At ClearanceJobs Connect 2025, Tommy Weinert, founder of Mount Indie, opened his session with a story about failure, persistence, and finding purpose. When he was 20, Weinert was kicked out of college and forced to watch his sister graduate that same month—a moment filled with shame and uncertainty. Determined to turn things around, he enrolled at Columbia College Chicago, studied music and creative writing, and earned a 3.5 GPA.
Later, inspired by a friend’s description of the University of Arizona, he decided to apply. When an admissions counselor told him he would “have no problem getting in,” he packed up his truck—only to realize the day before leaving that he had never received an official acceptance letter. After calling the university, an admissions worker told him he hadn’t been admitted. Panicked, Weinert hung up, called back, reached a different person—and that time was told he had been accepted. He went on to graduate from Arizona, crediting the experience with teaching him to pick up the phone, push past the first “no,” and lean into work that truly motivated him.
From there, Weinert turned to recruiting—specifically, cleared recruiting. He reminded the audience that while the industry constantly faced new challenges—COVID-era engagement issues, return-to-office debates, shifting contracts—the mission remained the same: find the right people, engage them, and protect the pipeline.
He warned of new threat vectors like North Korea’s “Jasper Sleep” campaign, where operatives used fake identities, deep-fake interviews, and falsified documents to infiltrate cleared companies. Citing DCSA data, he noted that 25 percent of reported infiltration attempts came through résumé submissions.
To combat this, Weinert urged recruiters to ban virtual or blurred backgrounds during interviews, verify IDs, conduct red-flag drills with FSOs and insider-threat teams, and trust their instincts.
Looking ahead to 2025, he said recruiting would increasingly resemble marketing—requiring personalization, creativity, and authentic engagement in an AI-saturated world. He closed by encouraging attendees to maximize the tools they already had—especially their ATS and ClearanceJobs features like Applications Reports, Expressed Interest, Workflows, and Pulse—before chasing the next flashy AI solution.
