Veterans Day Should Be Everyday For Recruiters
You know what's better than thanking veterans for their service? Hiring them.
Veteran’s Day is coming up, so SHRM rolled out an obligatory article highlighting the barriers in hiring veterans. I’ve added some of the stats from that article to try to get this post approved for continuing education credits.
90% of companies say they want to hire veterans. That's great! But only 31% of companies say they're effective at doing it (not great).
Veterans come pre-loaded with skills that most companies desperately need: Leadership, Problem-solving, Technical expertise. Yet somehow we've created this disconnect where veterans struggle to find jobs that match their abilities, while companies struggle to find talented people. It's like two people standing back-to-back looking for each other. Veterans have led teams under pressure, managed million-dollar equipment, and solved complex problems in literal life or death situations. But we get stuck on whether their military experience "counts" for our organization.
The first person I ever hired was John Corn. John came with experience in two branches of the military. He was one of the most driven, effective people that I have ever worked with. He was one of those people that I could give a goal, go away, then come back to receive twice as much as I had asked for. I received plenty of credit for how good my team was, but much of that doesn’t happen without John transforming limited resources into absolute gold.
Companies need to be intentional about hiring all the veterans like John Corn that they possibly can. Companies with formal veteran hiring programs are three times more likely to be effective at hiring veterans than those without any program. That's not a small difference - that's a "why aren't we doing this already?" difference.
Too many companies treat veteran hiring like a game of telephone. The CEO says "we should hire more veterans," then that message gets passed down through five levels of management, and by the time it reaches the recruiter, it's become "post jobs on military job boards sometimes." That's not a strategy, that's posting and praying.
Actual Strategies: Give veterans a clear way to self-identify during the application process. Use military skills translation tools (according to the SHRM article only 2% of companies do this, is that a typo or just recruiting negligence). Partner with organizations like Hiring Our Heroes. These are must-haves if you want to be serious about veteran hiring.
The next time you're in a hiring meeting and someone says "we can't find qualified candidates," ask if they've considered veterans. Better yet, ask if they have a formal program to recruit veterans. Because at the end of the day, saying you support veterans is nice, but hiring them? That's where the real impact happens.
