“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
That’s what former U.S. Marine Sergeant Tanner Horsley recalled of the incident while deployed that resulted in severe injuries and thus ending his promising military career. Since his medical retirement from the Corps, Horsley was uncertain of his professional future. He had been expecting to make the USMC a career like family members before him.
He is not alone in his thoughts. Every year, 160,000 military veterans are discharged from service; 15,000 annually in San Diego, making the region home to the nation’s largest number of veterans returning from wartime duty. For Horsley, and a group of young veterans, we helped answer the uncertain questions about their immediate future by accepting them to the Qualcomm Corporate Integration Program for Warrior Veterans.
Developed by Qualcomm and supported by the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command, QCIP-Warriors is an initiative created to help wounded warriors and military veterans as they move from active duty to employment in the civilian world. keep reading…
The way Chris Holmes quit his border security job must have made Gordon Ramsay proud.
It wasn’t a bad-boy, burn-the-bridge resignation that has garnered all the attention for the 31-year-old new father whose friends and co-workers call him Mr. Cake (for reasons that will become obvious in a moment). That might have been more the Ramsay style.
Holmes let them eat cake. keep reading…
A new site from the Labor Department in the U.S. bills itself as a one-stop shop for “hiring, training, and retraining a strong workforce.”
There’s a not a ton new here, and some of it’s a bit basic. But it’s also a pretty handy collection of links, on everything from tax credits, as well as on hiring veterans, people with disabilities, foreign nationals, and ex-offenders.
You’ll also find information on the hiring process, like some illegal interview questions, for example.
The main page is here.
When the same peer group surrounds an individual for an extended period, movements, actions, and language of that group become second nature. Often times, this is seen in members of the United States Armed Forces.
With this in mind, human resources professionals should understand that it is common to witness specific lingo or actions that have become second nature during their tenure in the military. And, as many members of the Armed Forces return home to a progressively competitive civilian job market, you will see more terms, MOS numbers (Military Occupational Specialty codes), and job descriptions that may catch you by surprise.
To ready yourself, read further and learn how to prepare a superior interview experience for both the veteran and yourself.
Push the Breaks
I have seen thousands of resumes in the past few years and had the pleasure of interviewing some great applicants in person, over the phone and recently by hosting Virtual Career Fairs via Google+ Hangouts. One that particularly sticks out was a Navy EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) specialist who caught me by surprise with technical jargon that made no sense to me. I knew his position in the military was important, but had little idea as to what he was talking about. keep reading…
In this, the ninth year of the ERE Recruiting Excellence Awards, finalists include a New York hospital that’s a finalist in two categories, a flower delivery company, a big technology and a big banking company, government contractors, management consultants, and a fast-growing home-loan organization.
“It really brings me hope to see people doing excellent things,” one judge wrote to me, about the industry’s leading awards for talent acquisition.
We made a few changes since last year’s ERE Recruiting Excellence Award winners and finalists were announced. For the first time we have an onboarding category. We split the “department of the year” into large and small companies. We altered the “careers website” a bit to encompass more than just a company’s own site, but social media and similar sites as well. And, we added an “innovation,” award, which will be announced at the upcoming Recruiting Innovation Summit.
The other winners will be announced at the ERE Recruiting Conference & Expo in San Diego, where the finalists will up on stage in a perennially popular q-and-a session for the audience.
Here are those finalists in alphabetical order within the categories: keep reading…
After closing 2007, at Veterans United Home Loans, the leading dedicated provider of VA Loans, we employed a 109-person workforce, all within our centralized Columbia, Missouri location. We will will advance into 2013 with more than 1,200 employees and a 22-office nationwide presence.
As the human resources director for one of the country’s fastest-growing private companies, I’ve had the pleasure of witnessing the highs and lows, the meltdowns and meaningful moments, and seen the best and worst in people, along with the downright bizarre.
While the previous list would make a great piece in itself, that’s not what I am most passionate about. What drives me is the opportunity I’ve been given, which has been hiring more than 1,000 extraordinary employees in the past five years, leading to recognition from Inc. Magazine as the nation’s No. 29 job creator — No. 1 in the financial and banking industry — and being listed on Fortune Magazine’s Great Place to Work list as the No. 21 best medium workplace.
Results like this are not the production of a boilerplate hiring method or template that fits every company, but the collective achievement of a unit that believes in working as a team to produce a superior end result for the user.
To understand what it takes to assemble a successful entity like Veterans United, read on before you hire your next applicant. keep reading…
Just days after the nation honored its military veterans, a new survey says job seeking vets are putting in more effort, yet feel less confident than they did last year about finding a job.
