Last week, cleared recruiters and other professionals engaged in the national security hiring space came together for ClearanceJobs Connect 2023. The morning kicked off with a keynote from Tracy Walder, a former Staff Operations Officer (SOO) at the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center and a Special Agent at the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office specializing in Chinese counterintelligence operations.
After the morning sessions, the conference split into separate Recruitment and Security Clearance topics to give attendees actionable insights to bring back to their hiring squads.
OFCCP / PAY TRANSPARENCY
OFCCP is a part of the U.S. Department of Labor and is responsible for ensuring that employers doing business with the Federal government comply with the laws and regulations requiring nondiscrimination. Compliance looks different whether you recruit for a small contractor or large business. This panel, with Jessica Reynolds (Echelon Services), Janine Hunter (S4 Inc.) and Yesenia Avila (DCI Consulting) offered tactical tips for recruiters / HR to remain compliant, what pay transparency means for cleared recruiting, and how to avoid a lawsuit.
DCI Consulting expressed the importance of why recruiters need to be aware of OFCCP, along with big misconceptions about OFCCP in the recruiting process. Whether you are small business or household defense contractor name, OFCCP does differ from small companies to large organizations. Mainly in having dedicated compliance teams to cover themselves against potential lawsuits.
Pay transparency was also a hot topic, something that has become the cool new thing as companies intend to be more progressive in the hiring realm. Not only does it benefit demographics that are generally underpaid, but we’ve also seen how disclosing the salary for a position actually gets more clicks on job openings.
Panelists shared why HR and recruiting teams enforce it before it becomes a law in their state, and why it’s good for recruiters in reducing their time to hire because they are avoiding time wasting conversations with candidates.
PROPOSAL RECRUITING
The ebbs and flows of cleared recruiting is a balancing act for TA teams. Proposal recruiting while like fully funded staffing, requires different skills, organization, and team structure. This panel will equip recruiters with the knowledge needed to ace their proposal effort recruiting. Meg Kemp (Peraton) and Kortney Calano (Calano & Associates) shared how recruiters can ace this piece of the cleared recruitment process.
Meg Kemp discusses the biggest differentiators in skillsets from a fully funded recruiter to a proposal staffer, along with the benefits of having a separate team for proposal recruiting and one for fully funded recruiting.
Kortney Calano is a former COR, and gave recruiters tips for themselves and their hiring managers when it comes to sourcing and submitting key personnel in a response to an RFP. There are also big no nos from a federal employee perspective when recruiters are reaching out to fill key persons. Along with when the contract is awarded, and recruiters are trying to secure incumbents. 
VETERAN HIRING
Reaching veterans before the next recruiter is critical – as many veterans have a security clearance and transition nicely into the national security sector. But getting buy in from hiring managers on implementing a skillbridge program, particularly for smaller businesses that may not have the bandwidth to take on a transitioning service member to shadow, can be tough.
Eric Eversole and Crystal Cochran of Hiring Our Heroes joined ClearanceJobs Connect to discuss the statistics with veteran and military spouse talent, and how partnering for a skillbridge program can benefit your long recruiting game, and improve your retention numbers – since that is a main driver when veterans leave an organization (because their spouse can’t find a job).
CYBER HIRING
It’s no secret that there’s a cyber workforce gap between the number of cleared openings and candidates to fill them. At this panel, Kyle Fox (SOSi) and Heidi Snell (WWC Global) discussed what challenges they are seeing across this niche industry, and creative ways to help reduce the cyber gap… and get your candidate approved by the Government.
The Government has some complex technical challenges that some of these missions are trying to solve. Kyle Fox touched on what he foresees the cyber hiring landscape looking like over the next decade, and it includes more skills-based hiring along with AI.
Heidi Snell brought insights on what sort of hiring challenges recruiters are facing: the industry challenges, and a few ways that recruiters can combat them. Partnering with universities, implementing bootcamps within your own force to pivot to cyber, and much more.
The state of the cleared candidate pool, DE&I in the cleared space, techniques to source a more diverse workforce, how technology changed recruiting in 2023 and what’s next for recruiting and retention were all parts of the discussion. We had a great Connect 2023… we better see you secret squirrel wranglers in 2024!
