I was a Navy technician (submarines) and I know what mission critical means. It means it gets done. The technicians I place come from the same mission-critical environment. It’s a mind set that is instilled and never really goes away. Whatever it is that needs to be done, it is that important.

I worked with Eaton Power Services (formerly PowerWare) and they hired 18 technicians. All were top-performers, highly reliable and professional. Their training was a great fit for PowerWare’s UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) systems which are the top of the line. Their military-experienced field technicians are likewise ever vigilant over their customers’ needs.

Makino, a leading producer of machine tools, hires military-experienced technicians regularly and has done so for over 10 years, in part because Makino is a patriotic company but mostly because they need highly reliable technicians in the field. It is not a far stretch from what these candidates do in the military to what they do at Makino.

Top technical training, reliability and strong customer service skills are what separate military-experienced technicians from the pack. A mission-critical mindset will separate you from your competitors. It’s go time!

Bobby Whitehouse

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbywhitehouse

1. Assign a sponsor. Preferably a military-experienced performer who can understand the candidate’s point of view in assessing potential employers.

2. Pick them up at the airport. Sure they can take a cab, shuttle or rent a car. But when a sponsor from the company picks them up, it makes them feel welcome. It also provides an opportunity for peer level small talk.

3. Executive Involvement. Military-experienced talent is accustomed to meeting with top brass. Nothing says “we are serious about development” like a meeting with the boss. This is a great opportunity to impress the candidate.

4. An all-access tour. Give them a bit of “star treatment” by introducing them to the key players in each part of your business. Touring the facility and meeting team leaders is a great opportunity for questions and for the candidate to gain a better understanding of the business.

5. Involve their spouse. This is a two sided decision so if the candidate is married, have a sponsor for their spouse, too. Relocating a family to a new location brings with it inherent concerns. A tour of neighborhoods and attractions with a good guide will help seal the deal with the spouse.

Top performers appreciate stand out organizations. They are looking at the top teams in industry. My client was not a Fortune 100 company but a smaller firm that beat the big boys every time.

Bobby Whitehouse

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbywhitehouse

The military is a community like any other representing all points on the bell curve. However, because the military sets a higher standard (UCMJ), more focus is placed on character. Companies like Bradley-Morris, Inc. have a team of recruiters representing many spaces within the military communities. I know about submarine service but have no personal experience regarding how the fighter jet community advances their top performers. The person who works beside me does though, and along with the rest of our team we differentiate and match individuals based on desired performance attributes so our clients hire the best “military-experienced talent”.

The back end is really interesting as we experience a strong consistency in performance across service branches, job segments and industry sectors. Checking in with placed candidates and their hiring managers is an eye opener. The feedback is overwhelmingly positive and often over the top amazing. It is not uncommon for a candidate we place to advance 3 or 4 steps within a short time with the company. The fastest track I have seen is 2 steps in 90 days.

This particular candidate was a graduate of West Point who excelled as an Army leader. I placed him in the food manufacturing industry with a Fortune 500 company as a production supervisor. Within 90 days he skipped through maintenance supervisor and was put in charge of their process improvement team. After that facility became the best in efficiency, he was advanced to lead process improvement for the entire division becoming their quality guru.

There are countless examples of the positive contributions of military-experienced talent. The people who excel in the military are hard charging go getters and these qualities fit well in corporate America too. Hire military. It is good for business.

Bobby Whitehouse

http://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbywhitehouse

By September 2001 I had completed a transition from active military duty to civilian employment, and elected to continue my service as a member of the Army Reserve. Ironically, one of the reasons I left active duty was because I was feeling burned out from all of the deployments I had been on throughout the 1990’s (Gulf War, Somalia, Bosnia, and Saudi Arabia at the time of the Khobar Towers bombing).

I had been with my employer just one short year, and in those last few months finally felt as if I was adapting well to the cultural change that came with being a civilian. On the morning of September 11^th I was scheduled to deliver some training to employees in our Birmingham office. I heard about the first plane from the radio station I was listening to as I was entering the parking garage. At that time, there was still much confusion as to what kind of plane and whether this was a freak accident or something else. By the time I made it up to the training room, every TV in the building was turned to CNN and all of the students were following reports on their BlackBerrys and telling me that a second plane had struck. We attempted to start the class, but the continuous updates of increasingly horrifying news made it impossible to continue. The students were distracted by the news, and I was becoming increasingly distracted by the knowledge that my reserve unit was certain to be one of the first called up in response to this tragedy.

