Mike Bruni Live on Shally's Alley

Hey everybody, all right, how's it going? Welcome to Shelly's Alley, the 1st of April, 2025. Today is April 4th, and man, I wish it would have been April 1st because then I could have done like a total April Fool's joke about, you know, April 1st and, uh, and really kind of play on it, but it's, you know, it's too late. So anyways, we are here at Shelly's Alley with a special guest, Mike. And Mike, um, I've, I've known Mike for— we were just talking about it was over 20 years. Mike is a member of the government, if you will, community in DC. He works with a lot of federal programs with, with Department of Defense and Education and a lot of other, you know, federal access type of programs. And you might recognize him from— he was in Federal News Radio, he was featured on the Pentagon's channel Hiring America television. So, you know, we're talking to a TV star here, right? And you might also know him from the Recruit DC conference. He's one of the members of the board of directors there. Mike Bruni. He's got maybe, what, 25, 30 years of experience with, with government recruitment? More than 30. Yeah, yeah. So somebody I look up to, um, and I'm actually wearing this shirt in his honor specifically because when we met, I was doing some work with SAIC that is now Leidos. Leidos. Now, was that— I wonder this, I've asked a couple of people and I'm not really sure if I have the right answer. Did Leidos acquire or did SAIC acquire or was it a merger? What's the deal?

Well, I'll tell you, it's interesting you ask that question. So let me kind of explain that because that was a little bit—

Sort of like a morph.

Yeah. Well, it was interesting because Leidos was the original SAIC. And then what happened was they split the company, but the real SAIC, in other words, the EIN number of the modern-day Leidos was the pre-split EIN number of SAIC. The SAIC that you see now was, it was the actual spin-off, but they spun the name off. So it's interesting.

Oh yeah, now they're competitors, going back to their roots as the original Leidos. And the SAIC that's out there is the, is the other one, that it is the newer one.

Yeah, they kept the name and the branding, which was interesting.

Wow, okay. Yeah, well, um, you know, it's, uh, very opportune. And by the way, folks, if you're thinking I have genius timing, I'll take the accolade, but really this was planned, uh, way before all the announcements about, you know, um, the, the government cuts and layoffs and, and that other stuff. So I actually did not plan to have Mike here right after that. However, how fortuitous Mike has, you know, basically ground-level knowledge on what's going on with what we refer to as GovCon, which is the— you want to explain that? The government contracting? You want to— can I explain what GovCon is for the uninitiated?

Sure, sure. Did you want to do that, Shelly? You want me to explain it?

Why don't you explain it? It's your, it's your field.

You got it. So again, I've been around, just for those of you in the audience, I've been around the government contracting and federal government space for the better part of about 30 years, all within the human capital and talent acquisition space. As Shelley mentioned, he and I go way, way back. But government contracting, I think a lot of people outside the, the Capital Beltway here in the Washington, D.C. area, which is where I sit, I think are probably not as familiar with government contracting. And that's basically the industry that supports federal government, mostly through services, right? So professional services, which really equals people, expertise, human So here within the Beltway, we typically refer to that as government contracting because the government does depend on private industry to perform a lot of its actual work. As we know, government doesn't typically buy things or integrate systems. It actually brings the private sector in to basically execute those functions. It's a very, very big business. It's probably coming up in the news today with everything that's going on. As we speak, as we sit here today, we're still kind of living in a time of uncertainty where we know that there are probably reductions coming. I think what everybody's waiting for is how deep those reductions will go. We're seeing it in the federal space, the actual federal government, but I think we're still waiting to see what type of reductions or decreases or whatnot we're gonna see here in the private community.

So basically GovCon is the ecosystem of the corporate business for-profit enterprises. I know that might be redundant, but it's all of the business world that revolves around supporting government activities at every level, everything from like construction to health, you name it, as long as there's a government cabinet-level agency or whatever that's running it, they, they need to hire outside firms to help them with, you know, this work. In some cases, they even manage companies like Leidos and BAE. They manage other companies that are contracting through them, and those are called subs or subcontractors. And traditionally, what one of the things I wanted to kind of kick things off with Traditionally, GovCon is considered to be a very stable, rock-solid business model. So, if you're in the GovCon, you kind of have a pretty good trajectory. Now, there's a big difference between being stable and being predictable. A lot of companies depend on winning bids and if they get the bid, they get the business. So, one of the biggest, I would say, differences in recruiting for GovCon is that you may very well be recruiting for a job that doesn't exist yet. And that's a very different nuance. For example, let's just say Lockheed wins the contract to build the next boat. That's probably not accurate, but it would be more like an airplane, right? And they're negotiating that bid, and they need to show that they have the ability to do it, so they have to have the people. But if the bid falls through, then those people never got hired. So it's kind of a little, tricky. It's almost like, it's almost like in the business world, like contract recruiting for contractors, but it's even more, um, it's even more performative. Like, we are going to have this thing, but we might, we might even sign a letter saying we'll hire you if we get the deal, but if we don't get the deal, we might not, right? It's always been considered a really stable— I mean, I don't know, as far back as, as, you know, probably the beginning of our, of our nation's history, it's considered a stable job to work for the government or with the government. And that just changed, right?

Correct, correct. You know, it's interesting you mentioned that. You know, when you go back, you know, government contracting— yes, I mean, we are— we have been, um, you know, over the course of time, you know, I'd say over the last 30 years at least since I've been in it, this is a very stable you know, for, for the most part, a stable, uh, industry because of the federal government. That's—

yeah, it's always got to run. The government's always running, you know.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, it's interesting, you know, I— when I got into recruiting, it was just after the wall came down. So I remember I got into this business, you know—

oh no way, really? I didn't know that.