This survey from Monster offers the first full-year comparison of attitudes and job-seeking challenges from both veterans and employers. Launched a year ago, the survey results are rolled up into what Monster calls the Veterans Talent Index. It paints a sometimes discouraging look at the difficulties and obstacles veterans, particularly those who served since 9/11, face in finding work.
That group of veterans have the highest unemployment among America’s 21 million military veterans. As a group, the so-called Gulf War-era II veterans had an unemployment rate of 10 percent last month. Women veterans in that group had an unemployment rate of 15.5 percent, nearly twice the 7.9 percent national rate. keep reading…
As the nation prepares to celebrate Veteran’s Day Sunday, there is encouraging news about the progress American business has made in hiring veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The unemployment rate among veterans of what the government calls Gulf War II is the highest of all veterans.
Collectively, veterans have an unemployment rate of 6.3 percent, well below the national rate of 7.9 percent. However, post-9/11 veterans have an unemployment rate of 10 percent.
A year ago in October (the most recent month for the data), the unemployment rate for those veterans was 12.1 percent. That month the national rate was 8.9 percent. The gap between the national unemployment rate and that for veterans is still wide, but it has closed considerably in 12 months, narrowing from 3.2 points to the current 2.1.
What’s helped is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, and in particular the Vow to Hire Heroes Act, which gives employers a tax credit of up to $9,600 for hiring unemployed and/or disabled veterans. That program, like so many other tax programs and rate reductions, will end on December 31 unless Congress acts to extend it. keep reading…
The U.S. Marines are apparently picking up on the “good job is a meaningful job” thing, as it will be using some of its ad dollars to emphasize that a Marines career involves helping people and the community.
The Marines campaign to attract officers is being done with help from the ad agencies UniWorld Group and JWT. The Marines are using the tagline “Fighting with Purpose” and the web address Marines.com/impact. The Marines and the agencies are trying to resonate with millennials, and, in particular, what the Marines call the “diversity prospect audience.”
The marines.com/impact website has sections on “rebuilding communities,” “being quality citizens,” and “community impact.” The messages will also be spread using a 30-second TV commercial, as well as print and mobile advertising.
Meanwhile, the Marines’ page on Twitter (“a Marine is never unarmed“) has a more combative theme. The Marines also have pages on YouTube and Facebook.
The Defense Department in the U.S. just isn’t doing what it needs to in order to recruit and retain science, technology, engineering, and math employees.
That’s according to a new report from two private non-profits — the National Academy of Engineering and the National Research Council. The Defense Department itself sponsored the study.
The Defense Department’s recruiting “should be reviewed and overhauled as necessary,” the agencies say, including:
- Rethinking whether you really need a clearance for some STEM positions
- Using employees’ skills better, and helping them grow in their careers better
- Changing the “slow, impersonal, and sometimes opaque” hiring process
More here.
There’ve been events focused on veteran hiring, and those aimed at hiring people with disabilities — but one upcoming, one of the first of its kind, is aimed at a combination of the two.
The October 31 online event is put on by ON24 and Veteran Recruiting Services, with two U.S. government departments – Labor and Veteran Affairs — also involved.
Lowe’s, Intuit, and Waste Management are among the employers expected to participate.
More here.
Back in early Spring, I was approached by a local HR organization to present at its local symposium with regard to an article that I wrote for ERE several months ago — “What Corporate Recruiting Can Learn from the U.S. Military.” Apparently the article struck a chord with the program manager, and he reached out to me and asked me if I could deliver a presentation based on the theme of the article. I obliged.
For those who perhaps missed the article when it ran, the main idea revolved around the high recruiting demands of the U.S. Military (in particular the U.S. Army); and how year after year the Army not only meets, but exceeds, its recruiting goals. An interesting fact to note: in one particular year, the Army needed to recruit 75,000 individuals into its ranks. The question I investigated was how a business (the Army in this case) could successfully recruit several thousand individuals year after year while companies in corporate America fail to reach recruiting goals that are nowhere close to the numbers the Army needs to obtain.
Through my research and personal experience, I drilled down on this concept and arrived at a simple conclusion: for the better part of Corporate America, recruiting is a broken concept. keep reading…
As a U.S. Navy veteran and talent acquisition professional for America’s leading physical security services company, I commit each and every work day to pursuing gainful employment of our country’s military. My organization partners with a number of military assistance groups including The Employer Partnership of the Armed Forces, Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, and the Wounded Warrior Project, to name just a few. We also keep an open line of communication with veterans, reservists, and their families and caregivers, to help ensure our career opportunities are visible. Our company-wide military hiring program, Hire Our HeroesSM, is an essential part of our recruiting strategy.
