Demystifying Cyber Jobs – In the Energy Sector | Episode 112

Nathaniel Nelson
Welcome. Everyone to the industrial security podcast. My name is Nate Nelson I’m here with Andrew Ginter the vice president of industrial security at waterfall security solutions who’s going to introduce the subject and guest of our show today Andrew has gone.

Andrew Ginter
I’m very well. Thank you Nate we have 2 guests today Amanda Thiel is the workforce development group lead at Argonne National Laboratory and Eddy Mullins is the project coordinator at Argonne National Laboratory and they’re going to be talking about jobs the the official title here is demystifying cyber jobs you know they’re focused on the energy sector but you know it seems to me that a lot of what they say applies to all industries. you know, especially you know since we’re talking about jobs and recruiting um and you know. People complain the the employers complain that nobody’s applying to ot cyber security job postings and the um you know the the people looking for jobs are complaining. There are no postings they can’t find them so in a sense. Both of these are the same problem and this is what Amanda and Eddy are going to be talking to us about.

Nathaniel Nelson
All right? then without further ado here is your interview with Amanda and Eddy

Andrew Ginter
Hello Amanda hello Eddy thank you for joining us before we get started. Could you maybe you know give our listeners a ah few words about yourselves and about the good work that you’re doing on the the cyber force project at Argonne National labs

Amanda / Eddy
Sure I’m Amanda feel I’m the workforce development group lead at argon national laboratory and I lead the cyber force program out of the office department of energy’s office of cyber security energy security and emergency response. And I’m Eddy Mullens I am the project coordinator at Argon national laboratory and um I work closely with Amanda. I assist in managing the Cyberforce program and the cyberforce program is the collegiate workforce development effort out of the department of energy that looks. At providing students that operational technology component of understanding how to get themselves into that energy sector job right? after they get out of college.

Andrew Ginter
Okay, so thanks for that. So you know in my understanding Cyber force is training you know, young folk to enter the the cyber security roles in the energy sector. and. You know you I heard you folks speak at at the energy set conference recently. you’ve been running into challenges getting your graduates placed. Can you can you talk about? Ah, you know some of these some of these challenges. What’s what are you running into here.

Amanda / Eddy
Sure so the cyber force program um hosts um a handful of competitions and exercises for collegiate students to kind of better prepare themselves with cyber security skills. And operational technology knowledge. But what we’ve come to really understand is that the terminology that a lot of these students learn at school in their colleges universities even in their quick programs that they take their boot camps. Don’t necessarily translate into the jobs that they’re looking at online and what I mean by that is the terminology that we would necessarily think in a traditional cybersecurity or cyber engineer that they’re looking for in a job. Doesn’t necessarily translate directly in a 1 to one when we get into the energy sector they use slightly different terminology and so these brand new people. Are you know students or folks that are looking to go into the um job market. They’re not fully under. Standing that. Um there’s a different vocabulary that’s out there and so trying to get them to really understand that they have to be look fully into a job description as well as understanding that. Um.

Amanda / Eddy
Their job role is not going to just be cyber when they get into an energy sector job. Yeah, and also one of the other things that we that we noticed you know is we looked at generation and and the way that the modern generation that’s getting into the workforce now the way they look At. The workforce is completely different than what if like a Gen X or a baby Boomer You know like the millennials of the Gen Z’s when they’re reading these job descriptions. There’s a lot more than just the totality of what it is that they’re going to be doing that they’re looking for is. You know they’re focusing so much on what is the general experience of and how does this job and the experience that it’s describing to me how does it fit into my life. You know like our our parents when they were in in the workforce. It was How do we fit to to the workforce Now. It’s kind of like how does the workforce fit for us So You know we’re seeing that. Some of these descriptions and the way that they’re written in the energy sector has been. They’ve been utilized for you know, quite some time. and they’re a little bit outdated to some of the modern tactics and the modern ideals that you know, ah. Current generation student would be looking for and and appealing to apply.

