Top 10 Fails of Military Recruiting [part 2]
Welcome back! I don’t always follow through with my promises to publish more, but when I do, i hope it’s worth your time. This post continues my train of thought … lifting from my experience in corporate recruitment and military transition some of the most serious blockers to launching and sustaining a successful recruitment program. If you haven’t read #1–5, be sure to link back, though
FAIL #6: Failure to tap your internal word of mouth network
The military community is a small world. Yes, there are a lot of people in the military community spread all across the globe — both those in service and their families, and they are constantly on the move. Yet, as many of my fellow vets will confirm, word spreads rapidly, and it spreads primarily through word-of-mouth … and social networks have only accelerated the speed. What this means is that your brand reputation will travel ahead of your marketing and outreach efforts. Good news travels … but in the modern world of hyper-criticism … bad news — bad service — bad interview experiences — bad representation at a job fair — low offer rates — low offers … they will travel like lightspeed.
Have you recently hired newly transitioned veterans? Have you treated them well? Are they engaged in their new roles? — enlist their support (pun intended of course) in reaching back into that network while it is still fresh.
The veteran network is not nearly so robust … when veterans get together, however, they tend to bond very quickly and information like always will travel in those interactions. Additionally, your veteran employees will know how to access and connect to their active and reserve communities in authentic ways.
One additional note … military spouses — not only are they a great addition to your workforce (yes they will likely transition out in a few years) but having hired thousands of them I will tell you with certainty that they are as a group over-educated, over-prepared, and will hit the ground running and work hard and effectively until they transition. They are a significant part of this vital and vibrant network. If you haven’t connected your military spouse employees with your recruiting efforts, you are missing out on a significant internal resource and competitive advantage.
FAIL #7: Failure to incorporate veterans on your recruiting teams
I’ve seen two primary ways that veteran recruiting programs are structured: A single Director for military recruitment — usually reporting to your diversity recruitment manager or perhaps directly to your VP of Recruitment or HR. I’ve also seen veteran recruiting as an added responsibility for a segment of your existing team … that is a group tasked with attending the “military stuff and events.” The first instance is pretty common for new programs … someone higher up suggests that the company start a veteran recruiting program and so a veteran is hired to run it, they are given a modest budget … they might have prior experience in military recruiting (recruiting into the military) or in Personnel — and they are generally tasked with handling interviews or candidates with a military background and representing the organization at “military stuff and events.” The second instance is more common in organizations that operate in fairly close proximity to military installations, and who naturally receive a solid volume of applicants from the military.
“Your veteran employees will know how to access and connect to their active and reserve communities in authentic ways.”
I would suggest that neither of those approaches are effective. I recall a not-too-distant conversation with a large company who took the first path in establishing a new military recruitment program. They found a form Army Medic who was good with people and put them in charge of building their military recruitment program. The Director I spoke with proudly shared their process where “all military resumes” were filtered to this individual who would “translate” them for hiring managers. I was glad that we were on the phone and they couldn’t see my face. “So what types of positions do you hire?” the reply … “mostly diesel technicians.”
Expecting that the “token military representative” on your recruiting team is going to have the knowledge to accurately translate all military experience for your organization is …. Well it’s ludicrous. Please don’t do that.
Instead, I recommend you hire military with prior recruiting experience as part of your total recruiting team … you assign them requisitions like you do … not just military requisitions put positional requisitions and you let those team members interact with everyone on your recruiting team … let them learn, let them share … allow their knowledge and insight to flow into your recruiting efforts in an authentic and natural way through team dialogue and problem solving that comes with working together toward a goal. This is how the military works and while it will not seem as fast, you’ll have a far more authentic and effective program before the year is out.
FAIL #8: Failure to help quantify their experience
Yes, you’re a big bad recruiter … yes you have thousands of resumes coming your way every day … yes you don’t have the time of day to help someone get their act together … yes the majority of military resumes are terrible … yes, newly transitioning military candidates often have terrible interviewing skills. Yes, I’ve been there and I totally get it. End of the day… your job is to get the best — first for each and every position. And you are supposed to be developing a pipeline of qualified and promising candidates. You have an applicant tracking system to handle much of the tedious work — no more paper resumes — less scheduling nightmares. A military candidate is not an entry-level candidate …. They are skilled and they are trained. The Department of Defense invests billions of dollars annually in their training … you would be amazed if you knew how much of military time is spent just training. The challenge for them is that in order to advance they have to prove their skill mastery and prove themselves … not write some pointed narrative with high density-key words and pithy action-statements.