And it's trough, right? Back when, uh, you know, cuts throughout the 1990s were very, very deep. There was a a lot of cuts there in the '90s throughout even into the late '90s. And it wasn't until 9/11 that all of that started to come back and kind of increase the business where it is today. So there was that lull of about a decade for the better part of a decade where we saw continuous cuts, but we haven't seen it since. So the generation now in the workforce, yes, we're not really used to it. The majority of people that were here back in the '90s, you know, have obviously retired or transitioned out. So this community and this, this talent pool, if you will, is not, you know, they're not used to this. And many of us that are probably listening to this outside, you know, our industries take hits all the time, right? The high-tech industry, the financial services. Government is not used to this. You can imagine the shock of, you know, of what's going on right now here. Amongst the, uh, the local talent pool.

Yeah, that's exactly the point that I'm trying to make, is it's like, wow, you know, it's— you're— you may switch— there's, there's an inside joke, if you will, in the industry— you may switch seats, but you're still in the same job. So like, your employer might be Company A, but then it might, you know, be contracts move around, and then it might be Company B, but you're still doing the exact same job. You just have a different badge number because now you're working with another company. That's how stable it is. And now all of a sudden, weird. And I want to also clarify, we're not talking about military here, folks. So, so this government doesn't mean, um, you know, Army, right? There's education, there's urban housing, there's agriculture, there's, you know, when you look at the cabinets, uh, the president's cabinets, it represents the same thing that in a, in a corporation it If you looked at the executive suite, you know, the president and CEO has, you know, the SVP of sales, the SVP of operations, the SVP— that's the cabinet. They're the members of the executive branch that run the things that make a country run. And only one of them is the defense industry. There's also all these others, including health and human services and all that. So it's a huge, huge impact. And you, Mike, you've been in the trenches for a long time. What is one— I know you have a lot of knowledge, but I want to just start to get some of it. What is one hiring practice that you see companies stubbornly holding on to that just drives you nuts?

Great question. I've got to tell you, something comes immediately to mind. This community is extremely reactive. It's a very— from my experience, it's a very reactive community. It's not to say that we don't source. but I think it's extremely reactive. But here's, here's probably why. And again, I'm assuming here, this community, you know, we talk about AI, we talk about queries, we talk about sourcing and automation. It's very actually difficult to do in a number of communities here around the government, particularly the intelligence community. I, I can't— I come from the intelligence community, have worked around all of government, but most of my experience is in the intelligence community. And as everyone knows, you know, certain access, certain clearance you know, certain clearances, you know, we are raised to hide, right? We're raised to hide. I, you know, when, uh, in, in the advent of the internet age and the online, you know, age, that's not really, you know, it was never all that popular, you know, over the years. Of course, we all, we all went online, but, you know, the government, you know, because of the nature of classification and, and just obviously, um, you know, things that are classified, if you will. You know, that's a world that there's— you have to take a lot of risk in. So when you're out there, you don't necessarily advertise. So your algorithms and your scrapers and everything that we use typically in recruiting and sourcing sometimes comes up short. Right. So the fact that that happens, sourcing becomes an extremely difficult function inside the talent acquisition community, which I think has driven a lot of the TA community here to be more reactive. And what I mean is posting jobs, going to traditional job fairs and things like that. Not to say that I'm opposed to those, but we're very limited in our ability to identify. Plus you have a talent pool here. I mean, when we talk about supply demand, I'm hard pressed to think of another industry that has such a delta between available opportunities and the talent that's actually number one qualified, but also possesses the access to actually jump into those roles. Because keep in mind, the government doesn't necessarily clear people at the rate of production. So that's, that's a limited pool to be sponsored technically. In other words, to undergo a background investigation as an industrial contractor. So keep in mind, you have this small pool of fish and fishermen hanging around.

The fish are like, wow, there's a lot of food here, but I can't eat any of it. That's right.

That's right. And the talent pool has its pick of where it can go. So it drives a recruiter crazy. I will tell you, and again, I've touched other industries nationally and internationally. I would say that the Washington, D.C. metro area, if you're in a particular IC, DOD, are probably some of the most difficult environments to recruit in.

So you mentioned IC. I want to— once again, it's kind of one of those things that when you're in the business, you don't really think about, but IC is the intelligence community. And Mike has a significant amount of experience working across the intelligence community and in various capacities. And this includes some of the, you know, overt business that we do, you know, FBI, you know, national security. These are things that— not things, these are organizations and activities that are known, but it also includes foreign activity where we're protecting our nation's interests in our lives in countries where, you know, there has to be anonymity. So, there's a lot of sensitivity around what you can say, what you can't say, you know, things that get redacted, etc. And that's a whole different space where just— and I love using this example, Mike. You know, when I teach recruiters about cold calling and we talk about the opener, And one of the things that I do when I, when I'm calling someone and kind of identify myself really quickly and I say, do you have a moment to talk? So, you know, this is Shelly with SASE. Do you have a moment to talk to me? And in any other industry outside of the IC, most of the time people will say something like, sure, or what's this about, or who are you, or whatever. But in the IC is the only industry where I consistently not every time, but very frequently get the following answer: How did you get this number? Right? It's totally different. So when people object in my classes about, well, that sounds like cold calling, sounds like it's really aggressive. What if somebody says, how did you get my number? I stop and I go, you know what? The only time I've heard that, how did you get my number, is in the intelligence community. Other than that, people don't say, how did you get my number? But in the intelligence community, they have to ask you that because it may possibly be that you shouldn't have that number. In the first place. So it's funny, right, because it's like a whole nother— everything that you think about technical recruiting and the challenges of technical recruiting, scarcity, lots of offers, add to that the fact that somebody has to have clearance or be clearable. That means that they can pass the adjudication process. So on top of all the other requirements, now you have this extra, and frequently it's location sensitive. You know, if you're looking in, in the DC area there's a limited population of whatever, and it's not like people can relocate easily because that means you have to relocate your residence and pass adjudication locally where you don't have any employment history or anything like that. It's, it's pretty tricky, very, very difficult.

