Act Now & Execute Your Goals: Navy Veteran to Executive Through NPower's Program with Malcolm Smith

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So some months went by, and I was contacted by one of the recruiters because I had a LinkedIn page made for Npower. He's was like, "Hey, you sound like a great candidate for Npower. You should come and do an interview. It's free." I just thought, you hear the word 'free' and instantly skeptical of everything, right. So, so I was like "Free, alright, I'll go check it out." So I got my resume, did the application, did the interview with these guys. And they were really cool. Most of them are veterans.

Warriors fall in, it's time for formation. Folks, today, I have a really, really awesome opportunity for us to actually speak to someone who utilized one of these many partners, that I've interviewed within the last year. So on August 19, I interviewed Demetrius Goodwin from Npower, who also brought another guest with him who was Joshua, Joshua Murphy, who had just recently graduated from Npowers program for Cybertech. And today, we're going to talk about another person who actually utilized Npower. This is the Act Now and execute your goals session for The Morning Formation Podcast. And I want to welcome Malcolm Smith to the show. Malcolm, thank you for joining us.

Thank you for having me. Thank you.

No, as I always say, the honor is all ours because hearing stories like you, and what you've done for your career is exactly why I'm here. And so I want to, I want folks out there to understand that, that this could also be you. And we're going to talk about who Malcolm is, how he took advantage of the opportunities being offered through Npower, and how he found a career after getting those certifications. And he's going to provide some advice for our community. So Malcolm, let's just get things started right off the bat. Let's learn a little bit, a little bit about you. You are a Naval Veteran, is that correct?

Yes. I joined the Navy in what, 2007. Did various things throughout the years. So what I was, went to the Middle East a bunch of times, Africa, I spent the year in Afghanistan, Operation Enduring Freedom. Bunch of ships. I was a gunner's mate, for those that are not privy to Naval language, basically, like a weapons specialist, right. So I'd be a small arms and stuff like that. I decided to take the plunge after about 11 years. And in 2018, I just said, "I'm done. I'm gonna get out." Right. But throughout those years, I, I took advantage of like the TA that we got right and I got a degree in management. And I also started my degree in IT. It was just a basic Bachelors of Science in IT. So I didn't finish while I was in. I got out. I moved from Virginia to DFW, so Dallas, Fort Worth area in Texas. And, I sat around for six months, right. So I got out, I did the military benefits route. I did the GI Bill. And I finished my degree. Along the way, as I was finishing my degree, I was contacted by a program called Npower. Now, throughout this, I was throwing out a whole bunch of lines, like we all probably do, right. We get out, we throw out a whole bunch of nets, and we try to see what's gonna bite, right. So it was various programs that wanted me to pay them to do it. And they wanted me to stop my college career and use my GI Bill to actually pay them, to give me certifications. And in my mind, I'm like, "That makes no sense to me." Right. So there's gotta be something out here. And so some months went by and I was contacted by one of the recruiters because I had a LinkedIn page made for Npower. And he was like, "Hey, you sound like a great candidate for Npower. You should come and do an interview. It's free." I just thought, you hear the word 'free,' you're instantly skeptical of everything, right.

Oh, yeah.

So I was like "Free, alright, I'll go check it out." So I got my resume, did that application, did the interview with these guys and they're really cool. Most of them are veterans. Here in the DFW area. The Npower for us is Veterans only, right. They have some in New York and I believe in California that does underprivileged youth. But here in Texas, were concerned with veterans. So I was like, "Hey, I got accepted to the program?" And they were like, "Yeah, so you do this program. And we'll give you a free certification." The certification at that time when I did it in 2018, was the A-Plus certification through CompTIA. And so I went through, got the certification, continued school, and we did a round of interviews, because they do job placement. That's the cool thing about Npower, right. They help you get a job on top of giving you this free certification. They teach you how to write a resume, they teach you how to dress for a resume, they give you your interview skills, they give you your headshots, they give you so many other things, right, so many soft skills that you need to be successful out here. And so we did a job interview. One round of interviews, then we moved on. They picked candidates to move on to the next round of interviews, and this was with Citi Bank, right. And that's not the only company they do rounds, job interviews for, job placements, this is just the one that I did it right. So we did a couple of rounds of interviews, and I got picked up for an internship with Citi. Which is amazing, right. Because if you really think about it, the hardest part for us is getting our foot in some type of door, right. You could put out 100 applications and never hear anything back from any of them. They wont even tell you you're not even qualified. They'll just leave you in the wind. Right.

Right, exactly.

So it was it was pretty cool. So we got the internship. I did this internship for, I did it for like 11 months. And it wasn't a free internship, it was a paid internship. So that's also a great thing, you get a salary as you're doing this internship. So it's basically like a long interview process, while you're in. And you're just going through the motions, you are picking up skills as you go along. They're teaching you things you need to know for a specific job or whatever you want to do within the company. And after that, you do a good job...I got put on full-time as assistant vice president straight from an internship, right.

