Northern Virginia Chamber of Commerce
Jul 29, 2024
NVC convened Regional business and academic leaders for the first in a round of exclusive meetings to identify federal, state, and local barriers to increasing the constrained availability of the cyber workforce.
Participants identified strategies, goals, and potential solutions, targeting next steps to accelerate cyber workforce growth in the Region. The discussion touched on a range of challenges including the importance of alignment between hiring managers and HR. Some of these elements include the importance of soft and professional skills, core engineering skills, and looking beyond traditional sources for talent to expand the recruiting pool.
The next step is to gather federal and state stakeholders to share challenges and collaborate on solutions. The Region’s leading professionals recognize that locating talent in this highly complex field needs to be addressed for our Region to grow.
This series has been inspired by NVC member, Peraton, who identified this Region-wide challenge.
“What do you think is our greatest challenge in finding and retaining cyber workforce talent in the Region?”
Matt McQueen, SVP and Chief Engagement & Communications Officer, Peraton
“As a Region, we continue to have challenges finding, attracting, and retaining the cyber workforce we need to address customer demands. From my vantage point, this is due in large part to the fact we have spent years studying and talking about the problem versus actually assembling the right people to construct a real-world plan, including establishing non-traditional pipelines, to address the challenge.”
