ERE.net

As Johnny and Jane come marching back from war to prepare for the next chapter of their lives, they face the daunting challenge of turning their military experience into machine-readable resumes and elevator speeches that convince corporate recruiters to give them a second look.

“The novelette of their experience in the military,” says Sherrill Curtis, doesn’t always translate clearly.

Agrees Carl Blum, “The hardest problem they have is translating their military experience into civilian language so a recruiter can understand what they have to offer.

Curtis, Blum, and Blum’s partner in an organization called Tip of the Arrow, Bob Deissig, and Sgt. Major James Clark were the prime movers of a program last month at New Jersey’s  Ft. Dix called “Ultimate Warrior Career Workshops and Job Fair.”

They had plenty of help. The Garden State (New Jersey) SHRM council signed on early to the project, supplying dozens of recruiters, supplemented by career coaches from the state’s professional association, and representatives from federal agencies and area colleges.

But this was no ordinary job fair, although some 70 employers showed up and Blum tells us 200 of the participants expect offers. keep reading…

Pete Kaiser, CEO of the Kaiser Group, talks about how recruiters can benefit from dollars allocated in the recent government stimulus package.

Kaiser, a former recruiter who operates “one-stop” shops for the government; explains how employers can use the government to find everyone from military veterans to IT employees. keep reading…

Sodexo recruiter Angela Guidroz and I talk about:

• Recruiting veterans
• Whether Sodexo has actually hired anyone who it connected with via social media
• What to do with fewer jobs and more time
• Personal lives and corporate lives on Twitter keep reading…

If you think it’s hard to convey to candidates how they might feel after a stressful day as a nurse, law enforcement officer, or air traffic controller, imagine trying to describe what it’s like to fly an F-22A Raptor or carry an M-16 rifle in the Iraqi desert. The U.S. military (whose recruiting tactics are explored in more depth in the March Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership) uses a blend of artificial intelligence and human intelligence to provide prospects with realistic combat previews, so they can make informed choices.

On the U.S. Army Web site, prospects can access podcasts, participate in discussion boards, chat online with active duty soldiers and recruiters, and watch videos which depict various Army careers and combat training. But the Army also gives candidates access to free war games, so they can virtually experience combat situations and assess their skills. The games resonate with millennial prospects, who average 17 to 24 years of age, and who are quite comfortable having a joystick in one hand and a mouse in the other.

“We use photos, tell stories, and recruits hear soldiers talk about combat in experience centers set-up all across the country,” says Lt. Col. John E. (Ed) Box, battalion commander, Chicago Recruiting Battalion, U.S. Army Recruiting Command. “In the experience centers, soldiers returning from combat relay their personal stories to recruits. We also provide virtual combat experience through the America’s Army website, which features free war game downloads for computers and the Xbox 360.”

The use of simulated training environments has grown in a number of industries for good reason; virtual training has proven to be effective and trainees are free to make mistakes, without creating dire consequences. Airline pilots have trained in-flight simulators for years and surgeons practice new medical procedures through a combination of hands-on and simulated experience. The military is highly advanced in its use of simulated training; applying the technology to the recruiting and screening process is a logical way to immerse candidates into stressful situations, so they can experience the environment and the emotions it evokes.

In the “See What It’s Like” section of the U.S. Air Force Web site, candidates can test their ability to refuel jets at 22,000 feet or fly with the Thunderbirds. The interactive tools comprise just a small portion of the tactics employed by military recruiters to achieve the increasing annual goals for new signees. Despite the obstacles of lengthy deployments and ongoing war, recruiters from the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps are achieving their annual recruiting mission by bonding with prospects, using carefully crafted messages and being brutally honest about military life.

At ERE’s conference last month in Hollywood, Florida, a panel of recruiters from Sodexo, Wal-Mart, and elsewhere, as well as an employment-law attorney from Ogletree Deakins, discussed the hiring of men and women who had served in the military. Here are some of the notes jotted down from that session — websites that might be useful. Thanks to John Amodeo and HireVelocity for compiling it.

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ManTech International needs information technology workers with security clearances and Inova Health System needs registered nurses; both companies are partnering with the Army Reserve as part of a new program that gives private-sector employers access to nearly 250,000 reserve personnel and 785,000 reserve retirees.

