A fortunate development in corporate America has been the broad consensus that veterans can add tremendous value to an organization.
Nearly every Fortune 500 company now seems to have a veteran hiring program of some kind, and many even have veteran-specific leadership development pipelines.
This is a welcome improvement from the cold treatment Vietnam-era vets received and I suspect these programs have had a high-ROI for the many corporations that have invested in them. It’s a classic “win-win”!
Generally, these programs are focused on recruiting middle-management talent and, for the most part, this cohort consists of junior military officers with 4-8 years of service or staff non-commissioned officers with 8-12 years of service.
For simplicity we will call these folks “Junior Military Leaders” or “JMLs”.
But, my observation is that a larger segment of the economy- the Lower Middle Market (or LMM) – is more or less missing out.
For the sake of simplicity, we will define the LMM as consisting of those private enterprises with revenues between $20-$100 million.
I am sure they exist somewhere, but I have yet to run across a LMM company with an active veteran hiring program.
This is not surprising.
Businesses at this scale simply do not hire entry-level middle managers at a velocity that would justify the time and expense of a formal program.
However, this does not mean that these smaller enterprises cannot tap into the same talent their larger cousins are enjoying.
They just need to be a bit more refined and efficient in their approach.
Over the past seven years my business partner and I have personally recruited and hired nine JMLs into LMM leadership positions – examples range from a division president responsible for a $7M EBITDA P&L to a line supervisor managing ten direct reports.
Some quick recollection puts our success rate with those hires at 78%.
Of note, the two “misses” were both results of ignoring rule #1 provided below.
Admittedly, the sample size is small, but I will take that win rate any day of the week.
While there likely is some luck involved, we believe this success is due to three factors that are easy to replicate (in order of importance):
Yep, this does actually make sense in an article about hiring veterans!
Multiple studies have observed that turnover for veterans in their first post-military job is abnormally high.
The reasons are obvious:
These programs, which are meant to prepare service members for the private sector, are largely developed and taught by people who have not spent a day in a private sector job. Furthermore, any useful information or training is directed towards junior enlisted members (as it very much should be) and is not relevant to departing JMLs.
Transitioning JMLs often have a very skewed view of the private sector
This is especially-so of large-cap corporate America. They believe when they join these companies their days of frustrating bureaucracy, inefficiency and paternalistic overlords are behind them. When they find this is not the case, they can become disillusioned, and they move on.
Transitioning military members often select for short-term optimization
Moving back home, taking the highest starting salary without understanding variable compensation, or moving close to a girlfriend are all common short-term priorities that often lead to suboptimal job selections.
We have found that a good “inflection point” is to recruit them away from larger companies two-three years into their first job.
At this point, these veterans have had time to figure out what they are truly optimizing for long-term and are keenly aware of what they want to avoid in their next role.
Not surprisingly, this leads to higher retention.
Some additional benefits of this two-three year period are more developed practical skill sets (CRM, Excel, etc), an appreciation and understanding of variable compensation, and some valuable time adapting their military leadership experience to the nuances of the civilian worldBy hiring at this point, you let Amazon and Exxon foot the bill for the awkward transition period, and you get to enjoy the long-term upside of a great leadership hire.
You will likely pay extra for this hire given the additional work experience, but the ROI on this incremental compensation investment will be huge.
Civilians simply cannot interpret a military resume.
Military jargon and poor resume crafting make the task nearly impossible. To make the point, I have provided below a hypothetical resume line item for a Marine Corps Captain with eight years’ service. I then provide my interpretation as a veteran juxtaposed with a likely civilian interpretation:
“Created and supervised a realistic live-fire training exercise for 700 personnel as the Battalion Assistant Training Officer. This complex training included coordinating heavy machine guns, mortars and artillery fire over the course of 48 hours.”
Civilian Interpretation: “Wow! Sounds like project manager material!”
Veteran Interpretation: “Why in the world was this guy a Battalion S-3A at that point in his career? This guy is either incompetent or he decided the date the wrong Colonel’s daughter”
By getting veterans in your organization involved in the process you can quickly filter resumes and read between the lines of military career progression.
There are also some significant nuances between the services. If possible, try and have a veteran from the same service review resumes early on.
If you do not currently have veterans in your organization – fear not! You can leverage investors, fellow executives or other people in your business network to get a military-trained eye to review resumes.
After two-three years in corporate America, many JMLs are craving the autonomy and culture of accountability they experienced leading small or medium-sized teams in the military.
Above all else, they miss having direct subordinates that they can truly lead and mentor.
As a small, nimble and efficient organization you can provide this in spades. Lean into this and not away from it. Being smaller is your advantage so communicate it!
OK, admittedly, our data set is limited, and our experience is somewhat narrow in scope.
However, we believe strongly that the above approach will allow other LMM enterprises to achieve similar success rates when taping into the veteran talent pool.
Over time, we hope the LMM can achieve a human capital “win-win” on par with their large-cap cousins.
We certainly plan to continue this approach!