Andrew it seems to me that what you guys are talking about here. It’s ah it’s a common refrain maybe within industrial security but also in just about any line of work. You know. You go to school for all these years you learn Calculus and then you go out into the real world and you don’t know how to do your taxes. Is there anything unique about how we’re applying this to industrial security this problem.

Andrew Ginter
I don’t think so I mean I think it’s ah it’s ah it’s a widespread problem. The specific data points that Amanda and Eddy have are are in the energy sector That’s that’s what they do. But yeah I I see a lot of similarities across industries you know and it’s it’s not just across industries. It’s across. You know time I mean I’m coming up on the end of my career now but I remember you know before I started when I graduated high school I was going to do a sciences degree at the University Of Calgary I show up at the university and I know that to do a sciences degree. You’ve got to take first-year calculus and I had taken. High school calculus and the university had a program saying look if you’ve taken high school calculus you can do a challenge exam if you ace the challenge exam. You don’t have to do the first semester of University Calculus so you know I’m ah full of myself I I say you know I got an I got an a in high school calculus I should be able to do this. Show up for the challenge exam and you know they put the exam paper down in front of me and I don’t understand even 1 question your name goes here I understood that part the rest of it. No idea you know 5 minutes later studying these questions I get up I I hand the paper and I leave. I show up for ah for the the calculus course you know 2 lectures in I figure out that they’re teaching exactly the same thing that I learned in high school only they’re using a different notation and so I looked at these questions and didn’t understand one of them. So yeah, terminology Notation. You know this is stuff that you know what there’s there’s there’s gaps. You know. In this industry. There’s gaps in other industries. There’s gaps over time. This is I think this is a very common problem.

Okay, so you know that sounds like a couple of different problems. Can we can we hit terminology First can you give us some examples What what? you know? what are the what are the gaps that that students are seeing versus you know the the industry is is using.

Amanda / Eddy
Sure So in a lot of positions. We’ll say in the energy sector they tend to look a lot as in a generic post on either an operational security analyst or operational security. Um. Engineer and when they look at those things they tend to think of it as operational meaning less on the cyber side or it’s written more in a sense of um. It sounds like a help desk role rather than them actually working on the cyber side. and it tends to be well use word less flashy for them. So when we think through Cyber they’re looking for. Firewalls and they’re looking for the fact that they’re going to be building a secure backend um and part of that problem is and again it’s the knowledge that some of these students lack in just the general critical infrastructure field is that? um. Energy Sector specifically has been around for obviously so long that our our infrastructure has been there and it’s not changing So a lot of what we need. Security wise is understanding both and a physical type as well as the it that goes with it.

Amanda / Eddy
But it’s not just Cyber. It’s having a multi hatwearing person that understands both an I T infrastructure but also an operational infrastructure which is keeping the grid up and running but we can’t just. Keep the grid up and running by updating and putting updates in place or a firewall. and so they’re looking for those things of I’m going to be managing patching keeping the lights on for things and it’s not as clear as day. for these students and so when they don’t see that in a job posting or even a job title. It tends to be less clear for them if that’s actually what they’re going to be doing or not but when we talk to these organizations. That’s. Ultimately what they’d be doing on some portions of their job and other portions. We’d need them to really kind of help understand what’s the next thing look like for this company. What’s the next generation of energy look like in securing it and. Part of that is still trying to figure out what are we calling things. What are we doing and working through some of that.

Andrew Ginter
Okay, that makes sense. you also mentioned sort of generational challenges. It’s 1 thing to to look at a job posting and say yes, this is the kind of thing I’ve been trained for. but it’s it’s another thing to look at it and say this is what I’ve been trained for and yes, this is what I want to do um it it sounded like you were saying that sort of a lot of the postings that you see out. There are sort of recycling language from ten years ago and really are not appealing to the the young people that. You know the the posting is targeting. Can you talk about about that what you know what? what needs to be in these postings and you know is it just the postings or does. The nature of the job have to change somehow in order to to attract this generation of of workers.

