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Veterans are a valuable resource in the battle for technology talent

 2 years ago
source link: https://www.fastcompany.com/90778523/veterans-are-a-valuable-resource-in-the-battle-for-technology-talent
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Veterans are a valuable resource in the battle for technology talent

Along with existing tech skills, veterans bring other valuable assets to the table

Veterans are a valuable resource in the battle for technology talent

Business owners who have tapped former service members to fill technology jobs often share a common opinion: Veterans are valuable additions because they bring with them the unique and important skills required to be successful in the workplace of tomorrow. Veterans are leaders who have high integrity, which makes them well-rounded and outstanding candidates. Those qualities can be applied to more than just tech jobs.

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“Veterans bring a powerful skillset and real-world experience to many positions,” says Jason Frei, senior director, program management, Boeing Global Services and president of the Boeing Veteran Engagement Team Business Resource Group. “They are resilient, mission-oriented, and forward-thinking. Veterans tend to have agile and entrepreneurial mindsets and are great at working on teams.” “Veterans usually run toward problems instead of away from them,” says Michael Smith, field CTO at Neustar Security Services. “They are very well trained in making decisions under duress with only partial information to go on.”

COVETED EMPLOYEES

Those qualities bring to life the transferrable skills that make veterans attractive job candidates. Competition to hire the best talent is intense, especially for technology jobs. Keys to success include cultivating relationships with veterans’ organizations, developing internal resources to help veterans thrive, embracing a mission-driven culture, and learning to translate military skills to the civilian sector.

That last point is often a stumbling block. “At face value, a veteran’s previous title and experience may not seem to fit the exact requirements in your job description,” cautions Hari Kolam, CEO of Findem, an AI-powered talent-acquisition platform. For example, an Air Force veteran with two years of experience operating an Automated Remediation, Asset Discovery (ARAD) program on their résumé might not mean anything to a civilian recruiter. But it translates to operating a state-of-the-art cybersecurity platform with hundreds of thousands of endpoints in a complicated multi-vendor environment—a skill highly valued in today’s private sector.

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DOING IT RIGHT

For businesses interested in recruiting veterans, Boeing’s approach provides a case study in how to do it right. Veterans account for approximately 15% of the company’s U.S. workforce, and veteran representation in most of its business units is above the industry standard.

“The military skills translator on our Military and Veteran Careers website is a very important part of our program, and it works both ways,” Frei says. The tool helps veterans find positions within Boeing that best match their experience and skillset, and non-veteran employees can use it to see how military skills are relevant to specific positions.

Another resource Boeing uses to support and develop veteran talent is the Boeing Veteran Engagement Team (BVET), a business resource group with 24 employee-led chapters across the company. Boeing also partners with nonprofit veteran-serving organizations along with the U.S. Department of Defense SkillBridge program, through which it expects to train and hire hundreds of military veterans. Last year, Boeing invested $13 million in organizations that support veterans and their families worldwide.

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Frei, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and president of BVET, believes that Boeing’s involvement in comprehensive programs to support veterans outside of the company plays an important role in their recruitment inside the company. “People want to go where they know they are valued and where the values that are important to them are shared,” he says. “That is the culture here.”


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