At the time, the unit I served with supported a major Army headquarters in Atlanta that had responsibility for planning responses to crises (domestic and international) and for supplying and training the units and individuals who would be the responders. Whatever was going to happen in the weeks, months, possibly years to come, was definitely going to be the main focus of my headquarters. My reserve unit was trained to augment the full time military and civilian staff, so I was not surprised when I received the phone call just a few short hours after dismissing the class. I was sitting in my hotel room, transfixed on the TV and alternating between a sadness I had never felt before and rage. “I was expecting your call,” I spoke into the phone. “When do we start?”

I share this story because it is not an unusual one for those who serve in the National Guard and Reserve. The details may change, but the immediate shift in focus upon receiving that call does not. I want to highlight what my company did when I informed them that I would be taking a leave of absence for an undetermined amount of time. I hope it serves as an example of an employer being truly responsive and supportive of a Guard/Reserve member, and ask that you take a look at your policies and support programs and see if you are as Guard/Reserve “friendly” as you could be.

1. Just before I notified them of my alert, I checked the company’s HR policy on military leave. At the time, it did have a separate leave category just for military duty, but it only reflected the standard two-week annual training commitment. My company also offered differential pay, where the company pays the difference between military base pay and the employee’s salary (if the military base pay is less than the civilian pay). But, again, this was only offered for the standard two week training period. I knew I would be gone for much longer than two weeks; I knew I could possibly be away for a year or more. I brought this to the attention of my HR rep and asked if the company would consider revising the policy on military leave and also consider offering the pay differential for a longer period of time. I provided her with a sample policy letter from the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) website. Amazingly, within three weeks, the company was able to rewrite and gain approval for both policy changes. Ultimately, I was mobilized for a total of 2-1/2 years and the company covered me the entire time. And, before you send me emails about USERRA (Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act), USERRA says employers have to let us go serve and have to place us in a job of equal or greater responsibility upon return. It specifically does not require employers to pay salary differential or benefits while we are gone. The first military leave policy addressed our retention of benefits while absent in a military leave capacity for up to two weeks. The revised policy actually became two policies: one for short term military absence (two weeks) and one for long term military absence (i.e., mobilizations).
2. While I was gone, the company asked for my permission to post my picture and name in a common area where the rest of the employees could see those from the company who had been mobilized/deployed after 9/11. This allowed employees an opportunity to acknowledge our service and to keep us in their thoughts.
3. During my mobilization, the company did not have an employee resource group (ERG) for veterans. By the time I returned to work in 2004, the first fledgling one was standing up. I joined it and took on a leadership role, and we made it our mission to continue to push for more support of our Guard/Reserve employees. Our ERG created a newsletter to inform the group of our efforts and to recognize those who were mobilizing/coming off of mobilization, those that had been promoted in the Guard/Reserve, and those that were doing great work in the community serving veterans and military families.
4. The ERG also convinced our company leaders to send out a letter to all veteran employees and Guard/Reserve employees in advance of Veterans Day, thanking them for their service and sacrifices. This letter was hand signed and mailed to the home address of each employee. It fell to the ERG to find the veterans and military members in the employee base, as HR had no record of who had self-identified as a veteran upon hire. The leaders also acknowledged our service and sacrifice every Memorial Day and Veterans Day thereafter in a statement that was emailed to all employees.
5. The last change I was attempting to enact before I left the company to start The Value Of a Veteran was a change to the short term military leave policy. It covered the standard two weeks of leave for annual training. Our ERG members let us know that they were increasingly being asked to do additional training requirements in the course of a year. We polled the group and the average was 4-5 weeks of military training a year had become the “new normal”. Our members had been taking the 2 week military training absence, and then using vacation time in order to retain pay and benefits or take the remaining 2-4 weeks as unpaid leave.

If you are looking for additional ideas as you develop your military recruiting and retention program, please consider downloading a free copy of my employers guide to recruiting and retaining military veterans. Use coupon code HireMilitary before checking out and the cost of the guide will be deducted.