Wow.

And the reason why this happens like this, for a lot of us in the Npower program is because of our managerial skills we already have, right. So Citi and Npower knows that these guys are going to come in, they're going to be on time. They know how to speak to people. They know how to respect people. They know what hard work is. There's probably no harder work than they've already done, anywhere out here in the civilian world. Right.

Right.

So they know we have all these soft skills and training someone to do a specific job is easy. That's the easy part. The hard part is getting someone to show up on time and be where they need to be and do what they need to do. Right. So. And that's what Npower is highlighting for us. Right. So their partnership with Citi and some other companies, I believe they're partnered were like HP, General Motors. I want to say Toyota. I think some people ended up with, ended up with Deloitte. So I think they partner with Deloitte also. So it's a lot of companies that has their eyes on Npower, and has their eyes on veterans, right. So like, we're the hot commodity out here for tech.

Man, I really, it's really great to hear that such large companies are valuing the military veteran character, that you just talked about. Being on time, understanding how to talk to people, all those, all those responsible and accountable things that you carry within yourself. But then you also reiterate when you're in the military as well, especially as you move up the ranks. And, you know, Malcolm, you went from being a gunner's mate to going into cyber tech. There's so many folks out there that are not into cyber, that they feel like it's not for them. So you, it sounds like you made a very massive transition when you went from, sort of one industry to another industry. For folks out there that might consider themselves as not a techie type person. What advice would you have for them, as far as if they are sort of thinking about "Maybe this is something I should just try out and, and see if it's for me."

The advice I would tell them is to, look at the avenues of tech that aren't technical. And when I say that, I mean, the avenues where you're not building routers, or you're not building out trays of hardware arrays, right, or you're not coding, what AWS. There are parts of the tech industry, that's not technical at all. There's a lot of parts that have a human factor in it, that needs to be manned, right. So when I say that, I mean, like project management. At some capacity, every single one of us in the military has done project management or program management, right. So we've taken one goal and we've set milestones within that goal, to get it done. Right. So we've taken the mission, we put milestones in that mission, like whether it's maintenance, training, whatever you had to do to complete that mission and see it through fruition. And you had to report those goals, right. So at some point, you had to stand up in front of formation and say, "Hey, yesterday, we got this done. Because we got this done, let's do this today. So we can do this tomorrow." That's project management 101. You have the managerial skills, you have the experience. It's just a matter of writing your resume, to make it, to highlight that experience, right. So your program management, most of us has gotten a program that we did manage in the military, whether it be the small arm section, right. I managed hundreds of weapons, I managed hundreds of rounds of ammo, I managed everybody's training, I've managed a program. So that's what we need to highlight on these resumes. When we do that, we show hiring managers like, "Hey, yes, I don't know how to code, that's fine. You have coders, but what I can do is get those coders together, make them work as a team, get a goal for those coders, set milestones and track those milestones, within a certain period of time." It's usually 12 months, or 24 months. And report on that every day in a meeting, what we call 'scrum' now, here in the business world, is just morning formation. Right. That's all it is. Everything that we've done. I know in a Navy, we mustered like three to five times a day, to report on what was going on what we needed to do and what we need to continue to do, right. That's all a project manager is. You have a morning meeting, you take meetings during the day. And you just figure out these problems, you work a problem. And that's what we do best, we work problems, we working until it's done. And it's not always super technical. It's more of just trying to understand the technology, to get to a certain goal. Right. You have your super technical people and most of, I'll be honest with you, most of the time, the super technical people are not good at communicating with other people. That's why they are the super technical people, right. They like sitting behind their computers, they like coding. Your job will be to tell them, "Hey, this needs to be done. Let's get it done by this day, or what are the pain points of not getting it done? I'll write it up. I'll talk to everybody for it."

Yeah, yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Because a lot of times you need someone to translate those technical skills in layman's terms to people that may not understand what that coding is, or may not understand the timeline of how long it would take to do a project. So that makes a lot of sense, man.

Right. So there's so many avenues, right. There's business analysts. If you ever use Microsoft Excel, Excel, you have a lane right there. There's a lane right there for pretty much any job you want, to be an analyst, right. If you can do a pivot table. It doesn't take much to learn pivot tables. You can watch a YouTube video and 10 minutes and know how to do a pivot table and you can fiddle around from there and work your way through these analysts things. What we're looking for and what companies are looking for, is those soft skills right. They want the managerial skills. They want the, the manager...they're able to manage ambiguous tasks. And that's pretty much all we did our whole career, is get some broad task and widdle it down into one clear concise goal and execute, right. And when it comes to tech, there's lanes and avenues for all that. Right now for instance, my company just put out like 4000 different jobs that needs to be filled. Right. And Npower is doing their best to try to fill all of the. They just don't have enough people, right. So the more classes roll out, the more people can be seen. The more people that can be seen is the more people that can get hired. And we can solve their problem not having people, and we can solve our problem of needing great careers after we're done.

