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.

Your Staff Is Job Hunting

If you think the headline is wrong, you may be in for a surprise. Right Management (a Manpower division) says 84 percent workers are looking or will be looking for a new job next year. That’s the same percentage as last year, according to the firm, which surveyed almost 1,100 workers for this year’s survey via an online poll.

So now you’re thinking, “Some poll. More than 84 percent of the staff is still here.” But the survey doesn’t mean everyone is headed out the door. The findings are a barometer of worker distrust in management as well as job commitment.

Says Right Management Executive Vice President Bram Lowsky, “It’s a workplace equivalent to whether or not ‘the country is moving in the right direction.’ Sometimes called ‘flight cognition’ by behavioral psychologists, intent to leave is far from an unusual phenomenon, but when it applies to four-out-of-five employees for two years running it has to be of top concern to senior management.”

Creative Forecasting

The first-quarter 2012 outlook for marketing and advertising professionals is pretty decent, according to a new survey.

Here — at right — is what marketing and advertising executives said when asked, “In which of the following areas do you expect to hire in the first quarter of 2012?” (with multiple responses allowed).

Military Recruiting, Swedish Style

The Pentagon recruits American youth with a high-tech appeal that makes military life look like more fun than the best video game. If you’ve seen that space command commercial from the Air Force, then you know what that means. The Swedish military takes, ahem, a somewhat more down-to-earth approach.

Get Paid to Tear Things Down

Who wouldn’t want a job in demolition? Some of us would even do the work for free, especially if it involved stuff blowing up. (Yes, this might just be a guy thing.)

If this interests you, click on over to the National Demolition Association’s new job board, which it calls Demolition Career Connection. It’s a JobTarget site that backfills with construction jobs from construction job boards. Alas, it turns out even laborers have to have certain skills and training to work in demolition.

Applicant Tracking and Referral Systems Partnering

Taleo, a system for managing job candidates, has a little partnership going with SelectMinds. SelectMinds (written up here) has a tool to manage employee referrals, allowing employees or alumni to match open jobs with their contacts, and recruiters to keep track of referral activities, applications received, and so on. This referral product will now be integrated (though not free) for users of Taleo’s applicant tracking system.

Speaking of Taleo partners: TALX also is integrating with Taleo, offering larger employers WOTC help.

Home Health Report

A new report’s out on the home health and personal care industry. The 121-page PDF includes sections on training, wages, hours worked, and labor shortages in the field.

Deloitte Tops Vault’s Tech Consulting List

1,500 consultants ranked Deloitte’s IT consulting group as a best place to work, moving it from third last year to first for 2012. Vault compiled the rankings based on weighting a number of qualities including prestige, firm culture, pay, and work/life balance. Deloitte Consulting LLP earned a weighted average of 7.964. Just behind it was last year’s first place winner, Booz Allen Hamilton with a 7.866 score.

Besides the rankings and scores, Vault also compiles an abstract of what the survey respondents had to say — good and otherwise — about each of the top 25 companies on the list. See it all here.

Manufacturing Optimism

Many manufacturing execs envision certain operations coming back to the U.S. Why? Higher wages in China and elsewhere; a smaller supply of skilled people overseas; and patriotism.

From Washington, where Michelle Obama announced yesterday that corporate leaders will hire 100,000 vets and military spouses in the next two years, to a Phoenix job fair today where Chase Bank is encouraging veterans to attend its job fair, the focus has been on addressing veteran hiring. Late Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a veterans jobs bill.

Without a doubt, it is a worthy effort. But it is also one that faces challenges very much like those plaguing the civilian employment situation. The fact of the matter is that unemployed veterans look a whole lot like unemployed civilians: young and undereducated.

A second, smaller, but still substantial problem, is the one facing Reservists and the National Guard: multiple call-ups and the legal obligation to rehire them when they return from duty, makes many employers reluctant to hire them in the first place.

Testifying before Congress four years ago, Ted Daywalt, CEO and president of Vetjobs.com and himself a veteran, said, “The military knows that returning members of the National Guard and Reserve are having civilian re-employment problems.” He told a Congressional committee back then that VetJobs received several calls a month from veterans telling how they were asked about their interest in the Guard or the reserves. “While the question is illegal, it is occurring.”

“Most disturbing,” he added, “as this trend grows, returning National Guard and Reserve personnel — the very people who have been fighting to keep the United States free — will find it harder to obtain meaningful employment equal to their education and experience.”

Little has changed, Daywalt says, since his testimony to Congress. “If you are leaving the military today,” he told me just a few months ago, “companies want to hire you, until they find out you’ve joined the Reserves or are in the Guard.” The call-ups of Reservists and the National Guard may have abated, but employers who had to endure the loss of people in key positions they couldn’t fill or, if they did, had to figure out what to do when the employee returned from service, those employers are reluctant risk it again.

That may explain why the rate of unemployment for the Guard and Reservist veterans of this century’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan was 14 percent last year. For all veterans, including the Guard and Reserves, the rate was 11.5 percent.

Under federal law, “returning service members are to be reemployed in the job that they would have attained had they not been absent for military service, with the same seniority, status and pay, as well as other rights and benefits determined by seniority.”

Officially the Uniformed Services Employment and Reemployment Rights Act and known by its initials, USERRA, the law is supposed to protect returning vets from being penalized for their active duty service. But, Daywalt says, small and mid-sized employers in particular have found ways to game the system, out of necessity, he adds, not malice. One of the examples he offered in our discussion was of a company where the HR department laid off workers before the acutal call-up orders were issued, thus circumventing the USERRA rules.

According to the Department of Labor, in fiscal 2010, there were 34,612 calls to the customer service center run by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. ESGR is typically the first place employers and veterans turn for help with the requirements of USERRA. Of those contacts, 3,202 resulted in actual cases that required mediation.

When a formal complaint is filed by a veteran, an investigation is launched, which can, though rarely does, lead to a federal prosecution. In fiscal 2010, there were 1,438 new cases; 117 were referred to the Justice Department. Five resulted in DOJ complaints.

Just this month the Justice Department settled a case against Lowe’s, which fired a National Guardsman without cause within a year of his reemployment. Lowe’s paid $45,000 to the fired veteran.

Although, as Daywalt’s Congressional testimony points out, the Guard is also subject to being called out with some frequency for natural disasters, the reemployment and discrimination problems should diminish with the reduction of overseas forces. Less tractable is the high unemployment of young veterans.