I received an inquiry the other day where the recruiter stated that she had received a resume from a military veteran with excellent qualifications for the position she was trying to fill.  When it came time to schedule the interview, the veteran indicated that he was deaf and asked if the interview could be conducted over email versus over the phone.  The recruiter wanted to know what else she could do to make the interview a success.

First, I applaud the fact that she did not let a stated veteran disability dissuade her from considering an applicant.  I quickly referred her to one of my favorite resources – the Job Accommodation Network (JAN).  You can search its accommodations database for the particular situation you are facing and then by the particular limitation you are trying to address and you will see a list of accommodations that could be made.  The best part about JAN is its consultants are available (at NO CHARGE to employers) to answer any additional questions you may have.  You can reach the consultants by phone, email or live chat.

Another resource for this specific situation is the Rochester Institute of Technology’s National Technical Institute for the Deaf.  It has a Center on Employment which specifically addresses how to interview someone who is hard of hearing and how to make accommodations after the hire.

Here are a few additional resources:

• Lighthouse International:  Tips on interviewing and accommodating candidates with vision impairment
• University of Washington’s “Interviewing Courtesies for Individuals with Disabilities”
• The United Spinal Association’s disability etiquette guidebook:  General tips on interacting with people with disabilities, covering numerous conditions.

(If you can recommend other resources, please specify in the comment section and provide a link.)

One resource I would like to see (please contact me if you know of any) is one for interviewing persons with facial or other visible disfigurement.  We have veterans with disabilities who have burn scars and/or missing or severely damaged facial components.  The resources I have come across are for the person with the disfigurement preparing them to meet an employer.  There are discussions on whether to address the disfigurement before meeting the hiring manager (such as in the cover letter, or when scheduling the interview) or upon meeting the interviewer before sitting down (“In case you are wondering what happened to my face…”)  But the only advice I have seen for the employers is “Don’t stare”, “Don’t let it throw you for a loop” and “Don’t ask how they attained the disfigurement”.

Particularly with facial disfigurement, you may encounter someone whose speech is difficult to understand.  One approach would be to read up on how to interview people who stutter.   One piece of advice for HR from The Stuttering Foundation that I think would behoove us all to consider is that “people who stutter often have excellent communications skills. They should not be seen as deficient at verbal communication. Some people who stutter are very often qualified for and interested in positions requiring them to deal with members of the public on a daily basis.”  The same is true for persons with facial disfigurement.  Don’t assume they want to work away from public view.  I recently had the pleasure of meeting J.R. Martinez, a former Army Infantryman who was burned over 40% of his body in an IED explosion in Iraq in 2003.  He is now an actor on the TV show “All My Children” and a motivational speaker.   He is also featured in a documentary called “TRIAL BY FIRE: Lives Re-forged”.  Clearly, he is not someone who doesn’t want to be seen.

You might think that your recruiters and hiring managers would never intentionally disrespect a person with a disability.  Hopefully, you are correct.  But, are they prepared so as to not unintentionally disrespect them?  And what happens after the interview is over?  A few years ago I actually had a hiring manager tell me after interviewing someone who was visually impaired that she was not going to recommend that the company hire him because she “just can’t imagine him interacting well with clients”.  It was more about her perception of what a XYZ Company employee “looks like” versus what skills the candidate brought to the table.  And this happened after her company had declared that it wanted to improve its hiring of persons with disabilities!  So, the point is – don’t assume your recruiters and managers are prepared to interact with people with disabilities just because you told them it is a strategic focus for the year.  You have to provide training (and this should be regular/annual professional development for hiring managers and supervisors) and opportunities to interact with wounded warriors and other persons with disabilities in a non-recruitment setting.

81% of military occupations have a direct or very close civilian equivalent.  We have engineers, nurses, lawyers, accountants, store managers, telecommunications technicians, truck drivers, food service managers and more.  And all military members possess, to some degree, intangible skills such as leadership, process improvement, problem identification, trouble shooting, managerial/supervisory administration, and project management.

The military assesses an applicant for attitude and aptitude to learn a skilled trade or to manage skilled labor and then presents the applicant with choices of career fields based on the assessment results. The applicant selects a career field based on factors such as available choices, demand for those occupations, associated financial bonuses for choosing harder-to-fill career fields, timeliness of training school availability, civilian career goals, and personal preferences.