Amanda / Eddy
Yeah I think it’s it’s it’s a little bit of both both not just the the language within the posting and you know also what is the experience that come with it I mean we all know like after 2020, you know and in the modern generation. 1 of the biggest things that you know they look for is flexibility. You know if you look at the baby boomers the gen x like telecommuting never existed. It. It wasn’t an expected um expectation of work where now it’s it’s almost a demanded expectation of work and and and it doesn’t have to do with just telecommuting. Or hybrid work is just the flexibility of hours of scheduling. You know we all we all grew up with the standard 9 to 5 that’s almost kind of going into the older generation where it doesn’t exist now you know the modern generation is looking to be flexible on how it is that. They can work what hours do they work best at and those are some of the things that are simply to add to to a job description that can already emphasize what the job experience would be like you know when they look at. As soon as they start seeing that 9 to 5 yeah like Amanda mentioned earlier it just it doesn’t sound sexy. It’s not appealing and when you talk about the energy sector. Automatically when you think of energy. You think the line workers the boots on ground were.

Amanda / Eddy
The sector in itself already doesn’t have those appealing factors that would be working for a Google and Amazon those big tech companies. So that’s how you you modernize the the positions and the descriptions to provide a little bit of emphasis on the the benefits of of life. We all know that. Working for the energy sector has its own benefits and sometimes the energy sector kind of fails to emphasize those benefits of the the consistency of work those kind of things so it’s a little bit of both when it comes to just the terminology as well as the flexibility of of what they’re looking for.

Amanda
And what we want to see is we’re not emphasizing that job posting should be unrealistic either. at the end of the day like we understand that there’s always going to be jobs that just there’s not much you can change in a job posting to make it sound any better. But when we start looking at the generational differences between each generation and how potentially 1 looks similar to another but then what are their differences you start to kind of notice just in the workforce alone. What does each generation really value and at the end of the day we look at job postings and they tend to be written a lot for the baby boomers those that they really they were wanting a job and it really didn’t I don’t want to say didn’t matter what the job was but they were very.

Amanda / Eddy
They wanted to get in the door. They preferred structured organization at the end of the day and so you see a lot of positions written that way when you look at the gen x they started to be more flexible and wanting to really be able to see the ability to change. as an opportunity grew and so being able to be able to see that ability to grow within an organization started to occur. But then you get to the millennials and again as Eddy pointed out when they started to join the workforce covid hit shortly in the mix of it. And work from home started but equally millennials tend to be very money driven. So at the end of the day when you do a job posting for them. They’re very wanting much wanting to know what is the dollar range that they’re going to be hired within. I’m again, not stating that that’s a good or a bad thing but they kind of have an expectation upfront of understanding where their lifestyle is um within their kind of domain and then you see gen z which is kind of on almost a polar opposite spectrum again not saying that they’re not interested in the dollar value. But they’re really more interested in understanding like how do they bring value to your company but also bring value to their life. They want to make a difference. and that’s a really hard way that you need to think how can I write our job description to show someone.

Amanda / Eddy
The value that they bring to a bigger picture at the end of the day and honestly the energy sector has probably 1 of the biggest areas that you could bring to the gen z of saying like you’re bringing so much value to not just this company but honestly to the end of the day to the United States when you come here and work with us and to Edie’s point like venership brings stability when we think right? just this last year you know we’ve had a lot of those big tech companies having quite a bit of layoffs and so when you think through energy sector companies the like you know you have more stability there. Ah, may not be as flashy of a salary but you have stability and you have something that brings value back to you of I’m actually bringing power electricity something back to either my own house or to people that I know.

Nathaniel Nelson
Yeah, so I am ah millennial technically. But I’m only a few years off of gen z and so I do feel the urge to defend them a bit here. Um I don’t think that what Amanda meant is that ah gen z is you know money hungry or whatever it. Gens z does put ah a focus on the salary numbers because I think that there’s more of an idea of worker empowerment. You know that you don’t just go and work for a company and take whatever they give you but you. You vet them to make sure that they’re going to give you the experience and the compensation that you deserve upfront.

