When it comes to finding the right employees to make your organization shine and reach its goals, there’s nothing quite like the value of bringing on military veterans. As you diversify hiring policies and procedures, be sure to include veterans among your targeted outreach—because these smart, skilled people make great additions to any staff.

Here’s why it pays to attract and recruit veterans into your workforce, and how to do it successfully.

Veterans Make Exceptional Staff Members

Members of the military make committed, determined team members who bring a host of experiences and insights to benefit your company. If they had a successful military career, then they gained valuable soft skills like discipline, focus, and integrity. They may also have learned practical skills, such as IT and tech, that can be of great advantage on the job.

Government Benefits Can Make Hiring Veterans Even Better

To help military members integrate back into civilian society after their service, the government has set up a number of programs that employers can draw upon. There are many tax incentives, salary subsidies, and other programs that can be leveraged to make it easier and more profitable to hire veterans too. 

Here’s how to find, attract and recruit veterans successfully.

10 Tips for Recruiting Veterans

Finding and appealing to military personnel during the hiring process isn’t complicated—as long as you have an effective, well-crafted hiring process in place for recruiting these valuable people. Make these 10 techniques a vital part of your HR repertoire as you hire staff:

1. Sell the why.

Veterans are mission-driven and passionate about making a difference. They crave having a purpose in their civilian careers. Attract and recruit veteran applicants by promoting the greater purpose and values of your company. 

2. Go where the veterans are. 

To find great hires, you must be where they are! Consider hosting recruiting events at local military bases or installations. Participate in veteran-specific job fairs and career events. Seek out veteran-related community organizations and share with them the job opportunities you have. 

3. Capitalize on your current network. 

Word of mouth is the most effective tool for reaching military personnel, because veterans trust the input of their fellow military members. Encourage your current veteran employees to share their experience with other veterans who might be interested in working for your company. Create videos, brochures, and/or a specific website where veterans can read stories from other veterans about how great it is to work for you. 

4. Don’t overlook veterans’ spouses. 

Veterans understand that companies that take care of military families are good places to consider for employment. So, create programs and strategies that benefit the whole family. How do you do this? Make an effort to hire and retain both military members and their spouses. Help military families with relocation expenses. Offer remote or distributed work options to make onboarding them as easy as possible.

5. Use online tools. 

Social networking provides tremendous opportunities to share your open positions with a targeted group such as military members. To make use of this approach, consider posting open positions on military-specific job boards and forums where veterans will see them. Veterans and spouses have their own social networks where civilian employers are welcome. Find these places and be there…online!

6. Make your position known. 

When you attend networking meetings, community events, or social gatherings, let your colleagues and friends know you are looking to hire veterans. Your network can help you spread the word. Similarly, add marketing to your website and careers page that makes it obvious you encourage veteran candidates to apply. Be sure to use accurate terminology, language, and images to show you understand who veterans are and what they need. 

7. Create detailed job descriptions. 

Connect with veterans effectively by using military language in your outreach and job descriptions. Make it clear you will count alternatives to full-time employment for required experience—such as internships, apprenticeships, and military-related work. In job summaries, use key phrases and words that will spark interest in a veteran, military spouse, or reserve member, and help them feel like their service and experience are relevant and that they are capable and qualified for the role. 

8. Educate your staff. 

Often, military recruitment and retention are lumped into the human resource department or diversity division’s current roles. This can create a diluted result that impedes your goal to hire more veterans. To combat this, educate staff about the military so they can familiarize themselves with how the military works. This will help ensure they can connect with veterans and build strong relationships. Also, consider establishing a specific military recruitment division or committee to specialize in veteran recruiting. 

9. Pledge to hire veterans. 

Register your organization through the U.S. Chamber and Capital One’s Vet Employer Roadmap. Through this network, you can tap into a pool of thousands of veterans and spouses alike. After signing up, you will receive a web sticker that can be displayed on your career page. 

10. Engage senior leadership. 

Once you have a well-defined vision and concept, determine who among senior leadership can provide the visible support needed for your veteran recruitment initiative, program, or policy. Programs that have ongoing support from an executive “champion” are more likely to gain traction within the company, making it easier to attract veterans throughout the hiring process.

Helpful Tools for Reaching Veterans

To make it even more streamlined to find great hires who were in the military, tap into these excellent resources!

OKVA Veteran Employer Network

OKVA Veteran Employer Network is a collaboration between the Community Service Council (CSC), Oklahoma Veteran Alliance, the City of Tulsa, DR Consulting, Key Personnel, and Oklahoma Division of Veteran Affairs. The network was created to identify and build an employer network of organizations interested in recruiting, hiring, and developing veterans in the workplace. Employer members have access to peer-to-peer programming and networking, which allows for the sharing of best practices, tools, and resources for building a veteran-ready company culture.

Veterans Employment Toolkit

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has published a step-by-step toolkit that employers can use as they recruit and retain veterans. This resource equips employers and workforce development teams with the tools needed to help veteran employees living with Traumatic Brain Injury and/or Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

Recruit Military Service Solutions

RecruitMilitary.com is an online source of military veterans and spouses with over 50 combined years of experience in the veteran recruiting space. Recruit Military Service Solutions (RMS2) can gain you access to virtual and live career fairs, 1.5 million veteran candidates, expansive spouse networks, and print and digital branding. RecruitMilitary.com also provides sponsorship opportunities for career fairs, targeted emails, a candidate database search, and more. 

O*Net

O*Net provides an easy quick resource to demystify military resumes and talents. It allows an employer to search by military occupational code (MOC) or job title, and cross-reference military job functions and skills to civilian equivalents, or vice versa. 

Employer Roadmap

Employer Roadmap provides articles from experts in veteran recruiting, hiring, and retention. The site will give you access to resources for hiring vets using best practices. You will have access to a veteran hiring workbook, job description builder, a career skills guide, action plans, and case studies to help you along the way. 

Broaden Hiring Procedures to Include Veterans—with Help from Who’s Your HR?

With so many benefits of hiring military members, it’s well worth expanding your recruiting approach and intentionally reaching out to attract veterans and their spouses to work for your organization. And we can help you craft a strategy to better your recruitment programs.

Who’s Your HR? understands veteran employment. In fact, our own facilities manager is a veteran—so we know what it takes to attract and retain these valuable employees. And we’d love to lend our expertise to your recruitment strategies.

Contact us at 539-215-8868 to schedule a consultation.