Once an occupation is chosen, the military invests tens of thousands of dollars in the training and professional development of its service members.  The military also communicates defined career paths for officers and enlisted members, and manages their professional development and requires attendance at career development schools at predefined times.

As the years go by, service members are provided assignments into new positions of increased responsibility by a central team of military human resource managers.

And so, after 6 or 26 years, the service member is completing a successful military career having never assembled a resume or applied for a job. Very few have had a need to interview for a position; the few that have did not need to translate their qualifications and experiences into a different language in order to sell themselves to the decision maker.

In the months, even years, leading up to the point of separation or retirement, the military member becomes increasingly aware that there are major transition planning activities in which they should be engaging.   They also experience anxiety as the realization sets in that they are leaving a highly structured, path-driven, centrally-directed environment of military career management to the looser, endless-possibilities, individually-directed environment of civilian career management.

They struggle with trying to explain how very military specific positions such as “Command Sergeant Major” or “Executive Officer” might equate in a civilian work environment.  And, they are just learning about this social networking tool called “LinkedIn”, but they aren’t clear on what it can do for them and how to use it to find a civilian career.

So, while the military services and the Department of Labor are charged to help the service member prepare for transition to civilian life, I like to focus on those civilian recruiters and hiring managers and help them to understand the military better so they can improve their recruitment of veterans.  I find that once the recruiters and hiring managers get clear on what service members have to offer and better understand their levels of responsibility and salary expectations, their military recruiting programs really take off.  They make better choices on where to look for military talent and spend their talent sourcing dollars more effectively.  They have a higher rate of success in making good matches for their open positions, which is one step towards improving retention of veterans.

• A business that has few veteran employees to be mentors to incoming transitioning service members
• A former service member who would like to mentor other veterans in an organization, but whose employer does not have a formal mentoring program, so the veteran struggles to find ad hoc opportunities to mentor

So, I was very excited to come across a group who can provide a solution for both conditions.  The Business and Professional Women (BPW) Foundation is partnering with the US Chamber of Commerce to launch a very aggressive and unique program.  Called “Joining Forces for Women Veteran’s Mentorship Program” (JFWVMP), the group’s goal is to recruit 100,000 women (veteran or civilian) to mentor 100,000 women veterans and military spouses and caregivers by the end of 2012.  The program is included in the greater JoiningForces.gov initiative, led by First Lady Michelle Obama and Dr. Jill Biden.

The part I like best is that BPW and the Chamber are not trying to develop a completely new and separate program.  They’ve made the very smart decision to leverage existing mentoring groups (such as AcademyWomen and the Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors) to build a consortium of providers who can address the various mentoring needs of women veterans, spouses and care givers and who are already employing best practices in high-touch mentoring.

Many of us in the human resources field associate mentoring with career development.  However, women veterans, military spouses and care givers face additional issues that mentoring can address:

• Packaging of military skill sets in preparation for securing civilian employment
• Guidance on starting a business
• Assistance with family support issues, such as homelessness, single parenting, or caring for a person with a disability
• Picking up the pieces and developing a “new normal” after the death of a loved one
• Decisions around pursuing additional post-graduate education, whether full or part time
• Recognizing signs of stress, depression, or other potentially debilitating conditions and finding resources to overcome them

Even with a consortium, finding 100,000 mentors and 100,000 protégées is still a challenge, especially given the aggressive 18 month timeline.  So, if the following describes you, keep reading to find out how you and/or your company can get involved:

• If your company already has a formal veteran mentoring program, and you’d like to expand to mentor veterans outside of your organization;
• If you are an employee of a company that does not offer a formal mentoring program, and you’d like the opportunity to mentor women veterans/spouses/caregivers;
• If you are a woman veteran/spouse/caregiver who does not currently have an opportunity to be mentored; or
• If you are a corporate, government or non-profit organization that has an established formal mentoring program for either veterans (in general) or women (in general) or caregivers of the ill or injured (in general)…

…go to www.womenjoiningforces.org for details on how to participate.  Do it today.

First, let’s start with a definition. The term “bounce rate” is an Internet marketing term that refers to the percentage of single-page visits. In other words, a visit in which a person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. Is your company tracking the bounce rate from your main career page? A high bounce rate is an indicator that your entrance page isn’t relevant to your visitors. “I didn’t see what I was looking for, so <bounce> – I’m outta here!”

