Charles Lyons-Burt
Jake Frazer has literally grown up in the government contracting industry. He began his career in the U.S. military as an end customer when he received support from the contractors while deployed with IFOR in Bosnia. He joined the industry in 1999 working for Brown & Root Services (now KBR), and he has worked across the industry for the last 26 years. Now, he’s the president of Precision Talent Solutions, a company he co-founded to help leading contractors find the top talent for their senior-most positions, and he believes companies often need an external set of eyes to help seek out the perfect candidates.
Frazer, like his whole team at Precision, is drawing on extensive experience gained in industry. He spent six years inside a large prime and subsequently ran a mid-sized prime focused on supply chains, whose primary customers were the Defense Logistics Agency and General Services Administration. As chief operating officer, he oversaw that company for a decade before selling.
In this Executive Spotlight interview, Frazer spoke to us about the now close to a decade of work Precision has done bringing a different approach to talent acquisition, as well as his thoughts on the changes brought on by the new presidential administration, including a newfound emphasis on European defense.
For a cutting-edge global perspective on the GovCon industry, be sure to mark your calendar for Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 GovCon International Summit, happening in Tysons Corner, Virginia on Oct. 16. The second annual event will gather leading experts on foreign military sales, combatant command representatives and allied authorities to explain complicated global dynamics and how they’re impacting U.S. contractors. Register for this GovCon conference now!
ExecutiveBiz: Tell me about Precision’s culture. How do the things you’re setting in place culturally influence how you’re helping organizations acquire talent?
Jake Frazer: I think if you want to be great at recruiting, it really comes down to empathy. You have to understand what the candidate is going through, and you also need to understand what the customer is going through. That’s where I think a lot of search firms—and even some in-house recruiting departments—fall short. They don’t truly understand the mission because they haven’t been out in the field.
We’ve got a team of 30 people across 12 countries, and if you added up our cumulative GovCon experience, it would total about 470 years. Everyone on my team has been out in the field, worked on programs, and many of them have been deployed to some pretty tough environments. They’ve lived and worked alongside soldiers and service members. They get the mission, they get the end customer and they get the urgency.
That’s what sets us apart. It’s empathy, combined with a real understanding of the bigger picture and what we’re ultimately trying to achieve.
EBiz: How do talent shortages play into how Precision approaches the talent pool?
Frazer: The market is in an interesting place right now with the new administration and changes at the Department of Defense. One thing we’ve done to stay proactive is focus on collecting talent leaving government service. A few weeks ago, we hosted an event with more than 50 senior executives—former members of the Senior Executive Service—where we coached them on their career transitions and helped guide them into the private sector. We’re following that up next month with another event, where we’ll bring together senior executives and military flag officers with our customers for a kind of matchmaking session. It’s our way of helping address this influx of talent coming out of government and making sure it gets aligned with industry needs.
We’re also focused internationally, especially on European defense. You can read the headlines—there’s going to be significant investment flowing into the European defense industrial base, but there’s a real talent gap. I live in Europe, and from where I sit, there’s a major opportunity to build out a strong services industry to support that growth. That’s a key focus area for us.
Third, we’ve been building capabilities around what I call GovTech—AI, cyber, cloud, space, positioning, navigation and timing, and related technologies. We’ve brought people onto our team who have done that work operationally. It’s part of maintaining that ethos of empathy I mentioned earlier. We know there’s a drastic talent shortage in areas like cyber and AI, and we’re trying to find creative ways to help our customers close that gap.
EBiz: Do those exiting the government right now and moving to the private sector need to prioritize developing AI and cyber skills?
Frazer: For anyone making that transition, the most important thing is figuring out your differentiators. Try to identify three key things that really set you apart—things that matter. At this point, it might be a little late to try and quickly get up to speed on something like cyber or AI, but what you can do is take a hard look at what you uniquely bring to the table.
Ask yourself: What do I do that’s different from the rest of the senior executives making this move? The same advice applies to military personnel and civilian executives alike—take inventory of your career, your passions and your strengths. Understand what you bring that others don’t, and learn how to highlight those things. That’s what’s going to help you get to where you want to be.
EBiz: What factors or GovCon industry trends are influencing your growth strategy as you look toward Precision’s future?
