Kathleen Smith 00:49
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Security Cleared Jobs: Who’s Hiring & How. My name is Kathleen with ClearedJobs.Net and I'm so pleased to welcome my co-host, Rachel. How are you doing today?
Rachel Bozeman 01:03
Well, Kathleen, it's really me. It is Rachel. I'm here, friends, and we are here for a fantastic show. Let's get it started, Kathleen.
Kathleen Smith 01:14
So today we're talking with DaVontte Archie with Ultra Intelligence and Communications. Welcome to the show DaVontte.
DaVontte Archie 01:22
Hello. I'm so happy to be here.
Kathleen Smith 01:25
Rachel, I know you have a burning question for DaVontte.
Rachel Bozeman 01:28
Man, you just had to tell everybody, because I cannot wait to ask the question. It's what I'm here for. It's what we live for. So let's start at the very beginning. If you don't mind, my friend, we'd like to learn a little bit more about you. And how in the heck did you end up at Ultra?
DaVontte Archie 01:43
Yes, well, my name is DaVontte Archie. I currently manage talent acquisition for Ultra I&C, but my career actually started in retail. I was starting as a little cart pusher for a grocer up here in Western New York, and I just rose through the ranks there. And eventually the HR bug bit me, and I started to gravitate towards there. Also did some operations management there. But after I ended with tops, they put me through school, which was a really great opportunity for me. I graduated, and then I got into my first government contracting role. So I was doing talent acquisition and employee relations for an accounts receivable management firm up here in Rochester. So I did that for a few years. And then, as the winds go in government contracting, the contracts moved elsewhere. And honestly, that's what brought me to Ultra. And I'll tell you, I've had the opportunity to work across so many different Ultra segments, so many great individuals, both here in the United States, Canada, the UK, and even our good friends in Australia. So it honestly has been a really fun ride from little old Rochester, New York to working for this global organization.
Rachel Bozeman 02:55
I love it and I just don't think the cart pushers get enough credit. That is a hard job.
DaVontte Archie 03:00
In upstate New York, absolutely not.
Kathleen Smith 03:04
I think we should have an entire separate show on what are those other jobs we have all done. I've done a lot of retail. Believe me, I know how to fold a t-shirt better than anybody. So Ultra Intelligence and Communications has about 750 employees in the US, UK, Canada, and Australia. So what does your company do in the cleared community?
DaVontte Archie 03:28
Ultra I&C, we actually have a 50-year heritage of providing, whether it be tactical communications, command and control, or cybersecurity, and more modern days, we also do artificial intelligence and machine learning solutions, and we do those for the most challenging defense applications. I say all that to say, we connect the multi-domain battle space, so whether that be air, sea, space, cyber, we have some type of touch in there. And we ensure secured information is exchanged, again securely, in any type of high-threat environment. Those who are in the community may know some of our solutions, such as ad, see ad, see rain, the Orion family of radios. If you're in encryption or COMSEC, you may know our CMS, some of our remote key management solutions, but yeah, we are headquartered in Austin, Texas, now American-owned. When I joined, we were under UK ownership, but we still have locations across the globe. We have offices in San Diego, Tampa, Florida, Germantown, Maryland, and then if you are following us, you probably see some positions posted in Huntsville. So we're excited to announce that in the coming months, we'll be having a physical presence somewhere down there.
Rachel Bozeman 04:45
Awesome. So much going on, so many places, so much goodness to share. So we know that our listeners probably want to learn a little bit more about maybe some of the career opportunities. So what type of folks are you looking to hire, DaVontte? And what are those skill sets that they must have to get their foot in that door?
DaVontte Archie 05:05
Yes, so I'll try and see. We are a government contractor, but we are engineers at our core. So doesn't matter if you are a C++ developer, an embedded software engineer, our friendly FPGA engineers, as I mentioned earlier, we've got artificial intelligence and machine learning, data scientists, systems engineers, and then everyone that it takes to make that program successful. So that can be your program, finance folks, your IT folks, our wonderful friends in information security, very challenging areas to recruit for, might I say. But yeah, anyone who it takes to run these types of government programs where we're looking to hire, and then those who've got the aptitude to want to join.
Rachel Bozeman 05:52
Love it. So you kind of mentioned this a little bit, but I want to dig in a little bit deeper, because I love to geek out with my fellow TA friends out there. Tell us a little bit more about those skill sets that are particularly more challenging for you to find right now, maybe those ones that just keep you up at night.
DaVontte Archie 06:08
Oh yes, I would say anything right now. And a lot of my recruiting friends can say this, cybersecurity, just because the threat environment is changing so much right now, those roles are just so difficult to recruit for right now. Of course, we do a lot of, as I mentioned earlier, embedded software. So for our folks, we're doing low level system on chip, bare metal coding for most of our roles, we also do a lot of NSA type one certified products. So we're always looking for those folks that have that niche skill set and understand those standards and how to make sure that we're complying with those.
Rachel Bozeman 06:46
Love it. And you've mentioned this already, some of the different locations, but tell us where the bulk of the positions that you're hiring for, where are those located right now? And you did get it out there, good old Alabama. Huntsville sounds like it's on the road map and out there with some opportunities. So where are most of those positions located?
