Vetonomics - Episode 1: Why your company is missing out on top talent!

Hello Justin Henderson, and thank you so much. My apologies for the brief delay. This is my first foray into LinkedIn live and live streaming. So thank you all for your patience. And what we're going to do today is we're going to talk about betonomics. And betonomics is a term that I coined as a amateur economist for, for bringing data into veterans looking for employment as well as veteran job companies looking to hire military experience. So first I would talk a little bit about me and why I think that I'm worth listening to and watching once a month. First, I'm a former Marine. I was born and raised in a village about an hour south of Pittsburgh. And I talk about it being a village because there was only about 320 people in my town. And so many companies will talk to me and say, hey, we're from rural America. Will veterans want to come and work for us? And a lot of us have been born and raised in that community and we're looking to get back. So I joined the Marine Corps right out of high school and I was a motor transport operator. I joined the reserves, was there for six years and while I was there I went to the University of Pittsburgh and that's where I earned my degree in economics. And I was lucky enough that I actually spent some time in Brussels and Antwerp, Belgium at the International Management Institute where I earned my certificate in European Union business law and diplomacy. And what was really great about that, I was there for the Euro aging myself a little about a little bit. And I was able to work with small business leaders and understand that effect and also how to manage cross culturally. Like most veterans, I transitioned out and spent some time looking for a career about three years I was lucky enough to find some Marines that earned their job through Bradley Morris referred me over to Bradley Morris and the rest is history. I've been here over 15 years. In that time in my direct placement role, I've helped over 1500 veterans find employment. And then with my partnership with Recruit Military, I've helped thousands of veterans through our career fairs, my publications, my speeches, things like that. But what is vetanomics and why? Watch this. So again, what I'm trying to use is I'm trying to leverage data to guide us to one, the veteran job seeker to understand how they stand against their peers, where the needs are in the economy so they can leverage their experience properly but also for the job seek for the hiring authority out of corporate America, understanding how to leverage that experience, how to engage that audience and really maximize those I don't say soft skills. I say human skills that the military gives you. You know, I feel like the term soft skills really dehumanizes the process. And if you want to hire a veteran, it has to be human engagement. So those human skills that really make us stand out. So we want to talk about how to attract military talent. And what does that experience mean to you? Also, the term for vettenomics is the economy. You know, understanding what is happening in our economy, how those shifts and those dynamic shifts we gone for the last year, how they're going to impact either your job search or your ability to attract military talent. You have to understand the battle space you're in. So we're going to talk a little bit about the numbers now, which is getting into the unemployment rate. And I think, you know, one of my favorite interview questions is, where do you see yourself at three to five years? I think if you're asked that question in 2019, I don't think any of us would have said, hey, we went from a 3% unemployment rate to a 9% unemployment rate to an average of 6.5% unemployment rate for veterans in 2020. What is also a major shift that nobody saw coming was the rebound. We had 943,000 new jobs filled in July, and the unemployment rate shifted dramatically. As you can see, in August, our national unemployment rate moved from 5.8% to 5.4% or 5.9% to 5.4. So a half a percentage point drop in one month is almost unheard of. But again, we're in something that hasn't happened in over 100 years. You can expect these dramatic shifts. What was really interesting to me was the shift that happened from the veteran standpoint. They've gone from 4.8% unemployment to 3.9% unemployment. So what that shows you is that corporate America sees the value. It's not just the hard skills we have, but it's those human skills that they're really looking for, operating safely, strong leadership capabilities, and in environments like we're going through right now, and really that ability to build culture. One thing that I am seeing more than I have before is the way corporate America is valuing culture. What we're seeing right now is those organizations with a really strong culture are able to retain their talent because they're focusing on the human skills, not just those hard skills. And those companies that have had a really bad culture, especially last year are really having some hard times right now retaining talent and attracting talent. And what you're seeing in that latter group, they're trying to use pay to overcome that culture hurdle. So as a job seeker, you want