Security Confidential S2 E5 7 Eagle Group

Manoj Tandon: Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Security Confidential. Today we are honored to have Jay Sheehan and Jordy Kern from the Seven Eagle organization join us, along with my co-host Tyler Smith, who’s making a reappearance. But really, this is about Jordy and Jay. So Jordy, Jay, if you guys want to give us a little bit of background about your organization. I know we’re partnered together, and I understand at a high level you folks are doing a lot of great work with veterans, but give us some details. What are you folks about?

Jordy Kern: Seven Eagle Group—our primary focus is to help as many veterans and military spouses as we can in their career fields. We are providing training in emerging technologies. We’re constantly speaking with companies, trying to get them placed in either internship programs, work-study programs, or direct hires. We’ve created platforms that allow the veteran and military spouse to work in remote or gig economy work. We also can get them into the contract side as well. So we’re pretty happy with what we’re trying to accomplish. Our mission is strong, and we’re just out there every day plugging away.

Manoj Tandon: Now, folks that are coming out of the military typically have a very high degree of training in a specialized area. Are the folks that you’re working with looking for civilian roles outside of their primary training? Are they looking to make a career change, or is it more that you’re aligning with their primary skill sets that they picked up in the military and then trying to put them in the market with that?

Jay Sheehan: I guess a little bit of both. We have veterans who come to us who have extensive backgrounds in technology and in other fields, and we place them into positions. Then we have other men and women who are looking for a career pivot, and we’ll provide free training to help them accomplish those goals.

Manoj Tandon: Jordy, what was the impetus to start Seven Eagle Group? What was the inspiration behind it?

Jordy Kern: So we started about six years ago. I didn’t serve in the military myself. Jay was an Army veteran, but I wanted to start something to help out our country’s heroes. I wish I did serve. I never took that opportunity. My father did in World War II, and I just always wanted to give back. I thought this would be a great way to help people with their careers when they got out of the service.

Manoj Tandon: Tyler, you’re a partner here at Dark Rhino, and you’ve kind of been the leader here in working with the Seven Eagle Group. What’s your vision for this partnership? What do you see happening here with veterans?

Tyler Smith: Just being able to give people a shot at a career that can be rewarding both monetarily and non-monetarily. You know, for me, security is more of a calling than anything else. I think it aligns very well with that mindset that drove me to join the Marines in the first place—serving something bigger than myself. It’s something that you do every day working in security where you have an impact. You see the changes that you’ve been a part of or the difference that you’ve made. I think it’s a great opportunity for veterans because when I see other veterans, I see myself when I was transitioning. I was a bit lost, to wrap it up neatly and briefly. It took me quite a while to find my way to security. I really wish that there had been something there when I had gotten out that could have helped me make that transition a bit more easily. So yeah, I’m really excited about what we’re doing. Right now, we’re working with a small handful of veterans in a pilot program. We’re trying to help get them not just the training but the deeper institutional experiences and knowledge by partnering them up with mentors that are working in security, so they can have somebody to talk to in the industry to help keep them motivated, answer questions, and just help them through the process.

Jay Sheehan: Seven Eagle has been instrumental in making that happen with us. One of the hurdles that we’ve had to overcome is a lot of hiring authorities want experience. It can be a challenge when you’re going for an entry-level job: how are you supposed to get experience? So what Dark Rhino has been doing for us and for the veterans is amazing. It gives them that opportunity to learn in a real-world setting and have something to talk about when they do go on interviews.

Manoj Tandon: This is something, Jordy, that I wanted to get back to that Tyler mentioned, which is the transition from the military to the civilian world. I’ve never served, but maybe my false impression is that the transition is very smooth because people are so well-trained and they have such a breadth of experience coming out of the military that they should have no trouble in finding work in the civilian world. Is that a bit of a false notion, or could you shed a little light?

