Challenges and Strategies in Hiring and Retaining Tech Talent

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Welcome to the Las Vegas IT Management Podcast.

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My name is Shay Toya Marie, and today I have the opportunity to be interviewing Clayton

Carroll with Vanguard Integrity Professionals.

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How are you doing today, Clayton?

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I'm good.

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How are you?

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I'm doing amazing.

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I'm super excited to get to know you a little bit better.

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Could you just tell us a little bit more about Vanguard Integrity Professionals and your

role as the Director of Compliance Technology and Cybersecurity?

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Yes, well, we are a software developer shop for mainframes and mainframe security, both

user access and implementation of NIST guidelines and monitoring.

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I'm the director of technology there.

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I basically do everything soup to nuts with my team, whether it's the mainframe,

sysprogging, the internet support, the network's infrastructure, the hardware

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infrastructure, everything.

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We take care of that from the technology side.

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I also have the lovely role of being the compliance manager for all of our customers when

they come in with requests for information, as well as the cybersecurity is making sure

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that we get our pen testing done and our cybersecurity side is all up to snuff.

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Awesome.

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That sounds like a lot.

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What are some of the key challenges you face in your role, especially in a rapidly

evolving tech landscape?

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The biggest problem I have is not just hiring good talent, it's keeping them.

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We're a small business.

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I can get them snuck away from some of those casinos that are in town here.

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It's not that hard.

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It's hard keeping them there.

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get a lot of these employees, get

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drawn away from the casinos because they're just a cog in the wheel.

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In my environment, a new administrator can actually make a difference within the first

three months.

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And that is a very powerful thing for people that are not used to having that kind of

empowerment.

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But definitely the trick is keeping them because, you know, once I start teaching them

things and they start learning from the group, then they start looking outside and

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And it's hard for a small business to try to compete with some of these big companies,

especially when I teach them everything they need to do about networking.

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And then they go back to the casino as not a level one tech, but a level three tech.

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it's, then they go, well, yeah, it's, definitely, it's definitely difficult.

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Got it.

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No, and I totally understand being a small business ourselves.

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So I understand the difficulties of hiring employees and then also keeping them.

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So I totally understand.

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What are some of the things that you found to keep an employee within the company?

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Well, the number one thing I do is we do all of our own OJT training on the job.

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We teach them.

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If they don't know certain things, we teach them everything.

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We do have a lot of technology at Vanguard, not just for what our corporate infrastructure

is, but we have a full QA lab system that we help the QA people try to bring up things

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that mock the other customers' environments.

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Same thing in development, they have to bring up certain new stuff.

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We help them with that, we get them so that they can get things done and we keep the

lights on and try not to lose any data in the mix.

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Got it.

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Now that totally makes sense.

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Thank you for sharing Clayton.

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And as Las Vegas, you did talk about, you know, with the casinos, but Las Vegas is known

for its unique job market.

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What specific challenges do you encounter when hiring technologists in this area?

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Really the biggest problem I have is finding technicians or technologists that are a

little bit wider than normal.

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In casinos, they silo everybody.

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So if I find a network guy that's coming from MGM resorts, that's what they know.

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They give them one thing to do and that's really nothing else that they do.

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It's trying to find someone who knows networking side of things, firewalling side of

things, VMware side of things, VDI configuration.

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use that for development people to get in and work.

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It's harder for us to find the depth of the knowledge that we need.

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But that's why we tried it, train everybody that we can and give them what they need to

get their job successful.

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Got it.

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And when it comes to finding those employees, are you the one that's personally going out

to find those employees?

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Yes.

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Yes, awesome.

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And where have you found the best results of doing so?

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For my purposes, we've used both LinkedIn

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Indeed, and ZipRecruiter.

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And I have found a lot better quality of people coming in from ZipRecruiter than I have

anything else.

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Now, don't get me wrong, LinkedIn is very nice because they're very engaged and they have

the apps on their phones.

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So communicating with people coming in on LinkedIn was much better experience.

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But coming in from the technology side, Zip is the one.

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Got it.

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I've heard that before.

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So that's awesome to hear that as for you know, that's coming from you as well.

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So thank you Clayton.

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And then how do you deficient Vanguard integrity professionals from casinos and other tech

companies when attracting top talent?

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The biggest thing we have to offer is they can do a lot of different things when they come

to Vanguard.

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They could start in IT, move into cyber.

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They can go into where they don't know.

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one wants to do compliance with me.

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But they do some of the other things like development.