Yeah, and it add— that adds, you know, layers of complexity to this, no question about it. And as I mentioned earlier, people purposely try to stay off the grid Which again is always the challenge in recruiting here. And it does, it's extremely challenging. It's, you know, we can't hire everyone. You have to have certain backgrounds, you have to have certain skills, but honestly, and we do this, I'm still a practitioner. The majority of people that I need and want aren't advertising themselves. There may be a footprint out there. The challenge becomes how do you identify people that hide in plain sight? So it's challenging, it's extremely challenging.

Sometimes, you know, there's a fallacy out there that I've encountered a lot where people say that, you know, the fact that you have top secret clearance, you can't put that on your resume. That's actually not true. If you have a particular clearance, there's only 3 basically, right? Secret, uh, classified secret, and top secret. Is that right?

It's actually secret today. It's secret, top secret.

It's only 2.

Well, we still have a confidential, but most, most organizations have done away with— so based on the NISPOM, which is the personnel security manual, there's confidential, and I think it still exists, but that's a very low level, secret, and top secret. And then beyond that, depending upon the agency, depending upon— there's different compartments and classifications that you would have to do in addition to those background.

But so the fact that you have secret or top secret clearance in and of itself is not classified. So that's something that you can find on a resume, although a lot of people don't put it on there anyway, just for safety. But it is allowed. However, there are a lot of other things that you cannot put in writing externally. And to find people with those skill sets, you cannot do a keyword search because those are, you know, that document goes through a redaction process where, um, people that are, that are, you know, guardians of this, of the secrecy will remove certain keywords. So keyword searches are sometimes, uh kind of just pointless. What I found is the best way to do it is to look for what's missing, right? What do they have on their profile that tells you that they're probably adjacent but there's something missing? And one of my favorite things, of course, is the word declassified, because nobody puts declassified on their resume unless the opposite was true. If you put declassified on your resume, somewhere along your career you touched something that was classified.

Yeah. And it could also be that most publication review boards will redact a lot of that language. They won't tie certain things together. And it varies. It varies. It varies per department and per agency of what they are going to release, allow you to release. Right.

Which is how you structure it. And yeah, pretty much. Yeah.

What your job is. And to be perfectly honest with you, the majority of, you know, the terminology that you see in the DOD or you see, you know, in the intelligence community for the most part, there's a different language. We speak a different terminology here. So there's a lot of acronyms and things like that. Of course, if you've served, you're probably familiar with it, but there is a lexicon that most people have a challenge with translating that into what I call, you know, commercial or civilian speak. So when you are transitioning, like now, many, many federal employees impacted, obviously, that need to find roles in the private sector, maybe not necessarily GovCon, maybe outside of GovCon, there's a huge lift now. They have to make that translation, which is challenging.

And it's like occupational codes, nothing secret or classified. It's just your occupational codes or the job titles, you know, the linguistics or vocabulary of how that's described. That may be very familiar to you as a government employee for, you know, 10, 20 years, but in the public sector isn't used. And so when you put that on your resume, I can't think of any examples, a recruiter reads that and they were like, what is this? I don't know what is that. And so that actually causes you to be eliminated or rejected from consideration because they don't know what it is, even though it might be exactly the equivalent. You know, like I can think of things like logistics, right? I mean, if you're in logistics, whether you're moving Coke bottles or, you know, parts from, from a, you know, classified airplane, it's still logistics. So the transferable skills are the same, right?

You just have to be able to convey it, right? So one of the things that I do, we typically work with government executives moving from government retirees into what I call the commercial marketplace. And we work with them not only to help translate their skills, But what we also have to do even more importantly is be that interpreter that actually can work with the client company, a Fortune 100 or a Fortune 500, to try to explain exactly what this person does and how their skillset and expertise can benefit you. That is a challenge because most people are not familiar with what this person has done in this community and how that translates to a commercial application.

What does that mean in business? Isn't there, um, and I'm sure you, you coach a lot of candidates as well as, so you work with recruiters as a consultant advisor and also with candidates. Isn't there, uh, some kind of a crosshawker translator that helps you? You put in your, your, you know, code or whatever and it kind of tells you what the— does that exist or am I imagining?

Are you talking about the MOS calculators that you take?

Yeah, it translates from Is that it?

You'll find those. That's active duty military. So the MOS for any particular discipline within the service, a lot of companies will have that calculator, if you will. Now there's a number— I've seen a lot of—

But not for non-military. There's no translation for that?

Not necessarily for MOS, but what I am seeing are there's some AI platforms now that I think Google just came out with one that allows you— being more geared towards federal overall. So I think there are some applications and that technology is probably getting a little better. And I think it will help people in the long run.

It's just basic vocabulary, you know, like just the fact that the way that you describe logistics doesn't sound like what UPS does. It's, you know, completely different.