Andrew Ginter
That’s right I mean you know I have a daughter who’s who’s a millennial and you know I might use the word practical um to me, you know it’s it’s not just saying I want to know how much money I’m going to get it’s it’s a bigger picture of and what does that mean for my life. Where am I going to live do I have to drive into work. You know what? how does? How is it affect you know, sort of the the big picture and to me it’s you know it’s more than than the generation with each generation to me. You’ve also got to look at well bluntly how old is the generation and. And what are they up to in a current posting I mean you know to me it’s I see the mistake here. The mistake is old guys like me put a job posting together that would appeal to me when I was fresh out of school. Yeah well a I’m the wrong generation b I’m not fresh out of school b. You know see ah a lot of these folk aren’t fresh out of school either I remember you know when I was a young man I bounced from job to job. The grass was always greener. and then I had my first child and the wife looks at me and says you’re done moving around and I’m going that’s for sure and i. Got me a job I settled down and I stayed there for 15 years Why because I had other fish to fry. Okay I had I had other priorities in life I had other ways to spend my energy if I had spare energy. It went into the kids it went into the the home it went into the family. Not you know, finding the the grasses being our next job so you know.

Andrew Ginter
There’s a lot of variables here. It’s not just the generation but you know where is that each generation at at their point in life in this kind of age group that that you’re trying to appeal to.

Nathaniel Nelson
Right? And of course the conditions that in in which people are looking for jobs now are quite different. You know I can imagine someone in say your position Andrew who’s been at the same company for 15 years or or longer than that and then they post a job for. Maybe the kind of entry level job that they started off with and they have a salary number associated with it that sounds quite good to them. But of course ah houses cost a lot more relative to average salaries these days than they did before and so what might seem like a lot to. Somebody of an older generation now to a younger generation. You know doesn’t quite go as far.

Andrew Ginter
Indeed so lot of variables to take into account.
Um, so that makes sense but you know I want to I want to push back on sort of I heard you use the word remote work saying that you know there’s ah, a generation of of young folks out there that entered the the workforce you know during or shortly before the pandemic that have become accustomed to remote work. Everyone’s expecting remote work. You know I have to push back on that if you are a pipe fitter in a you know a power plant and it’s your job to you know fix stuff that’s broken and you carry a toolkit around all day. This is not something you can do remotely. You know. Is it really true that there’s a whole generation of people out there expecting to do remote work and you know to me that just doesn’t seem possible. Can can you talk about that a bit more.

Amanda / Eddy
Sure So You know you’re right? That’s it’s definitely I think more what I think idie and I were mentioning was more definitely towards the tech field and I think it’s a benefit of tech to be able to be remote. most jobs require you to have your computer and internet line and you know you should be able off to the races most of us figured that one out again unfortunately during a time in which we didn’t really have many options. but to be at home. other unless your job was to be in the office which again not stating that some of these energy companies did require someone to still be in the um office. But the a lot of Ah. We’ll say entry level are folks looking to come into. Um the Job Market. They grew up in what was a remote environment whether that was school whether that was a remote job and so they see ah. Flexibility into them almost a negotiation factor of that ability to be able to work from home and so seeing the tech industry is one of those of the few and again I think everyone looks at that. Ah, it could be a systemic problem moving forward.

Amanda / Eddy
And it could be a benefit dependent on where your organization is um that that is definitely something that we’ve noticed that um the younger generations look for and find as a means of want is their ability to work. From I won’t even say work from home but work from wherever they’re at some of them. It’s they want to be on vacation three hundred and sixty five days a year but work from wherever that places and some of them is they just really enjoy working from home rather than being in an office so they can work in. You know. Be at home and at ah Alaska but work for you know a company on the East Coast whatever makes most sense for them in a comfort environment. But I I agree with you that no not every industry and not every person you know, understands that that’s something that you know is available to them.

