Starting a Military Hiring Program – Is Hiring Veterans Competitive?
It’s great witness the “tipping point” regarding starting a military hiring program. When I began work at BMI in 2001, most companies I talked to had no plans to hire military. I’ll still run across a company not seeking military from time to time, but they’re now an outlier.
After reading Krista Williams’ recent post on recruitingtrends.com, You’ve Been Asked to Start a Military Hiring Program. Now what? , it was refreshing to reflect on how far recruiting attitudes toward a military hiring program have evolved. Yes, the military-experienced talent pool represents some of America’s best and brightest. Yes, winning in business is about fielding the best team, and yes, hiring military-experienced talent is not charity. Ask Amazon or General Electric. They both own great military hiring programs and are very good at achieving top hires.
But I have one quibble with the post and that’s toward the end where she writes, “Veteran hiring is not competitive…” In the context of the paragraph regarding how important it is to get a military hiring program started on the right foot, this phrase sticks out. As a matter of fact, this could be the main reason to have a solid military hiring program: because veteran hiring is in fact so competitive.
Where I live, on the leading edge of military-experienced talent, the best of the best candidates have 10-20 companies vying for their services before they even transition out of the service – competition is intense. And with more veteran hiring programs popping up all the time, the competition will only increase. That’s where I earn my stripes, so to speak, helping employers win this top talent and providing a high return on investment. If you are hiring military to win in business, roll up your sleeves and get ready to work. Krista makes great points but on the subject of “competition”, I’d have to disagree.
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