Kathleen Smith 00:52
Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of Security Cleared Jobs: Who's Hiring & How. This is Kathleen with my wonderful co-host, Rachel Bozeman. Rachel, how are you doing today?
Rachel Bozeman 01:04
Excited to be here and so excited to talk to you, Kathleen, and to meet a new
friend and guest who's going to teach us a little more about some great
careers. So, Kathleen, who do we have the honor of talking to today?
Kathleen Smith 01:17
Today's guest on the show is Tim Irby, HR Generalist with Xtreme Solutions.
Welcome to the show, Tim.
Tim Irby 01:25
Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.
Rachel Bozeman 01:27
We are so excited you're here and love to talk to a fellow friend in the HR
talent acquisition space. I think anybody in HR probably never, as a child,
grew up and said, "Hey, I'm going to be in HR when I grow up," but
yet here we find ourselves on this crazy, wild adventure. So tell us a little
bit about your career journey. Where did you start, and how did you end up at
Xtreme Solutions?
Tim Irby 01:50
You pointed it out exactly right. I never thought I'd be in HR. My career
started so many years ago in the manufacturing world with Procter & Gamble,
and they do a wonderful job of training engineers, which I was, how to manage
people and teams. After 10 years or so, my position moved into the HR world. I
later left Procter & Gamble to work in the retail industry, in the
healthcare industry, and actually came to Xtreme Solutions after that. So what
I have experience in is really understanding not just the HR silo, where we
talk about recruiting and engagement and all those important things to make a
business run, but I've been on the operational end, and I've talked to
candidates from a whole lot of different backgrounds. Xtreme Solutions was a
really good match for me. We're a small organization, headquarters-wise, and so
we wear a lot of different hats. I like to be involved in recruiting. I like to
be involved in the whole life cycle of employee management, from talent
management and skill development, coaching leaders, developing leaders in our
organization. I actually get involved in business development every once in a
while as well. So we're a good match for my interest of not just doing the same
thing every day.
Kathleen Smith 03:08
That's always great to hear, because I love it when you share that you're part
of business development. That is always one of my bugaboos in recruiting—that
you really need to know about workforce management when you bid on new
projects. So it's really exciting to have you on the show with that kind of
experience. But before we delve into that later in the show, what does Xtreme
Solutions do in the cleared community?
Tim Irby 03:34
Xtreme Solutions is a little over 20 years old, and most of our background is
providing management services or IT services and technology to the government
space. Primarily, we have had in the past and continue to have contracts with
the federal government, although we've had many contracts on the commercial
side as well, with very large companies like AT&T and others, providing IT
services. But for the cleared space, at this point in time, our major contract
is with the Passport Agency in Washington, DC, providing management services
for those administrative processes and IT skills that they need at that
location. We also have another re-emerging business in a cyber range for
cybersecurity, and it's a business that's booming across the world right now—a
big need for that. We provide one of the only really customizable solutions for
not only government services but academics and the commercial side to train
their personnel on cybersecurity attacks, the skills they need, and the
counter-efforts they need to provide, as well as to test out their systems and
coding to see if it's effective. So we're doing both of those. In the past,
we've managed IT centers for the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, and all of
those require cleared positions. This position with the Passport Agency is a
little bit unusual for us in that the cleared positions are mostly
administrative, and they're not in the IT or technology world.
Rachel Bozeman 05:09
It sounds like there's a whole lot going on and many opportunities. You
mentioned some of the different roles that you're hiring for, but could you
tell us a little bit more about those cleared positions that you've actively
got posted or could be posting in the near future?
Tim Irby 05:24
We have quite a few postings, and really, something is always going on in the
Passport Agency. For example, right now, we're in search of the program support
manager, the top leadership position who represents the contract and is
responsible for all of the deliverables. We have supervisors that report to
that person and team leads that manage smaller teams. So people who are
interested in managing an operation within the cleared space, we're definitely
in need of that on an ongoing basis. The people who work for them, who do the
executive assistant roles, SharePoint services, what we call fraud
investigations or authentications, and work on passport inquiries—all of those
require a Secret clearance, some a Public Trust. We always have some positions
open for them. The good thing is that we offer a lot of opportunities for
promotion from within, and so that creates a domino effect of, okay, we've got
to find backfills. So we always have some movement for people, but these are
opportunities for people to come in, show their work ethic, develop their
skills, and move upward in the organization.
