Meeting the U.S. Navy’s ambitious hiring targets demands collaboration across thousands of contractors nationwide, at a time when the United States is already facing a shortage of skilled workers, according to Ray Dick, co-founder of Piccadilly Cloud. This Kansas City, Missouri-based company, which developed a talent assessment and hiring software platform specifically for manufacturing and skilled trades, recently secured a $9 million contract in support of the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s submarine industrial base initiatives.
The project incorporates Piccadilly Cloud’s TEQ Connect platform, designed to help defense contractors expedite the hiring process for qualified candidates and improve worker retention within the national defense industry. Dick emphasized that the U.S. Navy requires the construction of three new nuclear-powered submarines annually for the next decade, as a vital national security measure. This effort, he estimates, will require approximately 140,000 “highly skilled, well-trained and highly motivated workers.”
“Using TEQ Connect, military contractors can swiftly identify and hire the ‘best fit’ employees they need to fulfill their missions and keep America strong,” Dick stated. The specialized nature of submarine manufacturing demands craftspeople capable of designing, fabricating, assembling, calibrating, and testing every component of these complex vessels, Piccadilly Cloud explained. These workers require not only technical competency but also the strong work ethic and emotional intelligence necessary to complete the mission.
TEQ Connect was developed by Ray Dick (CEO), a former University of Kansas engineering instructor, and his co-founder and son, Abe Dick (CTO), a software engineer with experience at top startups like PayIt and Pepper IoT, along with a growing team in Kansas City. The platform is unique in offering a predictive model that allows hiring managers to include factors such as availability, education, and experience, but also to define desired behavioral and motivational traits. This approach enables the creation of comprehensive job profiles and helps determine employability, Ray Dick explained.
Candidates complete an online application, including a five-question assessment, and receive a “TEQ Score”—short for Trade Employability Quotient—assessing their suitability for a specific role. Real-time matching allows hiring managers to prioritize and focus on the best-fit candidates, accelerating the hiring process. Piccadilly Cloud noted that TEQ Connect’s job profiles, along with its behavioral and motivational trait assessments, comply with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and emerging AI privacy legislation. This ensures accurate, unbiased evaluations, equipping hiring teams with the insights needed to quickly identify and recruit top candidates.
