Besides patriotism, why do employers love hiring veterans?
Everyone knows that it is patriotic to hire veterans, and there are generous tax credits available for doing so, but there are even more compelling reasons that veterans make desirable employees at all levels of your company.
Taylor Justice is the Co-Founder and Chief Business Officer at Unite US, a company which was designed by veterans to aid fellow veterans during their transition from active duty to civilian life, the Match.com for vets, if you will. Justice is a veteran himself, serving in the US Army after graduating from West Point. After his military service, he is finishing his MBA at the Columbia Business School’s executive program and is a partner and co-founder of his ?rst entrepreneurial venture HigherEchelon.
Top 7 reasons vets are a hot hire
Justice is well versed in what makes veterans stand out, and below, in his own words, he outlines some of the skills veterans have that they may not have had without their military experience.
- Empowering Leaders – Veterans make leaders better. Leadership isn’t just about leading subordinates but also anticipating the needs of your boss or team. It’s easy while managing multiple tasks for leaders to get side tracked; Veterans have knack for keeping meetings, team members and communication on task.
- Resiliency – Developing the intangible mental assets of service members is required military training. Resiliency training allows veterans to control their energy to make smart decisions and perform on demand in stressful situations and in any environment.
- Improvisation and Visualization – Every veteran understands your first plan will most likely change, and are trained to visualize how plans can be successful and how they can fail. This training has taught them to always have a contingency plan and rely on plans B, C or D if things happen to fall off the rails.
- Dedication to Ideology – Veterans buy-in to the mission, they embed the vision and mission of the organization into the fabric of their being. Due to their dedication veterans are able to formalize strategies and implement actions that will always benefit the team or company. However, Veterans won’t follow blindly, there must be purpose behind the company or leader’s ideology.
- Cause & Effect – Veterans are aware of the various potential outcomes of actions taken and the effects the outcomes will have on the team or organization. Veterans try to think a few steps ahead to put the organization in the best position for success.
- Practical – With their ultimate goal of helping the team and organization succeed, a veteran’s humility allows them to take on the most trivial tasks because they are aware that those tasks are just as important as the larger ones.
- Backwards Planning – This is the essential tool used for all military personnel. They are taught to initially ask ‘what is the desired outcome?’ and from there work backwards to put a step-by-step plan together to get to the desired outcome.
