“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.

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.

• 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

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.

American Legion

Corporate Gray

Corporate sponsorships of the Army Reserve

GI Jobs

Helmets to Hardhats

Hire a Hero

Hire Vets First – arm of the U.S. Dept. of Labor

Marines for Life

Military Chefs

Military stars

MOA and ROA career fairs

NCOA career fairs

Operation war fighter

Recruit Army

Recruit Military

Transition offices

VetCentral

Working with ESGR and its Reserve Unit Listings

Wounded warriors

5-star employer recognition

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.

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.”

Bradley-Morris is a placement and staffing firm in Georgia, which itself is 60 percent staffed by former military. It also conducts job fairs, operates a veteran-focused job board and publishes a careers newspaper that is distributed on bases throughout the U.S. and elsewhere.

Veterans make great hires, says Scott, because the military emphasizes leadership training, instills a strong work ethic, places a value on teamwork and accomplishment and skills training is about as up-to-date as it gets. Plus, he adds, with passive candidates increasingly reluctant to leave secure jobs or unable to relocate because of the housing market, “This is an excellent opportunity to pursue military.”

The hottest job opportunities for veterans, says Scott, are in manufacturing and energy.

The CareerBuilder survey found employers agreeing with Scott’s list of qualities. Almost three-quarters of the employers surveyed said veterans brought a strong sense of teamwork and a disciplined approach to the workplace.

So why is it that some veterans are reporting difficulty in finding work? BMI executives believe there is a communications gap, Scott says, explaining that there are all sorts of training, placement and other free services specifically for ex-military. But, he says, “There is no one place for a vet to go to find out about all the free services.”

SimplyHired (profile; site), the vertical search job board, has added a tool specifically to make it easier for veterans to find employers looking to hire ex-military. Announcing the search tool, SimplyHired described it as a way of filtering the “results from DirectEmployers Association’s list of over 400 federal contractors and “vet-friendly” employers, who take affirmative action to employ and advance in employment veterans in accordance with Affirmative Action Programs, the Vietnam Era Veterans’ Readjustment Assistance Act (VEVRAA), and the Jobs for Veterans Act.”

The U.S. Department of Labor has also organized 120 veterans job fairs to be held in 31 states this month as part of the HireVetsFirst initiative. Find the list here.

CareerBuilder HR vice president Rosemary Haefner, commenting on the findings of the survey, said, “20 percent of employers said that they will be actively recruiting veterans over the next 12 months.

“Employers value the diverse skill set that veterans can bring to their workforce and how these workers can have a positive impact on their bottom lines.”

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.

It’s similar to what I see when analyzing strategic Internet marketing programs. It comes down to one simple thing: legacy, incumbent budgets that prevent you from achieving the desired outcome. Long-standing, legacy budgets fund college graduate and intern relocation programs and are regularly renewed while mid-level, experienced-hire budget resources are highly irregular and often insufficient to acquire the best talent.

The expenses for experienced hire candidates, such as airfare and hotels during interviewing, and relocation costs of an experienced hire, often come directly out of the P&L of the business unit doing the hiring. As you enter budget cycles in the years ahead, you should consider creating a flexible budget pool for experienced hires that is independent of the business unit. This not only will help your recruiting programs hire the top talent you need today, but will position your firm strategically to have a nimble experienced hiring process in the upcoming years as the baby boomers begin to retire and you look to hire replacement leaders from Generation X.

In the short term, you need to get a bit more creative to give offers to the best and brightest talent. Here are a few ideas for obtaining the best, most geographically diverse talent:

Actively Seek Out Renters as Candidates. It’s understandable that you don’t want to take on real estate risk unless absolutely necessary, especially in the current marketplace. Additionally, you want to be hiring candidates who demonstrate responsible financial behavior — they might have the same positive tendencies when making decisions for your business! Renters with no outstanding debt or without hard-to-divest real estate should be therefore highly sought-after assets! An added benefit of this is that there is a correlation with having fewer personal belongings when renting and that would lead to a higher likelihood of a lower-cost move overall.