Yeah, and you know, the best thing that you mentioned about all this is like, once you are, once you're finished with the certifications, they help you find a career. And I love what you said earlier about the no strings, because a lot of times when it comes to veterans, or his current service members, we're always thinking like, "Alright, so what's the catch?" Right. It's always like that used car lot, sitting off base, that's waiting for that, that young E-4 to show up.

Exactly.

We all know how much the, I mean, our pay grade, and our pay scale is out there on the internet. So they know how much we make. And we always feel like someone's out there looking to take advantage of that. And I love how you reiterated earlier, how there was no strings attached. You're proof of that. You went through the entire process, got certified, and then got the career. And then overall, Malcolm, you're the reason why I do this podcast man. We spoke before the podcast episode aired. And I mentioned that, you know, over the years, I just got tired of hearing about all the negative things about veterans, you know, alcoholism and drugs and all this other stuff, man. There's people out there doing it, man, there's people doing it, you know, making something of themselves. Just like you. And I think it's really important to highlight the great sacrifices that you made, being in the Navy, being away, being out on a ship, out in the middle of the ocean, for months, and months, if not a year or so. And here you are today, utilizing all your resources that are available to you to make yourself level up in your personal career. And for for anyone out there, you know, you mentioned a lot of the different employment opportunities that are available to you. And you listed some really big heavy hitters. As far as folks, you know, in the business world. What advice would you have for the community? For folks out there that want to, I guess, look at the cyber tech industry and find, like, what might be...what would be the best fit for them? Like, is there anywhere where they could do a little bit of research? Or how did you come across the position that you're in right now?

So funny story, right. The position that I'm in right now, I had no idea existed. Right. So as right now I'm a continuity of business analyst, right. So I'm like the lead continuity of business analyst for all of North America. And when I first got the call, it's like, "Hey, we're gonna set you up with an interview with this guy. He needs a guy because his guy lives in Singapore, and he's switching jobs, and they want to bring the job over to North America." I'm like, "Okay, I'll take the interview. Sure." So then me and my current manager, we started speaking, and he was describing the job. And I never heard of this before. And as he went on, it was like, "Oh, this sounds kind of like operational risk management." Right. We did that in the military a lot, which is...

Oh, yeah. Oh yeah.

That's all we did, right.

Right. Yep.

And basically, that's what this job is, is operational risk management, for technology and businesses. So we have plans, we made sure the plans are executed. For instance, stuff like COVID happens, we made sure we know how to properly use the systems. Everybody know what they need to do, what we need to do, to make sure everybody can work from home, and so forth, and so on. And it's not a super technical job. It's more of a managerial job for people, right. I just understand the technology that they are using, so we can better create plans for each other, so we can keep the business running through all types of emergencies. Right. So the advice I would give people is keep an open mind. Right. So like when you're reading a job, and you're, say you're reading, they call them recs, so you say you're reading the job requisition, and it has a whole bunch of stuff listed. And it's kind of overwhelming. It can get really overwhelming, really like the job requirements, right. And you're reading these job requirements like, "Oh man, they want a Master's degree or they want a Bachelor's degree. They want someone that has 20 years of Excel and 20 years of whatever." Keep an open mind for those jobs, right. Because sometimes those jobs are just written to justify having the job. You may get into that job and do something completely different. I've seen that...

Okay.

...hundreds of times. Like, "Well, you probably can't do that. But from talking to you, I think you will be good to do this."And there you go, now you just created a job lane

Yeah, no you're 100% right on that, because when I was the for yourself, right. And that happens, that happens a lot. So if you go through these courts, these courses that they have for, for veterans, especially if you get into stuff like Npower, keep an open mind, right. Sometimes you may get into a job where it could be technical and if that's what you're good at, then that's what you're good at. Sometimes you can get into jobs where it's like, you're the EO. Everybody had an EO in their department or in the military. They're Equal Opportunity officer, right. There's jobs out there for that in the tech field, right. Because everybody has to have equal opportunity even in tech field. There's jobs, like I said, program management, project management, Scrum Masters. You're literally just managing meetings and milestones. There's jobs where you're doing risk, right. You're going to audits and you're making sure people get certain evidences in, that prove that you've done the job for a year, you know, what I mean. It's just so much in the tech field, especially for like companies like banks. So you got USAA, which is big. Wells Fargo, who's on a hiring spree, what Citi, JP Morgan Chase, who also I believe, partners with Npower. They need so much and so many S3, the battalion training officer, you talked about risk people with so many skills, that they're kind of overwhelmed trying to find people. So like, as we get out the military, we just slide in. But the, the best way, is, I guess, by making those connections with people and with programs to get your foot in the door. Because you could put in, we talked about it beforehand, you could put in hundreds of thousands of applications and the system will kick them. They'll just kick them out because they're not written right. But what these programs like Npower do, they take you every Friday, and they show you like, "Hey, this is how you write a good resume. This is the key words, this is how you look at a job requisition and pick out the key words in that job requisition and put it in your resume." So the system will pick it up better, right, some little, little tips like that. And just keep an open mind. Right. So you see, the word "data analysts" like, "Oh, my God, data analyst, that's crazy." But at some form, you've done data analytics, right. If you, if you've ever count counted your people, counted the amount of hours that they work, counted what jobs that they done, and what they need to do management, for example, we did that every single time we did a next. That's data analytics. You just need to know how to effectively write that in your resume.

