4 Reasons Why Organizations Struggle to Hire Veterans

2022-04-05T13:16:07-04:00

Numerous academic studies have documented the advantages to initiating programs that successfully assimilate veteran talent. Why aren’t more organizations taking advantage of this plentiful, productive talent source?

1. Shrinking percentage of corporate leadership. As the veteran population relative to the population of the nation has decreased, so has their presence and leadership in civilian institutions. Veteran presence among corporate leaders is at an all-time low. The Wall Street Journal reports that the percentage of large publicly held corporations whose CEOs had a military background to be 2.6 percent! Even if you expand that group to include all S&P 500 board members, the percentage with a military background is still less than 5 percent.

2. Negative biases. Research confirms that hiring managers maintain negative biases when confronting veterans due to this growing civil-military gap. Those biases tend to result in the under-employment of veterans. Underemployment occurs when a person engages in work that doesn’t make full use of their skills and abilities. A recent survey by LinkedIn found that 76 percent of the top industries hire veterans at a lower rate than their civilian peers and that veterans are more than 30 percent more likely to be underemployed than their civilian peers.

3. Veterans’ struggle with transition. Most veterans do not easily transition from the military to the civilian world. While there are many government support systems attempting to support that transition, they are collectively insufficient. And while many well-intentioned non-government support systems attempt to close this gap, the critical “last mile” of support – focused hiring efforts, onboarding support, affinity groups, mentoring programs, etc. - tends to rest at the feet of their prospective employers.

4. Lack of dedicated corporate veteran hiring programs. Most civilian organizations are not organized to successfully hire veterans. A Korn Ferry study documented that fully 80 percent of organizations do not have veteran-specific recruiting programs. The study also documented that 71 percent of organizations do not provide training to hiring managers or recruiters on veteran hiring, and 52 percent do not provide onboarding or transition support to veteran hires. Even worse, the US Chamber of Commerce recently documented that 90 percent of small businesses do not intentionally hire veterans. And so, in spite of the enormous potential upside that this talent pool offers, few organizations are taking advantage. It is a missed opportunity.

Matthew J. Louis is the President of Purepost, Inc. and the author of the HarperCollins book Mission Transition: Navigating the Opportunities and Obstacles of Your Post-Military Career, a practical guide for veterans and service members in career transition. Louis holds an MBA in operations and finance from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and a BS in mechanical engineering from West Point. He is a graduate of the US Army Command and General Staff College. Louis served in the Southwest Asia combat theater and on the staff of the US Army’s Office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations. He is a retired Lieutenant Colonel.

Bibliography:
Aaron Kay, “Research Shows Military Service Can Hurt Some Job Seekers’ Prospects,” Duke Fuqua School of Business, September 23, 2019, accessed October 16, 2019, https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/how-military-service-can-hurt-some-job-seekers’-prospects. See also: Steven Shepherd, Aaron C. Kay, Kurt Gray, “Military veterans are morally typecast as agentic but unfeeling: Implications for veteran employment,” ScienceDirect, Volume 153, July 2019, Pages 75-88.
Melissa Boatwright and Sarah Roberts, “Veteran Opportunity Report: Understanding an untapped talent pool,” LinkedIn, accessed December 7, 2019, https://socialimpact.linkedin.com/content/dam/me/linkedinforgood/en-us/resources/veterans/LinkedIn-Veteran-Opportunity-Report.pdf.
Roy Maurer, “8 in 10 Employers Lack Recruitment Programs for Veterans,” Society of Human Resource Management, May 25, 2015, accessed October 23, 2019, https://www.shrm.org/ResourcesAndTools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/Pages/Recruitment-Programs-Veterans.aspx.
“Small Business Index: The Voice of Small Business Owners,” Metlife & US Chamber of Commerce, Q3 2019, accessed May 12, 2020, https://www.uschamber.com/sbindex/pdf/sbi_reports/SBI_2019_Q3.pdf.

Duke Fuqua Insights | Duke's Fuqua School of Business

Response by SGM Bill Frazer made Apr 5 at 2022 4:43 PM

2022-04-05T16:43:03-04:00

Don't forget the fact that many skills are hard to translate into the civilian world, and civilians often are not wanting to look at anything more than the surface.

Response by SPC John Bryant made Apr 5 at 2022 4:50 PM

2022-04-05T16:50:13-04:00

Just left my Job with Dell Technologies because of the lack of opportunity and raise in the 7 year 11 months I work for them I'm changing correars to protective security officer as it pays $4 more an hour then I made with Dell with my Collage degrees in IT Management Networking seem as if I wasted the 7 year of school only to move to a skill set I learn in the Army. Same Corporate American dose not pay competitive wages and look down on those who protected the right for them to conduct business in this country.

Response by CPT Aaron Kletzing made Apr 6 at 2022 8:30 PM

2022-04-06T20:30:48-04:00

Great points — thanks for sharing, and for taking the time to write this!

Response by CPT Aaron Kletzing made Apr 6 at 2022 8:33 PM

2022-04-06T20:33:29-04:00

LTC Matt Louis — I see you majored in Mech Engineering at USMA. When I was there, that was renowned as the hardest major academically, by far. What made you do it?! Lol ;-)

Response by SrA James Ebersohl made Apr 6 at 2022 10:49 PM

2022-04-06T22:49:46-04:00

Sad very sad! Corporate America and healthcare is failing our Veterans miserably.

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made Apr 7 at 2022 8:19 PM

2022-04-07T20:19:17-04:00

One-time Presidential front-runner Gary Hart suggests additional reasons for the disconnect —> “...the military has become a society unto itself...” —and— “... military and defense structures are increasingly remote from the society they protect, and each must be brought back into harmony with the other.” Reserve and Guard unit members are fortunate to face those issues to a much lesser extent.

Response by TSgt Steve Takacs made Apr 16 at 2022 10:49 AM

2022-04-16T10:49:22-04:00

http://www.bridgingthegap.vet is an organization in NJ that helps veterans get Jobs.

Bridging The Gap

Response by CPT Private RallyPoint Member made Jun 28 at 2022 4:32 PM

2022-06-28T16:32:19-04:00

Sir, great piece and a wonderful roll up. I’d like to add the following based on my experiences in the private sector.

I have recruited veterans on behalf of a private sector firm and noted the disconnect that was eloquently described as societies unto themselves. When we leave service, we are told at TAP to document every course/training we've ever had, while a potential employer wants a simple two page resume. That’s one sheet front and back not the 10 page CV which would list every training received by an SM. A 10-20 page CV often doesn’t get read and ends up in the circular file. A resume should get an employer excited enough to interview you and then cover that in an interview, we often don’t share this as much as we should.

I’ve also seen SMs either over or under value themselves based on what they’ve “heard”. What I mean is this. I mentored an E-7 who was planning to leave the AC and told me they made only $50K. I told them I didn’t believe them and began to show them how much they actually made. With basic pay, BAS, BAH and locality pay, they made $110K in terms of a salary. Yes salary because in the private sector there are no allowances and every dime is taxed. They told me they thought all their issues could be resolved for a job making $100K a year. I showed them once health care and childcare were added into their expenses, the Army was paying the equivalent of $110K which would be needed to maintain their current standard of living. They actually wanted a job making $165K to get where they wanted to be. In short, they didn’t know their true value and decided they were more valuable to the Army than the private sector.

Lastly, there are few executives who are veterans but that 5% is five times of all in the US that ever serve which is 1%. Find companies and firms who proudly boast of their veterans and the good work they do.