Target Veterans Terminating Active Duty Military. Lisa Rosser is a book author and founder of The Value of a Veteran, a firm that advises and trains organizations on the value and hidden benefits of hiring veterans. According to Lisa, “Over 100,000 service members separate from active military duty (i.e., not National Guard or Reserve duty) each year and it’s a little known fact that each and every one of them is entitled to one free move anywhere in the United States.” The veteran can request that benefit any time within one year after the date of separation. Many military members begin their job search eight or more months in advance of their last day of contracted service. That is the optimal window to begin marketing your company and its typical hiring needs to the military audience, and wrangle that free move on Uncle Sam’s dime. She also encourages people to look at the skills and competencies fully, not just their job titles and/or organization. These aren’t just infantry folks — among them are computer programmers, highly skilled engineers, nurses, and healthcare professionals.

Seek Out Spouses of Recently Relocated Workers. You might find some candidate gems here. Larger companies in your region who frequently relocate people might have lists of such people or access to organizations that provide support to these people. Look at their skill sets completely — not just their last job title and company brand. If you find a way to quickly show these people that you see value in them when they first move to an unfamiliar place, you are very likely to make an extremely positive impression. The result will be acquiring an appreciative, loyal, and content worker who has a higher likelihood of remembering your gesture.

Target Individuals Who Have Shown Interest in Your Geographic Region. You can seek bloggers and social media participants via search engines such as Google who mention the position’s location favorably in their writings about a vacation, a relative, or close friend that lives in the region, a business trip they particularly enjoyed, or otherwise. Then again, a candidate might present you with an old-fashioned letter to someone at the company stating a desire to move the area. Due to the affinity that they have for the area, they might be highly motivated to move to the region and happily share or absorb the costs upon receiving an offer. Just like with the relocated spouse, this individual will be highly appreciative of the opportunity. As an added bonus since you found them via their blog or social media tools they are likely to tell the story over and over, creating positive word of mouth about your employment brand.

Focus On Sourcing Candidates Who Once Lived In Your Region. If the role is New York City, knowing that they can handle living there can be an important factor in selecting a candidate. Potential candidates will likely fall into one of two buckets: A) they loved it and can’t wait for the opportunity to return; or B) they never wish to return. The latter might have ideas about candidates who might be appropriate due to their prior experience in the location, so even that outcome is not a waste of your time and effort.

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.

RANK

Here is a very generalized over view of the rank structure in most military branches:

Enlisted

Enlisted grades E1-E4 are considered a learning and leadership development phase in most branches of service. E5 and higher ranks have significant leadership responsibilities and are given a formal title of Non-Commissioned Officers under the command of an officer. Even though the NCO ranks below the most junior officer, most senior NCOs, those with many years of time in service, have a vast depth of leadership and technical experience far beyond a Junior Officer.

Commissioned Officer

Commissioned Officers are military members who hold a commission from an Officer Training Program and a command role in the military hierarchy structure. They are leaders and can be likened to any mid- to high-level corporate manager depending upon rank and structure of the branch of service. As with the NCOs, the officers make decisions involving millions of dollars of government resources and the lives of hundreds of people. General Officers are those who demonstrate extraordinary leadership skills and are the executive level — CEOs if you will — of their respective branches of service.

The numbers of people and dollars managed will vary depending upon rank and assignment. A recruiter should quickly see how valuable both the Enlisted and the Officer candidate is whether transitioning directly out of the service into civilian life or discharged and applying to your company.

EDUCATION

The military loves education! From the moment a recruit steps on those yellow footprints, the entry point at USMC Recruit Training, Parris Island, SC, they are learning.

Formalized skills and leadership training begins from day one and the military begins the process of transforming a piece of coal into a diamond. Let’s be honest: stereotypes abound when we talk about our military candidates. I’ve heard from various sources that they are uneducated because of their technical position as a machine gunner or tank operator. This couldn’t be farther from the truth and is simply a lack of education on our part as recruiters.