That's it. And, you know, it goes beyond that. You know, it's also being able to prepare people on how to engage with the private sector. There's so much emphasis on translating skills, resumes, how do you interview, what do I do with my LinkedIn profile? Where the rubber meets the road is my— is when I get in front of you, can I articulate that in a way that you're going to understand? That is a huge challenge that we find in the candidates that we coach and promote.

So I love that, that you brought that up. I actually was going to ask you about that. What is— what is the most hilariously bad job search-related advice that you've heard someone give that made you want to just, I mean, totally cringe, pull your hair out? In other words, you're a candidate that you're coaching that comes to you with, well, I was told— what is the absolute worst piece of advice that they've brought to you that they've said they've had from others?

Great, great question. I'm going, I'm going to focus on the resume because the majority of advice given comes from this, typically the resume advice. Here's the thing about resumes. Everybody's— they're like opinions. Everybody has one. Right. Yeah.

Everybody has an opinion on what a resume should look like or—

yep. And it confuses people a lot of times where— and I teach in a lot of the government transition courses as well. So this comes up a lot and, you know, it's great. I think everybody out there that gives advice on resumes is giving something good. I don't want to downplay that.

There's always good advice, right? But I'm asking for like the funny, like the funny cringe anecdote where somebody gave you something that they were told that was just the absolute contrary to like common sense?

Oh, I think I'll be honest with you. And again, I'm coming at it from a government perspective. They will structure a government resume for private industry just in general. We don't have to go any further than that. And I can tell you honestly, most people in the commercial world, meaning that they haven't spent time in the government, would never understand what that is. They would not understand. So when I see someone actually giving resume advice on how to structure their experience from a particular, you know, intelligence agency and they're trying to actually structure their resume for like Google or, you know, I'm just sending, you know, take your pick, fill in the blank, whatever company, it's not going to translate. Number one, it's not going to beat an algorithm. An algorithm is not going to recognize it. Number two, the human eye is not going to make sense of it. So what ends up happening you get now into the habit of what I call, you know, constant discouragement, where you have somebody that's constantly applying, not getting into—

rejected, rejected, rejected, rejected.

Yeah. So I don't know that, Shelley, I can think of one thing. I think it's a very common theme because there's so much emphasis on resume and resume. And I'm a believer. I'm just going to speak for myself. Resumes have very little traction to get you a job. They might get you recognized. But again, I always, I always use the football field as my guide, right? Might get you to the 20-yard line. It's sure not going to get you into enemy territory for a touchdown. So again, it's all a strategy. But typically a lot of folks out here that are looking to make a transition are getting a lot of advice. It's all good advice. The problem is, how do I put that advice together to benefit me? That's the challenge.

And I want to, I want to jump on something you said about the resume. You know, I I've always, ever since the beginning, when I got into this industry many, many, many, many, many years ago, uh, 1996, if you can believe that, I, uh, and by the way, the reason I got into the industry is because I was going around all over the country trying to find a job, visiting my friends from when I was in the service, Peace Corps, and staying with them and applying for jobs, um, because I thought, you know, if I'm a local, right, so I would change my address and everything. Anyway, long story short, I'm, I'm sick and tired, beaten down from doing exactly that, you know, sending my resume out and not getting any responses. And ever since I got my job in, in recruiting, I felt like the resume is, is kind of a— it's like your enemy. It's kind of a bad thing. In other words, nobody gets a job because of their resume. The resume doesn't get you a job. I feel like the resume opens the door But really, what its job is to help employers eliminate people. It's not really, you know, people aren't selecting resumes, they're rejecting resumes. And it's something that as a job seeker, it's important to understand recruiters aren't looking at applications looking for which one is qualified. They're looking at applications to disposition everybody to clear the queue because they're required to clear out their queue and not have people sitting in limbo. And so most of the time they're looking at your resume for what to reject. It's when they don't see something to reject that they stop and look at what to accept. So you got to get past that filter, and it's a— it's almost like the opposite of what you would expect, right? Um, so yeah.

Wow. Yeah, yeah. I'm always shocked by the amount of people— we coach a lot of people— I'm shocked by the amount of people that actually rely on nothing but applying. Um, I'm always shocked by that.

And, you know, obviously networking, they don't do the following up, they don't do Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's, that's interesting.

Now you would think, you know, especially coming out of the government, they would have some sort of support, like some, you know, there are like the Department of Defense and some of the intelligence community depending upon, they actually do provide really good transition programs. The challenge though becomes you can't get enough people that have different industrial perspectives and disciplinary perspectives to provide the right advice for all of these people. So it's It's good generally, but it really comes down to the individual to be able to actually develop a strategy for themselves. And it's challenging because, you know, HR in the government isn't the way that we practice HR in industry, right? Finance in the government is different than finance. You know, there's no profit loss in the government. It's all budgeting. When you come out into the, into private for-profit, typically you have to understand P&L. Now, many people understand that when you're hiring somebody from the government, but it's not an automatic transition. There are many nuances that exist in private industry that do not exist in the federal government.

Okay, like what?

Well, again, there was a couple examples there. For instance, you know, in—

The ones that don't exist, yeah.

Yeah, I mean the, you know, HR I'll use, you know, HR in private industry is very big on compliance, right? Protecting the company. That's not necessarily the case in government, right? It's more administrative. Different compliance.

It's a different kind of compliance. Government.

It is. Yeah. And it's a, it's a different rule book. So it's practiced much differently. Not to say that someone can't transition. I certainly don't mean to suggest that you can't, but there is a learning curve, right? Logistics, you mentioned military logistics, although very good, is different than commercial logistics. So going from the military directly to UPS and all that, there is a learning curve. It can be done.

