The CIA steps up its recruiting game with a concerted effort to hiring the next generation of employees. With a tagline like “A career like no other” the CIA makes its differentiating angle clear. The CIA hopes that an upgraded recruiting website will help the agency meet hiring goals. The site focuses on helping users search for student programs and open positions, as well as educating the next generation of employees on the agency’s hiring processes and offerings. Director Gina Haspel has put numerous efforts in effect over the past two years in order to continue to move the CIA forward in the Intelligence Community.
Layoffs Impacting the Defense Industry
| Actifio | With a Google acquisition in the works, Actifio released 54 employees from their jobs. The Waltham, MA based technology firm, Actifio specializes in reducing unnecessary duplication of data. Founded in 2009, the organization had worldwide offices with a few hundred employees. While Actifio was valued at more than $1 billion, Google’s acquisition was an undisclosed amount for the private organization.
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When it comes to more technological advances, sometimes, you have to give people a little bit more information. That’s exactly what the DoD is doing with a pilot program that gives defense contractors special access to programs with the intent that the involvement will heighten technology developments. DOD Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition and Sustainment Ellen Lord outlined the DOD Special Access Program (SAP) Corporate Portfolio Program (CPP) in a memo on December 15.
“This increased protection, resulting in many activities being secured in special access programs (SAPs), challenges the DOD’s ability to share critical information and to collaborate with the [defense industrial base] to deliver capability to the warfighter,” Lord wrote in the memo.
Lord identifies the need for the CPP as a means to give defense contractors greater access to any SAPs they are currently on, thereby increasing better research and development efforts. While the number of contractors involved is small, the intent is that with more information in the hands of a few, the greater the innovations later.
Hiring impacting the Defense Industry
| BAE Systems | While BAE Systems has over 500 open positions listed, currently, they are in need for Intel Analysts in Northern VA. The organization is on the lookout for candidates with active TS/SCI clearances.
In the world of intelligence, BAE Systems offers jobs in intelligence analysis, cyber operations, and IT in order to enable militaries and government agencies the ability to recognize, manage, and defeat threats. |
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Opportunity to Watch
Sometimes it seems like there’s a mystery that enshrouds the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). How do you get a contract with them to work on a project or how can you get a job with the agency? Director Victoria Coleman wants to marry the Apple Genius Bar concept with DARPA in order to create a innovation storefront for the agency.
“If I have a place where … there’s foot traffic, people just come in and they think ‘What is that? Well, maybe my company can play in that,’” Coleman said. “I’ve served on the [Defense Science Board] and another organizations for so long, [and] I didn’t know where to go. If I don’t know where to go, what are the chances of other innovators finding their way?”
Coleman has a vision for organizations not only to come to a storefront to get acclimated to DARPA, but also to accelerate technology capabilities with DARPA mentoring and investing in promising companies. Coleman believes that if you build it, they will come.
“Putting an accelerator on the ground will be really important,” she said. “And of course, you know, Silicon Valley is the first place if you think about it, and that’s right, but it’s not the only place where innovation happens that the department needs to be connected with. For my money, honestly, I don’t want to like the thing that everybody else has done, so you know, Silicon Valley, Boston, the obvious places. [We] are going also think about places that are not so obvious to reach out to.”
