by Adam Wahlberg
October 25, 2013
EJ
Ajax owner Erick Ajax had heard all the stories about vets in the
workplace. Narrow skill set. Not a good fit in the office. Unstable.
Still, he wanted Brad McKnight, a former Marine, to join his
Fridley-based metal-forming company as a machine operator. He met
McKnight at a veterans job fair and liked his potential, thought he
could be a manager one day. His colleagues weren’t sold.
“There
was apprehension from the management team, as we had been reading about
PTSD. But we tested his aptitude, his critical thinking, his math
skills and they were superior. We worked with him for the first couple
of months on a trial-for-hire basis and he proved everybody wrong,” says
Ajax. “We just promoted him to be quality manager.”
That
was eight years ago. Ajax wasn’t just trying to be a nice guy. He had
the intuition that vets like McKnight, who was an air traffic controller
in Iraq, had the math skills and the soft skills—discipline, teamwork,
professionalism—that could help his bottom line. He can now say they
have.
The Economic Value of Employing Veterans
Accelerated Learning Curve
Veterans have the proven ability to learn new skills and concepts.
Leadership
The military trains people to lead by example as well as through direction, delegation, motivation, and inspiration.
Teamwork
Veterans
understand how genuine teamwork grows out of a responsibility to one’s
colleagues. Military duties involve a blend of individual and group
productivity.
Diversity and Inclusion in Action
Veterans
have learned to work side by side with a wide range of people,
regardless of race, gender, geographic origin, ethnic background,
religion, and economic status, as well as mental and physical
capabilities.
Efficient Performance Under Pressure
Veterans understand the rigors of tight schedules and limited resources.
Respect for Procedures
Veterans develop a unique perspective on the value of accountability.
Technology and Globalization
Because
of their experiences in the service, veterans are usually aware of
international and technical trends pertinent to business and industry.
Integrity
Veterans know what it means to do “an honest day’s work.”
Health and Safety Consciousness
Thanks to extensive training, veterans are aware of health and safety protocols both for themselves and the welfare of others.
Triumph Over Adversity
In
addition to dealing positively with typical civilian issues of personal
maturity, veterans have frequently triumphed over great adversity.
Source: Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development website
On
metrics such as absentee rates and worker output, his veteran hires,
which now number 17, outperform his civilian hires. Today he says
unequivocally, “If we have two candidates that are equal, we go with the
veteran.”
No
disagreement from the management team anymore. In fact earlier this
year he hired Curt Jasper, a former command sergeant major in the Army,
who at one time in that role had more than 1,000 people reporting to
him, to head up his human resources department. Other employers in
Minnesota are also discovering the wellspring of talent to be found in
returning post-9/11 vets.
Reasons include:
Lower turnover: U.S. Bank has found its retention rate 47 percent lower with veteran employees than with non-veterans.
Higher
aptitude: Xcel Energy has found 70 percent of vets pass its applicant
aptitude tests, compared with 45 percent of non-vets.
More
reliability: EJ Ajax’s absentee rate is 7 percent lower for veterans
than non-veterans, and the average veteran tardy rate is 39 minutes
versus 62 minutes.
So
why, then, does Minnesota continue to rank as one of the worst states
in the nation for hiring post 9/11 vets? And what’s being done to
improve matters as approximately 500 more service members are due to
return to Minnesota in 2014?
In
2012, the state had the ninth-highest unemployment rate (14.1 percent)
for post-9/11 vets, according to a U.S. Congress Joint Economic
Committee report. Compared with the state’s overall unemployment rate of
5.5 percent at the time (the ninth-lowest in the nation), Minnesota had
one of the greatest unemployment disparities between vets and non-vets.
Things were even worse two years earlier, when 22.9 percent of
Minnesota’s vets were unemployed (the third-highest rate nationally),
compared with 7.4 percent unemployment for non-vets.
These
numbers spurred action. Several commissions, coalitions, and
public-private job programs were created to help turn things around in
Minnesota. There’s no shortage of public programs available to vets.
There are approximately 1,500 websites nationwide that help veterans
find jobs, according to Jim Finley of the Department of Employment and
Economic Development (DEED).
But
what seems to be most effective in turning the tide here is the slow
changing of perceptions, and increased understanding, of veterans within
companies. The success stories coming from organizations such as Xcel,
U.S. Bank, General Mills and Ajax are making other employers take note
at a time when they also are complaining they cannot find enough
qualified talent in Minnesota through their more traditional approaches.
Some of the Misperceptions and the Realities of Hiring Post 9/11 Vets:
Concern: We’re worried vets might lose it in the workplace.