And I've seen it done many times and it's done all the skills are different, but the function. Yeah, I see what you mean.

So you have to, you have to know, you know, you have the basic skills for it. It's just Again, it's moving from one application to the other, right?

Right, right. So it's almost like, again, going back to translation, it's the skills are there, but you have to translate how you apply them. So maybe a good example would be like, for example, uh, the, uh, JAG, right? Judge Advocate General, or the, the military court system. They have their own attorneys because the law for government is, you know, it's different. It's still— you're still an attorney, but if you're in a military court versus a civilian court, you, you know, you have to apply different aspects of the law that may— you may not be completely familiar with.

Interesting. Yeah. So, um, yeah, there's just— and I think it's, it's the know-how to do that which becomes a challenge.

Okay. Yeah. So they get, they get help, but they still have to translate.

Yeah, absolutely.

Um, I wanted to ask you about something. So you're one of the few, very few people that I have ever met in my career that has implemented a staffing effort that was in the scale of an excess of $1 billion. Is there anything you can share with us that I know, you know, probably some of that was sensitive, but what can you share with us about something at that scale that we can learn from for those of you that are only working on a, you know, $1 million instead of $1 billion staffing initiative?

So it's great. I'm glad you asked that. I haven't talked about this in a long time. So this was an effort probably going back about 15 years ago. So I'll start out with this.

I might have been involved, just saying.

3 months nonstop.

Yeah.

Almost sleeping in the place. 3 months. Because, Charlie, as you mentioned earlier, and just to kind of bring back contingencies and the bidding, you know, government contracts. And by the way, the government acquisition process is what dictates this. So that's why we're constantly recruiting for jobs that don't yet exist, because when they—

because they're required.

Yeah, they put out solicitations, right? You have to be— you have to competitively bid certain government work, and it's very staff augmentation. I mean, most services, think of staff augmentation, that's really what it is. So they put these monster programs out, in some cases multi-billion dollar deals, and that's a lot of people.

Right?

So what you have to do to be compliant in order— in not all cases, but many, and some of these are very client-specific— sometimes you have to identify every individual that you think you're going to put to work. You may not— they may not be available. It might be not—

may not even be interested, but they got to be out there. Okay.

Yep. So they have to sign a letter of intent typically and express interest. So you're literally recruiting hundreds, if not thousands of people in about a 90-day period. Again, that for this example. So what you have to do is put all of that together just to be compliant. Because if you're not compliant, your bid is thrown out.

You're out.

So if that solicitation states you have to have an identified person for every labor category, and let's just say it's 1,200, 1,400, 1,500 people, maybe more, you've got to slot a name in there. So you can imagine the size of the teams and the lift from a recruitment perspective. Now, people that work in this industry are very used to getting a call from a recruiter and saying, this is a contingent opportunity. We haven't won it yet, but I'm going to give you a letter of intent that states you're not necessarily committed, but you're interested. Could be committed.

And it's just intent. You're not committing. So, you know, they can sign it and still not do it. Yeah. Yeah.

Or a contingent offer of employment, and then it's contingent upon a contract award and many other things. I mean, you can stack a contingent offer letter with numerous contingencies, right? So it becomes more of an administrative lift than anything else. And I'll be honest with you, there are technology platforms out there trying to address these things. It's very challenging. I mean, I think eventually they'll get there, but it's very challenging. But it's a lot of time, it's a lot of effort, it's a lot of horsepower. And I remember sleeping there. I mean, it's that—

On site. Okay.

Yeah, it is. Um, so we at the time, we had the hotel, we had a hotel right next door. We all lived in it. We all lived in it. And keep in mind, this was done inside of a classified room.

So basically, talk about a full-time job. This isn't just full-time out, this is like literally full-time, as in your workday is 24 hours.

There is no remote work in the intelligence community.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, there might be—

dial it in.

Yeah, but for the most part, don't, don't come looking for remote work because chances are you're probably not going to find it because everything is in a particular, particular area known as a SCIF, which is typically a facility that's under certain regulations and things like that, that work has to be done. That particular effort was done in that particular, in a particular SCIF. So not only was it all that time, but most of the time you're in a room with no windows, you're locked up.

Wow. That sounds very, very—

these are very stressful. It's not for everybody. It's an extremely high churn, high burn, very stressful environments many times. But it is a huge, monstrous lift. And at that time it was done on a SharePoint site and you were manually uploading resumes and letters of intent. It was wet signature. I mean, talk about it, folks. Yeah, believe me, we have a good today compared to when we did that. So that was right, that was before, you know, these AI platforms and everything like that. But it was a huge— that was a huge lift. Yeah.

So what would be your biggest translatable win from that that you're gonna— that, you know, you would coach a recruiter today, um, who's not necessarily in, you know, in the cleared space, what would be your biggest win from or your biggest lesson that you would teach to a recruiter today?

And I'm glad you asked that question. From what I have seen, and this probably extends to any industry, but because I've been, I've been hanging in this industry for a while, recruiting in this industry, and I think maybe earlier I should have mentioned this, recruiters have to become more embedded and integrated into the overall—

in the business. Know the business.

