Veterans are a great source of talent for civilian employers. Veterans bring distinctive capabilities and valuable skills developed through real-world, high pressure experience. In addition, employers have an opportunity to earn $9,600 in tax incentives per veteran employee all while building goodwill with critical stakeholders – their customers, employees and community.
After the longest two wars in our nation’s history, over 2.9 million service members have returned to civilian life and an estimated 1 million more will do so over the next five years (Veterans Job Mission). Employers have an opportunity to capture this talent for their organization and help veterans transition by:
- Gaining a better understanding of the veteran experience and the business case for hiring vets.
- Leveraging the resources available to help employers hire veterans.
- Helping veterans to “sell themselves;” something which can be unnatural to the veteran population.
- Building organizational understanding of veteran capabilities.
Compelling business cases to hire a veteran today:
Distinctive capabilities: Veterans are performance-oriented, have a strong work ethic, and thrive under pressure, and are also capable of teamwork, leadership and problem solving skills learned in the military which are suitable for many civilian roles.
Valuable skills: Veterans receive advanced training in a variety of technical skills since Military spends in these skills to make veterans cost-effective employees.
Tax incentives: Employers can take advantage of federal tax credits of up to $9,600 per veteran and State tax credits are also available
Hiring vets builds goodwill and honors their service: Recruiting veterans reflects the social responsibility of an employer and builds goodwill with customers, employees, and the community. Hiring veterans, who have sacrificed for their communities and the nation, is the right thing to do.
So how can companies change their approach to hiring veterans?
Here are some of the best practices for employers to find, hire, on-board and retain veterans
- Tie veteran recruiting to overall business strategy by identifying veteran skills needed and tracking veterans effectiveness in both recruiting and job performance.
- Build commitment by establishing a core internal team from all levels (e.g., senior executives, HR, hiring managers) to support veteran recruiting activities and communicate value of effort to the organization.
- Leverage network of existing veteran employees to build relationships with external veteran and champion-groups.
- Develop compelling and clear employee value proposition for veterans to use internally and externally.
- Select, assess, and adjust mix of recruiting like veterancareer.org to meet recruiting goals and increase awareness of company opportunities within veteran community.
- Develop marketing materials that clear communicate the employee value proposition to veterans.
VeteranCareer.org makes hiring veterans EASY. Our successful veteran job board will create an opportunity for you to attract and hire top and talented veteran job seekers in the market not available through the main stream job boards. We have 60,000+ unique visitors who are looking for open positions that fit their goal and experience. Try our successful job board and hire our heroes!
Regards,
Danny Alex, Roseville, MN