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they decide they want to be a mainframe Sysprog, they can start learning how to do system

programming on a development machine for mainframes.

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We also have developers that get brought in.

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We have an internship program that works from the bottom up and they come in from UNLV and

they can also do a lot of good things.

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We've had a lot of good people come from UNLV.

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Got it.

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UNLV is awesome.

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Thank you Clayton.

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And what strategies have you found effective in competing with the casinos when recruiting

technologists?

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Again, getting people to know that we have, I'll give you an example, getting people to

know that they can make a difference is really, really impactful for these employees.

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We had one of our interns in our first round of internships from UNLV, I think it was in,

I think it was right before: 2020

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And she came in and she was on the development team working with them side by side and

they had a problem for a customer.

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And with a baseline of, went through our bootcamp and with her bootcamp experience, she

went through and actually was able to give development the idea of what the problem was.

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And that got the customer out of the shape that they were in and it fixed the problem.

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that.

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That employee, she's a developer now full -time and she's still with us and that's been

four years now and she's one of the most impactful people.

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But giving them that insight that upfront, you can really start making a difference that

really has a lot to do with it.

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Also influencing change.

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Some people in big businesses, you're in MGM Resorts, you're running Cisco Networking.

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You're going to come to them and say, hey, we need these new products to do X, whatever

that is.

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A lot of times that lands on deaf ears because you're talking to a manager that doesn't

really have purchase ability and then they got to send it up the flag and see if anyone

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comes back.

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In a small business like we run, those kinds of questions can be answered directly by the

team that is managing that property.

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And we can actually do some of the things if we see it financially viable, a return on

investment that's going to be more than what we think we should be using for another

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product and be able to make it implemented and safely and

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get it transitioned within six to eight weeks.

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Those are some of the things that in a small business, you can actually make that happen.

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If I get the go for a new product coming to corporate, my goal is to have that done in six

to eight weeks, as long as I get all of the, I got to get all the buy -off from everybody

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for it.

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But once they give me the buy -off, I can usually bring something up that quickly with my

team.

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And that is something again, in a bigger company, it's just because of the size of the, of

the

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of the infrastructure.

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It's just too big to move that fast, but we can't.

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And it's very empowering when something like that happens.

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Got it.

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And as a small business ourselves, I totally understand that.

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And I understand the importance of that.

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So thank you for sharing Clayton.

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And so with the increasing demand for cybersecurity professionals, how do you see the

future of techs hiring in Las Vegas?

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I think it's getting better.

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has been COVID made it go crazy.

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Everything.

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really went crazy during the COVID years.

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But I think that the universities are doing a really good job of beefing up the cyber

talent.

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I'm actually working to try to get back in touch with the CSM team.

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They had a meeting out there a couple of weeks ago, right about the same time as Black

Hat.

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And they had a new internship that they're running out there to get these kinds of people

out into the workforce, whether they're paid interns or non -paid interns.

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I haven't figured that part out yet, but they are definitely willing to do some of the

work and learn.

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And from a perspective of mine, I just lost my intern.

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She ended up going back to UNLV full time and getting the last of her degree put back

together.

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But when you have an open spot, it's good to have people that are hungry, but it's nice

when they actually know how to do a few things already.

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And that's what the universities are doing a really good job of so far.

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Because my last internship is also from UNLV.

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Understood.

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And that's very, very helpful when it comes to hiring.

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So I understand.

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And especially if they're hungry to learn more, think that's very, very important.

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Are there any emerging trends or technology in cybersecurity that you believe are crucial

for professionals in the field to focus on?

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think the biggest thing everybody loves doing the black hat, white hat, those are gone

now.

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It's all really red team, blue team, purple team, which is kind of a thing.

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But my environment is all blue teaming.

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We do a lot of.

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vulnerability assessments and management to make sure that we're still meeting the needs

of the applications internally.

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But defending the network is really where a business my size and, and if you ask NGM after

the black hat hack, they also blue team is so important and everybody loves to be the red

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team, black guys.

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The red team is basically people that go in and try to attack to

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Exposive vulnerability and the blue team are the guys that want to go out and do the work

to keep it safe.

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And that's where most of our people do.

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That's just teaching them how to do security, real security, teaching them how to keep

things secure by default, instead of just bolting it on later.

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Those are all important concepts.

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A lot of IT guys, tend to

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startup a system and the first time they do it, it's just, you know, it's just get it up

as fast as I can.