Despite what seems to be a prevalent theme that veterans can’t find jobs, the reality is that it is veterans under 25 who are having the most problems finding work.

For all veterans, regardless of age, the unemployment rate last year was 8.7 percent. For the nation, it was 8.8 percent. (The percentages are not seasonally adjusted.) But as you drill down, as the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics did in a special report on veterans, it becomes obvious quickly that veterans 18-24 are faring the worst. Last year, 20.9 percent of them were unemployed. Those 25-34 had an unemployment rate of 12.6 percent.

Not to minimize the problem, but young vets aren’t much worse off than the youth population generally, especially when you consider the participation rates: more vets are in the labor force than civilians their age. The BLS data for 2010 says the unemployment rate for all 16-24 year-olds was 18.4 percent. (The data for just the 18-24 year group isn’t available. However, the BLS rates for 18-19 year olds in 2010 was 24.2, and 15.5 percent for 20-24 year olds.)

Says the BLS, “In general, Gulf War-era II (Iraq and Afghanistan this century) veterans had unemployment rates that were not statistically different from those of non-veterans of the same gender and age group.” The BlS might also have added educational level to that statement.

Gulf War II vets older than 24 had an overall unemployment rate of 10.2 percent. Those with only a high school degree had a rate of 12.7 percent and about the same for those with some college. However, only 3.9 percent of vets with a college degree were unemployed.  Last month, 4.2 percent of the U.S. labor force with a college degree was unemployed. (The number of vets who didn’t graduate high school was too small to include.)

Thursday, the U.S. Senate approved a bill giving employers tax breaks for hiring disabled and unemployed veterans, and, of particular importance to younger veterans,  providing education and job training benefits.

Cpl. Todd Green, left, and Pfc. Kevin Adams on the South China Sea

Unlike a civilian resume that often culminates in the highest level of responsibility to date, the military resume is often a collection of seemingly unrelated experiences and must, therefore, be considered together as a whole.

Below is a list of questions (reprinted from my new book) you can select from, to assist you in understanding the candidate’s background and convey your interest in the world from which they are coming.

General opening questions can build rapport and sense where the individual is in his or her transition from military service to civilian employment. Begin with “I know leaving the military can be a big transition . . .”

• How is it going, separating from military service?
• How has the adjustment been?
• What has been the biggest surprise about the civilian workplace?
• What opportunities are you looking forward to taking advantage of as a civilian employee?
• What challenges do you foresee as a new civilian employee?

For each job over the past 10 years, ask:

• How would you describe this position in layman’s terms?
• What was your primary mission in this job?
• What did it take to accomplish this mission?
• What were the key activities you performed, and in what circumstances/conditions?
• What people or resources were you responsible for in this role?
• What were the greatest challenges in the role?
• What is an example of a time that everything went as planned?

1. What was your contribution?
2. What did you learn from the experience?
3. How did you incorporate what worked and what you learned?

• What is an example of a time that things did not go as planned?

1. What went wrong?
2. What did you do, and what was your contribution?
3. What did you learn from the experience?
4. What did you change or do differently as a result of this experience?

• What aspects of this role or job would you like to find in a civilian position?
• What aspects of this role or job would you prefer not to perform in a civilian position?

General questions to ask include:

• How would you approach a situation in which… (describe something “typical” of the job the candidate is applying for; avoid irrelevant questions that may come across as setups)?
• What kinds of things did you coordinate and accomplish in the community (e.g., community social events, charitable projects, leadership roles)?
• Looking across your recent military work experiences, what key knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences would you say are most valuable?
• Setting aside the specific job you were required to do, what activities do these knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences prepare you to do?

The survey was released this morning by Monster Worldwide, which, in addition to its flagship job board, also operates Military.com, the largest career and information site for veterans, transitioning military and their families. The survey introduced Monster’s new Veteran Talent Index. Separate indices score veterans’ confidence in their career opportunities, their job search activity level, and an employer measure of how they perceive the veterans they’ve hired measure up to other workers.

On the latter score, employers are much more gung-ho about hiring veterans than are the vets themselves. Almost every employer who has hired a vet (99 percent) would hire another. That’s due in large measure to their performance. Sixty nine percent of employers say the veterans they’ve hired do their job “much better” than their non-vet workers.

Speaking during an online news conference this morning,  Jesse Harriott, Monster’s chief knowledge officer, said the survey makes clear that employers are more optimistic than the vets themselves are about their career transition.

Where the Employer Veteran Hiring Index came in at 70 out of 100, the  Veteran Career Confidence scored only a 50. It’s “not as high as we would like it,” Harriott said.

Veterans may lack confidence in their ability to translate their military skills and experience for the civilian workplace. Nearly half (47%) of the surveyed vets feel challenged getting employers to understand what they did in the military. 45 percent say applying those military skills in a civilian environment is also affecting their confidence.

That’s an area where employers and veterans share the same concern. Seventy percent of the nearly 500 employers in the survey agree “Veterans or those with prior military experience are prepared for a career transition out of the military.” However, by the same percent, employers say vets need to do a better job explaining how their military experience applies to the job they’re after.

Communication appears to be the biggest problem, according to the survey. Three of the four issues deal with providing prospective employers more information about their military experience and helping them understand its relevance in the civilian world.

In his introductory comments this morning, Harriott noted that there is a broad difference between veterans who served prior to Iraq and Afghanistan, and those who have served since 9/11 and the subsequent invasions. This latter group is officially referred to as Gulf War-era II veterans.

While the unemployment rate for all veterans is below the national average, for Gulf War II vets, it’s 12.1 percent (not seasonally adjusted). For the youngest veterans, those 18-24, the unemployment rate was 20.9 percent in 2010, according to the latest release from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Older veterans, especially those with college degrees, fare significantly better. For those Gulf War-II vets older than 24 with a college degree, the unemployment rate in 2010 was 3.9 percent. Those who only had a high school degree had an unemployment rate of 12.7 percent.

That suggests that despite their military training, young vets without a college degree are struggling. Monster’s survey found that some 60 percent of the job postings on its site called for a bachelor’s degree or better. However, its study of Gulf War II veteran resumes found only 26 percent listed a college degree.

“It is apparent that veterans need additional training and education in order to be strong candidates for available roles,” the survey report notes.

Monster will issue its new Veteran Talent Index twice annually. The next one, Harriott said, will be out near Memorial Day.

