Explaining what you’re capable of doing in a resumé is hard, especially if you have technical skills developed in the military That’s why one start-up wants to use a video game to establish a job candidate’s bona fides.
Don’t scoff. This isn’t a sequel to “The Last Starfighter,” the cheesy 1984 movie where a high score on an arcade game lands a teenager in a real spacecraft in a distant galaxy. But San Antonio-based Cyber Warrior Network does give veterans with cyber experience the chance to prove themselves and continue to defend the country in civilian jobs.
I understand the need. When I served in the Army, my job title was “Electronic Warfare/Non-Morse Interceptor/Analyst.” But I didn’t do “electronic warfare” and intercepting Morse Code was a critical part of my top-secret job.
How can a civilian hiring manager make sense of that?
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Cyberwarfare veterans experience a similar disconnect when they apply to civilian companies. Again, and again, veterans would complain to Nigel LeBlanc that they had these valuable skills, but between military jargon and security clearances, they couldn’t get hired.
LeBlanc, himself an Air Force veteran, was the veteran outreach coordinator for Maryland’s Department of Business and Economic Development. Part of his mission was connecting cyberwarriors with companies.
“I was talking to these employers, and they kept asking `Where are all these great veterans we keep hearing about?’” LeBlanc told me. “So, I collected all these resumés and sent them out.”
Only a quarter of the veterans found jobs, while a quarter never got an interview. LeBlanc discovered that the National Institute of Standards and Technology had established criteria for cybersecurity professionals, but these veterans’ military skills were getting lost in translation.
“The biggest frustration on the employer side was that they couldn’t understand what these guys were talking about,” LeBlanc said. “So, I say, maybe if we could validate hands-on keyboard experience, then that would alleviate the need to go into something classified or sensitive.”
LeBlanc moved to San Antonio at the end of 2016. By September 2017, he had started the Cyber Warrior Network with a chief technical officer and a data scientist. They took the national cybersecurity standards and mapped them on to the skills military personnel learn.
The next step was to find a way for veterans to demonstrate those skills. That’s when they discovered a designer who had an ethical hacker game. Together, they made the game a whole lot more realistic.
“While candidates are playing the game, we’re validating their skills and abilities, and also we’re looking to do behavioral analytics while they’re playing the game,” explained LeBlanc, who is Cyber Warrior Network’s CEO.
In addition to certifying the candidate’s skills, the CyberWraith game can also identify skills gaps and provide training to fill them. Meanwhile, employers can test their employees and search for candidates who have the skills the company needs — and not just technical skills.
“We want them to tell us exactly what knowledge, skills, and abilities that they are looking for today, and then also if they have a crystal ball, what would they want their pipeline to look like,” LeBlanc said.
The cybersecurity industry faces new threats every day, which means skills learned two years ago can be obsolete. CyberWraith can evolve as quickly as companies identify new threats, recreating those scenarios for training purposes.
LeBlanc has since made the game open to anyone who wants to play and prove themselves. And while the company ensures the game is a realistic way to assess how a candidate employs cyberwarfare tools, it does not reveal any national secrets or teach people to hack.
“If you’ve been in the industry, then you will see the correlation very quickly,” LeBlanc said. “We had to change the names of some of the tools because we don’t want a young, impressionable 16-year-old going on there and then hacking into somebody’s bank account.”
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Nor does he want a “Last Starfighter” scenario: “We don’t want someone to get a knock on the door and have someone say, ‘Hey, we saw you did well in this game. Now you need to come work for us.’”
LeBlanc wants to use the game to help high schools and universities develop relevant curricula. And by making the game available to the public, he hopes to find hidden talent from outside the usual channels. Ultimately, LeBlanc hopes to develop a cyber warfare e-sports competition, where experts can demonstrate their skills.
For now, LeBlanc and his seven-member team are in start-up mode, working to meet the needs of clients and preparing for an investment round so that they can expand their talent search to the outer reaches of the galaxy.
Tomlinson writes commentary about business, economics and policy.
twitter.com/cltomlinson
chris.tomlinson@chron.com
https://www.houstonchronicle.com/business/columnists/tomlinson/article/Cyberwarriors-prove-their-skills-find-jobs-with-14975164.php
2020-01-15 09:50:00Z
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