the recruitment process. So I’m really looking forward to that. You referenced the proposal recruiting. That’s going to be moderated by our own Phoebe Wells. And we’re going to talk about maybe how splicing and dicing your recruiters, having a team that’s focusing on proposal recruiting and then having a team that’s focused on fully funded efforts, how can that do well for yourself as a contractor in getting these billets filled? So that’s going to be a great one as well.
Well, and then we’re going to have Eric Eversole, who spoke last year, from Hiring Our Heroes. He’s going to be bringing along Crystal Cochrane, so that’s going to be a really great presentation as well. And then we’re going to close out the recruitment track with cybersecurity hiring, which many of our contractors recruiters, that are joining today, most likely have cyber positions that they’re filling, so that’s going to be great as well. And then, like you said, ending the day with Sue Gordon. I’m total fan. I’m going to have to contain myself.
Jill Hamilton: Yeah. For sure. Yeah, no, I like how we have the focus on veteran hiring and cybersecurity hiring. Both are hot topics that we write about on our site all the time. We get a lot of interest in them, those two topics. And so, I think that’s such an important thing to have on the schedule just to segment each one of those out. Because they do present some of their own… With cybersecurity hiring, I think some of its own unique challenges between, especially with the federal government moving towards more skill-based hiring and whether or not that’s trickled down to actually be written onto contracts. So it’s so hard to actually get the talent that you need in order to meet the requirements that you need for the contracts themselves. So I think that’s a really helpful segment to have there in the day to focus on that.
Katie Keller: The third track we referenced, the clearance jobs user training session, we’re going to talk about how to build a better clearance jobs profile, how to really maximize your workflows. I haven’t used the Clearance Jobs site since I was a recruiter in 2019. And so, some of these tools we’ve put on the site really do save time and take care of the monotonous tasks of, “Okay, if this candidate creates a profile, I want to connect with them and send them a message right away.” Well, instead of you manually doing that, a workflow can do it for you. So we’re going to talk about that.
We’re going to talk about status updates and candidate engagement. We just added the comment function on our site. So that’s really going to boost engagement and really allow for candidates to be seen, but also for recruiters to see those candidates as well. So that is going to be a great session.
You’re right, Jill. People are going to have a little bit of trouble trying to find where they want to be, which room they want to be in. But it’s going to be a lot of good information sharing. I’m so pumped about it.
So any other sort of takeaways from maybe if recruiters are listening and they thought about going last year, but they didn’t make it, why do they have to go this year? Or FSOs for that matter?
Jill Hamilton: No, I just think it’s such a great day to connect with others in the industry and to learn and to grow, to get updates on things that are happening with the federal government, but that it’s going to affect you as a recruiter. So I think, at a minimum, even just having a 30 minutes to pop in and get some questions answered with Clearance Jobs staff on how to use the site even better. That in and of itself, you don’t really… You take it all you can from the day. And even if you just went to the Ask Me Anything towards the end, which is huge, just to have 30 minutes to go ask somebody anything, or you can just be jotting down your questions.
Of course, you can always reach out to us at any point, and we are always all about helping our customers so they can get to their candidates. But to have that chance to sit in the room there and ask a couple questions is great. In addition to all the other features from both the main part of the agenda, as well as the different tracks, it’s just going to be a day packed with networking with others and learning different tips and tricks and walking away better prepared for the rest of the year.
Katie Keller: Absolutely. Well, Clearance Jobs Connect is the only event focused on security cleared recruiting, and features government speakers from DOHA and DCSA. You’ll learn the latest security clearance policies, the most innovative cleared recruiting ideas. And like you said, it’s just an opportunity to network with fellow secret squirrel recruiters.
You can also get professional development credits to help you toward recertification. We believe in professional development, so that’s why we’re offering this as those seven PDCs toward your recertification.
ClearanceJobs Connect, you can get tickets on our website. We only have a few left, at about.clearancejobs.com. It’s going to be on October 19th from 8:00 to 5:30. We have that happy hour at the end, which is my favorite part. And so, I did want to call out our premier sponsor, Peraton. We have a couple of other partners that are supporting this event, STEM Solutions, Leidos, and your company should be at Clearance Jobs Connect, too.
