Yesterday’s Advisor, highlighted a unique on-the-job training program for veterans and their spouses created by Prudential Financial, Inc., and the El Paso Workforce Opportunities Services. Today we present an article by Nick Swaggert, director of the Genesis10 veterans’ program, explaining the unique hiring situation when it comes to vets.
An infantry officer with the U.S. Marine Corps from 1999 to 2010, Swaggert’s first-hand knowledge of veterans’ strengths, challenges, and culture has prepared him well to identify new opportunities for companies and veterans to serve one another.
Recently we’ve seen a tremendous amount of companies declare their newfound goal to bring more veterans onto their workforce, but despite these proclamations and other attempts to help veterans, the unemployment rate for veterans under the age of 30 is 12 percent, or double the national average of 6 percent.
Quite simply; it boils down to common misconceptions and skills translators inadequately identifying what the best jobs truly are.
Lost in Translation
Veterans’ skills are poorly translated into corporate speech, and their capabilities are therefore vastly underestimated. Even the Department of Veterans Affairs’ newest online job search tool fails at converting terms such as Marine, Infantry, and officer by yielding “no matching results.”
More often than not, a veteran will get placed as a security guard or truck driver because those seem to be the only skills that the corporate world is able to associate with someone who has served in the military.
Companies and organizations don’t realize the valuable skills U.S. veterans obtain while serving in the military. Not only do they possess honorable traits that a company should want to see in its employees, but they also are often extremely proficient in technical skills. Despite these competencies, a veteran still may not be hired because he or she doesn’t have a college degree, or because his or her skills do not translate accurately from the military to the office.
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Information Gap
Indeed, a large part of veterans’ unemployment can be attributed to the information gap between veterans and hiring managers. Before an individual is recognized as a veteran by the U.S. government, he or she must complete 2 to 3 months of intense boot camp, followed by at least 4 years of service.
By the time servicemembers are discharged from the armed forces, they are indoctrinated in military culture. From language nuances (business vs. military vernacular) to cultural customs (handshake vs. salute), and from the subtle to the more pronounced, there are many differences between how the military and corporate worlds operate.
The Learning Curve
Both groups—veterans and businesses—face a learning curve when it comes to veteran hiring: Veterans need to learn how to assimilate into a civilian organization, and companies need to learn how to incorporate veterans into their organizations.
Perhaps the biggest difficulty that companies face in hiring veterans is accurately evaluating veterans’ military experience in a way that effectively determines where veterans fit best in their organizations. Whereas HR and hiring managers can rather easily assess whether a traditional candidate is a fit for a specific role, veterans come with an entirely different set of job titles and credentials that require a new and different approach when it comes to hiring.
For example, it is not uncommon to see a company at a job fair promoting veteran jobs, and then turn right around and advertise those same jobs on big-name job boards. While such a company might give the appearance of focusing on veterans, they really are not.
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It’s Not Plug and Play
Companies that want to hire veterans need to retool their job descriptions to more closely align with veteran attributes and values instead of experiences. While veterans bring an abundance of skills to the table, it is unlikely that even the most technically proficient veterans were exposed to many of the systems, programs, or coding languages during their military careers that are commonly used in corporate America.
Veterans are some of the most hardworking and adaptable people out there, and are more than capable of succeeding in corporate environments. Aligning attributes will set both the company and veteran up for success. Companies need to recognize that if they truly want to hire veterans, it will require more than adding “veteran” to a job ad.
Military Values
When a company truly focuses on hiring a U.S. veteran to be a part of its team, it is simultaneously adding honorable traits to its culture, including loyalty, leadership, and dedication. These characteristics can help create cohesiveness within an organization and, therefore, make a company stronger. These are qualities you cannot just teach anyone, but rather are qualities that become natural behaviors for men and women who have lived and breathed the military lifestyle.
Bridging the Gap
At Genesis10, we are trying to break the paradigm that prevents veterans from getting hired. It is not an easy task, but by partnering with companies to identify roles where veterans can succeed, recruiting high potential veterans, and providing ongoing training and mentoring, we can achieve this goal.
This article is right on. As a military retiree – I thought I had made all the right decisions – got a college degree,etc. but all I was offered was low paying clerical positions because my 20+ years in the Navy was working in a classified field. Additionally, when I retired (1993) it was unusual to be a female retired service member, so there really was a double whammy. This continues to be the case for me, even though I am gainfully employed now, it took many, many years to overcome these issue. I don’t use milspeak and know that I am still underemployed.