The Army Reserve Employer Partnership Program was launched in April, and 48 companies have signed agreements guaranteeing an interview to interested reservists, who are either beginning or ending their duty or who want to change careers. In exchange, the Army is providing training and in some cases even customizing the curriculum to meet the needs of private employers.

“A good example of how we’re adapting our training to help meet the hiring needs of private employers is what we’re doing with truck drivers,” says Col. Dianna Cleven, who manages the partnership initiative for the Army. “Army truck drivers drive under some pretty austere conditions, and we’re talking with the commercial licensing authorities to make sure Army drivers can pass the commercial certification test.”

After conferring with employers, the Army Reserve is focusing on providing additional training courses for careers and trades where candidates are in short supply. It’s even considering adapting its West Point leadership curriculum to provide private-sector managers who are also reservists with leadership training.

Cleven says that employers should expect and prepare for the reality that reservists will be called for duty, because the demand for their services is not expected to diminish anytime soon. Currently, active reservists can be called to serve 12 to 15 months once every five years.

As America honors its military veterans, there’s news about the difficulties some vets have finding a job. A CareerBuilder (profile; site) survey says 1-in-6 vets report spending six months job hunting after leaving the service. About 1-in-10 say it took them a year to land a job.

Of the 750 vets surveyed for the report, about 20 percent said the biggest challenge to getting hired is the difficulty employers have in understanding just how transferable military skills are. Some of the vets also said they were at a disadvantage because they lacked a college degree, good interviewing skills, or there was just a lack of appropriate jobs in their area.

However, the news isn’t as bleak as the survey might imply. Bill Scott, with military recruitment specialist Bradley-Morris (profile; site), told us, “In our view, we still see this market as strong for veterans.” The U.S. economy has slowed hiring generally, acknowledges Scott, the firm’s VP of marketing and business development. But there are ”many opportunities (for veterans). There are employers who want to hire veterans.”

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Your company may be sending a brand-destroying message that hiring next year’s summer intern is more important than hiring your next director, vice president, or other C-level executive.

Many firms are hiring college graduates and interns for next summer. In many of those cases, relocation is paid to the college graduate or summer housing is arranged for the intern. A look at the experienced hiring market illustrates an entirely different story. A search in Google for “local candidates only” delivers more than 250,000 results. Sure, several of these openings are for retail or hourly employees where considerable education credentials aren’t required.

But you get:
50,000+ results for “local candidates only” vp
5,000+ results for “local candidates only” mba

If you sift through there a bit, you’ll find some senior openings like Chief Financial Officer and Chief Marketing Officer. Would it not be wise to mix in talent from other regions, if not solely to have different vantage points and a more diverse perspective? The best companies I’ve ever worked for had these qualities and created true diversity in skills and life perspectives. Ideally, you should be recruiting the best people who are passionate lifelong learners with cutting-edge skills capable of a building a collaborative, high-performing culture regardless of their location.

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As a recruiter if I’m given the task of recruiting for a geography or business segment that is new to me, my first step is to educate myself. I need to understand the culture of the business segment, what the demographics and unemployment rates are for the area, colleges, and universities that are nearby, major industries present, and a multitude of other things.

The same approach should be taken when reaching out to veteran and former military candidates. We touched on skills translation briefly in this article. The ownership for understanding how to translate skills falls on both the recruiter and the candidate. Companies and recruiters who really go after veteran and military candidates also know that they need to go above and beyond to understand and build a significant relationship bridge for the candidates to their hiring managers.

Military rank and education is the second layer that I delve into as a recruiter when assessing a former military candidate on top of the technical skill base. We know the drill as recruiters: what can this person bring to my company or client? It may seem like a long, drawn-out process when looking at all the pieces separately, but we are polishing up our skills so we can see the diamond.

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Even the military is not immune from the consolidation of job boards. Today, RecruitMilitary, LLC announced it bought competitor Landmark Destiny Group for an undisclosed amount.

A subsidiary of Virginian-Pilot Media Companies, a Norfolk, Virginia newspaper company, Landmark Destiny operates a job board for U.S. military personnel transitioning to the private sector and recently separated veterans. It will be merged into RecruitMilitary.com, a similar military-focused site.

Both LDG and RecruitMilitary also publish employment newspapers, distributing them on U.S. bases around the world. RecruitMilitary and LDG send their magazines to military bases for free distribution to transitioning personnel. RecruitMilitary publishes Incoming!, a six-page quarterly, and ships more than 50,000 copies to over 230 bases. LDG publishes Search & Employ, a 28-page bimonthly, and ships some15,000 copies to more than 75 bases.

