Active Talent Pipeline Solves Cyber Recruiting Challenge

The Client

Cyber Security Company

Our client provides cyber defense using complex behavioral modeling, big-data analytics, and advanced computing capabilities to deliver unprecedented network visibility, early threat detection, and targeted, business-informed mitigation actions. They also provide for collective defense by sharing and correlating threat and event data across multiple companies and sectors.

The Support

  • Operating systems, networking, and distributed systems
  • Linux systems administration and management
  • OS container technology
  • Network and internet protocols
  • Cloud technology such as Amazon AWS, and OpenStack
  • Shell scripting

The Challenge

Our client was in the process of expanding the functionality and scope of their two main product offerings while simultaneously adding new developers to the team. The surge of internal activities created an immediate need to hire multiple Site Reliability Engineers (SRE) to work on operations related issues and to be on-call to troubleshoot hardware, software, application and network issues.

The new SRE roles were also intended to represent the SRE organization during the product design reviews and for improving the deployment processes through the use of automation.

The challenge to find this level of SRE talent in short order was compounded by a white-hot Cyber Security market with one of the lowest unemployment rates in history.

The Solution

Utilizing The Squires Group’s proprietary In The Perfect Space (ITPS)TM methodology, our dedicated Account Manager, Paige Umbel, was able to get an in-depth understanding of the company’s products, its founding members’ core values and the growing business model.

What quickly emerged was a story of an industry leading team of cybersecurity experts coming together, under one company, to defend customer networks, industry sectors, and nations from advanced cyber-attacks. They were rapidly expanding and it was clear that their need for top tier talent would be ongoing.

In response to our client’s ongoing talent needs, our recruiting team created a plan for an Active Talent Pipeline—which is essential in identifying candidates that are in various stages of making a career move. This approach fosters a continual flow of candidates into our Active Talent Pipeline.

Our next step was to craft a list of target companies and support/ ancillary companies in the Cyber ecosystem, who operate in our client’s market. Our team then spent time identifying and interviewing candidates from those companies that would fit our client’s fast-paced environment.

We also reached out to our extensive network of consultants seeking referrals of people they have worked with in the past to add to the Active Talent Pipeline.

As a result, we identified several candidates that were sharp and hungry for knowledge. Candidates who yearned to know how and why things work. These candidates were solid technology professionals seeking an opportunity to move out of service companies and grow their careers in Cyber product development with a cutting edge company.

The Success

With the success of our Active Talent Pipeline recruiting approach, we were able to identify a group of top-flight candidates and present them to our client to support their Site Reliability Engineering needs.

After several rounds of in-depth interviews, our client made offers, which were in turn accepted, to several of our candidates. The new hires have been a solid addition to the team and are supporting in the build out of the functionalities of their Cyber Security products. They are also helping with the implementations at the client sites.

Because of our ability to support their immediate needs for Site Reliability Engineers, we are now established as their number one strategic staffing partner. Since that initial success, we have been asked to assist with additional talent acquisition needs and delivered successful hires for their Cyber Security Product Manager, Instructional Designer, Controller, Computer Network Defense Analyst, and a Linux Systems Engineer to continue to foster their rapidly growing company.


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