Building relationships with colleges or universities for locations you are staffing in is an essential step to effectively staffing programs and building candidate pipelines. Engaging with individuals from security clearance or Intelligence Community (IC) track programs like University of Maryland Global Campus doesn’t have to happen just in the D.C. metro area, though.
Virginia Tech recently announced the launch of their National Security Institute, aiming to become the U.S. leading academic entity and thought leader in research and development, technology innovation, policy, and talent, all in advancement of national security.
For cleared recruiting, essentially, they should have just climbed to the top of your list as talent acquisition resources to pull recent graduates from (they may have been on your list already since their engineering school has some students that have obtained security clearances through defense contracting internships).
UNIVERSITIES AS CANDIDATE SOURCES FOR CLEARED PROGRAMS
These types of partnerships require some finesse to maintain but can pay off and save your recruiting team loss on vacant billets. It’s critical to partner with local universities to where you are staffing contracts – and this includes schools with national security institutes or intelligence tracks. Here are a few examples for locations with government customers that have cleared openings and elite schools that you could potentially pull candidates from.
The DoD is already Virginia Tech’s biggest source of federal funding with around $50 million in FY 2020. Why not bring the candidates back to their largest investor through their college years as post grads in the working world?
Letitia “Tish” A. Long, chairman of the Intelligence and National Security Alliance (INSA and current rector of the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors is very excited about the new launch. “Virginia Tech has created a thriving ecosystem of security-related research and workforce development that provide the critical foundation necessary to support the National Security Institute’s mission of shaping the next generation of intelligence leaders, and in pursuit of a safer America,” she notes.
The institute will bring together researchers, programs, and resources from the school such as the Virginia Tech Applied Research Corporation (VT-ARC) and the Ted and Karyn Hume Center for National Security and Technology, combining student learning opportunities and R&D at a large scale.
Recruiters should be tipping that large scale in their favor.
THE CLEARED RECRUITING CHRONICLES: YOURÂ WEEKLY DoD RECRUITING TIPS TO OUT COMPETE THE NEXT NATIONAL SECURITY STAFFER. SUBMIT YOUR RECRUITING QUESTIONS TO EDITOR@CLEARANCEJOBS.COM.