to be wary of that and be understanding of culture because we know it's all important. Leaving that tight knit culture and that mission focus to the military, you want to make sure you're landing somewhere where you still have that belief, you still have that strong culture. So, and some of the statistics we're seeing as well now, first, I don't want to talk about anything that I personally can't quantify. So that being said, what I'm going to do is I'm going to use the recruitmilitary.com job board because of just the volume of candidates that we get through that job board, through our 120plus job fairs. That's a large enough data point for us to say, okay, out of these 80 to 100 plus thousand veterans that have went through this program in the last 12 months, that's a good enough sample size for us to extrapolate that out throughout the community. To give you an idea, there are about 200 to 250 veterans or military professionals that transition every year. And to give you an idea of that, that is compared to 3.9 million college graduates in 2020. So when you're looking at your replenishing workforce, you have 3.9 million college graduates coming out. You have about 250,000 veterans. Veterans right now make up 10% of our U.S. population, 7% of our U.S. workforce. So if you think about that number, we're just under about 11 million citizens. We have a 3.9% unemployment rate. And you can extrapolate the data from there. So who's getting out and what do these numbers look like? You could probably see this and this doesn't isn't a big surprise for anybody that's served their country or really study this. 48% of the registrants on our job board are from the Army. It's the largest branch of service. And then the other three services branches, Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, about that, 18 to 17 and then Marine Corps, the smallest, one of the smallest branches, 12 there is a coast Guard that there wasn't enough of those numbers really to put a dent on this pie graph. But we do have some Coasties as well for any of those listening today. And then what is the status of these people? The separation of course is the largest group. You're getting retirees. Those are people that are either medically retired, injured at work, that have retired because they've done their 20 plus years of service. Another thing that we're also looking at that not everybody takes into account when you're looking at your veteran hiring, but your military spouse. The military spouse is a high performing individual who has had to put their spouse's career at the forefront. And when you're in the military, you're relocating every three to four to six years. So when you have a military spouse, you have to understand their resume may look like a job hopper, but it's only because they have to relocate when their spouse does. I will tell you, one of the great benefits of COVID is the remote work. As you can see, I'm not working in an office, I'm working from my house and something I've done for several years, but has become more of the norm. The savvy companies are using those remote opportunities to attract top talent like military spouses that can have a true career no matter where their military spouse takes them. So something really to think about as you're looking at your veteran outreach. And also something important to know is the ranks and understanding, you know, what level of experience are you looking to target for your military hires? And what we're doing is we're using the E and O and W monikers for the rank. Every branch of service has a different name for that rank. But for simplicity sake, we're just going to walk through with the E, whatever, O, hyphen, whatever wife. So E stands for enlisted. That is somebody like myself that joined the military right out of high school, goes right into an individual contributor role and then works their way up. And you'll see that pyramid of leadership in the military, it's almost exactly the same as what we're seeing on our job board. Those E1s, E2s, that's pretty much going through training. Three months, six months as an E1, you become an E2, nine months as an E2, you become an E3. After that you, you need to actually get promoted. So those E4s are well rounded and performing well within their MOS, their military occupational specialty. Hey, they're good at their job. Those E5s are showing that next level of performance and then that E6 depending on the branch of service. That's when you start getting that lead tech leadership role. So those are your hands on leaders, your technical leaders, your logistics leaders, whatever it may be. Then E7, E8, E9, those are your supervisors, managers, directors. As you can see, those numbers are going down because the number of those people in the military are a lot less than those E3, E4s, E5s, E6s and E9 is the highest rank you can get on the enlisted side. And same with the officer. You have a small pyramid of leadership. The junior military officer is really the one running the day to day operations. Those are O2s, O3s and then molding into those O4s and really what you're finding, if you're looking for frontline leadership and you want to leverage that leadership that the military gives and trains in our