How many military veterans has your company hired in the past five years? And how many of those hires came from actively recruiting veterans rather than simply waiting for them to apply?
I’ve spent more than 30 years helping companies find talent, and I know how easy it is to rule out good candidates when their backgrounds don’t exactly match what a hiring manager expects.
Military veterans are a good example. They’ve spent years developing practical skills, but getting employers to recognize how those skills translate to civilian jobs can be an uphill battle.
In fact, while 69% of U.S. employers report difficulty finding qualified talent, many veterans are struggling to find work that makes full use of their experience. According to Indeed and The Harris Poll, 57% of veterans surveyed felt underemployed or believed their jobs underrepresented their military responsibilities.
Some of the people you’re looking for could already have years of relevant experience, even if their résumés don’t look quite like what you’re used to seeing.
4 ways to tap into overlooked veteran talent
I’ve worked with plenty of employers who want to hire veterans but aren’t sure how to evaluate their military experience. A few changes to how you approach recruiting and hiring make a real difference.
1. Understand the experience behind military job titles
Our team at Orion Talent helped place a Navy pilot in a service area manager position at a medical imaging company. On paper, he probably wasn’t the candidate you’d expect to oversee technicians who install and repair MRI and CT equipment in hospitals; he’d never worked in healthcare or managed a service business.
But look a little closer and there were clear parallels between the work he did as a naval aviator and the role of service area manager. He had direct experience operating complex, high-value equipment where maintenance discipline could literally mean life or death. He also worked closely with maintenance crews and led people under pressure.
Our job was to help the candidate and hiring manager see how his experience fit the role, and once they did, it was clear he was the strongest applicant.
When you’re interviewing veterans, spend time getting into the details of what their military work actually involved. For instance, I always want to ask about the equipment they worked with, the people they supervised, and the decisions they were responsible for making. You might be surprised by how much of that experience applies to the position you’re trying to fill.
2. Prioritize skills and learning agility over traditional credentials
I’ve encountered employers with pretty entrenched ideas about what a qualified candidate should look like, especially for technical positions. They want someone who can come in and do the job, which makes sense.
But when those requirements become too prescriptive, you risk screening out candidates with relevant experience. This happens a lot with highly technical roles, which are notoriously difficult to fill.
Someone who served in the Navy’s nuclear program or worked as an Electronics Technician, Electrician’s Mate, or Electrical Power Production specialist with the Air Force could have experience that’s directly relevant to a variety of roles in data centers, power generation, advanced manufacturing, and other critical infrastructure operations.
Most of the time, applicable experience doesn’t come through as a 1:1 match with the job description, so you have to take the time to probe for it. But if you give veterans (and all candidates) a chance to show what they know and how quickly they pick up new skills, you’ll likely be surprised by the number of qualified candidates you have to choose from.
3. Prepare your organization to support veteran talent
Expanding your talent pipeline to include more candidates with nontraditional experience is a different thing from actually hiring them.
Recruiters may understand why someone’s military experience makes them a strong candidate, but the hiring manager who makes the final call often can’t quite envision them in the role and goes with a “safer” choice.
This isn’t just an anecdotal observation. Research from Harvard Business School and the Burning Glass Institute found that skills-based hiring reforms led to increased opportunities for workers without bachelor’s degrees in fewer than one of every 700 hires.
As someone who’s seen the value veterans bring to private-sector jobs again and again, that frustrates me. My challenge to every organization this Veterans Day is to commit to coaching its hiring teams on how to evaluate veteran job candidates. If you don’t know where to start, bring in a consultant with specialized military recruiting expertise to help.
4. Build relationships before positions need to be filled
A lot of recruiting happens because somebody leaves or a new position opens up, and suddenly there’s a mad scramble to find the right person. But service members are often planning their next career move well before leaving the military, which means they’re not available to start in the next two to four weeks.
However, taking an always-on approach to recruiting means you can tap into military talent pools while simultaneously bolstering your talent pipeline.
If you’re always talking to potential candidates, even without a perfect open position, you can avoid the scramble when it’s time to bring someone on board. That’s especially true if you know you have plans to open a new location or expand a facility in the months or year ahead.
If you’re in a specialized or technical field like energy or data centers, talking to transitioning service members early (I recommend three to six months before their separation) is beneficial for both of you.
In these sectors, attracting candidates with the right skills who are willing to relocate is tough. But transitioning service members are in the process of deciding where to live. Starting the conversation early means you both have time to determine if your organization is a good match for their skills and career goals.
Give military talent the recognition it deserves
Approximately 200,000 service members transition out of the military each year. That’s talent we can’t afford to leave on the table.
If you’re not already recruiting transitioning service members, why not? If the answer is that you’ve just never thought about it before, please do.
Our former service members are highly skilled leaders, and I hope every HR executive, recruiter, and hiring manager will take the time to reflect on how their hiring practices could be more inclusive of veterans and all nontraditional candidates.
You might just find that someone whose background looks a little different on paper is exactly the person your team has been looking for.
