Kansas City HR tech startup earns $9M defense contract to help hire skilled workers for nuclear subs

Meeting the U.S. Navy’s aggressive hiring goals requires collaboration across thousands of contractors in all 50 states at a time when America is already experiencing a shortage of skilled workers, said Ray Dick, co-founder of a talent assessment and hiring software platform developed specifically for manufacturing and skilled trades.

His Kansas City, Missouri-based company, Piccadilly Cloud, recently announced it had been awarded a $9 million contract supporting the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense’s submarine industrial base initiatives. The project provides the startup’s TEQ Connect platform to help defense contractors accelerate the hiring of qualified candidates and boost worker retention in the national defense industry.

The U.S. Navy specifically needs three new nuclear-powered submarines each year for the next 10 years to secure the nation, Dick said, noting it’s an effort that will require an estimated 140,000 “highly skilled, well-trained and highly motivated workers.”

“Using TEQ Connect, military contractors can quickly identify and hire the ‘best fit’ employees they need to fulfill their missions and keep America strong,” he added.

The specialized nature of submarine manufacturing requires craftspeople who can design, fabricate, assemble, calibrate and test every component of these sophisticated vessels, according to Piccadilly Cloud. Workers must not only have technical skills but must also have the work ethic and emotional intelligence to complete the mission.

The Piccadilly Cloud team at a recent volunteering activity at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore location in Kansas City’s East Bottoms; courtesy photo

TEQ Connect was developed by Dick (CEO), a University of Kansas engineering instructor-turned-entrepreneur; his co-founder and son, Abe Dick (CTO), a software engineer who previously worked at such top startups as PayIt and Pepper IoT; and a growing team in Kansas City.

The platform is the only software as a service (SaaS) to offer an exclusive, predictive model that enables hiring managers to not only include availability, education, experience and other skill requirements, but also define the desired behavioral and motivational traits necessary to create comprehensive job profiles and determine employability, Ray Dick said.

Candidates complete an online application that includes a five-question assessment and are assigned a “TEQ Score” — short for Trade Employability Quotient — indicating their suitability for a particular job. Matching is done in real time to enable hiring managers to prioritize and focus on best-fit candidates and accelerate hiring.

TEQ Connect job profiles and behavioral and motivational traits have been validated to comply with the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures and emerging AI privacy legislation to ensure accurate, unbiased evaluations and to provide hiring teams with the insights they need to quickly identify and hire top candidates, according to Piccadilly Cloud.