Your Military Recruiting Program, It Briefs Well...

How well-trained are the people doing the recruiting or talent acquisition for your company when it comes to looking at veteran or military spouse resumes?

I'd be willing to bet that when these recruiters see something related to military service or time on a resume they either gloss over it because they don't understand what it means, or they assume the person, if they're a former military professional, is broken in some way, shape, or form and won't be a good fit for your company. Or, and this is even more common, they've seen movies or TV shows that depict service members as having severe PTSD that gets triggered at the drop of a pin and will have explosive outcomes. Recruiters won't pass resumes to hiring managers because the recruiters assume former military professionals are going to be barking orders all the time, or the hiring manager is afraid the service member is going to be looking to take over their job.

So, even though your company may tout itself as being "military friendly" and you proclaim it on your careers pages or on social media, what happened is that the company put a program out there that essentially "briefs well," but no one beyond the people who put it together really knows the "why" behind this program or how to approach it effectively. You don't have a military-friendly company if your recruiters don't even know the fundamental difference between a Soldier and a Marine. You do, however, have a military recruiting program that proclaims your company is "doing its part."

Then, because you haven't trained your hiring managers or recruiters on how to intentionally look at resumes from the military community, you lose out on top talent.

This happens more often than not. Former military professionals apply to hundreds of jobs they know they could do in their sleep, but because no one in the recruiting or hiring process is trained on how to make sense of military experience those resumes get tossed to the side and eventually added to the pile of emails that will get the "We're sorry, but we're going with someone whose skills more closely align with the position," message.

If your company is claiming to be military friendly, but your programs and initiatives don't go beyond your "sanctum sanctorum" at the higher levels, then you aren't all that military friendly. Anyone who is involved in the sourcing, hiring, and onboarding of talent needs to be brought in on what these initiatives and programs look like. They should know the "why" behind your military hiring program, and they should also have some basic understanding of what military terminology is. Understanding how military culture can enhance your company culture is another huge part of this process.

At the end of the day, I have a few questions for your company. If your hiring process involves applicants entering their information into an applicant tracking system, does it screen for words like, "military," "veteran," or any service-specific terminology? If it's not screening for these things, why not? If it is, do those applicants with those words in their application and/or resume get flagged for personal review by someone with military experience?

The answers to these questions help define just how close to being Military Ready you actually are, and/or how much Suiting Green can be of assistance to you.