At ClearanceJobs Connect in Colorado Springs, ClearanceJobs’ Alex Schildt and Point Solutions Group founder Paige Goss tackled a question every defense and intelligence employer is asking in 2026: how do you hire cleared talent when the rules keep changing?
Goss, who built Point Solutions Group in Denver in 2017 and later launched cybersecurity firm Point Solutions Security, joined the ClearanceJobs and DHI Group family when the company acquired PSG in February. She and Schildt opened by comparing notes on Colorado’s evolving talent market, where lifestyle appeal, political dynamics, and a thinning venture-capital pipeline are reshaping who comes to Colorado Springs and Denver, and whether companies can keep them there.
The conversation turned practical fast. With many large organizations trimming headcount rather than growing it, Goss argued that recruiting is shifting from filling seats to assessing human capacity: can a candidate learn, adapt, and grow into roles that don’t exist yet? She was blunt about resumes, calling them increasingly unreliable in an AI-saturated hiring landscape, and described leaning on professional networks and targeted verification questions instead.
Both speakers pointed to transparency as the throughline for winning cleared talent: being upfront about long, uncertain investigation timelines, building career paths and compensation increases tied to clearance completion, and being honest about how AI is, and isn’t, used in hiring decisions.
An engaged audience pushed the conversation further, asking about compensation premiums for cleared professionals (Goss cited a typical 10 to 20 percent bump post-clearance, though some deep-pocketed employers offer far more), how to attract East Coast talent to Colorado, and how Gen Z’s skepticism of AI collides with a job market that increasingly expects fluency in it.
The session capped a day of ClearanceJobs Connect programming built to help employers across defense, aerospace, and intelligence sharpen how they find, hire, and retain the professionals who keep the mission moving.
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