Eddy
I mean it’s kind of one of the appeals to come into the tech industry when you think you know the tech industry and you look at California and states you know those those big states. Automatically you you assume 2 things 1 flexibility and 2 you assume high salary and the flexibility especially with tele remotest. Will allow some companies to be able to gain talent outside the scope of their their availability. You know if you look at rural Arkansas and you need a cyber operator in a rural area if if you don’t have that flexibility you limit yourself on.

Amanda / Eddy
How far can somebody be from the office. Are you gonna is somebody gonna be willing to drive 2 hours to go into the office or if you allow the teleremote the hybrid option you can get talent within outside the scope of driving distance which allows you to to operate slightly more efficiently. so that’s this this one. That’s what I was referring to when it comes to the flexibility in in the tech industry. That’s kind of one of the benefits to it.

Nathaniel Nelson
On the subject of remote work I have some notion that there are jobs within an industrial setting that that can be done remotely. You know that is ah maybe a work at a sock or someone who’s. monitoring the plant through some internet connection which is a subject. We’ve talked about before but don’t you need most people to be on premises like what percentage of people are we talking about here with regards to who can be remote.

Andrew Ginter
Um, ah, the short answer is it depends there. There isn’t an an easy number that springs to mind. you know some of the the dimensions of the problem. one is is criticality. if we’re talking about. Ah, you know managing small wind farms or small solar farms. A lot of that’s done remotely. Ah why? Well because the worst case if you get something if you if you get something horribly wrong. What’s the worst that can happen. The the turbine turns off the power stops coming out of you know 3 of your windmills does that affect the grid. Not really is even affect your bottom line. Well it depends how big a utility you are if you only have three windmills. It’s a big deal if you have you know 700 nobody notices. So on the other hand. You know if you’ve got a a large power plant that is you know feeding ah hospitals. It’s feeding the military installations. It’s ah you know it’s a really important asset. You’ve got I don’t know a hydroelecttic dam driving it or you’ve got coal-fired power plant. You know, massive. Boilers and furnaces. There’s more of a push in the the sort of the network engineering world to ah make that not so accessible remotely because all remote access is is potentially ah a threat. Um.

Andrew Ginter
It has to do with the role as well as you pointed Out. There’s a lot of you know if if what you’re doing is is looking at stuff and drawing conclusions about it and sending sort of abstract information back into into decision makers like your your example was a good one. The outsourced security Operations Center These people. Generally don’t have. They’re not trained as incident responders. Okay, they don’t log into the system and start poking around on it. They’re not trained to touch the systems but they are trained to look at the alerts and you know look at circumstances and decide whether something merits. Ah, deeper investigation and then so it over the fence with a lot of information to the incident response Team. So The incident response team might have to fly out to site but you know or might be hosted at the site. but not necessarily the people doing the analysis. So yeah.

It’s a long fancy way of saying it depends.

Okay, so so you know that that all makes sense imagine though that we had a magic wand and we waved the magic wand and all of a sudden. The the job postings people were putting out were you know speaking to the aspects of the job that appeal the most to the you know the current generation of of entry level workers. and you know magically you know use the terminology that that resonated. You know with the entry level worker saying yes this is what I was trained on. This is what I’m I’m able to do if we fix those problems are we done.

Amanda / Eddy
No, unfortunately I don’t think so just yet what we’ve also tended to find and again I’m not nitpicking on the energy sector because I know that this is done in a lot of places but we found that there’s. a use of I’ll use the word conglomerate job postings. So what I mean by that is if I’m looking for a software engineer the job posting will be posted as a software engineer 1 2 3 or senior and while that seems. Very open to anyone to apply? it. The position itself is written for the senior level. So when you read through a job description like that. It comes very um. Unwelcoming to an entry level person looking to apply it doesn’t provide a very clear understanding of are you looking for multiple software engineers. Are you looking for 1 am I as an entry level person who’s applying going to be compared against potentially someone who is a senior level am I going to even have the ability to apply and when you look at the job descriptions. A lot of the preferred experience.