Frazer: Private equity is becoming increasingly active in government contracting. If you look at the proposed budget lines—especially around defense and homeland security—you’ll see growing investment and private equity involvement. That’s a space we’re focused on because we add significant value beyond just talent. For example, the chief financial officer you need in a private equity portfolio company is very different from your typical CFO, and we understand those nuances. We’re also good at reading between the lines and even bringing deal flow to our private equity clients. It’s a key area for us, and I think it’s going to be a major driver in the GovCon market moving forward.
From a business development and account management standpoint, the deck has been completely reshuffled—especially under the new administration. Many of the traditional agency contacts are gone, and the agencies themselves have been reorganized. That creates a new type of business development challenge. You’ve got to reestablish your foothold and rethink how you’re engaging with federal customers.
About half of our business is focused on business development, capture, proposals, chief growth officers and solutions architects. And we’re not offering cookie-cutter solutions. We’re helping our clients think strategically about how to break into this new landscape and stay ahead of the curve.
Looking at the longer-term trends, European defense is going to be huge. There’s substantial investment heading that way, and U.S. companies are already setting up GmbHs and European entities to be part of that growth. You also can’t ignore INDOPACOM. It’s clear this administration—and likely future ones—will continue making significant investments in that region. That’s another area we’re watching closely.
EBiz: Expand on your interest in and emphasis on European defense.
If the current administration is rightfully pushing European allies to take more responsibility for their own security, then that’s going to require a significant shift in mindset—and spending. You’re seeing pressure to increase defense spending as a percentage of GDP. Some countries are still around 2 to 2.5 percent, but the goal is to get those numbers above three, even toward five percent. That represents a substantial wave of investment into European defense budgets.
But along with that investment, European governments need to learn how to outsource. In some cases—take the Bundeswehr, for example—there’s still this legacy thinking that soldiers should be the ones driving trucks. That’s no longer necessary. Those kinds of roles can and should be outsourced to industry.
That shift means two things: European governments need to get better at outsourcing, and industry needs to be better prepared to be outsourced to. The European defense industrial base can learn a lot from the U.S. experience over the past 10 to 20 years. They need to understand how to capture work, how to shape requirements and, most importantly, how to build a services industry.
There’s already a strong manufacturing base in Europe. But once you build something, you have to field it, move it and sustain it. For too long, Europe has relied on American infrastructure for that support. That’s not going to be sustainable going forward. If Europe is serious about defense autonomy, then building a robust defense services sector is absolutely essential.
EBiz: Where do you see Precision in 10 years and what are the concrete steps you have to take to get to that stage of evolution?
The great thing is we’re able to deliver a better service for less. Our model is highly technology-driven. Every candidate goes through a virtual assessment center that includes psychometrics, personality assessments, a nine-box predictor, cognitive testing, leadership success indicators, trainability measures and a video interview component—so our customers can essentially meet the candidate before ever picking up the phone. No one else in the market is doing it the way we are.
We also offer a much more flexible fee structure that shares risk with our customers. A lot of the traditional search firms are still stuck in that 30-plus percent fee model with large upfront payments. We can beat that—and provide a better outcome.
Our biggest challenge is awareness. We have a better product. We do it for less. We’re backed by people who come directly from the industry. But if people don’t know who we are, they can’t buy from us. Right now, I’d estimate maybe 30 percent of the addressable market even knows we exist. Ten years from now, I want that number to be 90 percent or higher.
It’s like a snowball. It started small, but it’s gaining momentum every day. We’re building more relationships, strengthening customer loyalty, expanding our talent pool, enhancing our tech and delivery, and moving into new markets.
Ten years from now, we want to be able to support any mission area across defense, aviation, aerospace, space, GovTech, European defense, INDOPACOM and Asia-Pacific. The goal is simple: support our customers globally across all their talent challenges.
EBiz: Any final thoughts?
I think companies really need to reconsider how they invest in what’s traditionally been called talent acquisition. There’s nothing more important to your business than getting the right people. Yet for some reason, that function often gets treated as less critical than finance or business development. But talent is everything.
A lot of companies want to handle hiring themselves, and that’s great—they should. But when it comes to strategic hires, those key business development or C-suite roles, working with an expert like PTS makes a real difference. We come from the industry. We understand the mission. And while there may be some incremental cost, such hires are silver-bullet hires where precision matters.
Companies should stop thinking of firms like PTS as competitors to their in-house recruiting teams. Instead, think of us as part of the toolkit. Finding and hiring the right people should be seen as a strategic and competitive advantage—one that can set you apart from everyone else in the industry.