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It's like, wait, no, sometimes it takes longer to do those things.

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So learning how to build and secure systems is really important for whatever the business

size you are and wherever you're headed.

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Got it.

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And thank you for answering that because I was about to ask you, what is the blue team and

red team?

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thank you.

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You answered it even before I had to ask.

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So thank you.

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And what advice would you give to someone looking to enter the tech industry in Las Vegas,

especially in the areas of compliance and cyber security?

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would say the first thing you need to do is build up your home lab and start learning.

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A lot of these organizations like Blackinfosec .com, Black Hills, or BlackHillsinfosec

.com, they have a lot of free resources.

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Everybody loves Cali, but Cali is only a tool.

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They have a lot of great resources, but you got to learn how to use them.

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Get in there and start learning all the tools.

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If you want to be a Red Hat tester, a Red Team tester so that they can go in and actually

know what you're talking about.

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But a lot of these big InfoSet companies will actually have a non -paid internships where

they will bring you in, give you training and start teaching you the way that they want

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you to learn.

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And if you're willing to do the work, problem number one.

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you can get in and actually do a lot of work to better yourself.

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And it doesn't take that much time, especially if you have a team that actually works with

you to answer the questions.

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Sitting in front of a Linux box and trying to do the things that you've seen online and it

doesn't work by yourself, it's really, really difficult.

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If you have a mentor or if you have an organization that you're bumping up against, that

can help a lot.

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Got it.

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And I'm sure it's very helpful, then also probably very important.

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that we are actually learning how to do it correctly.

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I'm sure that helps as well.

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Yes.

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And then could you share an example of successful hiring strategy that you've implemented

that has made a significant impact on your team?

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The since COVID got kind of weird, I had a full house when COVID broke and then I lost a

few of them because they because they were fearful of the disease.

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And I wasn't getting a lot of help from HR from a perspective of them doing the work for

me.

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So I took reins of it about three years ago.

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And now every time I have an open seat, I go out and I do my own searching on Zip and I

get my own management and I get my own and I do my interviews first before HR gets

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involved at all, because they tend to send me the people that they think are the ones that

are what I need.

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But I'm really the one that needs to know what I need to do because they aren't really

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skilled enough to know what the technology means.

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They just see a bunch of search.

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And I'm, a businessman and a business manager, I don't hunt for search.

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Search are nice.

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Don't get me wrong.

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Experience and great mental attitude.

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Those are really the things I look for.

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Someone who is willing to do the work.

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The last SA2, System Admin 2 that I brought in, he was a great resource for three or four

of the products that I run in corporate.

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But he didn't have a lot of the other stuff, but he's learning so fast because he said he

wanted to leave the place where he was working at to get more experience doing the kind of

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things that we do here.

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And now he's just very hungry and he's doing quite well.

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it.

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No, and that's most important thing is he got to be hungry.

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There's nothing you could do for someone if they're not.

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And then is there anything else you would like to share with our listeners about your work

at Vanguard Integrity Professionals or the future of tech in Las Vegas?

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Not there.

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No one knows who we are.

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Our niche is we, we compete with some of the big mainframe shops like Broadcom and IBM as

we're direct competitors to both of those.

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people in Las Vegas, they don't know who we are, but if you find someone who is looking

for jobs, we do run internships.

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have a pause on it right now.

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I think the next one is going to be next year in December, this year, December or January.

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They are paid internships and we do recruit people that want to be developers or

professional services employees who go out and assess and pen test other companies,

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hardware and software to make sure that they are as secure as they think.

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And it's a really great place to learn.

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I started there 11 years ago and I thought I was the top cat in my category.

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And I learned after a year or two that I was just getting started.

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And the man who sits in front of this machine today is not the same guy that it was over a

decade ago.

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I've learned a lot.

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I've come to be a lot more of an asset to the company.

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And I also realized that there's great potential with helping these companies stay secure.

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Got it.

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Which I'm sure is very, very important.

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And if someone's looking to apply, where should they go?

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It would be www .godovanguard .com and that's G -O the number two, Vanguard.

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D -A -N -G -U -A -R -D dot com and it's slash careers.

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They post everything that's there online and when we have our internships, they're there

as well.

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Look for that probably in October, November to be posted online and they started in

December.

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Awesome.

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And we'll be sure to put that in the bio, the description.

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Clayton, thank you so much for joining us today.

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I appreciate a lot and I look forward to getting to know you a little bit more.

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Thank you so much.

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Thank you so much.

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you