In the podcast below of about 10 minutes, Snell talks about his work teaching career skills to veterans, what veterans fail to realize about their experience, and how many phone calls he receives daily letting him know he has made a match.

Among the many other folks trying to do something about it is Ken Seville.

photo from the defense dept in Canada

Seville’s startup called “GuaranteedInterview” can be summed up briefly: get American and Canadian companies to agree to interview one qualified veteran each time they have a job open.

Seville — dialing in from Santiago, Chile — and I talk more about it in the podcast at the bottom of this post.

Meanwhile, some more information on the topic:

• Recruitment marketing to attract military veterans (webinar with Lisa Rosser)
• Translating military service to the civilian world
• Getting good at military skills translation

So far, neither of the proposals seems to have caused much of a stir, despite nearly unanimous mentions in the various analyses of the additional paperwork and increased obligations on federal contractors.

Littler Mendelson, one of the largest employment law firms in the country, says the OFFCCP focus on veterans “significantly expands the obligations of federal contractors and subcontractors.”

Another firm, McGuireWoods, referred to the proposal for additional data as both “burdensome” and “stealthy.” The firm notes in its analysis, “The agency (OFCCP) does not understand the private sector or have any apparent concern about the burdens and confidentiality issues these proposals place on contractors.”

The OFCCP itself estimated it would take 103.2 hours and cost $135,000 to collect and provide all the data that could be requested in the so-called “Scheduling Letter” — the notice of compliance audit — should the changes it wants be adopted. (The OFCCP has to get permission from the Office of Management and Budget for changes to the document and data provisions.)

Complying with the veterans rules is estimated to cost each contractor $396 a year and take 10.7 hours a year.

The paperwork proposals apply to employers with contracts of $100,000 or more and 50 employees. They expand the specific information the OFCCP wants in a compliance audit from 11 to 13 different items and also specifies how the data is to be presented. For instance, application, hire, promotion, and termination data will have to be organized by racial/ethnic group, and not simply by the broader minority/non-minority designation.

With the initial response to the audit notice, the employer must submit all company personnel documents. This would include such things as employee manuals and leave policies. Promotions and terminations (layoffs) will have to include the actual candidate pools for each.

McGuireWoods, a 900-attorney firm based in Richmond, Virginia, calls the proposed changes to the paperwork provisioning proposal “significant and problematic.” Its analysis includes links to the relevant documents from the OFCCP, which detail the specifics.

The veterans proposal is more far-reaching in that it requires contractors to more aggressively pursue the hiring of ex-military workers. Some of the provisions apply to most federal contractors, while some of the paperwork retention requirements have thresholds of 150 employees and $150,000.

Charu Avasthy, a consultant with Berkshire Associates, says the proposals will require contractors to affirmatively pursue the recruitment of veterans, and to have the records to demonstrate their efforts.

“It is an additional burden,” she said, but it’s not a whole new set of regulations. “I see these more as the means of getting the contractor community to increase the outreach and recruitment of the veterans.”

She is one of the authors of a Berkshire Associates whitepaper on the subject: “Effective Veteran Outreach — Understanding the Compliance Requirements.”

Besides broadening some of the recordkeeping, the proposal does require contractors to set annual hiring goals — benchmarks — that are derived from a consideration of such things as the percentage of veterans in a state’s labor force, the number of vets participating in the employment service delivery system in the contractor’s home state, and the contractor’s own assessment of the effectiveness of their recruitment and outreach.

To improve veteran hiring, one of the changes requires contractors to commit to “linkage agreements” with recruitment and/or training organizations, including with veterans’ employment representatives at local employment service offices.

The linkage agreements must be part of an expanded outreach and recruitment effort; the proposal requires a minimum of three specific types of efforts. In addition, contractors must provide notice of job vacancies for most types of positions to state employment services and in the format the state requires.

Candidates, who previously were asked to self-identify as veterans after receiving an offer, now must be invited to self-identify upfront. The proposal also more specifically defines which veterans are covered by the provisions: those recently separated; service medal veterans; disabled vets; and, active duty wartime or campaign veterans.

Berkshire’s Avasthy suggests contractors review the proposals (which are extensive and in legalese) and submit comments before the June 27th deadline. The OFCCP, she says, may modify some of the proposals or even eliminate some provisions after reviewing the comments. In any case, Avasthy suspects any changes that are made won’t go into effect until mid-2012 at the earliest.

The comment period for the expansion of the data and paperwork provisioning requirements for contractors being audited closes July 11. Information on how to submit comments is here.

For the provisions regarding veterans, the comment period closes June 27. The OFCCP details how to submit those comments here.

For more podcasts, webinars, and articles on recruiting be sure to check out ERE.net!

One judge (Rob Dromgoole) wrote on Facebook:

Finished voting for Recruiting Department of 2010 and Military Recruiting Program of Year 2010 for ERE. Lots of great applications. I’m humbled by how great some programs are.

And another (Gerry Crispin) emailed to say about the “military talent” category:

EVERY ONE of the Public and Private Companies and Agency firms who submitted to this category are winners. They are ALL engaged in ensuring that an underutilized but highly prized segment of our population is getting up to bat for jobs and competing for openings.

The judges took this project seriously, some showing me the spreadsheets and algorithms they created to keep track of their entries and sending me feedback on what worked and what didn’t.

As always, you’ll hear a lot more about the finalists throughout the year. At the Spring conference in San Diego, the winners will be announced, and you’ll be able to ask them how they did it, how they overcame challenges, and so on. We’ll also talk about them more on this site, in the Journal of Corporate Recruiting Leadership, on the ERE.net site, and we’ll ask some to speak at ERE’s Fall Conference in Florida (September 7-9, 2011).

This year’s finalists, in alphabetical order within each category:

Best College Recruiting Program

Deloitte: Among its many efforts: enhanced faculty relationships. More than 1,500 faculty use its accounting and auditing case materials in their teaching. A great quote from a Deloitte employee sums up a lot of what Deloitte’s done:

As a recently hired Business Analyst at Deloitte Consulting, I can say with conviction that I am with the organization because of a three-year relationship I built with Deloitte prior to being hired on full-time.

