Adaptability, Discipline and Experience: Why Veterans Are Model Employees

476519673In today’s rapidly evolving technical marketplace, organizations and employers are placing more focus than ever before on selecting well-rounded, knowledgeable candidates for their open positions. These candidates must not only offer technical expertise to successfully conduct the job duties, but also a comprehensive track-record of industry experience, versatility and discipline. In today’s often crowded job market, military veterans have continually stood out as model employees who often have a leg up on the general population across industries, fields and geographic markets.

So what is it exactly that veterans bring to employers that make them so valuable? It’s a combination of three major areas:

  • Maturity and Adaptability— training and experience in team work, as well as holding positions as both leaders and followers, veteran hires are typically collaborative members of an organization who know how to “play well with others” to accomplish specific goals and objectives;
  • Discipline and Focus — an innate sense of rule-following and procedural organization to accomplish a mission both on-time and on-budget is a cornerstone of a veteran’s military training, as well as a great background for project/program management roles; and
  • Practical, On-the-Job Experience — with many veterans holding critical, potentially life-altering positions over their military careers, as employees, they are no stranger to the sacrifice and dedication often required to get a job done.

In addition to these qualities, employers can be assured that when they bring a veteran on-board, for the most part, they are getting a mature, experienced and grounded individual with significant practical experience with sometimes stressful and intense situations. As highly-technical expertise is a mainstay of the majority of today’s military training and employment, many veterans also possess the “hard skills” that are needed to succeed in a number of key positions. Above all, these factors result in far higher percentages of successful outcomes from veteran hires when compared with their average civilian counterparts.

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In today’s job market and larger economy, particularly over the last five years, there has been a surge in hiring veterans for many of the reasons named above, particularly within the commercial and nonprofit market sectors. Veterans have truly benefited from the wealth of resources, such as job fairs, networking events, and job searching portals specifically tailored to veterans, to help them translate their hard skills gained from their military experience into the civilian workforce.A key trend we expect to see continue over the next several years is the presence of veteran hires across commercial and civilian industries, largely as a result of the military continuing to slowly decrease in size.

Armed with measurable skills, maturity, discipline, and practical experience, the employment future continues to be bright for veterans across the United States as they transition into either the public or private sectors. For employers, the increasing number of qualified, eager veterans provide a unique opportunity to more confidently on-board candidates with the knowledge that their past training and experience has prepared them for success and achievement in all aspects of the civilian workforce.

MORE: Hiring veterans is very smart

Robert Williams

Robert Williams
Robert Williams is the CEO of Vector Technical Resources, a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) IT staff augmentation firm. Williams retired from the United States Navy in 2006 after 28 years and 8 months of active service.

Robert Williams

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