DaVontte Archie 07:05
Yeah, so I'd say our most populated areas right now are, of course, Austin. That's where our bread-and-butter folks are. We've got the headquarters and an engineering development center out in Austin. Our Tampa locations, part of our encryption team. They also have a nice presence out in the Tampa space. And then this year, of course, we are expecting that we'll be doing quite a fair bit of hiring in Huntsville.
Kathleen Smith 07:28
I always love to hear Huntsville, because we have our National Cyber Summit that we're always part of every year, and we do our job fair there, and it's always fun. So tell us a little bit about the flexible schedule offerings that you have. I understand you have something that is called collaboration hours.
DaVontte Archie 07:46
So we have core hours. Those core hours are from 9am to 3pm local time, and generally for most of our positions, we actually follow a Monday through Thursday work week with half days on Fridays. Of course, that's for the bulk of the population. There are some exceptions to that. Our folks that may work on a government site, or some of our overseas folks, they might not necessarily be able to work that schedule all the time. But our core population, as long as they're within those nine to three working hours, we're very flexible on when they start or when they end their shift.
Rachel Bozeman 08:21
The time has come. We're gonna dig into maybe my favorite topic, and probably yours too, if I had to bet on that one. But it is company culture. Oh yeah, we are here. I knew I was gonna get a fist pump. So what is it like to work at Ultra?
DaVontte Archie 08:43
Well, I'll definitely say, we are mission-focused here at our core. We understand the need for why we do what we do. We also understand who we're doing this for. At the end of the day, if we make a mistake that's a war fighter's life or lives that could potentially be impacted. So we're always mindful in that. At the start of the call, yes, we mentioned that we do have 750 employees across the globe, but we really have that big fish small pond kind of feel. And once people join that, they start to realize what that means. But you're not just a number here, and due to our size, it does allow for more opportunities. It gives you more opportunities to stretch. For our engineers, that gives you the opportunity to touch the full life cycle of a product, and maybe not necessarily be compartmentalized to a specific area. I will also say, and this is one of the things I had to get used to coming to Ultra, is the leadership accessibility. And I think maybe this goes back to our size, and we're still growing, but it's rare to be able to walk down a regular facility and the CEO walks by and, you know, raise their hand, or you see the CFO. And not even that level of leadership, it's your program leadership, your finance leadership, very transparent. There's also the other side of the culture. We are also an agile organization. We understand that we have to be able to change. Our customers require this because that threat environment is changing in some cases faster than we can keep up. So we understand as an organization, in order to make sure that we're still supporting our customers, that we do need to change maybe the way that we do things, or maybe where we do things, or how we do things, so we're also very mindful of that. I'd say this sounds really cheesy. I promise they did not plant this. But my favorite quote is from our CEO, Jon Rucker, and he said, failure is okay, and that was probably one of the first things that he said in a town hall to all of us globally, is that failure is okay. But we need to fail fast, learn fast, break things, and do that beyond the rate of our adversaries.
Rachel Bozeman 10:58
That's awesome. That's such an inspiring thing and such a good reminder that we're all human and it's going to happen. It's how we pick ourselves up and move forward there. I think it's a great reminder there. But I know there's something else about your culture, and yes, I'm going to ask it, and it's about your Aspire program. So tell us what that is and what that means to your organization.
DaVontte Archie 11:21
Aspire is the acronym for all of our values. So each of the letters of Aspire means something. So we talk about adapt, support, perform, innovate, respect, and exceed. And again, those are things that really drive us and drive that mission focus. We are aspiring to be the ultimate Ultra I&C. At the end of the day, that's what we're really trying to be, and we're trying to make sure that we're the ultimate partner for our customers.
Kathleen Smith 11:51
All great stuff. Because I really love it when you talk about failure, and failure is okay, and if we're not constantly working on this and failing and learning and adapting, we're not going to change. So it's really great to see that that's part of your culture. I could go on and on about how excited I am about this. So another thing that I'm always very excited about is transitioning military folks. ClearedJobs.Net is a veteran-owned firm. I am a mill spouse. We have mill spouses. We have veterans all working on our staff, but we also really love companies who support SkillBridge. So talk about your SkillBridge partnership and how people can get involved in it.
DaVontte Archie 12:30
Yes, so we actually established our SkillBridge partnership last year, last August, if I'm not mistaken. And we are expanding the program as I speak, because we're moving into the Huntsville area, we're looking at opportunities that we can add more SkillBridge internships and opportunities for those folks. Ultra I&C has a very strong population of veterans in our workforce, and we're very prideful of that. And you leave it to me, I just want those numbers to just keep skyrocketing upward. So yeah, we're always looking and doing whatever we can to be able to give back to veterans and help them have the opportunity to get connected to the contracting space.
Rachel Bozeman 13:13
So you said something in the pre-call that I hope you don't mind us digging into a little bit further, and I'm quoting you here. So yes, friends, I'm doing the air quote. “Interview follow-up has died.” End quote. Talk to us a little bit more about how following up after an interview can have a positive impact for a cleared professional.