Ernst & Young: EY is no stranger to these ERE Recruiting Excellence awards. The company, in its own words, “honored every single job offer we’ve made to campus recruits” despite the recession. Its “Your World Your Vision” program invited teams of students to propose how they could make a difference locally; winners were awarded $10,000 to implement the ideas. Ernst & Young Careers on Facebook has 58,781 “likes.” Its Flexspace virtual reality tool allows students to explore real-life ways that work and personal commitments can work together. An International Intern Leadership Conference it held drew 1,339 students from more than 13 countries. EY’s now offering overseas assignments for some interns over the summer. It has more than a 90% conversion rate of interns to full-time hires for the past four years.

Best Corporate Careers Website

AT&T: Some highlights cited by judges: strong use of social media; strong use of color; engaging message to candidates; job search broken down by job seekers, returning seekers, and current employees.

Nestle Purina: After a March 2010 relaunch (featuring real people and real animals), site traffic rose sharply and “stickiness” increased 95%.

Best Employee Referral Program

Accenture: A finalist last year, Accenture’s program in the past was significantly different from country to country and was run decentralized. It implemented one globally consistent referral submission process; a system was developed internally that has a two-way interface with Accenture’s talent acquisition system; and it implemented one globally consistent employee referral communication campaign with one centralized global team running the program (day to day & strategy).

Aricent: It has won before, and shared a few of its secrets before, too. Its “offer to joinee” ratio is higher for referrals vs. overall. The same goes for its “selection conversion ratio” (how many people are selected out of total interviews). Its cost per hire is much lower. It has also measured quality of hire for referrals, finding that it’s higher than other hiring channels. Referred employees stay longer.

Best Employer Brand

Adidas Group: Surveys of employees and job seekers helped Adidas better understand how people perceive the company. Then it brought marketing, communications, and HR together to finalize its positioning, and its advertising execs were brought in to refine the brand (which is all about employees’ ability to shape sports and through their work, their ability to help customers achieve their sports dreams, and the connection to pro athletes). Adidas Group built a “brand bible” to educate people about the brand, and an employer branding toolkit to use in recruitment advertising.

Sodexo: It involved all levels of the company — from executive team members to interns — as brand ambassadors, communicating the brand on college campuses, professional association meetings, and through social media. Far more people are searching for Sodexo now on CareerBuilder and going to Sodexo’s career site. It has reduced paid advertising costs, such as job board spending. Last year, the company won the “department of the year” award.

Best Retention Program/Practices

Cisco: It created a new retention program to actively recruit its own employees for new positions.

PNC: The company reduced layoffs through a sort of in-house temp firm it created. An employee could take on a temp assignment within the company, perhaps in another division, possibly resulting in a permanent gig. The company saved on recruiting costs, severance costs, and saved some of its employees’ jobs. Melissa Mounce, the bank’s SVP of corporate talent acquisition, is on the agenda this coming March 25 in San Diego.

Best Military Talent Program

CACI: A contractor for the Department of Defense and intelligence agencies, CACI has an internship initiative providing on-the-job experience and training for disabled veterans interested in learning new career skills; collaborates with many veterans’ organizations to provide resume writing, interview training, and mock job fairs; and partners helps teach career skills at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the National Naval Medical Center. CACI has 522 disabled veterans in its workforce.

June 24, 2008, Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

Naval Sea Systems Command: With the unemployment rate among disabled veterans at 18%, NAVSEA has tried to address the problem with mentoring, training, and more for the wounded. In 2010, NAVSEA placed 282 disabled veterans into civilian careers and set a goal of hiring one “Wounded Warrior” per day in 2011. It has an over 90% retention rate among disabled veterans at NAVSEA, saving unemployment costs.

Most Strategic Use of Technology

Informatica: Informatica’s talent acquisition strategy emphasizes competitive intelligence mapping and how it can translate findings into actionable sourcing channels. The outcome is a solution to a common industry ailment, a way to retain the intellectual property of the organization’s recruiters, regardless of staff reorganization.

PNC: It did a lot tech-wise, from audio screening 400,000 applications in a year to centralizing its sourcing activity with SourcePoint CRM, which it uses to locate potential candidates and have the empirical data needed when talking with business managers, such as how hard a search is gong to be. Its landing pages have a “stay connected” option at the bottom to feed data into its CRM. For some jobs, it’s moving away from job boards and more toward search engine optimization and landing pages. PNC also implemented an online recruiter toolkit to standardize its processes, and is working on a hiring manager kit.

Recruiting Department/Function of the Year

CACI: It was a finalist last year, too. You read above about its military recruiting. It uses a candidate-centric recruiting team to proactively source a pipeline of candidates in major skill set areas. Recruiters tap into a pool of thousands of candidates as business needs necessitate. The referral program provides the No. 1 source of candidates, and an alumni program provides regular communication to former CACI employees to encourage them to return to CACI. CACI has also worked to facilitate the internal movement of employees to reduce hiring costs while increasing retention. The company had record 15% revenue growth in FY10.

Fluor: One of those companies and one of those award applications where you see how critical talent management is. Recruiters and human resources employees helped establish a candidate pool to support the BP oil spill clean-up effort, and helped recruit and train candidates onsite in several Eastern European countries for mobilization to a job site in Afghanistan without the cost and time involved in first sending them to the U.S. for training.

Naval ship arrives home after a medical care mission to Haiti

U.S. Navy: The Navy delivered one of its best recruiting years despite a shrinking military-eligible population, decreased propensity to serve, and significant budgetary challenges. It developed and launched a new brand. It used a cross-functional supply chain management working group comprised of recruiting, training, and fleet stakeholders to foster early communication of manpower needs, training availability, and resource constraints. And, it dramatically increased diversity market penetration though minority affinity group partnerships, focused diversity marketing and advertising, and strategic placement of diverse employees — recruiting the most diverse new employee population in the Navy’s history. All in all, it recruited the highest quality new employees in Navy’s history.

This was one of the most gripping and moving war documentaries I have ever watched. The documentary followed the daily lives of the platoon members assigned to the valley outpost. By now, you are probably asking yourself what in the heck does this have to do with corporate recruiting? The answer is EVERYTHING. U.S. Military recruiters SELL.

Watching and analyzing Restrepo made me think back on my time in the military — perhaps I had gotten a little bit lucky during my tour as our country was not involved in any conflicts like we are now. The location, the lifestyle, the battles, the pure hell these soldiers were put through on a daily basis made the selfish side of me think “I’m glad that’s not me.” In the days that passed, I would reflect on my time in service and on the men I saw in the documentary, and a thought crossed my mind: “Who and why in their right mind would want to go to that place?”

