Veterans: The New In-Demand Talent Pool
Businesses across the country are discovering veterans’ enormous leadership potential– and are moving quickly to hire this talent.
While the national unemployment rate is at a very low 4.2%, the veteran unemployment rate dropped to an astonishingly low 3.0% in September, reaching its lowest level since 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
There’s a good reason that companies are eager to hire veterans. It’s not just a patriotic decision– it’s a smart business decision, too. Consider this: closing a major deal or solving a last-minute client crisis can certainly be stressful, but these scenarios don’t hold a candle to what a veteran managed in combat. When you hire a veteran, you hire an experienced leader with a relentless drive to achieve, unprecedented composure under pressure, and the ultimate team player mentality.
3 Reasons Why Companies Benefit from Veteran Hiring
As Vice President for Lucas Group’s Military Transition Division, and a former Air Force officer, I’ve had the privilege of working with thousands of talented, driven veterans who demonstrate leadership readiness at every level.
- Relentless drive to achieve. Veterans understand that to be a successful leader, you must clearly define goals for yourself and your team and then apply the highest degree of discipline and focus to achieving these goals. Veterans genuinely understand the importance of responsibility and accountability to their team and their employer. Years of military training have instilled in veterans an innate ability to be assigned a task and execute this task with minimum to no guidance. When there is no clear precedent or path forward, veterans make one.
- Composure under pressure. To say that veterans excel under pressure is an understatement. Even with the guidance of military operating procedures, military leaders must make life-changing decisions in the face of unprecedented pressure every day. On a mission, results are non-negotiable. Veterans know how to stay calm under pressure because the lives of their team quite literally depend upon it.
- The ultimate team player. One of the first leadership tenets the military teaches is that to become a good leader, one must first be a good follower. Veterans work in a highly team-oriented and hierarchical environment. This means they know when to give orders and when to take them. Whether it’s moving supplies through hostile territory or leading a combat mission, they know how to build, motivate and mobilize teams that deliver results.