Presumably, your company has invested a lot of money in the development of its employer brand and its career page. Perhaps your company even has a team that monitors the effectiveness of the branding effort and tracks recruitment metrics for the number of applicants, by type, received through the career site. Are you tracking the number of veterans who apply through your main career page?

If the number of military veterans applying through your career page is very low, it may be that your company is committing one or both of the most common mistakes companies make when trying to attract service members to apply.

Mistake #1: No customized information for military veterans accessible from the career home page. Make it obvious from the home page that you are interested in recruiting military veterans. A simple link or a dramatic graphic calling out for “Military Veterans – Click Here!” will capture a service member’s attention and indicate right from jump street that you understand their information needs are different and that you are making an effort to address that need.

When I get push back from companies on this idea, I ask them if they have a special link for college students/university relations on their career page. The majority of them do. And when I ask why the company has customized information for that demographic, I get explanations such as:

• This is a group that is searching for their first job and they need a lot of additional info on company culture and career paths.
• This is a group that is likely, for the first time, applying for a job online, and they aren’t clear on how to put a proper resume together, how to navigate an applicant tracking system (ATS), and how the application review process works once the resume is uploaded.

At which point I remind them that they just described the same challenges that military members face when transitioning to the civilian sector. The main difference is, of course, the veteran has 4-5 or more years of direct, relevant work experience than the college student. But they’ve never had to put a resume together (we don’t need them in the military), they’ve never had to apply for a job (we are given assignments), and they definitely don’t know what happens after they click “submit”, other than they sometimes get an almost instantaneous automated rejection notice from the ATS with no explanation for why they don’t meet the criteria for the job.

Mistake #2: Hiding the customized information for military veterans under the “Diversity” link. Human resources professionals consider “veteran” to be a diversity category for a variety of reasons. However, the military member does not consider him/herself to be a diversity category and as such will not think to look under the diversity link to see if customized information resides there.

If you are looking for more information on recruitment marketing tactics for attracting military veterans, consider signing up for my webinar entitled “Marketing to Attract the Military Applicant”. I not only show you what you can do to attract more veterans to your company, I also explain why certain tactics work.

Otherwise, spend some time researching what companies on the CivilianJobs.com Most Valuable Employers (MVE) for Military and G.I. Jobs Top 100 Military Friendly Employers lists are doing on their career pages.

The number one mistake I see companies make when launching a military recruiting initiative is that they immediately jump into a sourcing strategy – typically attending a career fair of some kind – without having a clear picture of the type of military talent they seek and an idea of whether they are looking for specific occupations or general skills.

It’s not surprising then, when reviewing the results of exhibiting at these events, the recruiters report that they did not encounter service members that would be appropriate for current open positions. A few more experiences like this and many companies will give up on targeting military all together, believing that their roles are not a good fit for those with a military background.

It takes more that showing up at a military career fair to develop a successful veteran recruiting initiative. You have to understand the differences in experience, levels of responsibility, salary expectations, levels of education, and transition planning timelines of our military members.

• Do you know the different between officers and enlisted? And, what the heck are non-commissioned officers and warrant officers?
• Are you looking for degreed candidates because it is a convenient screening criterion, or will 4-6 years of actual work experience in a similar position be a good substitute?
• When looking for specific military occupations, do you know which service (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marine Corps) has those job positions?
• And, what about those combat arms professionals? You know – the guys who shoot things, blow things up and run things over with tanks? Do you have any idea what intangible skill sets they have in abundance that may be a great fit for your company?
• Ever wonder why you are getting service members approaching your table asking about jobs and available work locations who say they aren’t leaving the service for another 8-18 months? Why in the world are they attending a job fair now?

Clearly, it helps to understand the military before jumping into a specific sourcing strategy. Once you have a clear picture of who you are looking for within the military, I think attending targeted military career fairs is a great idea.

If you are looking for a way to get a handle on this quickly, I offer a webinar entitled “Translating the Military Resume and Interviewing Tips” which will answer all of those questions and more.

Otherwise, track down your veteran-employees and get them to assist you in answering these questions. Bonus tip – bring some of them with you to the next military career fair and have them engage with the service members, particularly those who claim to be 8-18 months from leaving the military. You may also choose to engage with a military recruiting firm that is already tracking the most highly sought after transitioning military profiles (some of whom may have a job secured before even leaving the service).