The military may not be for everyone, I understand that, but it is a company nevertheless, an employer; one of the largest employers in the world in fact, with its own culture, mission, pain points, and recruiting and retention needs. Looking back and examining the U.S. Army’s recruiting numbers over the past couple of years, this is what we find (numbers provided by U.S. Army Recruiting Command):

FY10 Mission Accomplishments

FY09 Mission Accomplishments

In fact, going back and analyzing the recruiting numbers from FY03 Mission Recap to present, the U.S. Army had only fell short one year in its recruitment needs. We are not talking about an organization that needs to recruit 20 individuals or even a few hundred; this is an organization that year after year needs to recruit upward of 60,000 individuals for dangerous assignments. Reviewing the recruiting numbers with thoughts of the Korengal Valley fresh in my mind, the recruiting success of the military astonished me.

So the question persists: How can the U.S. Military sell an individual into giving up their regular lifestyle, travel halfway around the world, be gone for months at a time, and risk life and limb while working in a hostile environment? Easy: the military sells the benefits of its opportunities and lifestyle, pays bonuses, and is aggressive. As dangerous as it can be, there are benefits in every opportunity. In my experience, corporate recruiters and hiring managers seek out every reason why an individual IS NOT qualified for a position — while military recruiters look for every reason why the individual IS qualified for a position. Another important selling factor is pure opportunity; everyone regardless of their background can be eligible for career fields such as HR, Finance, Aviation, Communications, Logistics, Nuclear Power, Combat Arms, Healthcare and many more fields. Everyone is given the opportunity to succeed.

People want to join the military for various reasons, just as they would like to find an opportunity within your organization. It’s important to outline the benefits, to be aggressive, provide future growth and training, to sell the applicant on the company and as to why an individual would want to work at your company — an important application I call “employment branding.” Moreover, the military is smart — it partners with trusted organizations to help build, market, and deliver the respective employment brand — rather than trying to do it on its own. In speaking with several former military recruiters, the group consensus on what makes military recruiters successful is the following: meaningful and productive activity, being personable and friendly, ability to outline benefits and long term goals, ability to relate to the applicant, and provide constant and consistent communication.

Here is a challenge: next time you find yourself interviewing a candidate, take off your recruiter hat and put on your sales hat. Look for every reason on why the individual is qualified for the position, listen to the applicant’s goals and objectives and match them up accordingly, give them their due time, outline the organizations benefits, sell them on why they should want to work for your company, advise the hiring manager on why you are presenting the individual and most importantly provide consistent communication — even if the answer is no.

Rest in peace PFC Restrepo. 

• First and foremost to be a talent hero you must always think like a business person in everything you do. ROI is the ultimate secret to your success. Your CEO will be absolutely thrilled when you start speaking business instead of HR and then back it up with fact-based metrics instead of generalalites and emotions.
• Second, and just as important, you have to be an innovator. A wise man from West Virginia once said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got.” That’s some deep wisdom, but it’s so true. Bottom line is you will never improve and become a talent hero unless you continually try new things.
• Third, and my biggest lesson learned in doing this talent stuff, is there’s simply no one single solution/technology/thing out there that you can do/use to ensure success. To be successful and a talent hero you have to excel in all your talent areas and have them in sync working together all the time.

At CACI we work extra hard every day perfecting and executing this secret recipe which has propelled us to national leadership in the talent area. I’m totally confident you can do the same at your company by following this secret recipe, but I must tell you it takes lots of work and persistence. Remember — and yes this also comes from West Virginia — that “winners never quit and quitters never win.” Once you’ve perfected this recipe and have it cooking on high you’ll see I’m not selling you snake oil. To prove my point here are a few examples of what this secret recipe has done for CACI:

• Ingredient #1: Everything we do in the talent area gets measured, and has a ROI;  for example, we know exactly where every hire (external or internal) comes from, how long it takes us to find them, and the cost of each hire. All our talent areas are also tied directly to CACI’s strategic and financial plans; for example, our predictive staffing model presented at ERE where we are driving our days to fill to 0 — now that’s a big hairy goal. Accountability is also vital to your success; for example, every time an open position goes unfilled longer than 25 days, the “hiring manager” and “recruiter” get to personally explain why to the President of CACI. It’s amazing how well this keeps us all focused on filling positions.
• Ingredient #2: At CACI we constantly try new ideas, technology, and reinvent all the traditional ways of doing things in our talent areas. We look for talent where others may not. We hire lots of disabled veterans, which are a gold mine of talent for those of you who have not looked there. We also revolutionized college recruiting. We simply run an in-house invitational job fair focused on college grads and market it in college newspapers and social media. A great example of our job-fair success was when we marketed three unique skill sets (developers, finance types, and analysts), received 500 applicants, interviewed 140, and hired 80 new college grads all within 60 days for less than $400 per hire. Another incredible innovation: we hire the superstar college students — e.g., 4.0 GPA during their “junior” year — taking them off the market before competitors get to them. I must admit almost everyone in the college hiring business squirms big time when I share my crazy innovations, but they really do work and are just a smarter productive way of doing business. Additionally we have our interns work year ’round so they can so earn more money for college and take on bigger projects for us. Lastly, we advanced our already highly successful alumni hiring program by paying our alumni the same referral bonus we pay our employees when they recommend candidates we hire. Our alumni know our business and culture well, so they often provide us perfect fits.
• Ingredient #3: This last ingredient is the hardest one since it contains all the moving parts in our talent area, from technology to process improvement. We constantly focus on connecting all the talent dots so they perfectly fit into our predictive staffing model, which ensures we produce results and not excuses.

Producing results is what it’s all about and why we come to work at CACI. I will assure you this secret recipe will produce results for you and you will become that talent hero at your company as soon as you get it boiling.

The number of vets receiving unemployment benefits also dropped, by 14,445. That would be reason enough to celebrate today, Veterans Day, were it not such an aberration. The week before the number rose by more than 17,000, the largest increase since the DOL started keeping track in 1986. It would be worth celebrating if the number of vets on unemployment wasn’t 44,500 and rising. A year ago, 33,400 vets were getting unemployment benefits. In 2008, the number was 22,900.

Whether or not there’s an error — the weekly numbers are regularly revised — isn’t important. Instead, it’s the inescapable fact that US service men and women are having a harder time finding jobs than the civilian population.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the unemployment rate for veterans who served after 9/11 at 10.6 percent, a full percentage point higher than for the population as a whole. Women vets fare even worse. The unemployment rate for them is 11.9 percent; men are at 10.4 percent.

