Businesses all over the country employ military veterans. Some do so to meet compliance requirements or to get tax credits, or even simply because they feel they should give back to those who sacrificed so much for this country. While these are all valid reasons to hire veterans, they often overshadow a far more important reason: the skills, ideas, and values they bring to the civilian workplace. This blog explores how veterans are the right choice in any hiring market.
Veterans as Employees
Nearly 200,000 people leave military service every year and reenter the civilian talent pool. Many of these veterans are often seeking employment in the private sector. As a result, they offer unique talents that might not be found elsewhere in a competitive pool of applicants. The vast majority of managers have found their veteran employees to be motivated, qualified, and high-performing individuals that add value to the workplace and to their role. This is something that businesses should consider when looking to fill open roles.
It is often difficult to understand how combat training, an understanding of tactics, and hands-on experience on the battlefield can translate over into a civilian role. How does one go from fighting in some of the most inhospitable places in the world to a quiet life defined by targets and work schedules? The answer lies in the holistic skills and experience veterans acquire as a direct result of military service. We explore this in more detail in the next section.
How Battlefield Experience Translates Into Civilian Roles
Veterans are known to be motivated, disciplined team players who don’t hesitate to take initiative and step into a leadership role. This is a reflection of time served in the military, where doing things meticulously can mean the difference between a failed mission and a successful one. Veterans are goal-oriented and driven to get there based on an understanding of the larger picture and the ultimate goal of the organization.
Working closely with servicemen and women of diverse backgrounds during service allows veterans to become great team players in the civilian world. Service members quite literally trust members of their squad with their lives in many dangerous situations. As veteran employees, they work to build trust with their colleagues with those lessons at the forefront of their professional experience.
Veterans learn the importance of integrity and honesty throughout their military service. This makes them extremely loyal and committed employees for the private sector. Veterans are also likely to be accountable for their actions, with a better predisposition than many civilian candidates to work for the success of the organization as a whole. Having lived a rigorous lifestyle of following orders and executing them to perfection, veteran employees will usually be more likely to enforce and uphold company policy and procedure at all times.
Challenges Businesses Face When Hiring Veteran Employees
Veteran employees are committed, honest, and loyal workers, which is why many businesses would be well served to hire them. While most businesses do acknowledge the benefits of hiring veterans (including high retention rates), there is still a lot of room for improvement when it comes to hiring veteran candidates. There are three distinct challenges that businesses face in terms of veteran hiring:
- Effectively communicating the difference between military and civilian expectations in veteran interviews.
- Developing efficient ways to probe a veteran candidate’s diverse military experience and qualifications.
- Understanding how military skills can mesh well in civilian or corporate work cultures.
The Need for Formal Veteran Recruitment Processes
Virtually all US businesses are unanimous in their support for hiring veterans. However, despite being open to having veteran employees, most private sector businesses have no formal protocols to interview, onboard, and retain veteran talent. This is the single most important area for improvement on the part of employers. A veteran-targeted hiring strategy can enable your business to tap into the pool of available talent and identify qualified veteran candidates.
Unfortunately, most in-house hiring teams have very little experience with sourcing and recruiting veteran talent. They try to apply the same process to veterans as they would to civilian candidates, and therefore encounter a number of difficulties. In the absence of veteran hiring protocols, businesses may need to rely more closely on veteran staffing agencies like CGT Vets to source, screen, interview, and hire candidates that offer long-term benefits to their role and to the workplace.