Dr. Robert Cherinka is a Senior Principal Information Systems Engineer for the MITRE Corporation, located in Tampa, Fl. His expertise is in software and process engineering, with a focus toward XML-based web service and agile development technologies. Bob is currently a Department Head for Agile Engineering and Interoperability, leading a distributed team of IT professionals located at 7 MITRE locations in developing and applying emerging technologies that enable information services and interoperability across several major US Government domains. Dr. Cherinka earned a Ph.D. and M.S. in computer science from Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, leading research in static analysis and testing techniques for component-based systems. In addition, he earned a B.S. in computer science in 1987 from the University of Pittsburgh. After 6 years in the US Air Force, he joined MITRE in 1993.
Mr. Joseph Prezzama is currently the Associate Department Head for the MITRE Tampa Operations facility. Mr. Prezzama has supported the Department of Defense for over 20 years in the areas of tactical communications and strategic enterprise planning. In 1996, Mr. Prezzama earned a Masters of Science in Software Engineering from Monmouth University, Eatontown, New Jersey. Prior to that, he earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Trenton State College, Ewing, New Jersey. He is a member of and has been published in AFCEA, and is a senior member of the IEEE, IEEE Communications Society.
The world today is constantly changing requiring organizations to adapt quickly and seek expertise to help meet the demands on their business. There are many workforce challenges that organizations seek to overcome, and one of the hardest things to do in modern corporations is to keep the talent pool young and vibrant. Early career hires tend to bring new and exciting ideas into play that may not even be considered by their more seasoned peers. The challenge with early career hires, especially in the Science, Technology, Engineering & Math (STEM) career fields, is the extreme difficulty in finding candidates who, not only have book knowledge, but also have hands-on, real world experience. Statistics show that this is a real concern to professional workforce employers. In this presentation, we highlight a model aimed at adopting new approaches for seeking and evaluating high quality candidates for on-boarding, conducting interviews and hiring to build a corporate talent pipeline. We discuss the model as it relates to recruiting, training, competition-based interviewing and providing hands-on work experience toward helping to build strong professionals in an organization. We conclude by highlighting several examples of successful approaches and their outcomes.