“Expecting that the ‘token military representative’ on your recruiting team is going to have the knowledge to accurately translate all military experience for your organization is …. Well it’s ludicrous.”
Far too often what I have observed in recruiting efforts in general is what I refer to a professional laziness … you or your team wait for the candidates to figure your system out … to get the words right … to write, say or communicate the right things. It’s the modern equivalent of the legend you may have heard of the Ford hiring process [there are a number of stories that are likely just legend but this is the one that was offered to me] … where they would take a candidate out and buy them pie … if they ate it crust first they were hired, if not they were not because, “those that ate the crust were willing to get the unpleasant things out of the way first.” I know plenty of hiring managers that have “tricks” like this and every trick I’ve ever heard of was more idiotic than the last … I love crust and save it for the end. If your recruiting team relies proudly on cheap tricks rather than doing the work to figure out what a person has done and is capable of doing based on their record …. If your team is unable to correlate or find similarities between work activities across positions or industries then you are going to lose the battle for the best. Veterans don’t want a hand out — but they do want to interact with a recruiting process that actually employees the power of a human mind.
— — sorry … got a little bit passionate there.
FAIL #9: Falling prey to stigmas
I recall a meeting with a CFO who told me point-blank that I should slow down my military hiring initiatives because of the likely impact it would have on our long-term-disability premiums.
Yes …. That conversation actually happened — if you’re reading this you know who you are. It is the single most shocking thing I’ve heard in nearly two decades of military recruiting. And worse … I don’t think it is uncommon. Oh, you will likely never have someone actually say that to you … but I believe the sentiment still exists because the pervasive view of a veteran (while far superior to the post-vietnam era stigma — Thank you Vietnam vets!) is that they are broken … used up … and more likely to become ill, injured or violent. This view is sickening and it is false. Veterans are better-off for having served. We bring experience and skillsets and levels of leadership and responsibility that simply cannot be simulated or developed in the civilian workplace. And if I have learned anything at all it is that the military does better at developing personal resilience than any other profession. They have to, our lives and liberties depend upon it.
“I recall a meeting with a CFO who told me point-blank that I should slow down my military hiring initiatives because of the likely impact it would have on our long-term-disability premiums.”
When you set up a veteran program … do not set it up for those that are “broken.” Set it up with the assumption that everyone going through that program is intent on being the next CEO …because that is far more likely the truth.
FAIL #10: Failure to think outside the ATS
The Applicant Tracking System is a modern marvel of engineering and artificial intelligence. It is capable of parsing narrative in countless languages, handling thousands of applications and candidates and schedules with ease and delivering sophisticated reports and analysis… and in light of the applicant tracking rules and compliance requirements it is also a necessary evil.
It is, however, probably the worst part of your entire process from a candidate’s point of view. “Wait, I just uploaded my resume and now I have to put everything in my resume into this online form as well?” “Wait, your system only parses text documents?” “I got an auto-response but haven’t heard from a human being …. Ever?”
Is your overwhelmed recruiting team hiding behind your technology? Have you even set it up fully? Let me offer a different view of your ATS …. It is your compliance tool. Period. Your recruiters and your hiring managers are your recruiting team … not this chunk of code. And while you may be spending a solid fulltime salary license fees for this thing, it is probably killing your military recruiting effectiveness simply because while it may translate Spanish, French, Japanese, or even Mandarin, it does not speak military or translate military. I would also suggest that if your recruiting team is reliant upon your ATS for its applicant pool, then you have a team of order takers not recruiters.
I ran an analysis of 100,000 resumes and their relative scoring by our ATS and found that resumes with military experience scored 50% lower than equally qualified peers with civilian resumes. What did this mean? Our ATS was a significant source of vulnerability for de-selection bias. Having been on both sides of a federal audit, I would caution all recruiting departments to take a serious look at their ATS … and to recommend that you are probably not only missing out on great candidates, but are very possibly opening yourself up to trouble if the ATS is the center of your recruiting process rather than just the enabling technology that it is designed to be.
BONUS: FAILURE to move beyond compliance
This brings me to a final added bonus! If your military recruiting program exists for the sole purpose of meeting compliance requirements … then please let your candidates know. I know .. you can’t actually do that … you would never actually say that … but the fact that there are organizations who have military recruiting programs with no real value placed on military experience and no actual desire to hire candidates with military experience creates tremendous market confusion … it leads to underemployment … it wastes time … derails careers … it does tremendous damage to the veteran and military community.
If I had a wish for legislation that would never pass … it would be to allow organizations to openly and freely opt out of military hiring requirements. There are plenty of phenomenal organizations that are dedicated to being Better for Veterans — hopefully yours is one of them.
