Taking Advantage Of Veteran Security Clearances To Land Jobs

Getting someone with any clearance cuts time off the process of having someone on the payroll but unable to work on a contract.

By Paul FlahiveDecember 21, 2016 9:30 am, , , ,

From Texas Public Radio

Filling cyber security jobs often times means finding people with the certifications but also with the security clearances to work on government contracts. A novel boot-camp style class teaches veterans with the clearances the skills to land the job.

This course at the Rand Building downtown aims to fill San Antonio’s security jobs stemming from the 1000+ IT businesses, commercial jobs servicing the outsized Air Force IT presence and the National Security Agency’s San Antonio office.  The 12-week course is a collaboration between Rackspace’s Open Cloud Academy and Project Quest, a nonprofit jobs program.

“If asymmetric cryptography scales better and provides so many more security services, why do we have symmetric Cryptography?” asks Ted Udelson the instructor of one of the many modules the class will study.

“It’s faster,” says the class in unison.

“Bingo Bingo Bingo, it’s faster,” he says.

The pilot course is free. The 13 students are veterans and range in age from their late 20s to early 50s. They were either unemployed or working lower wage jobs and wanting a shot at a good paying career.

Christopher Buffaloe felt strange jumping into IT at age 47, ” You can’t teach an old dog new tricks.”

He says he had to get over this idea after being unemployed for three months, the longest he had gone without work in 20 plus years. He and his wife are both retired military and came to San Antonio from North Carolina when she landed a job here.

“This was something very new to me. This is finally something, a direction I choose to go versus the normal route I was drive to in the military. This is kind of a beacon for me,” he says.

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