Rachel Bozeman 06:35
Very cool. Now, everyone didn't get to hear you and me go back and forth about
all the joys of living in the South—the humidity, the mosquitoes, the bugs, the
great food. But I know you are located just a little east of me there in
Atlanta. Are all your positions located in the great state of Georgia, or where
are they located?
Tim Irby 06:56
Good question. It really depends a lot on the contracts we have at the time.
Most of our positions for the last five or six years have been in Washington,
DC. Many of the positions—not all of them, maybe 25%—do have a telework
capability, so people can work from home once in a while. But due to the nature
of the work, where it has to be hands-on with the passport materials, those
roles cannot be telework positions. Now, we do have a dozen positions or so in
Atlanta, and with our cybersecurity work, we really are looking to fill those
with hybrid opportunities.
Kathleen Smith 07:33
Awesome. I was just going to ask you a little bit more about your hybrid and
remote work. Something that we've talked about a lot on the show is the fact
that flexibility is something that is actually earned by the professional on
the contract, depending on what kind of credentials and experience they prove
to the customer. So do you want to talk a little bit more about that? And I
think you also have that flexibility because, aren't most of your positions
requiring just a Secret clearance?
Tim Irby 08:06
Most of our positions require a Secret clearance. Once in a blue moon, there
might be something else, but most are Secret. The telework option definitely is
one where you have to earn the trust of your employer—ourselves—and of the
government, because while we may be confident in what our employee can do, our
client, the federal government, always reserves the right to dismiss the person
from the contract. So our employee has to satisfy two needs: having the
contribution, really getting the results that are required in a timely basis is
number one, but number two, also being accessible, reachable, and responsive.
We use Microsoft Teams to reach out to people. Are you available? I've got a
question. Our client or ourselves really expect the responsiveness that we
would get if I came and knocked on your door in the cubicle next door.
Kathleen Smith 08:58
I'm glad you outlined that because, in the cleared space, we did not have a lot
of flexibility as far as hybrid and remote work. That changed in 2020 and 2021,
and I'm really glad that Xtreme Solutions and other employers are maintaining
the ability to have some flexibility. But it really is about whether you earn
it and maintain that credibility that you will continue to do the work. Good on
you for having those standards.
Tim Irby 09:33
Thank you. We appreciate it. Of course, with the new federal administration and
their edict for federal employees to return to work, we thought that was going
to affect us as federal contractors as well. But our understanding at this
point is there's no intent to bring the contractors into that fold, and they
have the flexibility to decide whether they need it or not. So we're
maintaining our posture that we've had for the last number of years since COVID
took place.
Rachel Bozeman 09:59
Always evolving, always changing. I think the important message for all of our
listeners is to be responsible and use it wisely. With great remote freedom
comes great responsibility. You kind of touched on this a little bit, but, Tim,
if you don't mind, I want to dig in just a little deeper. You mentioned the
buffet of career opportunities that you have, but are there some that keep you
up at night that are a little bit more difficult to fill? You also mentioned
the ones you're always feeding, that pipeline always open, maybe those
lower-skilled opportunities. Can you tell us a little bit more about what those
look like and what a great candidate would look like in those roles?