When you compare recent vets to civilians, the contrast is sharper still. The civilian-only population (people in the workforce who have never served in the military) have an unemployment rate of 8.8 percent. For civilian women it’s 8.4 percent.

Why the disparity is a question with multiple answers; none of them a complete answer.  The Army, the largest branch of the armed forces with more than half a million active duty personnel and the branch that transitions some 150,000 soldiers annually, doesn’t know.

The Department of Labor, which administers many of the federal programs for transitioning military and veterans, says the poor hiring climate is exacerbating the usual problems of conforming military experience to civilian jobs, and communicating the values of leadership, mission, responsibility, and the like to hiring managers and recruiters.

Keith Anderson, a recruiter and principal at Impact Military Talent, describes the communication problem this way: “A squad leader has more management experience after a year in Iraq than any middle manager anywhere. But they have to be able to explain that and show a recruiter how that applies to the civilian job.”

One of the challenges, he said, is getting the vet to even recognize the applicability of what they did in the military to a civilian job. He mentioned a woman captain who managed a logistics operation of 200 supply convoys a day out of Fallujah during some of the worst of the fighting. “She has to recognize just how much of what she did translates into civilian life and tell that story. It doesn’t come off a resume,” says Anderson.

That translation problem begins even before a veteran gets to the interview. The resume itself can be a jumble of military jargon, meaningless to most recruiters, unless the job seeker is careful to “civilianize” the job.

A survey by the Society for Human Resource Management says 60 percent of recruiters found “translating military skills into civilian job experience” to be one of the challenges to hiring ex-military.

There are others, as the researchers discovered. Forty-eight percent of the recruiters thought the transition from a military to a civilian workplace culture was a challenge to hiring veterans. So were mental health issues, said 46 percent of the survey respondents.

On that latter point, a Rand study, “Invisible Wounds of War,” found that some percentage (up to 17 percent) of troops deployed to a combat zone showed signs of PTSD, though the percentage drops after several months of being home. Getting a handle on the prevalence of PTSD, traumatic brain injury, and depression is difficult, the Rand report points out, because many veterans and military personnel won’t report it out of a realistic fear it may hurt their employment chances.

However, on the former point, about the cultural differences, Anderson says it’s “a bad rap,” a hangover from the “old Army. That world of command and follow just doesn’t exist the way it did when we had a draft. It is a new world for the military today with a volunteer force.”

Bill Scott, a VP at military recruitment specialist Bradley-Morris, says he still hears about the culture issue from recruiters and hiring managers. They worry that their new ex-military hire won’t take initiative, but will wait for orders; a concern that arises more with career or long-term enlisted personnel, than with officers.

The bigger issue, he says, is communication.

“If the candidate isn’t well coached, even if their military job was exactly what the civilian job is, they may not be able to articulate that to the hiring manager, so they won’t get the job,” Scott explains. “We work for the employer, but we don’t want them to miss a great candidate because of something like that.”

Charlie Florance, today a project manager with Con-Way in Indiana, was on active duty for several years with the Army Reserve, rising to executive officer, when an illness cut short his career. Before separating from the service, Florance, like all transitioning personnel, went through the mandatory workshops that included career counseling services.

“It was easier for me,” he said, “because I was in a command situation and had that experience.” The training, he recalls, was helpful, but it wasn’t personalized. Even though he worked with a counselor, “it was clear there wasn’t enough time to work with me.” Nor did they have contacts or the network connections that are so important to social recruitment.

So he contacted some of the search firms that specialize in military personnel and ended up working with Bradley-Morris. From the recruiters there he got a resume makeover, access to online interview simulations, coaching on communicating his experience, and referrals to job fairs.

All of it was well beyond what the Army offered. Three months after making his initial contact he had three offers and a job.

“I was an officer, so I had it better than if I was an enlisted man. I had more responsibilities and more opportunities open to me, ” Florance explains.

What the Army — and, presumably, all the services — could do, adds Florance, is to “send everyone to school for job searching. Especially for the younger enlistees who come right out of high school, teach them how to search for a job. How to network and teach them how to tell their story to a company.”

Recruiters, too, can do more. The SHRM survey found that in the three years prior to the report, almost half the companies hired not one veteran. Out of the 47 percent who did no  veteran hiring, only 11 percent made any effort to hire a vet. Compare that to the 53 percent of organizations that did hire a vet. Half of them went looking for ex-military.

Remarkably, both groups of organizations — those that hired a vet and those that didn’t — agree on the positive benefits workers with military backgrounds offer. With almost identical percentages (above 90 percent) they agree that veterans bring a sense of responsibility to the job, have the ability to work under pressure, know how to see a task through to completion, and offer strong leadership skills, among other positives.

If you need any added incentive, the federal government, and many state governments, offer free or subsidized training. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit offers credits of varying amounts including $4,800 for each disabled vet hired. Hire a vet who’s gone through the Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program and the government will provide a salary supplement.

Navy veteran Ted Daywalt, of the job board VetJobs, suggests you employ a veteran and that you don’t stick them in a menial job way below their worth.

This is the result of a year of work by Scott Pitasky and others on the HR/recruiting team.

Currently in soft launch, the site will include a decoder to translate military skills into actual jobs (a long-standing challenge). It will also feature Friday afternoon chats with veterans and others who can help people with military-to-civilian transition questions, a list of upcoming events, and more.

“This is America … a brilliant diversity spread like stars, like a thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky.” — President George H.W. Bush, August 1988

“… each of us has a role to play, and all of us have something to contribute. He (Bush) didn’t call for one blinding light shining from Washington — he didn’t just call for a few bright lights from the biggest non-profits; but he called for a vast galaxy of people and institutions working together to solve problems in their own backyard.” –President Barack Obama, October 2009

This article is a call to action for recruiters to actively participate in assisting veterans to connect with the support and resources they need to build a career in the civilian workforce — one connection at a time through the 1,000 Recruiters of Light Project. Below is one such story which we hope connects with you and depicts our shared vision and inspires you to become involved.