DaVontte Archie 13:32
Well, I come from what they say, air quotes again, old school. Where after you interview, you send the follow-up note or you send a card. And it really is that closing touch that makes you stand out as a candidate. And what I meant by that's died is, I think, because we are moving so quickly now, right? You can apply to most jobs in less than three minutes. Very, very quick, very quick turnaround. I think sometimes that goes out of the window, that friendly salutation. But I'm telling you, it's few and far between when I receive those, “Hey, thanks for interviewing” or even just summarizing what your interview is, because sometimes I may have received one message and you were given a different message, and sometimes that's an opportunity for us to align and say, “Oh, okay, yep, the call went the same way,” but also it helps you stand out from that person that did not send a follow-up note. It helps you stand out as that candidate that, oh, I took the time to respect this person's time and acknowledge what we discussed. So it's a loss art. I think it definitely needs to come back, or it should come back, if you're looking to get a role, or looking to stand out from the competition, because we all know the talent pool is very vast, and we know how the opportunities tend to be.
Kathleen Smith 14:50
I'm glad you brought that up, and I think I want to flush this idea out a little bit further, so sort of doing a mini podcast within this podcast. So you're not actually looking for a generic thank you or follow-up, correct? You're actually looking for something that's customized to the conversation that you had with the candidate.
DaVontte Archie 15:09
Absolutely, if you're wanting to stand out as that candidate, you definitely want to recap that conversation and recap your understanding of the role, right? Because we as an employer, we want to understand that you understand the role before we bring you on. I always tell people, it's a two-way street. It's no longer, does the employer like me? It's, do I like the employer too? So we want to have that transparency upfront.
Kathleen Smith 15:33
I always found it interesting, back in the day when I was interviewing a candidate, you always walks out the door and go, “Darn it. I should have said such and such. They asked that question and I blanked out.” This is a perfect opportunity to say, “You asked such and such question, you asked when I used my specific skills in a situation, and I just remembered I had this instance where we brought a project in under deadline, under budget, met the customer's needs, and it's very similar to the responsibilities that you're asking me to take on in this new position.” I mean, that is a great way to do a follow-up.
DaVontte Archie 16:14
Absolutely, especially if you think there was a question that you fumbled on, or something that you were like, they asked something, and I just kind of blanked. I knew what it was, and I prepped for it. But again, that's another good way to kind of sell yourself and get yourself into that door.
Rachel Bozeman 16:27
You've been sharing some great tips and tricks, but gonna ask for one more favor here, friend. If you could share with us any last parting advice that maybe cleared professionals can use in their current job search?
DaVontte Archie 16:40
Yeah. Well, hopefully my people don't get mad at me for sharing the tricks of the trade. But I always tell folks, you have to approach job hunting as either a recruiter or as a sales professional. And what do I mean by that? You kind of need to source. So there are websites out there. One of my favorite ones is the sourcinglinks.com and what it allows you to do is put various Boolean search strings to help you locate people, organizations, or companies that you're looking for. Me as a recruiter, I use those skill searches, right? So I go to that website, I put the skills that I'm looking for, and then it gives me an open-source list of folks who have that skill set. How does that work on the job searching side? Hey, I want to get inside Ultra I&C. I need to find out who works in the HR department there. Or I need to find out who works in the software engineering team. I'm going to go to one of those websites and type in Ultra I&C, and put my little quotes on there, and human resources or software engineering, and see who those folks are. And those are the folks that you start reaching out to and having a conversation with, because I promise you, it gets harder for them to ignore an email. If you reach out to them directly, you're more than likely going to get a direct response, at least if you're working with our company.
Kathleen Smith 18:00
So how may our listeners get in touch with you?
DaVontte Archie 18:05
Yes, so I'm on LinkedIn. I am very accessible there. Folks who have reached out to me know that usually within one to two business days, I'm giving a response back when I can, but very accessible as an organization. Again, it’s a benefit of how we are, and again, we're still growing.
Kathleen Smith 18:22
Wonderful. Well, DaVontte, thank you so much for sharing with us all of the great things that Ultra I&C has to offer.
DaVontte Archie 18:30
Kathleen and Rachel, thank you all so much. It's been a pleasure.
Kathleen Smith 18:35
Another fabulous conversation. DaVontte really, I loved his Aspire acronym about adapting and supporting, but also that their CEO really led with a quote at one of their town hall meetings on failing and failing fast, and learning, and that that is okay. What about you, Rachel?
Rachel Bozeman 18:54
Well, gosh darn it, you stole it right out of my mouth. But no, it was so fantastic. And I think he also mentioned, just take it a step further about the transparency and accessibility of the leadership team, that it's simply about walking down the hallway, and even for those that are kind of spread across the country or across the world, knowing that they've got the accessibility to leaders to have those real conversations. I think it is such a testament to a culture that's open, transparent, comfortable, and it's just such an incredible thing to talk about. And I certainly know why a lot of people want to join the organization. Well, well, well, we did it again folks. Be sure that you go out there and hit the follow button for us and until next time, bye.