officers, those O2, O3s, those are boots on the ground, getting it done. The further away you go from that. 0405 06, that's more of that organizational based leadership, not that boots on the ground type leadership on the officer side. And go up to 09, that's your four star general. We don't even have that listed. We don't get them, they don't need us. And then the W is the warrant officer. So those are pilots. Like our CEO Tim Best was a army little bird Special Forces attack helicopter pilot. So he was a warrant officer. And then those are also your product specialists, your SMEs within a subject. So an MOS is a military occupational specialty, a job title. If you're a warrant officer within that job title, that means you're an SME. Hey, you're a strong leader and you're extremely proficient in that rate. So somebody definitely something to look for. If you're looking for trainers, somebody to run a program or leadership, they're phenomenal in leadership roles as well. And another thing that we're looking at as well is we want to see where their work interests are. So as far as corporate America, this is really important because you want to understand your battle space. Hey, are veterans really looking to get into our space and if so, where do I find them? This is important. What we're seeing is a lot of times when they come out of the military, we don't know what we don't know. So as we're filling out for these job boards, we're saying, hey, I know I'm a good operational leader. Aerospace, defense, industry, transportation, holistics, logistics. We move bombs, bullets, band aids, food, all over the world. One thing that's really good that we're seeing in which we know corporate America has a deficit in is the it. We're seeing a lot of that, more a lot of administrative leadership operations. Now I will tell you, we have operations listed as a large bubble that's covering manufacturing as well. You know what we're seeing majorly from 2019 to now that, that major shift that happened in April, May of 2020, where we went from a service driven country to a product driven country, meaning people that had expendable income, they used that on restaurants, hotels, vacations, the services side of life. Well, when we were locked down and we couldn't go anywhere, what happened? The money was burning a hole in your pocket. What'd you do? You bought stuff. You bought a new fridge, a new dryer. I may have bought a virtual reality machine for me and the kids, things like that. So what happened was those services, the hotels, cruise liners, everything else may have slowed down, but manufacturing boomed because we're buying more things. Distribution centers boomed because they were shipping more things. And then what we're seeing come through as an ancillary effect is field service to maintain the equipment inside those manufacturing sites and the customer service that is also goes along. So if you're part of that group, you're going to be really happy about this. Are the operations, the transportation, the customer service, the leadership, the admin, all that's going in for you. And then we talk about degrees. So what's really good with the degrees is as one, if you're an officer, you have to have a four year degree to become an officer. If you're enlisted like I was, the military is becoming so competitive. To get to that E7, E8, E9 rank, you must have to have a bachelor's degree. And a lot of those E89s have master's degree. And it's because the GI Bill is so robust and the military is so competitive for those slots. So what you'll see is, hey, if we're in the IT cyber field, we're going to get those type of degrees. Army Corps of Engineers, we've got mechanical engineers, aerospace engineers come out of the academies a lot. So you'll see that. But then you'll see a lot of business administration. What we're doing is, hey, I know, kind of like me, I have an economics degree. I didn't know if that would work or not. It was a passion of mine. I just knew that if I earned a four year degree, I was more marketable in corporate America. So you're seeing a lot of degrees there. They may not be specific into the role or industry you're looking for, but know that the military doesn't do that. The military looks at the human skills and capabilities of that person and says, you can do this job, go do it. Corporate America uses the college degree as a barrier to entry, saying, yes, you've been educated in this field. Therefore you are competent in it and you can do it. So if you're doing veteran hiring and veteran recruiting, I implore you to not look at the degree first, look at the experience first. Because if you find the experience is relevant and right, have the conversation with that veteran. Remember, conversations are what when in veteran hiring. So have that conversation with that person. Get a deeper understanding of what they've accomplished so that you can see if they are a good fit. And here's another one is I think is really important is where do veterans want to live? This is something that somebody that works with companies across the country have to have them understand. What I want to do next month is actually walk through the veteran population of each state so that you can understand really what