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Cyber Force 'Blows Up' Conventional Hiring Process

The Defense Information Systems Agency’s groundbreaking strike team model seeks to efficiently identify and acquire people who are ready and qualified to fill job openings and propel the space forward.

Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton, commander of the Department of War’s (DOW) Cyber Defense Command and director of DISA, speaks at the Cyber Workforce Summit held at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) leaders are revolutionizing their hiring approach to land ambitious and prepared talent more swiftly and successfully than before. Agency officials have blown up the traditional hiring process and replaced it with their new and adaptive strike team model, per Lt. Gen. Paul Stanton, commander of the Department of War’s (DOW) Cyber Defense Command and director of DISA.

The strike group approach has already proven to be effective. Stanton put the theory into action at one hiring event, and they extended 47 contingency job offers on the spot. And within three weeks of the event, they added 32 individuals to the workforce, according to Stanton.

The strike teams will not only consist of human resources personnel, but they will also include technical experts who know the details and duties of the position they are looking to hire. DISA leaders will bring these new units to job fairs to ideally streamline talent acquisition and fill the open positions quickly. The people in human resources can bring their expertise in the logistical process of onboarding someone into government service, while the technical specialists can demonstrate and convey to prospective candidates the type of job they are hiring for and the type of person they are looking for to undertake the role. They prefer to have this partnership between individuals on the human resources and technical sides present at hiring events to cover all their bases at once.

“I need to put [human resources personnel and technical experts] together and take them to a hiring event so that when someone says, ‘I have these skills,’ the person who knows what skills we need on our team is standing right there to talk to them and make a dynamic assessment,” Stanton said during his keynote address at the Cyber Workforce Summit 2.0 held at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C.

Stanton added that they will consider other factors, but he stressed the importance of having these conversations right away, especially given that the subject matter experts are all in place and ready to have these discussions. “Does this person have the skills that we need? Yes, you need a resume. Yes, we’re going to review it. But why don’t I have the conversation on the spot at the hiring event, and then once I determine this person actually would be a great fit for the position that I’m currently attempting to hire, why don’t I then walk them back into a room where the human resources professional is sitting and waiting to fill out the right paperwork and, on the spot, offer a contingency job offer? Yes, you still have to have a security clearance, and yes, there are a number of things that you have to go through, so it’s a contingency job offer. We have to follow that up, but why don’t I recruit that individual on the spot.”

The new strike team approach replaces the conventional method of writing out and sharing a position description with human resources personnel, posting the job and sifting through dozens of resumes to fill one position, a process that takes far too long.

“At DISA, the old process—I threw a grenade into that room,” Stanton said. “We are now going to execute our strike team approach to surgical hiring as the means by which we execute. Our team is here [at the Cyber Workforce Summit]; our team will be at TechNet Cyber in Baltimore and at a number of different events. If you go onto our newly minted website, it will describe where those events are.”

Overhauling the hiring process comes as DISA leaders announced that they are actively recruiting and requesting help. There are 61 open positions at DISA, Stanton said in his keynote address. Furthermore, fundamentally changing the way the agency hires is the first step toward ensuring that they fill open positions with individuals who are proficient and ready to go.

“Our revolution begins with acquiring elite talent,” Stanton said. “Our most significant advantage has always been our people: the innovators, the problem solvers, the warfighters who will run to the sound of the guns, not away from them. To get them on our team, we must treat talent acquisition as a critical warfighting enabler, one that demands speed, precision and agility.”

The Cyber Workforce Summit 2.0 is hosted by AFCEA International in cooperation with the DOW CIO and the National Defense University. SIGNAL Media is the official media of AFCEA International.