When hiring veterans, many conventional recruiters can struggle to source and onboard candidates. This can be the result of several factors and variables. Both recruiters and transitioning veteran candidates want the same thing, i.e., integrating talents and skills productively into a civilian workforce and workplace.
However, there is obviously a gap that inhibits the frequency of successfully onboarding vets, spouses of vets, and military personnel transitioning out of active service. Otherwise, veteran recruitment wouldn’t be so challenging. This could indicate that recruiters are missing certain insights that could help them remedy this situation. Read on to learn more about these insights below.
5 Key Insights About Veteran Hiring for Recruiters
Most professional recruiters are skilled at their jobs. Therefore, competence is usually not in question when discussing ways to improve veteran hiring. The reason might simply be a lack of information or insight into veteran behavior and expectations. When a deeper understanding exists between veteran candidates and recruiters, firms can overcome this gap. By extension, they can also improve the quality of veteran talent they onboard.
The following can help recruiters form a much clearer understanding of the overall landscape, and generate successful veteran hires as a result:
Veteran Candidates Are Not Looking for Handouts
Contrary to what some might believe, most vets are not expecting to be hired because of their military career or accomplishments. Instead, the vast majority of veteran candidates expect to be hired based on what they bring to the table. Like any individual, veteran candidates have skills and talents.
Some of these are undeniably acquired during the course of their service, but many others can be innate, self-taught, or even independently acquired. With this in mind, recruiters may need to recalibrate how they see veteran candidates applying for a role. Such candidates are looking for employment, not handouts based on their service.
Management Skills Are Universally Present Among Vets
When thinking about the military, the average person sees heavy equipment, tanks, fighter jets, and weapons. This imagery is obviously a big part of a veteran’s military service. However, this image can also obscure the skills of an individual veteran candidate. As a consequence of this stereotyping, bias can infect veteran hiring processes. Recruiters can become predisposed to thinking vets are not a good fit in corporate management roles.
However, the truth could not be more different. Vets are more than capable of handling civilian management roles. More than that, they acquire management experience as a result of military service, not in spite of it. In other words, the effective use of all those jets, tanks, soldiers, and equipment requires effective management of all available resources. This is something most vets learn on the job, often with very low margins for error. Generally speaking, this makes them far more suited to management roles than many comparable civilian candidates.
Veteran Hires Don’t Act Like Drill Sergeants
Popular movies like Jarhead and Full-Metal Jacket are among the most popular military movies of all time. While they offer great entertainment, people can forget that entertainment often requires exaggeration or dramatization. These movies and similar ones have only reinforced many stereotypes about military life.
This can actually damage a veteran hire’s chances of landing a civilian job after retiring. Recruiters need to unlearn a lot of the conscious or unconscious bias they may hold against veteran hires. A candidate with a military background is not going to run the workplace like a drill sergeant. Like any employee, they understand civility, courtesy, and empathy. Such stereotypes should never be a consideration when hiring new veteran talent.
Candidates With Military Backgrounds Have a Strong Sense of Loyalty
The military is founded on ideals of patriotism and a deep sense of duty. This is what allows the United States military to remain the most elite class of fighting men and women in the world. Members of the military remain deeply committed to their roles, peers, and to the institution as a whole. When they transition out of military service, they usually retain this deep sense of loyalty and commitment.
As a result, veteran hires are among the most loyal and dedicated members of any workforce. This usually indicates the candidate will be more likely to stick around, and not raise employee attrition unnecessarily.
Most Vets Are Actively Seeking Meaningful Employment
The way television shows and films portray vets is both unfortunate and inaccurate. The usual tropes of deep trauma, PTSD, violent breakdowns, and so forth may make for good TV viewing but they are far removed from the truth. Similarly, the preconception that vets are ready to settle for any role at all is unfair and inaccurate. Like any other driven individual, veterans actively seek meaningful employment.
Most don’t even want to be treated differently based on military service. Instead, they usually seek employers that are willing to offer meaningful roles with plenty of room for growth.
Of course, there is always the issue that general in-house recruiters may not have a deep enough understanding of veteran candidates. This is where working with a specialized third party like a veterans recruitment agency is a wise decision. These recruiters specialize in working with veteran talent. Leveraging this, they can often supplement a veteran hiring program with a much greater degree of success.