Steve’s true story:

———-

Last Tuesday night, I was lounging in a comfy club chair at the local Panera Bread with my sandaled feet up on an adjacent chair. It was a copacetic evening. The iced tea was perfect, and I was leafing through the barrage of daily emails that were left unopened from the day. An older man adorned with a U.S. Navy veteran’s jacket with a dour expression on his face started walking toward me; this fellow was not a happy camper and his low muttering mentioned something about my feet …

The place was nearly empty but he felt compelled to sit in the chair next to me. He expressed in a not-so-gentle-a-way that it was rude that someone would have their barely-covered feet up on a chair in a public place. He was angry in a way only someone with a real large chip on their shoulder is.

I could tell he was more hurt than angry — at no time did I raise my voice to escalate things. Here are some excerpts:

Navy: “I think it’s disgusting that someone would place their feet on chairs.”

Levy: “But I think I have nice feet; if they were gnarled and yellow I could understand, but look at these things.”

Navy: “I still think it’s disgusting and rude.”

Levy: “Sir, I’m sorry you feel this way, but I’ve been here for some time and at no time did the manager tell me to put my feet on the floor.”

After several minutes back-and-forth, I simply asked him why he was so angry; he told me he has been out of work for two years and could not get anyone to speak with him about a sales job. What a surprise!

Then I told him I was a recruiter and about my background working with people in the military. His demeanor eased.

For the next hour, I spoke to him about his career, what he has done in his search, what he likes to do for the simple joy of doing it — and I am sure he sensed that my interest was genuine. I introduced him to LinkedIn, reviewed his profile, and showed him how to join and use groups. I reviewed his resume and suggested changes based upon how hiring managers read resumes. We looked at several listed job opportunities. I explained to him how recruiters and hiring managers often think and act; this was all new to someone who truly believed that you must respond to HR and wait. We also shared stories about how tough it can be to be an older job seeker.

Looking back on this encounter one week later, I hope I helped him recognize how important his military service is and how he should be proud of it and highlight it — even if it did take place over 40 years ago. In reminding him to think positively and how to use the tools many job seekers should be using, a smile came to his face.

What this Navy veteran needed was someone who could mentor him as he navigated around the maze that has been created by industry and our profession — a massive field of corn stalks that in the minds of people often lead to nowhere and further exacerbate negative emotions. I believe in giving veterans a sense that recruiters do believe that one’s military service is not trivial; that job description buzzwords such as character, integrity, and motivation are not simply filler concepts that most interviewers are ill-prepared to assess.

While he hasn’t stopped calling since, his messages have not been rude or annoying; after all, he is a salesperson and he’s trying to sell himself. With my assistance — with your help — he’ll get the job he desires. And in the end he apologized for hating my feet.

———-

Serendipity: “An aptitude for making desirable discoveries by accident.”

The next day, Rob posted a Facebook message asking readers if they wanted to help review resumes through the Wounded Warriors Project’s “Warriors to Work” initiative. .

During a subsequent phone call later in the day with Rob, it simply popped out that if we could engage 1,000 recruiters — like President George H.W. Bush’s “thousand points of light in a broad and peaceful sky” — and attached each recruiter to a single veteran, as Rob wrote back to Todd Raphael, “think of the impact we could make.”

Think about what President Barack Obama said last year: “Each of us has a role to play, and all of us have something to contribute. [President Bush] didn’t call for one blinding light shining from Washington — he didn’t just call for a few bright lights from the biggest nonprofits; but he called for a vast galaxy of people and institutions working together to solve problems in their own backyard.”

Readers, think about how our industry — the “vast galaxy of people and institutions working together” — can use their time and talent to thank our veterans for their service with individual action and connection. Would you be willing to adopt and mentor a single veteran in need of assistance as they separate from active duty? Would you be willing to show them how to initiate and optimally use tools for their job search? Would you be willing to stand bytheir side?

This call to action stretches beyond the borders of America. It echoes across Canada, the United Kingdom, and all countries where soldiers go to war with no expectations upon their return. Let’s give them something they deserve: the opportunity to have a chance at success beyond the Armed Forces if they choose.

If you want to be part of the 1,000 recruiter movement, please join the 1,000 Recruiters of Light Facebook Fan Page. When you join, please add your picture to the Recruiters’ Photo album. More information including logistics will be posted there as we firm up the protocols. Let’s help veterans, one connection at a time.

Ernest Feiteira picked up on an item I posted and started a conversation about the value of such recruiting tools. A couple others chimed in about the ROI, something I’m looking into for a future article.

At this point in the discussion, there’s no resolution to the question of how you would calculate the ROI.

However, Down Under, the Aussies must believe that outsourcing their military recruiting pays off because they have been doing it for some years. I know that because I talked with a Manpower spokeswoman about a press release announcing that the Milwaukee  firm just won a $200 million recruiting contract from the Australian  Defence Force. 

In the release, Commodore Tim Barrett, director general of defence force recruiting, is quoted saying: “Manpower’s capability in managing and delivering large-scale and complex recruitment services is necessary to attract the calibre of military recruits that we are looking for. The breadth, nature, and complexity of this recruitment program can be considered critical to national security.”

The nation of 21 million people has an enviable problem. Its unemployment rate has been declining for years and is somewhere around 4 percent for 2009. (Incidentally, the Aussies think that’s a recession.) Even though its total military force is only about 53,000 active duty, the military has been hard-pressed to find enough volunteers to fill its ranks, especially when it comes to certain types of jobs that are in demand in the civilian sector.

The problem is so acute that a newspaper analysis a few months ago reported the Navy didn’t have enough submariners to staff its six submarines.

“By any measure,” says the report in the Australian, “the latest figures on recruitment from the Defence Department make for depressing reading.”

Manpower will employ 300 people to manage what it’s calling the “largest and most complex” RPO project in the world. It’s an end-to-end recruiting contract, that includes marketing and promotion up through onboarding.

The transition is already underway with the official launch set for February. Incidentally, it’s worth taking a look at the ADF recruiting website. The videos may not be as action-packed as some of the U.S. Army’s, but the ones I watched give you a pretty good idea of the nature of the jobs the military is looking to fill.

America’s Army

When you’re recruiting for an organization where the expression “taking potshots” is no mere idiom, you have to be innovative in your approach, not to mention cutting edge to reach the 17-25 year olds who are your (pardon the expression) target.

No wonder, therefore, that the U.S. Army has been using video games as a recruiting tool for years.

Now comes a report from GameSpot, a site for news about the digital games industry, that puts the 10-year-cost cost of developing and managing the Army’s free PC games called America’s Army at $32.8 million. The original cost to develop the first version of the games was budgeted at $7 million.