Amanda / Eddy
Is pretty hefty upfront because again, it’s written for a senior level and in talking to a lot of organizations. We’ve found that they do these in essence because it’s a budget and instead of writing out several positions. They pick whatever their max budget may be and the job postings are written to whatever their highest level person they can hire and then they have the discretion to hire people below that so it’s. It’s slightly concerning because if I see a software engineer senior and I’m an entry level person coming right out of college. My first thought is not to think I’m going to try to sell myself as a senior software engineer and if I don’t have contacts at that organization to even begin to ask the questions. Can I even apply for this is it more than 1 position. Do you think that there’s openings for others. It leaves it to be very unopen and unwelcoming even though at the beginning it looks like there’s these 4 potential areas that could. Phil for me. The other thing that we’ve noticed is that in these conglomerate positions sometimes just the lack of ensuring that it’s very clear and not just like grammatically looking that when we copy paste and change experience levels suggestions that we’re being.

Amanda / Eddy
Very mindful that those changes are occurring and just similarly looking at like a software engineer one some of the job postings we found were like they which to me would scream a very close to entry level person people were asking for like. 18 years of work or eighteen months of work experience which is you know a year and a half otherwise they’d take an internship experience but equally so then we need to make sure we’re providing those opportunities out to people in and the meantime.

Eddy
Yeah, and and one of the difficult thing is that you know we we understand a budget at limitations but you know a lot of these companies when they’re looking for secession planning when you write a position and you have multiple levels then competitively. You would think that. The company would take the person with the highest level of experience which is the least amount of training necessary for the person to be able to come in do the job like we always like to say you know, plug and play. But every time you look at the senior level you have individuals with 18-15 years plus of experience where. In the closer years the baby boomer generation the closer years to retirement and what occurs is that when you have these positions like that and all you continuously gain is high senior level members to your company which is good at that time you negate to have the secession planning.

Amanda / Eddy
Because you’re you’re missing out on those entry level positions that are lacking the training to get to senior level. So once you start having the large numbers of retirements and people start to leave. You have no one in the bottom to fill that position in the training. So what occurs is that as your seniors start to leave then you’re starting to. Alter the positions to bring in entry level where now you lack the senior experience to to produce that training to eventually repeat the cycle. So we noticed a lot that a lot of these these students. Because they automatically like a man that was mentioned they automatically presume they’re going to be competing against a senior coming off of college even at a high level of education a masters or a ph d as soon as they say experience required a lot of students look back and say is my education. My projects in school any competition. So is that experience or is experience mean days on the job and a lot of the times they have ah some experience but they sell themselves short knowing that I would possibly be competing with somebody who has 1015 years plus and companies lose a lot of modern innovative talent because of the way these conglomerate positions are being written.

Andrew Ginter
All right? So so you know thinking about this, let me ask you a hard question. we’re talking about people coming out of school or out of university into entry level positions but a lot of the. People I mean I I go to conferences I talk to people a lot of the people that I talk to a lot of people that I see in the ot security space. They they did not come out of school into ot security. They came out of school with you know, an engineering degree or you know some sort of technician certification. They worked 5 years and then looked around and said you know let me take the next step. Let me you know, get some skills in in a new field in addition to what I’ve been doing for the last five years or they come out of it. You know they go to school for it or even it cybersecurity. Ah, they get a few years experience maybe at a help desk maybe in ah you know a sock a security operations center and then they start you know, stepping out of their their sweet spot getting some some extra training getting some extra experience and moving into the ot security space. Um. You know none of these are entry level people. They’ve they’ve all started somewhere else. They have 5 years experience under the belt of some kind and now they’re moving into the ot space is there really such a thing as an entry level ot job.