populace you have locally to hunt in and talk to and really get on board. But as you can see, part of its population density. California is just a huge state. Texas, a huge state. Florida, I don't know what it is, but every army retiree wants to move to Tampa. So you'll see some of it. You'll see a lot of Florida as well. But also it's duty stations. We've got Jacksonville, Mayport, North Carolina has Lejeune and Bragg and some other bases. Texas has some bases there. So. But what you find is mostly mid Atlantic, southeast, west coast, warmer weather. They do like the retirees really enjoy states that don't tax their military retirement. And then again, just following on the majors that we're seeing come out of here, a lot of it as we are ramping up. You're seeing the news. It is a new battle space and a fastly growing battle space in the military. So we're getting a lot more veterans that are getting that education, those certifications to catch up to that. Also you'll see criminal justice and psychology. Again, we know what we know, we don't know what we don't know. So we know that, hey, I'm an mp, I'm an infantry person, I'm in the military. Criminal justice is something I'm kind of living and breathing every day. It's a degree that I can get. Get that piece of paper. So when I go out in corporate America, I can check the box that I have a degree. That doesn't mean that they're going to be a police officer as soon as they get out. Same with psychology. Same with, you know, some of the other ones. But now those more focused, HR management, project management. I'll tell you, project management is a big role that is really good to grab a veteran because that gives them a broader site picture of the company and lets them quickly learn about the client interaction, customer interaction that is like who's paying the bills and whose products they're buying them from and a deep understanding of the company quick. Especially we're hiring a military officer or leader. A project management role is a great way to start them into a leadership path within the company again because you're giving them a wide berth and a wide sick site picture of what the company is. And that's really a quick, quick overview of what we're going to do. Like I said, I am hoping to have this every Friday, the first Friday of every month. And the goal behind that is we have the jobs report comes out 9 o' clock Eastern standard. I'll launch at 1 o' clock on that day and we'll dissect what those numbers look like from a national employment perspective to a veteran employment perspective. We'll jump into where we see the growth rates coming. Right now it's a lot of field service, a lot of manufacturing, a lot of distribution centers. But what we're seeing as the, as the economy continues to open up in different sectors, we're seeing a lot of services coming open, we're seeing a lot of hotels, travel, you name it. Those companies involved in that industry are coming quickly in hiring. So hopefully this was helpful. Like I said next, the first Friday of September we're going to go through the actual numbers per state of veterans that are working age, working veterans. So you have an understanding of what you're looking at and also understanding that we're 7% of the US populace, we're 3.9% unemployment rate. So we're highly sought after for a reason. It's those human skills that we bring. And I also want to talk to you next time about defining that cornerstone experience in a job description so you understand how to maximize and leverage what the veteran has accomplished in the military. Hey, what does that must have to get them in the front door so that we can leverage the military experience. Anything above that, you may be going into an experience based search. And when it's 3.9%, there's not much experience on the shelf, it's only talent. So you want to make sure you're targeting talent and not leveraging experience. One of my favorite conversations to have is with a maintenance manager and they say, hey, we need a maintenance team. They have to have X amount of experience in corporate America, blah blah blah, all these different requirements experience. I say okay, close your eyes, think about what, what people on your team match that experience, that if they left tomorrow, you wouldn't cry. Okay, that's the person we can get for you. And what I say by that is make sure you don't create too much experience requirements to where you're lowering that talent bar. Remember the human skills, what makes you and I high performers is really what we want to leverage. We want to grab that high performer, make sure they have those cornerstone skill sets to get in the job and start the job. But somebody that's, that's naturally curious is going to develop on their own. So thank you again so much for the, the comments and thank you for joining me again. It's Justin Henderson. Please, please reach out to me on LinkedIn with any comments, any questions, anything you think that I can supply to you for the next one. I'm looking for your feedback to get better at this. So if there's any data you'd like me to dive into, industry job specific, veteran specific, please do. Thank you all so much. Enjoy the rest of your day and have a great weekend.