With rank and career progression, an advanced level of professional and military education is typically expected. Here are some examples and a great resource for you to be educated!

Let’s look at just a few of the possible schools and what they provide to your military candidate:

Basic and Advanced Non-commissioned Officer Courses provide the same training across the board in primary and advanced leadership. With this one piece of formalized training you have a candidate who has been taught, should understand, and display these principles: dependability, decisiveness, integrity, initiative, knowledge, tact, loyalty, unselfishness, and a host of others. (See Marine Corps Leadership Principles) Successful and timely promotion in the military will depend upon exemplary application of these traits in the management of ones self and team.

eArmyU Program is a fantastic way for the junior enlisted solider to enroll in college while serving with the flexibility to complete their education online. With the continued advancements in online learning, the E-1 through E-4 candidate may have leadership training along with a college degree they earned while working full time.

Air Command and Staff College provides education to all services in the air and space operations. This college is a rigorous 10-month program designed to move that mid-level officer into a higher-level command with more analytical and problem solving command skills.

Along with understanding how to translate technical skills from your military and veteran candidates, be sure to get up to speed on what education has been part of their military experience. When you understand their career progression in the rank structure of the military you are also able to quickly identify and correlate a general level of management to your positions.

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.

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.

On the exhibit floor, the Job Accommodation Network is evaluating employer websites for their accessibility. JAN is likely to be busy in future months as the government takes a closer look at the multimedia running on career sites. SSB BART is one private company also in this field.

Meanwhile, Northrop Grumman, the 120,000-employee maker of radar, missile defense, laser systems, satelite systems, and more, is making a special effort to hire the severely disabled. It’s recruiting from job fairs, military facilities, and via word of mouth. “There’s no big list of everyone who’s been injured and is out looking for work,” Northrop HR director Mike Jones says.

Because it’s often hard to translate military skills — for those you who do not offer positions driving tanks — Jones says he’s looking at his effort as “reverse recruiting,” examining candidates’ skills and then seeing where the company may be able to place them.

Northrop expects to hire about 15,000 people this year, and has something like 2,000 different types of jobs open now, from HR to systems administration to secretarial to accounting.

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.

According to Greg Bresser, executive director of the Purple Heart Service Foundation, “we recognized two years ago that if combat wounded or disabled veterans were properly trained, they could work from home. We saw an opportunity for this group of veterans to become a vital, remote work force for many large Fortune 1,000 companies, as well as smaller family-owned businesses.”

The first phase of the partnership will see 20 virtual agents deployed to Disaboom, responsible for approaching local and national businesses to sell listings in disaboom.com’s online business listings. Disaboom plans to expand the number of graduates employed to 150 virtual agents by the end of the year.

The veterans’ training course work maximizes their military training, according to Disaboom. Applications for participation in the program are currently being accepted at www.combatwoundedcallcenter.com.

“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.

PaYS, which stands for Partnership for Youth Success, helps soldiers obtain a civilian job after serving in the Army. The program begins upon enlistment, when the soldier designates his or her future job and employer preference. The soldier’s site visits and interview are scheduled six months prior to their separation from the service.

In addition, Sears sources future leaders from the Army by partnering with the PaYS ROTC program. Earlier this week, Sears agreed to expand its contract, which includes sourcing privileges at the 273 ROTC college campuses located around the country. The program allows partners to post positions and maintain relationships with cadets during their last two years in college.

“With 40% of corporate leaders expected to retire in the next few years, I think there will be increasing interest from companies in this program,” says Dana. “Officers are educated and they have the leadership skills and training private businesses are seeking.”

Just this week, President Bush signed a revised version of the GI Bill which will fully cover the cost of a four-year college degree for returning veterans for the first time since the Vietnam War. Given the expanded benefits, it makes sense for corporate recruiters to join the Army’s recruiting program rather than fight it, because the Army has enveloped its recruiting process in a complete career planning strategy that may be hard for private businesses to match.

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.