Tim Irby 10:36
In the lower-skill-level jobs that we have in the Passport Agency, they're
clerical and administrative. It's a good opportunity for people to come in and
show their reliability, understand the tasks that are needed, keep up with the
volume of the work, and demonstrate their attention to detail. The wonderful
thing about passports and the work that's done there is really helping people
in their lives to travel abroad or demonstrate that they were born in a
different country. There are a whole number of different things that people
need to have their passport verified for. So people need to recognize that if
they're doing something in those files, it needs to be done reliably and
independently because it's going to affect a decision that's made or a person's
ability to receive that data later on. The amount of verification and
double-checking that things are done correctly is immense, and we want people
who don't need that oversight, who can develop those skills and work
independently. That's the kind of person we need in those entry-level roles. If
they do well, it's very easy to promote them into other roles where they're
dealing with more customers, more agencies, law enforcement agencies, or other
government agencies once they demonstrate their capability. So there are a lot
of opportunities for those people. Now, the other pain point I want to talk
about is on the cybersecurity side. It's a new industry, very much in demand,
and we're finding it very difficult to get people who can do the business
development for us that also have the technical background in cybersecurity.
Many of those people might have services or software backgrounds, or other
technology backgrounds, or they may be super salespeople, great at developing
new industries, but we need somebody who's got that fundamental background to
be able to talk about and match the needs of the customer with what our cyber
range offers. We’ve found that we can find some people who’ve got super sales
skills but don’t have the technical skills, or don’t have the technical skills
in the right area. There are several different verticals available for
cybersecurity—academics, government, commercial—and it’s really difficult to
find someone who’s got all of those.
Kathleen Smith 12:53
Yeah, it’s really hard in the cleared community when people think recruiting is
an easy job because you just need to find someone with the clearance and some
skill sets. But there are so many interacting backgrounds—you need technical
but diplomatic, a communicator, a manager. I’m always intrigued listening to
how people approach recruiting in this community. I’ve only been here 25 years,
and it’s still amazing to me.
Rachel Bozeman 13:31
Another thing we learned early in our careers is to wait in line—there is a
process, and there’s somebody in front of you. But you’ve shared an example
before about a cleared job seeker who maybe tried to cut in line or circumvent
that hiring process a little bit, and it just didn’t go quite as they had
envisioned or planned. I think this is a really important story for other
cleared listeners to hear and understand to help them in their career search.
Do you mind telling us, Tim, a little bit about that one?
Tim Irby 14:05
Certainly. Recruiters look for people who have drive and initiative, and you
want to see that. In this particular example, an individual had applied for a
position that involved having both technical skills and sales or business
development skills. When we do our postings, we’re looking for a particular
range of skills. This person came in, and our HRIS system basically rejected
him because of certain criteria we’d established on the high end. He actually
decided to reach out to our CEO and asked for an opportunity to convince her
that he had the necessary skills. He didn’t know exactly why he was rejected,
but normally, I would say that’s a really good thing. I kind of liked that. She
bounced the resume back to me, and I had already taken a look at it anyway. The
thing was, you have to walk the talk. If you’re going to do that, you’ve got to
have something to back it up. I had evaluated his resume and could see that he
didn’t really have much experience at all. But I said, alright, I better double-check
this. I went to his LinkedIn page as well. This is another example of where
your things need to match up and be consistent. His LinkedIn page was even more
revealing about the skill he was trying to sell us on. It was more of an
internship position where he’d just done a couple of months and helped out in a
team; he wasn’t really driving a sales team as he tried to claim. So he didn’t
get what he was after. I even ran it by another independent third party who’s
involved in cybersecurity, and he came to the same conclusion that I did. I
really do admire somebody who takes those extra steps, but in this case, it
didn’t match what he was sharing in his background.
Kathleen Smith 15:52
I try to explain that time and time again to candidates: I appreciate that you
believe you could fulfill this job and deserve this job, but there are people
on the other side of the equation who know how to evaluate the right people for
that job, and you need to give them the chance to do their job and thank them
throughout the process without trying to go around it. Speaking of the hiring
process, I understand that you have something called a Meet and Greet in your
hiring process, which seems to have some really great things for not only the
candidate but for you. Do you want to talk a little bit about your Meet and
Greet process?
Tim Irby 16:31
Certainly. We don’t want to be just the HR people in headquarters trying to
make decisions for our operation. It’s so important. We don’t always have
people that we think have the right skills and background for the position, but
there’s this chemistry that’s going to happen within the team and between the
candidate and their management or supervisor. We want to get that exposure as
soon as we can to make the best decision. For the candidate, it’s an
opportunity to get something beyond what they see on paper—the job
descriptions, tasks, duties, and what the HR person can describe. It’s a chance
to get in there and personally see where the work takes place. What kind of
people are there? What’s the environment like? Is it too crowded, too expansive?
