Client: Intel Agency
Our client, a Federal Prime Contract holder supported an Intelligence Agency Program to provide IT Operations and Cloud Computing capabilities. All of this work required TS/SCI eligibility prior to performing work at this customer’s locations in the Midwest and the Mid- Atlantic region of the US.
The specific work performed on this program included Systems Engineering (Microsoft, Unix, and Linux based), Cloud Architecture and Engineering, Data Management, Software Development, and Application Packaging.
The Challenge
Our customer held this specific contract for a 15 year period, and during the last few years of the contract ran into attrition issues losing numbers of long term employees who were concerned about job security. This left them very short handed on a program that required 24×7 technical support.
Complicating matters, the positions were in a part of the country that did not have a local talent pool of TS/SCI cleared professionals. Nearly all of the qualified candidates in the area who held TS/SCI access were already supporting this agency, and cannibalizing individuals from other programs within this agency would not sit well with the customer. Simply put – the individuals they needed to perform this work did not exist locally. Even when they were able to identify someone to join the program, they were losing resources who could not wait through the 8-10 week onboarding process.
The Solution
Our client reached out to us based on our reputation for performing classified work across the country. They needed national reach to attract the type of cleared talent required to complete the mission. Softworld employs a national recruiting model and has developed an expertise in relocating cleared professionals for projects. We dragged a broad net across the country to leverage our network of consultants, developed over 20 years, to identify and deliver the talent our client needed. We visited the areas that individuals would be relocating to, in an effort to truly understand the region and lifestyle our employees would experience when they arrived.
Softworld understands the difference between a regional and national consultant. Our national consultants regularly relocate for the term of the project and we have been successful in placing consultants in all 50 states. Softworld’s large team of working consultants are regularly spread over 35+ states at a time. Using this experience we were able to quickly develop a recruiting strategy to get our client back on track.
We met with dozens of managers from the Midwest to Mid-Atlantic region, setup weekly position review meetings, and immediately tapped into our network of cleared consultants. After organizing the positions into functional categories (IT Operations, Development, and Data) we then engaged the Softworld recruiting teams, who specialize in each of these technical domains, in order to deliver qualified cleared talent capable of accomplishing the customer’s mission.
Due to our expertise in clearance processing, Softworld’s FSO was able to work with the client to decrease the onboarding time and manage the accuracy and validity of each consultant’s security credentials. Softworld was able to quickly maneuver through the clearance paperwork that needed to be submitted to the government. We shortened the average onboarding process to four weeks which dramatically increased the retention rate of candidates waiting to start, and managed the VAR process required to access the customer’s facility.
Results
Within three months Softworld made an impact by decreasing the number of open billets significantly. Using thorough technical interviewing techniques and strategies Softworld brought over 75 TS/SCI cleared resources to this program and grew our headcount from zero to 42 active employees over a two year period in a best athlete competitive environment with over 40 other subcontractors. In light of our success, Softworld became the preferred subcontractor to enable our customer to support the client’s mission.