Cannot be handled transactionally. It can't be you on an island and you shoving me resumes. You have to be in there with the capture folks, the capture managers, the proposal teams, the business development, the P&L leads. You have to be in there with them because human capital is the deliverable. And the fact that recruiting teams are still sort of satellites to that, and I see this in many, many industries, some people have figured it out. Out. But I think we need much more of that. Number one, you need it to really deliver and win like we did in that effort. We were fully embedded with everyone, going up to the CEO of the company, briefing the CEO in those days. So I mean, that's how embedded and close to the business you have to be. You have to know the competitive landscape. You have to know the dynamics and the nuances of the actual program. So having that access was critical. Now I get it, many recruiters may not necessarily have that. I was fortunate that I had the access that I could be exposed to that data. If you can do that, fantastic, go for it. So that does benefit you, although it doesn't mean you can't be successful outside of that. You have to gain the trust. You've got to build credibility with the people that are actually building these proposals and delivering the business. Because if you don't have that, you're behind and you're probably not going to gain the respect and the trust of the individuals because you need that. As you can see in an effort like that, You've got to be in the trenches with a lot of— can't say I need work-life balance. I'm sorry, it doesn't happen. As soon as you say that, you're not a member of the team, right? Again, recruiting, in my opinion, is not for everybody. So, you know, I've always said recruiting is like the NFL. We all want to go there, but only few can do it. I still believe that. I really believe that this function is much more sophisticated and complex, I think, than a lot of people.

Yeah, we give credit to. Definitely.

Yeah, absolutely.

And having been there— go ahead. Yeah, having—

yeah, no, I, I would say that that to me is probably the one thing that I see missing in many environments that I interact with.

Embedding, it's like getting close to the business.

Yeah, that's true, getting in there. And, you know, I think some people— I think some people use the term a seat at the table. This isn't just a seat at the table. This is you ordering and picking up the tab. You know what I mean? This is the whole nine yards.

You are the table.

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I think that's how proactive you have to be really to be successful. That's just, that's my two cents. That's always worked for me anyway.

Yeah, that's good advice. Yeah, get close to the business in any way you can and be part of it instead of just, like you said, from a distance. I think you said isolated on an island. Yeah, it's a great analogy. You know, you can't just be hands-off. So that's good advice to any— you're right, any industry. I totally agree. And the more you are embedded into the business, yeah, the more you know about what's going to be happening and you can even protect yourself.

You know, it's interesting. I do a— I used to do a panel at McDonough Business School at Georgetown and I used to call it Make Yourself Recession Proof. But I use it for recruiters. When I talk to an audience of recruiters or I coach a recruiter, or even just any individual in any discipline, make yourself recession-proof. And I can tell you the bottom line, the foundation for that is proactivity. You've gotta be the person that initiates all actions, follows up. You have to do that. If you are more reactive and transactional, you're probably not gonna be out in front. And again, that's why, you know, it takes a certain type of personality and a certain type of drive and grit to actually do that. And I see success in a lot of recruiters that, that possess those particular characteristics. In other words, I'll give you an example. When I interview a recruiter and the first thing you say to me is, the job remote? Not sure, you know, not that I have anything against remote work. I could care less. You can work from home.

Not for this space. Not for this space.

Yeah. I mean, but I need somebody who really wants the job and who really wants to be challenged, right? Because this is not a very— this is a very unforgiving environment. Here to recruit in this market. It's very unforgiving because people want instant gratification, they want instant results, and unfortunately the market doesn't bear that. So you have got to be fully on board, fully committed, and fully embedded in order to do that. And, you know, you're going to have to be up for that challenge.

Okay. Um, having been there kind of before and after, So, you know, before the technology, you know, like you talked about some of the things that are advances that are being made now with AI and everything. So since you've been there, like me, you know, before and after. Well, Shelley, I think, I think you were the first one.

I think I learned Boolean from you.

You probably did.

Yeah. I think I learned Boolean from you.

Yeah, you probably did. What, how do you keep a straight face when, when companies nowadays claim to be— companies or organizations claim to be innovative, but they're still asking for cover letters written in Comic Sans.

Yeah. Yeah, it's, you know, I think of it— I look at it as more compliance versus reality or process versus reality. I think you need process. There has to be a balance. I think a number of organizations, particularly in this community, right, because in this community, most recruiters recruiting rolls up to HR. Right. And I don't know, you know, I'm going to say that that's two reasons. Number one, compliance. We're very— because we deal with the federal government, it's highly regulatory. We deal with OFCCP. We have to deal with all of those things. So a lot of times I can't blame recruiting because it's forced upon them. Right. I think, you know, if you are going to have a process, I think you need to define why you have it. Right. So in other words, if you're, if you're requiring cover letters, is there a reason? Right. And there could be a valid reason for it, right? Maybe there is, maybe there isn't. But to just do it as part of process, that doesn't bring any value.

It's another hurdle. You're just—

yeah, it's just a waste of time. Right. And in this marketplace, human capital is revenue. That's the only way when you win a government contract in the services business here, Granted, we all need people to do the jobs, but your people are actually dollars. It's revenue. I hate to say that, but if I win a contract with 50 FTE, full-time employees, my job is to staff that contract depending upon what type of contract it is with 50 employees, right? 50 FTEs so I can make my deliverable, hit my fees and everything that the contract states I need to do. So that's your revenue. If you don't have that, that means all of those projections that your CFO did and your budgeting people did to say, why are we not executing on this contract? We're underrunning. You'll hear that term. We're underrunning the contract. You're underrunning the contract because you can't staff it. So who gets the blame? Recruiting. Wow.

Okay. Yeah, we get the blame for a lot of things. I think that we're not even—

time to fill is a huge metric here. And again, you can argue whether it's relevant in this business. Regardless of what you think about it, you're going to have to live up to a reasonable time to fill, which is 90 days, 120 days probably. I don't have the latest figure, but I'm going to say in this community it could even be above that. I'm going to say it's probably 90 days. And believe it or not, that's respectable. That's respectable.