Here is the scenario:

You’ve posted a position that will require, from the best-qualified candidate, a demonstration of their ability to lead diverse teams of people. The technical aspect of this role is easily taught in this situation and it is a mid-level management role with four to seven years of management experience expected from your candidate.

Before we look at a sample military/veteran resume, let’s clear our minds of the following recruiter inner voices:

Why didn’t this candidate translate their skills for me? Why does this candidate use all the acronyms? I don’t like the format. They misspelled a word. Why don’t they just tell me what I am supposed to be looking for from their last 20 years in the military. This is too much work!

First, take a deep breath. Second, take a look at this resume:

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS 1985-2008

Deputy Training Support Officer, 2003-2008

Navy School of Music, Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Norfolk, Virginia

Managed 14 personnel in the daily operations of the school’s facilities, technical training equipment, safety programs, and security. Responsible for developing, evaluating, monitoring, and analyzing military training support programs, interpreting results and publishing written reports. This position also included the development, supervision and management of a $400K annual budget, including procurement of supplies and training materials valued at over $10M

Drug and Alcohol Program Advisor, Substance Abuse Prevention Specialist 2001-2008

Navy School of Music, Marine Detachment, NAB Little Creek, Norfolk, Virginia

Responsible for drug and alcohol abuse case management, treatment referral, and aftercare monitoring. Developed, evaluated and implemented drug and alcohol abuse prevention programs and education. Provided classroom training, needs assessment, program analysis, and collaborated with community leaders

Head Library Media Division 2001-2005

Navy School of Music, Naval Amphibious Base Little Creek, Norfolk, Virginia

Supervised library staff and the daily operations of three separate libraries, the Media Library, Text Library and Music Library. Developed, supervised, and managed the libraries annual budget including procurement of computer software, training material, and supplies

Professional Training

• Alcohol Tobacco and Other Drug Abuse, Prevention Specialist Course, US Navy
• Alcohol and Drug Management for Supervisors Facilitator Course, US Navy
• Drug and Alcohol Program Advisor’s Course, US Navy
• Strategic Management Overview, US Navy
• Staff Non-Commissioned Officers Academy Advanced Course, US Marine Corps
• Ceremonial Conductor/Drum Major Course, US Navy
• Staff Non-Commissioned Officers Academy Career Course, US Marine Corps
• War Fighting Skills Program, US Marine Corps
• Simplified Acquisition Procedures, Defense Acquisition University
• Basic Musicians Course, US Navy

As a recruiter who routinely deals with active and prior military, my first thought is that I have a seasoned leader who may just fit the profile I am looking for. This person has a diverse and multi-faceted background in the Marine Corps outside of their MOS, which was playing in the Marine Corps Band. If I wanted to translate a position title from this resume, such as Ceremonial Conductor, or their collateral job assignment, Training Support Officer, where would I go?

There are resources out there to assist in skills translation for the recruiter without the background and understanding of military career progression through the ranks. One such resource, HireVetsFirst.gov, is funded through the U.S. Department of Labor and The President’s National Hire Veterans Committee. The website offers an Employer’s Zone that takes the recruiter or hiring manager to the Department of Labor’s Occupation Network, O*Net OnLine.

Additionally, a simple Google search (keywords: military skills translation) brings back several sites that also focus on assisting the veteran and the employer.

A recent article in the Los Angeles Times said that 76% of military service members did not know how to translate their own skills in the military into civilian positions. That is a staggering number and one that transition-assistance-program managers for the military should note.

But as recruiters we have a unique opportunity to bridge this gap and really provide value to these men and women who have so unselfishly served our country.

Those recruiters who are up for the challenge and can see the long-term benefit of such a strategy for their business will find value in this extra effort through a network of men and women who value relationships and camaraderie.

Military and veteran candidates are often diamonds in the rough. They have leadership skills in diverse, fast-paced, stressful environments along with being able to adapt to an accelerated learning curve in various environments. The resources are out there, the candidates are out there, and the next step for companies who will truly take the lead in innovative recruitment will be to go after this candidate pool.