Reality:
“One of the things we’ve noticed in assessing veterans as a talent pool
is that they’re very calm under pressure and skillful at adapting to a
new environment,” says Myer Joy, a vice president at General Mills and
business unit leader for Progresso. “We look for strong leadership,
agility, and the ability to make decisions in the presence of imperfect
information. They’re really good at sifting through ambiguity and
finding good answers and aligning people around a new direction. Great
for project management.”
Concern: We’re worried vets might not fit in culturally in our workplace.
Reality:
“We hire for behaviors and experiences and leadership, and we find that
veterans fit perfectly in our environment,” says Chris Hill, director
of recruitment for U.S. Bank, noting that 3 percent of the company’s
employees are veterans and 3.4 percent of its managers are veterans.
Concern: We’re worried vets’ skills might not fit our needs.
Reality:
“We find that we can place vets in many kinds of jobs, such as
engineering, alignment, and operational management. They do great with
problem-solving and leadership. And they do well in aptitude tests,”
says Bev Brown, director of inclusion and engagement at Xcel Energy,
adding that 5.7 percent of its new hires last year were vets and its
goal is between 10 and 12 percent.
Improving
matters is a growing understanding on each side of the hiring table,
whereas before, a hiring manager and vet would often sit across a table
and be confused—or worse, put off—by each other.
“Vets
are trained to answer questions in succinct, short answers and to be
formal. To sit at attention and make direct eye contact. That can come
off as intimidating. But it’s all in the translation and understanding
each other,” Finley says.
The Translation Gap
There’s
also the matter of understanding a vet’s resume compared with those
from traditional applicants—how does one translate military experience
into corporate-speak?
“I
wasn’t even sure what to call myself on LinkedIn,” says Lori Imsdahl,
who’s two months into a job as an operations coordinator for Hennepin
Health, a division of the Human Services and Public Health Department at
Hennepin County. She has five years of leadership experience in the
Army, and two master’s degrees, one in public health and one in creative
writing (see sidebar). But she wasn’t clear on how to summarize her
skill set.
“One
of the positions I held in the Army was called the “battalion S-4.”
When I first did my resume I was putting that as a title and explaining
what it was—setting up contracts, procuring supplies, things that are
transferrable—but people would be like, ‘What is a battalion S-4?’ So
eventually I changed it to ‘logistics manager,’ ” she says.
Women Veterans Outpace Men at Finding Management Roles
In
2011, 48.7 percent of all female veterans worked in management,
professional, sales, and office occupations, compared with 34.6 percent
of male veterans.
Women veterans are the fastest-growing subset of the veteran population.
26 percent of U.S. veterans are women.
There are approximately 23,000 women veterans in Minnesota.
Source: Minnesota Department of Human Rights; National Center for Veterans Analysis and Statistics.
The
good news is that here, too, there are now myriad services helping vets
write more employer-friendly resumes. And corporations are doing more
to understand military experiences; Xcel, for example, has a military
job translator right on its website, which helps match the applicant
with the type of job the company has. “That’s a big piece of this, and
we’re still trying to crack that nut and be better about it,” Brown
says.
And more employers such as U.S. Bank are hiring vets for their higher-level skills rather than specific experiences on a resume.
With
no financial background, John Zillhardt was hired by the bank and
placed in an accelerated training program to become a bank manager
within nine months.
“The
impetus at U.S. Bank was to find adaptive, responsive, and creative
leaders to manage risk and to be able to grow the bank, and I have
experience in leadership—I was responsible for 65 personnel in my last
role with the Minnesota National Guard. But I have no subject-matter
expertise at all,” he says.
A
few months into the role, he’s candid about how it’s going. “I like it,
but I’m barely keeping my head above water because there is so much to
know. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it is a worthy challenge.”
If
there is a risk to be found in these hires, it’s not that a veteran is
likely to snap, or even tell off-color jokes. It’s more that they could
be called back to duty.
That’s
a legitimate but overrated concern, according to Josh Goudge, who
managed a section of six while in Kuwait and today manages a dozen
people as a route supervisor for Republic Recycling in Minneapolis. “The
notion that troops are risky to employ because they might be called
back to service? Well, shoot; Joe and Jenny down the street are risky to
employ, too. To me it’s almost moot.”
Meanwhile,
there remains a competitive edge for those companies that are moving
the vet unemployment needle downward in Minnesota. They’re the ones
tapping individuals with project management, leadership and
organizational discipline from this source of great talent.
For additional data about veterans in the workforce
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