Yeah. Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's only certain places where you see a, you know, 40-day, 45-day time to fill. And in other countries in the world, there's legal requirements about your notice period and everything where they, you know, I don't know if it was Germany or not, I might be wrong about this, where there's actually like a mandatory 6-month notice period. So I mean, time to fill there, you gotta withdraw all that data from, you know, minus 6 months, 'cause that's not anything you can do anything about.

Well, I'll add one more thing that's a real, that's probably a nuance in this community and GovCon, So when we talk time to fill here, that's usually— it's interesting because time to fill is I got somebody in the seat, I'm executing. Here, it's you've got to identify the person, you've got to recruit the person, they've got to get an offer, whether that's contingent or— they're all contingent because if you get hired in this community, particularly DOD or IC, the intelligence community, you get hired and the contingency is that we take your clearance. In other words, we have to move your clearance. Clearance. So let's say you filled the job in 30 days.

Okay.

It may be another 30, 40, 50, 60 days until actually security completes their process. So you don't actually have anybody that's technically billing, if you will, until that time. So there's two things. And an argument in this business is what do we hold recruiting responsible for? And I've been part of these arguments, right? And I've won them and lost them. And sometimes it's day 1 to the day that they actually signed the contingent offer. We're responsible for that. And unfortunately, there's not a lot anyone can do for that time between signing of offer and then them actually walking on site, right? So again, that's a nuance of this community that many other industries don't have to deal with, right?

Okay, wow, uh, just give me a lot to think about here, expanding my mind here.

Um, okay, so this is, um, I'll tell you what, if any recruiters are listening and you want to hire recruiters, or hire recruiters from this, uh, they're going to be tenacious.

Yeah, they're not going to want to work remote.

Yeah, that too, right?

Probably not anyway.

Yeah. Uh, yeah, but, uh, but yeah, it's, uh, yeah, it's definitely an interesting market.

Um, I wanted to ask you a little bit about the, uh, what you've learned about agility and, and kind of just to define what that means. Um, there's— I believe in my mind there's a difference between recruiting and sourcing. In that recruiting has a, um, process that it has to be— there's a, there's a process you've got to adhere to. There's, you know, there's checkpoints, there's rules about recruiting. And when sourcing gets involved, typically it's when those aren't working and they need to kind of get around that. So it seems to me like, you know, following the, the process, the procedure, the systems and knowing a lot about the business is kind of one side of the job. Somebody obviously can be doing both, but the other side of the job is troubleshooting, problem solving, puzzle, you know, puzzle solving, that kind of thing. Have you— what have you learned about agility that helps you balance the rules and when you can bend? And I'm not saying break, just rules, and then when you can kind of stretch them a little bit in order to get the job done in a good way.

Great, great question. I'll tell you what I do. So, you know, I build recruitment teams, I assess recruitment teams, and I'll tell you what I have yet to ever find in my 30 years of doing this. My 30 years, I have not seen yet— now, I haven't been everywhere, but I have not seen a defined system.

Not one, right? No, but there's always a system Yeah, there's a system.

My system is different. It builds agility, right? So this— look, think of a football team and an offense or a defense. Football players on Sunday just don't go out on the field and throw the ball around. There is a methodology, there are plays, there's a defense they're reading. We adapt that to recruiting. We have to because nothing stays the same. It's not constant. So you have to be agile. Regardless of your industry. So in other words, is a recruiter and a sourcer role, if you are fortunate enough to have those within your organization, are they defined and how do they— so think of a standard, you know, an SOP, a living and breathing SOP that defines everything that you need to do. And then can you live it and can you adapt to it and can you, can you move around and pivot? Right. That's— I don't know if that makes sense. That to me is how you build agility. Because in other words, if you look at a Bill Belichick offense, right, it's everybody do your job. Offensive line blocks, right? They create the hole. The running back knows where they're going. The quarterback knows. The receivers know.

Everybody knows what they're doing in that play, right?

Absolutely, right? And you can adjust. There's utility in that. You can surge.

You can— as long as you know why do we want— so if you're switching lanes, know what the other lane supposed to be doing and do that. So agility is essentially knowing all the lanes.

Yeah, and you have to know every position.

Well, that's a— that's pretty good, man. That's pretty deep.

It goes very deep. And I think because it goes deep and it is so complex, I think that's the reason why people stay away. It's too hard. I've been in environments and made recommendations, even in the government. I did this in the government, and the government, of all— believe it or not, they're the one entity that probably has the ability to implement something like that. But the government doesn't necessarily have full-time recruiters in most organizations, believe it or not.

Right, because they use their partners for that.

But that's how you build agility. And here's the thing, Shelly, when you have that system and foundation created, when someone leaves, you automatically know who or what type of person to plug into that. And that person has a playbook, so they're not starting from scratch. We're not reinventing the wheel. What I typically see, you got a head of TA, you got a bunch of recruiters, you got some ops people, you got some sourcers. Hey, here's some reqs and go fill them. There's your hiring authority. And I see that time and time and time again. And I don't know if that's, you know, a nuance within this industry. I don't know if that's outside other industries. Again, I spend most of my time here, but I gotta tell you, that drives me crazy. And then we tend to have the same problems. For the last 20 years, this community has had the same problems. Which is can't fill the people.

Oh, right. Is it can't find them?

I do recruiter training. What is the number one course that everybody asks for?

Okay, sourcing. Sourcing.

That's it. No one cares about anything else. No one cares about candidate.

I'm not saying they don't care about that.

