How do you recruit for a cyber army of the near future?

Welcome back everyone and thank you once again as we've been saying all day for taking the time to

tune in to this year's event. Don't forget if you have any questions for our incredible guests you

can always click the ask a question button right there on your screen. We will try and take as many

of your questions and kick them to our awesome guests as we can. In our final conversation for

the event today we're exploring the challenges of manning the digital front line. My guests are

Colonel John Hosey. He's the sixth chief of cyber and commandant at the U.S. Army Cyber School

Colonel Kristen Sailing is the Innovation Chief at the Army Talent Innovation Directorate

And finally, Pat Tamburino, Chief Operated Officer at Noble Reach Foundation, a nonprofit organization that recruits top-tier talent in academia, industry, and government to tackle national challenges

Colonel Hosey, Colonel Sailing, Mr. Tamburino, very grateful to have all of you taking the time to join us today

Thank you, one and all. Colonel Hosey, let me kick things off with you for our conversation, if I may

What does it take to build a true next-gen cyber force, not just in skills, but a workforce also in terms of mindset and mentality, Colonel

So down here at the Fort Eisenhower is the Office of Chief of Cyber. We actually go out and look for and scour for candidates across all the cohorts, whether it be from West Point, ROTC, from any university across

We actually conduct in-person live interviews. So each person that is for at least the officer side of the house, each person that is brought in, we've actually conducted live interviews with subject matter experts that are already in the operational force

And we do that across the course as well through recruiting stations for the enlisted side, cyber operators

And then as those talented individuals are selected and want to become more experienced or technologically focused as they move up those individuals are also selected for warrant officer positions So that cohort then moves in and they become more technically proficient

through each one of those skill sets. So it is kind of an interesting challenge

but I don't think we've had success so far with reaching nearly about 100% for

recruiting for the past couple of years. Colonel Hosey, respectfully, sir, I'm going to stick with

you for this next one. If you don't mind a quick follow-up, I got to establish the obvious here for

your live shot, if I'm not mistaken, that is Captain American Shield and Molnir over your right

shoulder, I believe. That is correct. That's awesome. Absolutely love that. That's always

welcome here for the event. Grateful to you. Colonel Saline, a comparable question to you

Talk to me about how you are viewing the establishment of this next gen cyber force

in terms of the U.S. military, especially in terms of things like mindset and mentality. Obviously

we know the technicals are so important, but there's got to be a lot more that goes into that

process as well. And I'm curious what this conversation looks like from where you're situated. So in the past couple of years, we've done a lot on how we rethink Army recruiting

And one of it is looking specifically at different types of talent pools. We really want to get more

in-depth on what the requirements are for each of our individual specialties, especially as you get

into the technical side of things. Looking at cyber in particular, we need those technical

skill sets, but we also need a high degree of mental and emotional resilience in order to be

able to do the kind of things they're doing. And we need people that we can build resilience in to

rotate in and off the digital frontline. That is a unique challenge to us that's very different from

rotating people off of an operational frontline. So as we're building up these requirements with

the subject matter experts as our Centers for Excellence, what we're looking at doing is

you know fishing in different pools Right now recruiting for the Army looks it kind of a one size fits all model This is the standards for bringing somebody into the Army and we looking at where those standards

don't necessarily apply for some of these things, but also are not high enough for some of the other

requirements we have for this very specialized workforce. What we want to do is be able to pull

in the broadest and most qualified pool possible so that we have options for training people and

different areas and different specialties. Yeah, Mr. Tamborino, I want to bring you into this conversation. You are actively involved. You're sort of blending together the worlds of

government, academia, industry. What is the secret to getting all of these worlds to collaborate

effectively, especially in the broader conversation of cyber and innovation we're having here today

I would offer you a focus on the mission. People are attracted to mission-oriented work

If you can establish the mission, you can establish the relevance. You can create what I call the wow factor to say, I want to do that. I want to be part of that

Once you can do that, people will be attracted to government service, whether it's in uniform or as a civil servant. And I think you'll be able to get the best and the brightest that way because people want to make a difference

You have to create these jobs so they can see, I will go to work and I will make a fundamental difference in national security in the topic we're talking about right now

I'd also offer the government has to think about recruiting differently for civil servants

When I was the chief human capital officer of the Department of Defense, we hired somebody

The mindset is I'm hiring you for a 30 year career. How about changing that

I hiring you for a tour of duty That could be one two three years You work on a project as a government employee you make a difference and then we make the membrane permeable You go back to academia

you go back to industry, you go work on something else. And when the government has a need for your talent again

you make the membrane permeable back to the government and you do another tour duty. So it's not a 30, 40 year career. It's tours of duty across academia, industry, government

totally different way of getting people to think about their career. And I think it's really

really fruitful exercise to do it that way. So Mr. Tamborino, let me stay with you because I

really like that idea. And I think that's something that would resonate with a lot of people watching this. Are the incentive structures there right now to allow that kind of

semi-permeable membrane, if you will, back and forth between private and government work? And if not

what more should we be doing to encourage that type of view of service

I think we have, I will, I will talk to the younger cadre. We know in our experience at

Noble Reach that people coming right out of their undergraduate or graduate degree

don't typically consider government their first employer of choice. We have presented them with

with the opportunity to do mission-oriented work, meaningful work, now they make government

an employer of choice. So the first thing is you have to create the wow factor

When you get more senior, we're gonna have to deal with the normal barriers we've talked about

What are the compensation levels? What are gonna be the ethics rules

What are gonna be the post-employment restrictions? But if we believe we want people to adopt

this tour of duty kind of framework to their career, I'm really confident the government could address

these other problems. They're not insurmountable, you just have to be thoughtful