Tyler Smith: I can answer that one personally. In my personal experience, when I got out, I remember I applied for a supervisor’s position at a company that did call center work. In the Marine Corps, at one point in time, I was a fire team leader. It’s not a huge deal, but I was responsible for everything that three other human beings did or failed to do in any given period of time. There, the supervisor’s position was just overseeing 11 people for one shift. They came back to me and said, “Well, we have a janitor’s position that we think would be good for you.” I was kind of blown away by it. That was about as bad as it got, but at the same time, when I was going through TAPS, the Transition Assistance Program, I remember they were talking about all the different jobs in the military and what their equivalent is in the civilian world. When they got to infantry, they were like, “Oh yeah, there isn’t one,” and that was it. That kind of summed it up for me. I got out and worked at a shooting range for a little while, and it was rough. I didn’t really have a lot of opportunity to get ahead. If that’s my experience, and I’m pretty average in a lot of ways, I can’t imagine it being a whole lot different for other veterans. That’s just the standard stuff I ran into, not taking into account the people that ask me questions like, “Well, are you okay?” They think that I was some kind of crazy homicidal maniac potentially because I was a veteran who could just snap at any time. It’s like, “Yeah, I’m fine. What do you mean, am I okay?” They never said it, but you knew what they meant. That kind of stuff makes it difficult. Going from the structure that I had to literally none whatsoever was a big change.

Jay Sheehan: Yeah, I mean, this is something I talk about all the time. I was lucky enough that I had a career field when I came home because my last stint of active duty was when they pulled me out of the reserves and put me back on active, so I had a career to go back to. I’ve been in the staffing industry off and on for about 17 years now, so I had a good job to come back to. Even if it wasn’t for the same company, I knew I could pick up another job. But that being said, I’ve been doing recruitment, and we were always a “veterans first” organization. We always try to find a veteran to fill one of the positions. One of the biggest challenges, though, to me—and Tyler might have a better outlook on this than me—but I believe in the Army and the Marine Corps, we get trained to a task, not to a career level. You can take a person that’s maybe an aircraft mechanic or helicopter mechanic for the Navy, and that person can get a job at Pratt & Whitney as a mechanic. But the same person doing that in the Marine Corps or the Army can basically get a job at Jiffy Lube. There’s a big disparity there in the amount of training that they provide to the Army and Marine Corps specifically. The guys and girls that are getting out of the Navy and the Air Force are at a much higher level education-wise for a civilian career than the others.

Manoj Tandon: One of the things that we talk about amongst ourselves when we’re looking at hiring a person is that we like to hire on personality. How you deal with people, how you deal with situations, how well you communicate—these are all soft skills that are so important, and they’re very hard to teach. We can teach somebody how to monitor a SIEM or how to integrate technology A with technology B on a repeatable basis. We can train them to pass a test. But if they are not good communicators, if they don’t know how to think out of the box and make a spur-of-the-moment decision and take responsibility for that decision, those are skills that I don’t know that anybody can really teach. They’re acquired with life’s experiences. Tyler, I look at your background and your experience. Yeah, you were infantry, but I’m thinking about split-second decision-making, evaluating a situation, looking at what needs to be done when you might not have all the resources to do it. While you may not be directly a project manager or a risk evaluator, all the qualities that are necessary to actually become successful after acquiring a skill like that are present. We’re big fans of hiring veterans because they come with those soft skills that are very, very hard to find.

Jay Sheehan: I wish more employers and hiring managers thought like you. It’s brutal. They’re just looking at these old job descriptions that were written 30 years ago, and they just have a hard time understanding there’s more to a person than whether he has 10 years of experience or five years of experience, or what school he went to. You’re 100% right. The military, I feel from my experience, is the best training ground around for the civilian workforce. And it’s free to the civilian business owner. It’s not just about being task-trained. The soft skills that they bring to the table, the work ethic—we don’t have the opportunity to not go to work every day. Especially if you’re deployed, you’re working. There’s a lot of “hurry up and wait.” That makes us, I think, more patient than most.