Yes.

And or go to the shoot house, you know. I would do a risk management sheet talking about, you know, what was the risk of the entire event from start to finish. And, you know, it sounds like Malcolm that your certification, and the fact that you used Npower really helped build that bridge, from the position that you're in to the technical side of what you're doing. And that's what I, that's what I love about all this. And that's what I love about certifications in general. You were just talking about project management. I was just certified through DOL Coach as a Certified Project Master. So just got that the other day. And I was talking to someone else about it, who worked for the state DOJ recently, doesn't like their job and I was thinking, I was like, "Well, why don't you get into project management of some sort?" And they're like, "What's that?" You know, and then I got to this conversation about Scrum project management, sort of like what you were just talking about. And I'm gonna plug this real quick. You know, I found you through ACT NOW Education. You posted on their private Facebook group, you posted that you utilized Npower and so I reached out to you and I appreciate you getting back to me. But talk about connections, all right. That's the best place to go. Anywhere that has other Veterans, service members, training event, especially when we went to the range. military spouses, somewhere where you can go and you can post, you know, "Hey, this is what I did." You know, and then folks can reach out to you and ask you questions to, to get further information for their knowledge. And so I'm going to plug ACT NOW Education right now, because that's how I got a hold of you. And in reality, if anyone out there, if you have questions about cyber, just go on there, slam a post onto that ACT NOW Education Facebook account, and say, "Hey, I want to know about all the different things that involve cyber tech, in reference to whatever it is that I'm doing." And folks like Malcolm, can get on there and reply to you, you can DM them. I mean, at the end of the day, it kind of makes our community much more available, and much smaller, in a sense. Even though you're in Dallas, Texas, I'm in Southern California, we're able to connect that way, and that's the beautiful thing about utilizing technology for what we're doing here. And anyone that's interested, I'm going to make sure that I put Npower in the show notes, so you can scroll down to the bottom. But Malcolm, if anyone's interested in following up with you with anything that you said today, is there an email address they can reach you out? Or do you have any social media platforms where they can contact you?

Well, usually I talk to people on LinkedIn. So just go search my name, Malcolm Smith. It's the one with, Well, I think there's only one Malcolm Smith on there, but go search my name on LinkedIn. If not, you can email me at MalcolmSmith832@gmail.com.

Okay, yeah, and I'll actually put your, if it's fine with you, I'll put your LinkedIn in the show notes as well. So if you're watching this on YouTube, just scroll to the description. And then you'll see where you can click and find Malcolm on LinkedIn. And then also I'll put your email in there as well. Because at the end of the day, it's all about reaching back and helping out our community...

Exactly.

...to level up. So you know that that's what we do here at The Morning Formation Podcast, and Malcolm, I really appreciate the opportunity that you gave us today to hear your awesome story.

Thank you for letting me tell it. I love helping people out...it's easy for me, you know, I got the opportunity, I got lucky. And I want to help other people get lucky and find their lottery pick, you know what I mean. So if we can, we can break that stigma of veterans don't know anything but violence, or they're hostile or whatever the stigma may be. Let's, let's do it. And also, let's come together and share all these resources because it might not be a resource in tech, right. It could be a resource in anything that you can imagine doing. There's veterans out here doing it, and they will love to help another veteran do what they do, right. It's just the fact you got to get introduced to those people.

Exactly, exactly. Surround yourself, circle yourself with folks, like minded folks that are looking to level themselves up just like Malcolm here. And go down to the show notes if you're listening to this on the podcast, or if you're on YouTube, go to the description. You'll find all his links down there. Malcolm, thank you for joining us on The Morning Formation today. We'll go ahead and wrap up the show for now. But I hope that you further engage on the ACT NOW Education facebook and help out some of the folks out there that may have further questions on cyber tech, because it sounds like man, you are certainly climbing to the top and you've had a tremendous journey so far. Going from being a gunner's mate to being the being the VP working for Citi. So with that being said, folks, as always, I want you to stay tuned, stay focused, and stay motivated. Warriors fall out.