Military Service to our country is not something to be taken lightly. These brave men and woman sacrifice incredible amounts of themselves in the name of protecting our nation, however when their service is up, and they rejoin the civilian workforce, they can struggle to find meaningful work. It is a staggering fact when you realized that 95% of veterans are filtered out when applying for jobs online. The resumes of these men and women have leadership, teamwork, triumph over adversity, performance under pressure, and accelerated learning, written all over them. If a veteran does make it through the applicant tracking systems, less than one percent of hiring managers have any military knowledge to be able to understand how a veteran’s skills fit into their organization. Click below to listen to our podcast:
As HR professionals we spend a good bit of time fielding calls from recruiters who wish to match us with military veterans. Oftentimes these recruiters only work with the most senior level military officers. However, if your budget doesn’t allow for the high dollar cost of such a recruiter, what can you do to better serve this population? How does an HR professional rise to gain the knowledge necessary to recruit veterans? One they are hired; how do we ensure they are onboarded properly to maximize success.
Here are some very quick and helpful tips for recruiting veterans:
1. Train your managers and leaders to be able to decipher the many skills listed on a military resume.
2. Create an internal task force of former veterans within your organization or local HR community that can help you translate the resumes and gain understanding from a veteran perspective.
3. Once onboarded, create a support network for your transitioning veteran (preferably made up of past veterans) to help ease the process.
4. Set a hiring target and educate your internal team as to the importance of such an initiative.
We need to do better for these men and women and on this week’s podcast we discuss this very topic with Robyn Grable, who is a former veteran and human resources professional herself. For more information on veteran hiring please find this informative link below:
As always if Steve Nail or I can be of any assistance to you in your HR journey, or you want to hear different topics on this podcast, please reach out at survivehr@gmail.com. We would love to hear from you!