The document discusses solving the data center talent shortage and veteran unemployment by training veterans for jobs in the data center industry. It outlines developing a training program that transitions veterans' skills to the new roles and integrates training with operations. The results were a new remote hands services model adopted by the industry, customer satisfaction, and supplying over 400 full-time staff to the data center field while achieving commercial success and workforce development goals.

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Lee Kirby
November 2020
Two Birds
One Stone

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Context and Problem
 What’s the problem?
- Data center industry talent shortage
- Veteran unemployment/underemployment
 What was the scope?
- Enormous scope from physical to logical environments
- Chronic problem for 10+ years continuing to grow
- Pace of change with new technologies
- Pace of growth in the industry
- Becoming a root cause in incident analysis of outages

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Context of Analysis
 How to solve?
– Find a market need that can be satisfied with resources that are rapidly trained
and transitioned from another industry
– Develop training programs that rapidly produce competent personnel that can
operate safely in this environment
– Define sustainable development program to ensure increased competencies
and adaptability to new technologies and industry change
– Choose the optimal industry (resource pool) to draw from in order to focus
recruiting efforts
– In math, two negatives multiplied result in a positive outcome…

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 Training investment already made
 Experience operating in any environment (austere, hostile)
 Ingrained characteristics:
− Leadership
− Disciplined execution within strategic framework
− Outcome driven (mission first mind set)
− Cognitive abilities:
− Critical thinking
− Adapt & learn quickly and constantly
− Problem solving
− Continuous improvement mind set
− Teamwork – lead, follow, collaborate
 Size of the US pool (200K+ transitioning per year, 800K+ reserves)
Why the Military as a Resource Pool?

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Barriers & Constraints to Address
Veterans %
Unqualified BUT Trainable 50%
Related Experience* JUST Cross
Train
45%
Qualified AND Ready <5%
“Navy Nukes” <1%
Data Center Industry %
Will Train Veterans With No
Experience or Training
<1%
Will Cross Train Veterans 20%
Will Hire Qualified Veterans and Orient
to New Role
80%

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Objectives
 Develop service offerings in response to industry demand = Remote Hands
 Foundation
– People: The advantage of the veteran resource pool
– Process: Rigorous flexibility
 Training
 Services
– Technology: Transparent efficiency
 Time
 Budget
 Workmanship

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Alternatives Considered
 Recruit & train model
 Traditional staffing model
 Traditional functional model (Sec, CE, IT)
 Dispatched support model

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Approaches/Strategies Used:
 Workforce development strategy was key
– Backwards planning
– Incremental development (crawl, walk, run)
– Integrated training program
 Considers candidates' skills and experience
 Continuous development
 Operations synchronization
– Continuous client/market feedback
 Boot strap entrepreneurs means “Just in Time” investing

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Technologies Leveraged
 Off the shelf tools & SaS
– HR - ADP
– Finance - QuickBooks
– Sales - Zoho
 Custom built
– Training management
– Project management
– Workforce enablement
– Workforce management (contact tracing)

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Challenges
 How to define a training program that would accommodate all levels of
experience and produce consistent results
– Common core (Safety, Culture)
– Graduated curriculum (Pre-test to define starting point)
– Ongoing professional development
– Tightly integrated with operations
 How to afford the training program
– Initial investment
– Ongoing business growth
– Balancing the supply chain
– External perception

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Results
 New services model adopted by industry
– Reduced on site staff & improved operational efficiency
– YoY sales growth & competitive landscape changed
 Training integrated to Operations resulted in:
– Customer satisfaction & quality of service
– Rapid transition and deployment of new personnel
 Work force supply chain balance
– Training: Initial = 10%; Intermediate = 15%
– Ongoing professional development = 75%
 Diversity & inclusion naturally
 Since 2013 - 10 countries, 400+ full time staff, 2,000+ to the industry

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Lessons Learned & Recommendations
 Commercial success can be a means to an end
 Development driven by market demand produces tangible results
 Workforce development is key to solving the talent shortage in our industry
 The scope of the talent shortage goes far beyond what Salute has achieved but
the lessons learned here can be leveraged from physical to logical functions
(cyber, apps, devops, etc.)