Hiring Heroes: Recruiting Vets For Leadership Roles

The Dilemma

One of the world’s largest corporate giants set out to increase its military veteran hiring over the course of many years. The only problem was that the company didn’t have much in the form of military expertise, and even less insight on how to find and hire veterans. Not wanting to seem like it took on more than it could handle, the company was in need of some help if it had any hopes of meeting its self-mandated hiring benchmark.

The Strategy

With a task too big to overcome alone, the company called in our experts for recruiting reinforcements. As part of the company’s ongoing RPO program with the client, our expert team in military veteran recruiting – led by a recruitment manager who had a unique outside-in perspective of what it takes to work for/in the U.S. military – helped the company fill positions requiring special recruits.

The Impact

Our man-on-the-ground tactics helped the company not only deliver on its veteran hiring promise, but exceed it ahead of schedule. We not only ensured the company would be able to meet its goal but, because of our experts’ tremendous success finding the right talent at the right time, even led to the creation of an even more ambitious hiring timeline.

Veteran Employment Fast Facts

21.8 million U.S. veterans 

41% of unemployed veterans are between 18-44

26% of veterans 25 and older have at least a bachelor's degree 

NO. 4 ranked degree for veterans is engineering 

As statistics regarding unemployment figures for veterans continue to soar since the dawn of the 2000s, many corporations have instituted specific initiatives and corporate goals to hire more military veterans in highly skilled and leadership roles. They thought, rightly so, that the population of unemployed veterans was a poorly tapped resource of talent in the U.S. and one that could provide an organization with more than simply a worker to fill an open position.

The qualities these men and women bring, while often seen as intangibles or character traits, can and do bring real, tangible results to an organization. The leadership qualities and other skills acquired from years of training and experience both at home and abroad can translate almost perfectly to a life in a corporate environment – one in which structure and success are often at the core of culture.

However, despite the unique skills veterans bring to the workplace, many corporations aren’t aware of the ways in which to find, hire and train them as employees. Without any insight into what experiences and previous responsibilities best translate to an office environment, companies may succeed in hiring veterans, but it is unlikely they will succeed in hiring the right veterans.

But that’s exactly where our battles are won.

Outside-In Expertise 

To many organizations, hiring a veteran to handle the recruitment of more veterans seems simple and effective enough. Someone who has been a part of the military previously should, in theory, have the insight necessary to find and recruit the right veterans for any role. But unfortunately for most organizations, it often doesn’t work out that simply.

To help support the conglomerate’s veteran talent acquisition initiative, we brought on a former military contractor, who had spent years supporting the U.S. Navy and the Marines, managing data management systems, equipment installation and a variety of other digital tasks. But what makes our leader’s experience truly unique was that following his time contracting for the Navy and the Marines, he worked as a successful recruiter at a U.S. Air Force base in Ohio.

With this combination of experience in technical installations and military recruiting, he had built a network of veterans and a familiarity of how to engage with, recruit and translate military operations/responsibilities into skills that would perfectly transition into the traditional workplace.

Additionally, this military recruitment leader’s outside-in perspective not only aided veterans in developing resumes and skills that are adaptable to the office environment, he also provided company hiring managers with an understanding of how to best use the experience these individuals have to bring the most to any project or team.

Resume Decoding 

What exists on the resume of a military veteran as opposed to those individuals who graduated from high school or college and entered the workforce is vastly different. The experiences had and the skills learned were critical in making them the successful person they are, but are not necessarily easily translated into skills necessary in today’s workplace.

The good news for our client, was that this team had spent years translating such resumes and helped this team and the company increase their abilities in translating as well. We don't simply hire veterans just because they’re veterans, we hire veterans because they’re qualified.

This team developed an insight into what military skills and experience work best in a traditional workplace. When others may see someone with the title of “company commander,” who had experience in Army artillery with responsibilities that included moving large tanks, missiles and all sorts of heavy equipment, they may see just that – a company commander with little relevant experience. But what our expert military recruitment team sees is a clear-cut logistics expert. His team has found that organizing the movement of equipment and supporting the factors that go along with it translates perfectly into a career in logistics and operations. Filling these highly skilled roles was second nature.

It’s skills and expertise like this that have made us so successful in helping the client consistently reach (and surpass) its annual hiring goals while others haven’t.

Following Orders 

When our client announced its initiative to hire 5,000 veterans in a period of five years, it seemed equally as terrific an idea as it was a lofty goal. Few at the company had insights on how to hire veterans, what types of positions they were looking for or what their advantages were. But when we were tasked with aiding this effort in the company’s aviation division, all the concern simply disappeared.

Often given the responsibility of filling the largest number of veteran roles, our team not only met its benchmark of hiring 240-250 veterans every single year, but our team was so successful that the company increased the goal of the division we were responsible for to 280-290 hires. And of course, we met that, too.