Is it going to be social, or am I going to have my private space? Those kinds
of things. From our standpoint, it gives us that human contact beyond just
video and telephone. In some cases, we’ve screened how they actually work with
some of the technologies, but we want to see how the person communicates, how
interested they really appear, and how they might communicate with their
colleagues and supervisors. That gives us a chance, in a few minutes—maybe 15
or 30 minutes—to make that observation. It gives the candidate a chance to
self-opt out or confirm, “Yeah, this is the place I want to be,” and it gives
us a chance to take a second look as well.
Rachel Bozeman 18:07
Very cool. I love that idea. I think that’s a win-win for all. Everyone likes
to meet someone.
Tim Irby 18:13
There’s another aspect of this that I really like. It causes our supervisors to
have a little skin in the game. I don’t want the supervisors saying, “I didn’t
pick this team.”
Rachel Bozeman 18:23
I love it. Absolutely. Everybody likes to be part of the decision-making
process. So one final question that I have for you before I turn it over to my
sweet friend Kathleen to ask her final question. I’m just going to ask for one
more favor, if you don’t mind, Tim. If you have any other advice that you would
give to our listeners to make them super successful in their cleared job
search, I would love if you could share that.
Tim Irby 18:47
Pay particular attention to the required qualifications in our cleared space,
at least for Xtreme Solutions. They are there for a reason. They’re not used
just to filter people out; they really are a minimum requirement. We have a
number of folks who don’t have the education, the years of experience, or the
certifications, but they’ll apply anyway, thinking, “If I can only get in to
talk to somebody, I can convince them.” But we just can’t. We’re presenting
candidates to our clients that have those requirements. That’s so different
from the commercial space, where I’ve had experience, and where you might say,
“Maybe we’ll create a little role that can really fit you. This has given me an
idea of how you can contribute to our business.” I can’t do that where I have a
government contract. The roles are pretty well defined.
Kathleen Smith 19:38
There is no fudge rule. This is the requirement. They’re telling you upfront
what this job is.
Tim Irby 19:46
We really do want to find candidates. We’re not trying to discourage candidates
when we say that. People will be much more successful if they can match up
whatever experience they have with the required qualifications we post, because
we’ll immediately look for those people.
Kathleen Smith 20:05
Well, Tim, this has been a great conversation. How may our cleared
professionals in the audience get in touch with you?
Tim Irby 20:14
I would be very anxious for all of them to contact us and, of course, apply.
Look at any of the postings we put in the cleared space. You can also look at
our website, xtremesolutionsinc.com. We have a career page on there. We
typically don’t solicit unsolicited resumes; we’re really working off of
specific job postings. So I would say those are the two main vehicles to get in
touch with us.
Kathleen Smith 20:43
Well, Tim, thank you so much for sharing with us all of the wonderful things
about Xtreme Solutions.
Tim Irby 20:49
Thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity.
Kathleen Smith 20:51
Our pleasure. Tim made a really great point about if you’re going to apply for
a job, please look at the minimum requirements and make sure that you meet
them. Don’t make them up in your mind and apply otherwise. Rachel, what about
you?
Rachel Bozeman 21:07
Yes, they are not suggestions; they are requirements. So read them, follow
them, and if you don’t meet them, don’t apply. I thought that was great advice,
and I also appreciated Tim sharing the importance of trusting the process.
Sometimes you may think playing leapfrog and skipping someone is going to work
in your favor, but friends, you saw what happened when that little frog tried
to jump past the cars and not follow the line—squish. And what else is great is
you listening all the way to the very end. I know you learned something today,
and I hope that you are willing to share with all of your friends and family
and the person you’re sitting right next to right now. They need to hear this
too, so share it with them. Get out there, follow us, share it, and until next
time, bye.