4 Reasons to Consider Hiring Veteran Candidates
Simply Hired Staff
When you’re making hiring decisions, you can never be quite sure which skills will provide the most value.
Critical thinking.
Communication.
Active listening.
Camouflage?
It’s that time of year when companies observe Veteran’s Day in the workplace. But some companies are more excited about Veteran’s Day than others. These companies are not only celebrating those who dedicate their lives to protecting our freedom, they also have discovered the unique value of veterans in the workforce.
Who’s hiring veterans and why?
Did you know that ten Fortune 500 companies currently have CEOs with military experience as officers? That’s no coincidence. Hiring and working with veterans is not only good for veterans, but it’s good for your company. Veterans represent a demographic of employees that embrace values of hard work, high personal ethics and teamwork.
Here’s what these companies know:
Enterprise companies hire vets.
In the most recent Simply Hired data, we counted more than 923 veteran-friendly employers using our services. These companies have shown hiring practices that cater specifically to veterans and were tagged as #vetfriendly.
While this number represents .09 percent of companies advertising jobs on Simply Hired, most of these enterprise businesses with national reach, so they account for a larger cross-section of jobs. The companies accounted for over two million veteran-friendly job listings at the time of this writing, creating an incredible amount of competition for these worthy job candidates.
Veterans have incredibly flexible career capabilities.
Veteran-friendly jobs range across all industries and skills, indicating the flexible and talented nature of our country’s heroes. According to the data, here’s a sampling of the top occupations and job titles that fall under the #vetfriendly tag:
- Registered Nurses
- Software and Applications Developers
- Industrial Machinery Mechanics
- Human Resources Specialists
- Network and Computer Systems Administrators
- Medical and Health Services Managers
- Logisticians
- Child, Family and School Social Workers
If you’re in the process of hiring a new team, consider interviewing multiple veteran candidates. If you can identify qualified candidates with a veteran background, you’ll be able to build a team that is already trained in the fundamentals of teamwork and interdisciplinary communication.
Veterans have a wide variety of transferable skills.
Beyond the wide scope of career capabilities, veterans are also appealing because of their many transferable skills. Here’s a look at the top skills veterans use during their military careers that can be applied in the civilian workforce:
- Critical Thinking
- Monitoring/Assessing
- Judgment and Decision-Making
- Active Listening
- Speaking
- Complex Problem-Solving
- Social Perceptiveness
- Troubleshooting
Each of these skills is incredibly desirable and become even more valuable when combined with the others, translating into an incredibly well-rounded, committed team player.
Veterans make up an active workforce.
The veteran workforce is actively seeking employment. Over the course of one month over 170,000 applicants sought work using special searches that took into account their veteran status. This data points to an incredibly active demographic. When you’re having trouble finding interested applicants for certain job postings, consider expanding your search to entice veteran candidates.
If you’re wondering if there could be a match between your hiring needs and the local pool of veteran talent, there’s no time to find out like the present.
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