Together the two sites have over 500,000 registered users. It’s not clear how many overlap or what percentage have completed resumes. Still, RecruitMilitary president Drew Myers said in the press release announcing the deal that the acquisition of LDG “greatly strengthens our company. We jump to first place in military-to-civilian job boards, matching our ranking in military-to-civilian career fairs. And the purchase gives us a highly competitive position in publishing.”

We couldn’t tell what ranking he meant. Even ignoring overlap, both sites together don’t come close to the traffic of Monster’s Military.com. Traffic metrics sites Compete.com and Alexa.com show Military.com far ahead in rank and visitors.

RecruitMilitary however, has been aggressively promoting its military career fairs. So far this year it has held 64 compared to 13 in all of 2006, its first year producing the fairs. The company produces career fairs in cooperation with HireVetsFirst, a part of the United States Department of Labor; The American Legion; and the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network.

RecruitMilitary also provides search services to companies looking for workers with military backgrounds.

I’m “sick and tired” of having to explain just how much disabled people deserve to work, can work, and want to work, a high-level U.S. Labor Department official says.

Neil Romano, assistant secretary, office of disability policy, told the ILG conference today that people still believe the myth that disabled people are receiving plenty of money and don’t need to work. On the contrary, Romano argues: the disabled are innovators who crave the chance at developing products others may not have thought of.

“The marginalization of people with disabilities starts very, very early,” Romano said, speaking from personal experience as a dyslexic. He said every job he has ever received has been from word of mouth, because his disability prevented him from successfully and correctly applying for jobs. “I completely messed up the health care forms at the Department of Labor — so much so that I wasn’t covered for two months,” he jokes. (Romano also tells the endearing story of when he called his mother to tell her the White House nominated him to his job, only to hear his mother respond, “do they know you can’t spell?”)

Disabilities are a running theme of this year’s ILG, with many speakers arguing that disabled job candidates are the next wave of diversity, the next band of talent largely shut out of the workplace, as women and blacks once were.

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Disaboom has teamed up with the Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation to help combat-wounded and disabled veterans. Disaboom says it’ll hire virtual agent graduates of the Purple Heart Service Foundation’s job training program, “Veterans Business Training Center.”

All training grads are home-bound, combat-wounded, or disabled veterans, fully skilled in call center and contact center technology, and all have successfully completed an online training program offered through the Purple Heart Service Foundation and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Talent acquisition leaders from private-sector companies aren’t the only ones trying to recruit more people with finite resources. The U.S. Navy Recruiting Command has given management and technology consulting firm BearingPoint a contract to improve its recruiting efficiencies, in an effort to meet future hiring quotas for uniformed personnel and officers. With demand for military personnel escalating, especially in specialized areas, the Navy will use balanced scorecards and Lean Six Sigma to create process improvements and fill requisitions more quickly.

“The goal of the first phase of the engagement is to optimize recruiting efficiencies and resources by providing the Navy with full visibility into its recruiting processes,” says Marc Murphy, managing director for the Navy practice at BearingPoint. “The recruiting mission over the last five years has changed so significantly, that it has created an environment where the Navy must optimize their recruiting model to survive.”

BearingPoint will create dashboards and metrics and gather data in the first year of the contract; it will also employ process-based cost modeling techniques to figure out the true cost of recruiting both enlisted and officer candidates. Later phases will focus on improvements yielded by the initial analysis.

Sears PaYS

It’s not surprising that the military is turning to process improvement to drive recruiting effectiveness, according to Philip Dana, manager of military and diversity talent acquisition at Sears, and an author of a blog you’ve probably seen on ERE. Dana, a Navy veteran, says the military has adapted its recruiting strategies largely through necessity, because it has to compete against other employers for an all-volunteer workforce. Like most employers, Sears competes with the military for employees, but it also contributes to the military’s recruiting prowess by guaranteeing job interviews to returning vets through the Army’s PaYS program. Doing so gives Sears a pipeline of future workers.

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One of the specific challenges recruiters face is how to translate a candidate’s qualifications from their military job, Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) or Military Occupational Classification (MOC), to the civilian title.

It takes some education and understanding of the military lingo, occupational specialties, and career progression within the military structure to fully understand whether this person can fill your specific need.

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