It is time for human resource leaders, from every sector, to salute our military’s service, value their skills, and welcome their unique experience and talents into the civilian workplace. These individuals make a positive contribution in every civilian profession and will continue to do so with your help. These are the men and women who we trust to defend our freedom. Now is the time to return the favor with career opportunities that will benefit the veteran and your organization.
Following are my top 10 reasons to hire military:
#10 — Battle-Tested Real World Experience: Today’s human resource directors are interviewing warriors who may have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan and who have done everything from coordinating ground and air support during combat, to hiring local contractors, and restoring schools and hospitals. “Human resource professionals need to develop their own ‘military to civilian decoder’ systems to help explain the significance of how military skills and experience translate to the employment landscape,” says Johnny Dwiggins, Employer Partnership of the Armed Forces, contract program manager.
When counseling veterans transitioning from active duty to the corporate world, I advise them to use civilian terms when describing military experience. Not every corporate employer understands what a battalion, platoon, or brigade is. By repositioning the responsibilities into language that non-military can understand, more hiring managers will be able to relate the experience to the duties they are hiring for. keep reading…
Lucky for Shami Marangwanda she landed a recruiting job with Starbucks, because the irascible and profane Gordon Ramsay and his cohorts dashed her hopes of becoming a MasterChef. The Zimbabwe native had been laid off from her previous recruiting position when the opportunity came along to participate in the third season of Fox’ cooking show.
“I went in just having fun,” she told the Seattle Times. She made oxtail stew in a wine sauce made with sadza, a cooked corn meal that is a staple of traditional Zimbabwe diets. Alas, it fails to impress the judges and she was sent back to Seattle sans the apron that denotes a MasterChef semi-finalist.
Get Thee to a Gym
Boss been a monster lately? Then boost those endorphins. We mean the boss, though a little more exercise all around couldn’t hurt.
Turns out that abusive bosses can be tamed (though we doubt domesticated) by some time in the gym. There’s real science behind this. Three researchers experimented on 98 workers and their bosses and found “that increased levels of supervisor-reported stress are related to the increased experience of employee-rated abusive supervision.” Okay.
But here’s the biggie: “We also find that the relationship between supervisor stress and abusive behavior can be diminished when supervisors engage in moderate levels of physical exercise.”
So next October 16, instead of taking up a collection for a lunch, or cookies, or those soon-to-be-extinct party balloons, buy the boss a gym membership. keep reading…
If you’re here for a laugh, we’re going to disappoint you this week.
Maybe it’s due to the memories Memorial Day evokes; maybe it’s because the economic news has been gloomier than usual (and we haven’t even seen this morning’s jobs report from the U.S. Labor Department). Whatever the reason, we just couldn’t find anything recruitment-wise that tickled us, except perhaps an “umbrella recruiting tour” — more on that below.
Oh, we took a bit of schadenfreude from watching the Facebook ticker. And we see Kenexa is suing not-quite-everybody on some patent claim (more about that in a moment). What came closest to our goal of informing, while entertaining, was a report this week from Bloomberg BNA that says worker absenteeism is far below what it was pre-recession. keep reading…
We mentioned that awards honoree AT&T had added a military skills translator to its career site. The latest to do so is Ryder, which today is launching a website section for hiring veterans that also includes a translator feature.
On the Ryder site, service members enter what’s called a “military occupation code” or a “military occupational specialty code” to see what open jobs might match what they’ve done in the military.
Ryder has said it’ll hire 1,000 veterans by 2013. It has 670 jobs open, and about 8 percent of its current workforce is made up of veterans.
Moving “Troops to Tech” is the goal of one new careers site, linking military veterans with IT careers.
It was made by a trade association called CompTIA and includes information for veterans on how to get IT certifications at community colleges and private training providers, as well as for employers on how to get on a “registry.” The registry, whose current participants are listed, allows employers access to these veteran job-seekers, and gives them exposure as a company that prioritizes veteran hiring.
CompTIA bills itself as “the world’s largest provider of vendor-neutral certifications for IT professionals” in areas such as networking, security, Linux, health IT, and cloud computing.
The Australian defense department has started a new campaign with a “Superman” motif to recruit reservists, the first big effort like this in seven years.
Its plans includes TV ads, movie ads, billboards, newspaper and magazine advertising, and of course the career site, featuring people lifting up their shirts to show military uniforms underneath.
The site plays up the potential for good benefits, travel, community involvement, and personal growth — the latter, for example, exemplified by the prominent quote from a reservist on the site saying: “I wanted an opportunity to step out, try new things, and push myself.”
The Australian Army hopes to use the campaign for at least three years.