You have a menu, that's like the number one item that gets sold. Why? Why is that? It's a lift. This is a very high-touch, personalized community. You can't— you cannot automate for the reasons you mentioned earlier. You can't have a chatbot talk to someone. Why? It's being recorded. You can't have that. There's documentation. You can't plug Otter into something. You can't transcribe because people do not want a record of the conversation. What if something is said?

Yeah. Real reasons.

And by the way, you can't aggregate. You can't aggregate people because you can't. There's a lot of risk that goes into those things. So I know everybody says AI, AI, and I love AI. I think it's great, right? I don't think it can do everything everybody says it can do. I think maybe one day we'll get there. But today, this is still a human game. And in an industry like this, and there are others, that you have to be human, you have to be the face, because this is an extremely high-touch community.

That's interesting. Um, it's not— there's a lot of depersonalization.

I—

you said transactional, and that's actually what it, what it really boils down to in, um, in many other sectors where, you know, it's, it's almost like very assembly line, uh, process. So that's, that's just radically different, I think, than what most folks are used to. Um, yeah. Wow. So hey, I wanted to, I wanted to ask you one last question before you leave. I know we're getting close to the hour here, and I really appreciate you taking time from, I'm sure, very important work to, uh, to entertain us here and inform us. But I did want to ask you this, this one kind of, uh, critical question. With all the, you know, government layoffs activity, all that other stuff, there's, there's a lot of newly jobless civil servants and, you know, government, uh, former government employees, what is the best way for them to recruit themselves into the private sector other than showing up in their uniform and demanding a job, right?

Great. And, you know, this is where, this is where we work with them on, you know, it's one of the chan— and I've been, I've been, you know, coaching people out, recruiting people out of the government, the private industry for a long time. It's the one— how they recruit themselves is not only their way, their ability to convey and articulate what they do for what is valuable to you. Does that make sense? I, as a recruiter, let's just say they're going into high tech or pharma, right? Chemical, whatever it might be, whatever industry, hospitality, whatever. Take your pick, right? If I'm in the hospitality, healthcare, pharma industry, How am I going to recognize that skill set? So what we always tell everybody, you got to get smart on your industry. There's the industry, the employer, and the individual.

Right, right, right.

That's a 3-10.

I like that.

So if I'm coming out of USAID after 20 years of being overseas, I'm coming back. I have these skill sets that, by the way, probably very few people are ever going to understand. But I have talent and I have skill. My job is to actually recreate myself for a particular industry. This goes back to our resume comments and everything. I don't care what you put on a resume, right? I don't care what they put. No one out there for the most part is going to understand it unless it is translated in a way that that industry employer and individual is going to be able to understand. Forget beating the system, forget mass supply. At the end of the day, people are hiring you because you are of value to that, right? Take away some of the, you know, relatives and all that stuff. For the most part, if a firm is going to hire you, especially hire an unknown, you have to make sure that you demonstrate, convey, and be able to articulate your value confidently. So not only is it just the resume, it's my ability to interact with you, whether that's on a VTC, whether that's in person. So not all— I've got to be very confident in my ability to actually convey this translation.

Yeah, you may know how to do— you may be an expert, but come across as, you know, you— if you have very little confidence, it just doesn't work. Yeah, that's good advice.

Look, I, I actually took classes from an actor on being confident for recruiting. People think I was crazy because you have to be able to adjust.

I'm gonna go to acting school.

You know, I, I have to— you do, right? Because there's something in it. And, you know, shall I— I can go over here to George Mason University in Northern Virginia and recruit senior, you know, engineering students in the morning, and by the afternoon I'm at the Pentagon recruiting retiring colonels. That is two totally different approaches. A good recruiter can adapt to both environments without taking a break.

You have to like change your face, right?

Absolutely. It's even a different dress.

Oh wow, okay. Changing the car.

You even— you got to go put a suit on.

What that means, you go to the Pentagon, that's like working on missiles.

You gotta put a suit on, you know. So it's, um, it's a very interesting dynamic. Yeah.

Wow. Uh, hopefully a lot of job seekers are going to see this. I'm going to make sure that, that I get this out to the job-seeking community. And before I let you go, I gotta, I gotta ask you one question. Who should be our next guest?

Who should be your next guest?

Do you have a particular topic, or you're looking at somebody you think should be on the show? And they may not accept, so, you know, go large if you want. I'm just going to reach out. I mean, I've had some, um, pretty heavy hitters in here, so you never know. They may or may not.

I was going to say, you, you pretty much— you got the Brian Finks of the world, the Tim Sacketts. Those are guys I know that always have great quality. Um, Sharni, any of those guys out there, I, you probably get, get through them. I'll tell you what, Shelly, can I get back to you on that?

Absolutely.

You put me on the spot. I have a lot of the bigger names.

Yeah, just someone that you think has something to say that would be useful, that maybe especially if it's someone that hasn't been, um, you know, hasn't had a chance to speak out, you know, in a public forum, this would be a great place to get the word out on something important that they have to say that may not— they may not have an avenue for. So give us some time. Well, thanks, man. I really appreciate it. I'm glad to see you, uh, you're doing so well. Yeah, thanks a lot, everybody. Um, We will see you again here next week. The, uh, the topic for next week is we're having Christine Hampton come back and talk about healthcare sourcing. And she's, she's one of the greatest minds in healthcare sourcing, so we'll get a lot of tips on that from her. And then after that, we'll have Michael Bagelman coming in about analytics. So hopefully we'll see you here next week. Until then, be kind to yourselves. Bye, everybody.