Amanda / Eddy
That’s a really good question. so I it is one that’s like a definite one. That’s super hard to just jump right into and you definitely need the the mixture of talent I think what. At least it from my point of view and I I would presume Eddy’s as well is what we’re we’re looking to push back I think a bit on is wouldn’t it be great that instead of having and and again I’m not pushing back on just energy sector I think this happens quite a bit is. Organizations look to have someone else pay to build. Someone’s skill set up and then say I’d love for you to come work for us but instead of harvesting that talent as young, fresh green talent and saying. We’re going to build you and we want you to stay with us that provides a lot of people so much more hope that you have actual interest in having them grow and so whether or not I walking in the doors fresh out of college. No. 100 % anything about operational technology if you buddy me up with the right person in your organization whether that’s an informal or formal apprenticeship. Whether that’s an informal formal buddy system internship at the end of the day.

Amanda / Eddy
I’m going to be more loyal to that company because they see value in me of putting forth that time and effort to grow me for their organization and seeing the point of moving me through how they want things to be done by the time five years comes around again. Think people have happened to do it all the time they. Transfer organizations they move whatnot. But you’re starting to already start to see what you’re fixed in somewhat of your ways of how you see things done things and other ways and so we would love to shift the paradigm away from just saying well operational technology is you know. Bob who’s been doing it for 30 something years sooner or later Bob’s going to want to retire and who are we going to look for his protege and at what point in time. Do we start saying instead of looking for the person that’s been there for the last. 15 years that kind of knows what bob does when bob goes on vacation every once in a while. Why don’t we start looking at the younger talent that is interested in helping and start getting them involved. They’re interested and wanting to know equally they have a passion to understand how do these things break. and so instead of just saying we don’t have entry level if that answer is fully true which I agree with you to some you know, aspect on that operational technology side. You know that’s not something that we should be comfortable with actually going out and being able to say is that.

Amanda / Eddy
There’s no such thing as entry level because even 5 years of experience in an engineering program or I t and moving over and cross training to them move into ot technically you’re still a novice You’re not. You know you don’t know it all yet. But we just don’t want to call it entry because. 1 wants to take 5 years of experience and say now you’re an entry level again. so that’s my my push is you know hopefully that at some point you know we work to really start bringing in some of the younger talent and giving them that opportunity of using some of their. Very large brain capacities that they have to think outside of the box of how can we really secure some of our energy sector needs.

Eddy
Yeah, you know we’ve all heard the saying. It’s not always greener on the other side and like just like you were saying like. When you have somebody who has 5 years in a previous organization. They have a reference point and a standard of what it is that they want to do and how they want to be treated when they’re doing it. So. When you go from it. You have your 5 years of experience. You’re technically still kind of new now into the ot space and you realize this is not for me or I really like this but I don’t like the way this company does it. That’s when you start having large turnover rates and you start having a lot of.

Amanda / Eddy
People who come in do a year and then they want to pursue a higher salary so you spent 1 year training a person you made them a very good ot operator. Thank you very much now they went to another company to pursue another higher salary another experience when you. You take somebody who’s brand new and the only experiences they have is a college dorm and they’re willing to learn because they just spent four years five years learning they don’t have a reference of what another job should be. They don’t have a reference of how this job should be all they know is what you teach them and all they know is that I’m here to learn it. So. You’ll get more time and more effort and experience from this individual who’s really brand new green off of you know the academia side of the house who’s to gonna take the time to learn something than somebody who already can learn it quicker but ultimately say this is not for me I’m gonna go this different path. So. that’s why we’re kind of pushing to for companies to take the chance what we’ll call is take the chance and understand that it can be learned. It can be taught. It’s about taking the time to put them with the right mentorship and taking the. Effort to really get them to be what the company needs.

Andrew Ginter
Cool. Well you know this has been good I’ve I’ve learned stuff. you know before we let you go and well let me thank you first. Thank you both for for joining us before I let you go you know can you can you sum up for us what what should we take away from from these these questions and you know what. What are what are next steps if if we if we want to use the knowledge.

