Value of Veteran Recruiting Initiatives
Who are you?
John is Executive Director of NextOp, a non-profit organization whose mission is to recruit, train, and place high-performing mid-level enlisted military leaders into industry. John served in the United States Marine Corps from 1999-2007 as an infantry unit leader. His overseas assignments include Iraq, Kuwait, Syria, Jordan, Djibouti, and Kenya. In 2009 John helped found the Lone Star Veterans Association (LSVA), which has become the largest network of Post 9/11 veterans in Texas. In 2015, John worked with regional leaders to establish the Combined Arms network, a first of its kind community-based transition system built to accelerate the impact of veterans on Houston.
John holds a Bachelor’s degree from Texas A&M and a Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Houston. John is also a recipient of the prestigious Marshall Memorial Fellowship, representing the United States in eight different European countries during a month-long fellowship. As a Marshall Fellow, John has also traveled to the United Kingdom, Israel and Denmark to write comparative papers on their military transition systems and is planning to travel to Ukraine in Spring 2017 to assist in the development of their military transition infrastructure.
What do you do at NextOp?
Mostly serve as the janitor but also work with the board of directors on passing an annual budget, approving policy, setting strategic vision and authoring of 3 year strategic plan for the organization.
Serve as the chief financial officer, programs officer, development officer (fundraising), and anything that helps build the brand with military installations, corporate partners, foundations, grant making institutions, our 3 advisory boards, mentor universe, strategic partners and generally anyone who will support our veterans!
Value of Veteran Recruiting Initiatives
The value of military and veteran recruiting initiatives not only impacts working culture, safety, productivity, team orientation, and respect within an organization, learning how to recruit, train, and retain veteran employees has proven to have a significant impact on a company’s bottom line. The Corporate Executive Board recently found that veteran employees not only have a lower turnover rate than their civilian counterparts, but also have a higher productivity rate. So, veteran employees do not only save the company money but they make companies more money too!
We all know that veterans’ “soft skills” are the most sought after for companies such as showing up early, staying late, learning things faster, adapting to the mission, showing respect to supervisors, and working well in teams. Veterans also come with significant hard skills too, depending on their MOS or military occupational specialty. Although the military does not do a great job of providing civilian credentials for many of these learned skills, veterans may be able to test into mechanically and technically oriented positions right out of the military, they just need the chance to prove their value.
By developing a military or veteran recruiting initiative, companies can take advantage of these great opportunities to improve their workforce by attracting more military talent. It does not have to cost a lot either. For example, if you already have employees who are veterans, recruiting and hiring managers can activate them to attend job fairs, design military-specific marketing collateral and provide their perspective on how to best develop a veteran recruiting plan. HR professionals can also tap into expert military recruiting organizations like NextOp to source veteran candidates from regional bases and other marketing portals in the community.
There are many cost-effective solutions to recruit, train, and retain military employees into an organization such as insourcing and outsourcing – or a combination of both – to ensure your team is successful in taking advantage of America’s greatest human resource.