An entirely new version — America’s Army 3 — was released in June, and almost immediately the Army cut ties with the game’s developer. GameSpot reported earlier the Army will take over future development and game management.That will be handled by an Army unit formed in 2005 specifically to oversee development of the game.

Head2Head

This Canadian RPO and headhunter has a new video out that will make no friends with newspapers or job boards. Who cares, though. It’s a lot of fun and, ironically perhaps, it may be the most honest career video ever made.

“Stop putting in print ads. Stop posting on job boards. You may as well set fire to your money,” says an aggressive, sharply dressed gent who at first look might be an arms dealer or a central casting FBI agent.

That’s the opening scene of “What Can 60 Hours Do For You?” For the next 4 1/2 minutes you’re treated to snapshots of a 60-hour recruiting marathon to fill a req for a client where “failure is not an option.”

The credits claim that Head2Head staff wrote and produced the video. The parts were also played by staff members who should all get Oscars for their acting. (Or was it acting?)

Take the 4 minutes and 53 seconds to watch and enjoy. And then you tell me if it doesn’t nail headhunting. Still want to be a recruiter?

Vault.com

Vault, the venerable career information site that was an early leader in providing job seekers help in researching a company and building a personal network, has been struggling this year.

Erik Sorenson called it “stiff headwinds” driven by the faltering U.S. economy. In a memo earlier this month to the remaining staff at Vault, he described 2009 as a “period of right-sizing the company.”

Sorenson, the former president of MSNBC who became CEO in 2007 when Vault was acquired by Veronis Suhler Stevenson, has now stepped aside. His replacement is Claude Sheer.

In looking toward 2010, Sorenson said in the memo, “We need to beef up our senior management and strengthen our strategic efforts by bringing on someone with different knowledge, skills, and interests whose experience and passion is in growth platforms, strategic partnerships, and Internet deal-making.”

The change was effective on Dec. 7th. Sorenson is now Vault chairman and a consultant.

The Garden State (NJ) Council won a Pinnacle Award from the Society for Human Resource Management for its military career transition program. Developed in cooperation with Tip of the Arrow and officials at New Jersey’s Ft. Dix, the program is aimed at helping returning Iraq war veterans translate their military training and experience into the language of civilian recruiters.

ERE wrote about the Ultimate Warrior Career Workshops and Job Fair in August. Some 500 military soon-to-be discharged personnel attended the workshops where volunteer recruiters worked with them in groups and one-on-one, in sessions covering everything from writing a resume to preparing an elevator speech.

As the announcement of the award notes:

“More than a provider of “feel good” moments, the program’s goal is to share expert HR knowledge and insights about job searching and interviewing by delivering a broad scope of information and one-on-one attention for each service member.”

Sherrill Curtis, an organizer of the program, said in an email after the awards were announced that the program in New Jersey is growing, with colleges and universities signing on, as well as expanding with more volunteer HR coaches.

“With a local SHRM chapter in Indiana also winning for their similar program,” Curtis wrote, “we are well on our way with SHRM national support for drawing in volunteer HR professionals as career coaches from across the U.S.”

The second military oriented program to be recognized was organized by the Evansville (Indiana)-Area Human Resource Association in cooperation with the Indiana Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve. Besides offering career counseling and connecting employers and transitioning military directly through referrals and job postings, the Evansville-Area SHRM affiliate asked its member employers to list the certifications they require for various jobs. In turn, the military in the area is now offering opportunities for its personnel to earn those specific certifications.

SHRM also recognized programs to retain young workers in New Orleans; a Texas career fair specifically for workers with criminal records; a telethon-like seven-hour TV broadcast by two chapters in North Carolina that provided on-air counseling and assistance to about 1,100 callers; a job interview training program for high school seniors in Pennsylvania; a job counseling program for single-parent women and families receiving public assistance in New Mexico; a “Workforce Readiness Toolkit” for individual job seekers and employers in New Hampshire, and a SHRM chapter leadership preparation and training program.

More details on each of these programs and the Pinnacle Awards are available here.

“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.

What made this different were the one-on-one counseling sessions and workshops that prepped the servicemen and women — and some dependents — for the next day’s recruiter meet and greet.

Blum and Deissig, who founded Tip of the Arrow, began working with returning soldiers at Ft. Dix last year. Retired from careers in staffing and search, they both quickly discovered that while the men and women they met had held positions of leadership and responsibility, they were not skilled at explaining to a recruiter how what they did had value in the corporate world.

Blum told a story about a 24-year-old National Guardsman returned from Iraq who described himself as a clerk who had also been in charge of a security detail.

“I had to draw it out of him, really talk to him about what he did,” Blum says, learning the soldier had traveled Iraq returning money recovered from captured terrorists to their victims. In another assignment, he was in charge of protecting teachers and students from attack.

Saying he was a military clerk who also had worked security wouldn’t have meant as much to a corporate recruiter as explaining he was entrusted with a small fortune in cash and was responsible for the lives of a classroom full of children. Putting it that way, Blum says, lets a recruiter know that the soldier in front of them has integrity and has handled more responsibility than any job they may have is likely to require.

When Blum and Deissig connected with Curtis, who heads the state council’s Workforce Readiness committee, they found a firecracker of organization who mobilized the council and local chapters to provide the training the military personnel would need to launch successful civilian careers.

“I saw bright, articulate people,” Curtis reports. But like so many workers in the civilian world seeking a career change, “they have a very difficult time explaining what they are, what they have done, and how it applies.”

Career coaches and professional recruiters met one-on-one with the nearly 500 personnel — many of them  Army — who attended the workshop the day before the job fair. The volunteers would review resumes, teach basic job hunting techniques — there was a how-to session on career networking — and even do role-playing to help the job seekers get a feel for interviewing.

There was a panel of experienced, senior recruiters to answer audience questions on everything from what to wear to concerns about military related disabilities. International recruiting consultant Gerry Crispin, a principal in CareerXroads, talked about using technology for job searching. He also set up a LinkedIn group to carry on the day’s work.

The goal of the workshops was to get the military job seekers ready to “meet with an employer with confidence and articulate what they have done and how it applies to their job,” Curtis adds.

Curtis and Tip of the Arrow, which was founded to provide just that kind of help, are hoping that other state SHRM councils will pick up on the project and hold their own workshops and job fairs, with the Ft. Dix program as a model.