Amanda / Eddy
Sure so I hope that again we were obviously speaking to energy sector that’s who we work with the most um is that you know we really want to be able to bring together those open job positions that we know energy sector has and the. Amazing talent that we also bring from the cyber force program and the collegiate space and even those that have graduated from the program that are still seeking. You know new employment and be able to honestly marry the 2 bringing that talent to the energy sector and be prepared but how do we do that so that. Both sides are happy at the end of the day that both understand and are open to the ideas of what you know each are looking for and understanding really the expectations going forth. You know in future. You know people and work and things that we’re doing and then also really to just understand just from. Generationally and this is not just energy sector specific but all that you know we really need to stop and take a look at how are we? you know when we’re trying to recruit and you know write our positions for the next talent that we’re looking for. We really need to think through like what are the generations that we’re looking for interest. And each you know senior level position could be a very different group than someone when you’re looking for an entry level and we should be working to kind of ensure we’re being inclusive and and writing our positions so it makes.

Amanda / Eddy
The most appropriate sense to who we’re we’re writing it for so other than that I you know we’d love for people to we have the cyber force competition. That’s our main program out of the cyber force. that comes up here in November we would love for people to be able to participate. that’s our red blue exercise with collegiic students if those are interested. They can reach out on our website and that’s cyber force that energy dot gov and we’d love to hear and see people there as soon as possible.

Nathaniel Nelson
Andrew that was your interview with Amanda and Eddy do you have any final thoughts to take us out today.

Andrew Ginter
Yeah I mean the the big thing I got out of the interview was you know concrete ideas for for making job postings appealing to the generation that you’re recruiting, you know for the stage of life that that generation is in and this is something. You know it sounds to me like we have to you know consult with our hr people. These are people who study people not you know recycle a job posting that you know attracted us the old folk to the industry when we were that age many many decades ago. Um. More generally you know what I got was sort of a strong sense of of how important it is to hire young people succession planning you know the energy industry has to think long-term a lot of industries have to think long-term and I’m diverging a bit but you know succession planning can be tricky. That’s something that. Sort of deserves a whole episode if if we can find a guest but let me give you sort of ah just a taste I remember reading a report this was some years ago. it was a a manufacturing company. They brought in a couple of young engineers to replace. You know a technician who’d been with the company for forty odd years and was was approaching retirement and these engineers just couldn’t seem to keep up with the technician they they were together they were they were less productive than the technician was singly.

So they they they brought in ah, an an expert in operations analyst followed these people around for a couple of weeks came back with a report and said here’s what’s happening every time one of these engineers any time anybody goes to this technician and asks a question this person reaches behind his desk pulls on a clipboard with 79 scraps of paper on it.

Nathaniel Nelson
Yeah

Andrew Ginter
You know some of them yellow with age flips through you know answers the question and goes back to work get that clipboard copy it. These are your standard operating instructions. You can’t afford to have them hanging on a clipboard in 1 person’s office so you know. Making things work. Succession wise is is important. It can be difficult. Um and you know hiring young people fresh out of school can make them more loyal but you know in my opinion look even if if people jump around you know like I said in the first ten years of their of their. Career you know the grass is always greener. they bring you know people coming into an organization bring perspectives from outside the organization. you know if someone’s leaving our business. We might be miffed, but we’re probably hiring someone at that level in from another business. So. You know the energy industry has to think and does think sometimes as an industry not just as individual enterprises and as an industry you know we have to be about hiring and training and growing young people. This is something the industry has to do this is something that every utility. In the industry has to do and and here’s some concrete advice to you know, speed that process especially for the ah the the entry level folk.

Nathaniel Nelson
Okay, well thank you to Amanda and Eddy for elucidating that point for us and Andrew thank you as always for speaking with me this has been the industrial security podcast from waterfall. Thanks to everyone out there listening.

Andrew Ginter
It’s always a pleasure. Thank you Nate.

Nathaniel Nelson
Well thanks to Vlad Gabrie Anghel for speaking with you Andrew and Andrew is always thank you for speaking with me this has been the industrial security podcast from waterfall. Thanks to everyone out there listening.