Jay Sheehan: There are, let’s say, 350,000 jobs in cyber alone, and it’s growing at 20% on average. Those are good careers, as Tyler was saying. They’re secure, and you know that you can have not only a work environment you can work in, but you also have a family life. You’re not working 75 hours a week to try to make some overtime to feed your family. You’re working a regular nine-to-five job, or with a SOC being 24/7, it could be a shift.

Manoj Tandon: Are you folks working with any state, local, or federal governments to get incentives for employers to potentially hire veterans, or is that not a part of your mission profile at Seven Eagle Group?

Jay Sheehan: We are currently in the process of getting into what they call an IRAP—an Industry Recognized Apprenticeship Program. As I’m sure you can understand, there’s a lot of paperwork and it’s a detailed process. That’s in the works. We’re also working with SkillBridge, the DOD SkillBridge program, to try to create a similar program for transitioning soldiers, sailors, Marines, and airmen so that they might be able to work with us for the last six months of their duty station before they ETS and actually get some more of those work skills instead of just the soft skills.

Jordy Kern: There’s also a federal Work Opportunity Tax Credit. Any business in the country that hires a veteran who has an honorable discharge and has been out of work for at least a month is entitled to a tax credit ranging from $2,400 to $9,600. It’s not the reason anyone should hire a veteran, but it’s a really nice perk nonetheless.

Manoj Tandon: What kind of success are you seeing at Seven Eagle with the efforts you folks are putting in place? Are you seeing a very high placement rate now with the veterans you’re working with?

Jordy Kern: Every situation is different. As Jay mentioned, we do a lot of different types of hires—everything from a freelancer who’s working from home, to a contract worker, to a direct hire. We work with companies directly where they’ll reach out and say, “Hey, we’re looking for a cybersecurity analyst, a Java developer, or a maintenance technician.” Then we play matchmaker and go try to find the appropriate veteran for them. We have good success rates at doing that. This whole initiative that we just launched this year to train veterans in these emerging technologies is extremely exciting to us because we’re going to be filling a very shallow talent pool with some incredible workers who corporate America is going to value.

Jay Sheehan: I think direction is the biggest thing. As I said earlier, you’re looking for your “what’s next” when you come home. What’s your direction going to be? If we can set a direction, then we can set a course. I think that’s one of our biggest issues. I have a very good friend who retired this year after 22 or 23 years in the Army; she’s a former First Sergeant. She sat there saying, “What’s next? What do I do? Most of my adult life has been lived in a uniform. I knew where I was going every day; I knew what I was doing every day. And now what?” That direction is one of the biggest issues.

Tyler Smith: I agree. I was honestly planning on making it a career. I got hurt and that was it for me. I had no idea what to do next. Everything for me was so structured. You get out and suddenly it’s like, “Well, what are we going to eat?” There’s a scene in The Hurt Locker where he’s standing in the aisle looking at all the different cereal. I’ve totally been there. You’re just like, “What do I do?” It’s too much. It’s sensory overload.

Jay Sheehan: There’s a huge disconnect. The job is here, and you’re over here. There’s no bridge between them at that point. The bridge between it is your skill level, and if you don’t have the same skills as the job, you’ll never meet. You have to get there. The only way to do that is to put the work in and get the training.

Manoj Tandon: Jay, on that note, we are coming up on the hour here. I want you guys to plug your company or anything else that you guys want to say and make our listeners aware of.

Jordy Kern: Any military veterans or any spouses out there who are looking for a career or are interested in possibly hiring a veteran, we would love to be of service to you. Our web address is 7eagle.com. Likewise, if there’s anyone out there who just needs someone to talk to about their career, we have some incredible people on our team who are more than happy to volunteer their time and help any veteran or spouse or dependent with anything. We’re always available.

Manoj Tandon: We want to say thank you to you, Jordy, and to you, Jay, for taking the time to be here. I think you guys are providing a great service out there, and it’s going to be of value to a lot of people. It’s a very honorable thing to do, so thank you for doing it.

Jay Sheehan: Thank you guys. It’s our pleasure.