Vetonomics - Episode 2: Attracting Military & Spouse Talent

Hello everyone. Justin Henderson here at Recruit Military in Bradley Morris. Thank you all for joining me in episode number two, Vetanomics. So I guess we're officially a series. There's two of them now. But really excited to jump into the August jobs numbers and tell you what we're seeing. If anybody has looked ahead and looked at report was definitely different than I think a lot of us were expecting. But also as we look at this, there are some really good insights. So again, thank you so much for joining. Give my background. I'm a former Marine, as you could probably tell from my background, and I was motor transport operator, so truck driver in the marine Corps for six years. And then I've been doing this for over 15 years. And why I think this is insightful is I really want to educate not just hiring authorities in corporate America, but also veteran job seekers on where, from a veteran standpoint, really where your value is so that you can get the most bang for your buck from your military experience. And I know, at least for me, when I transitioned out, I wasn't quite sure what that experience converted into. And then from corporate America, you know, I speak to recruiters, talent acquisition, HR professionals every day, as well as hiring managers, and the economy has pivoted so fast that, you know, I feel bad for those recruiters and talent acquisition professionals right now because it's moving so fast. As you're trying to educate yourself and get ahead of it, you're also trying to educate those hiring managers and let them understand the battle space you're operating in. So hopefully this episode will give you some insights and some data points to help influence those hiring decisions and really show the true value of military experience. So again, thank you so much for taking the time to watch me. And let's jump right in. So again, Veteranomics September, the September episode, I'm excited. And let's run through the numbers. So first of all, when we walk through our numbers for August, it was interesting to see that our national unemployment rate, which was 5.4% in August, has moved down to 5.2%. So that's great. You know, what we're really hoping to do is get under that 5. Once we get under 5%, we're getting close to that full employment marker. What's really interesting, that for you, that had followed last month, veteran unemployment went down almost a full point. In July, we went from 4.8% to 3.9, which was just amazing to see. And we still ticked down another, we're down to 3.8%, which is again Just amazing. I feel like again what I'm hearing out there from corporate America is that our, what they call soft skills, what I call human skills, are being more valued. People are understanding. That's not all about do you understand? Can you do a pivot table in Excel? It's no. Do you have the, are you naturally curious? Do you have the discipline to go find those answers and learn? So I think our experience is more valued now than it has been in the 15 years I've been doing this. And even to show that what's been really interesting is look at 2020. You know, our unemployment rate for veterans was 6.5% and we've quickly moved it down to 3.8. And I know me and my teammates are really proud of the really small part we've played in that. But a reason that we wake up every day for it and our excitement is to help our customers, which is really the job seeking veteran and those hiring authorities looking to get them. What's really interesting is where these jobs were coming from. You know, where were people hired in August? I know me personally, the, the manufacturing part, I was not surprised by at all. We saw the, we saw manufacturing continue to boom as well as transportation and warehouses. What's really interesting is because we, the people that would go on vacation, hop on a plane, that would go out to restaurants, go golfing, whatever it is, those monies aren't being spent there currently. They're being spent on buying new appliances, buying a new tv, buying new things. So manufacturing of course is increasing and with that comes transportation and warehousing. And of course corporate America is reviving. So you're seeing those professional business services. I think what was really surprising to me was right here, leisure and hospitality, you see barely any growth yet our hotels are opening up. Anybody that's gone out to eat lately will see how many of us have seen that sign on the front door of a restaurant. Please be patient with the staff that could show up today. The hotels, the restaurants, the customer facing roles are really in dire straits right now. And I think that has a couple things. One is what those people are paid. Traditionally, wages grew 4.3% year over year to the point our non farm hourly rates rose 17 cents last month. So the average hourly rate for those roles is $30.73 an hour. The private sector for production, think manufacturing, where the majority of these jobs are coming in and even the distribution centers would qualify. Those rose 14 cents to now 2599 an hour. So again, going back to those recruiters, talent Acquisition professionals that are trying to capture talent and bring them in the front door. Your compensation rates that worked in 2020, 2019, just might not be relevant anymore. And I understand how hard that is to bring it up the chain of command and tell your supervisors or your hiring authorities that, hey, I know you hired X amount of people last year at this rate. But that's not happening now. And it's a big shake up to internal equity. And I understand that. It's just what the market is. And to let you know how bad that supply demand curve is, demand has never been higher than it is right now, per. Indeed, the current openings in the United States are 10.5 million. And to give you an idea how that matches up with what our demand is, our supply is. There are currently 5.7 million citizens looking for employment. That went down 835,000, but that is still well below the 5 million mark we were. So we still have some meat on the bone there as far as hiring people, but it's really tight. What was really interesting out of the numbers I looked at today from the labor market is that we're missing 2.9 million citizens. The labor market said that our labor force itself shrunk from 2020 to 2021 by 2.9 million people. So here we go. Having a increase in demand that has been unheard of. We have not seen really in recorded history here as far as the demand, that 10.5 number, but the supply continues to decrease. One thing people might not understand is the labor participation rate. And we'll talk about that after this slide. So again, we talked about last month, what we saw where those, where those hiring was. What's interesting is if you look at the last year is really where a lot of us have probably assumed where it was going. Over the last year we had a pretty good spread of hiring again in construction. We expect that. We expect that a lot. Especially if you saw what happened over the last week or two. We're going to definitely invest in our infrastructure more and more as we're battling these upticks in climate change. Manufacturing continues to grow. As we start to bring manufacturing back to the United States, we understand how Covid really showed how exposed we were to that international trade and how we have to really shore up our borders with the abilities to manufacture the necessities here, semiconductor solar panels, because we're going to renewable energy. So I continue to see construction and manufacturing grow. And what you saw was the leisure and hospitality came back quickly this year. But obviously with the spread of The Delta variant, we're seeing that that slowed down last month, but again, as that spike levels out and goes back down, we'll probably see another, another run on the hospitality side. What's really interesting too is we're really not seeing a change of what veterans are looking for. We do like transportation, logistics, which matches up with corporate demand. It cybersecurity continue to be of critical importance. Operational leadership, customer service, aerospace and defense, and then of course, leadership and admin. What people don't realize sales that the military is really good at, sales roles, you know, those individual contributors, fighter pilots, helicopter pilots, even infantry combat arms officers do phenomenal. So I highly recommend that if you do have sales jobs and you have veterans applying that you talk to them and learn about their influence capabilities. And we covered last month about the degrees and education that these people are targeting, that we're targeting. And again, mostly it's because the military is so competitive that we know getting a degree will continue our growth inside the military. But also we don't know what we don't know. So I implore you not to punish a veteran if their degree doesn't go specifically inside the industry. Knowing that they knew they had to educate themselves like me, earn my degree, and said, hey, I know I need a degree even though I don't know where I'm going to be in five years career wise. I just knew getting that education would help me. So we talked a little bit about labor force participation rate. This is something that not a lot of people pay attention to. As you can see, we were pretty steady. And as our healthcare systems and technology can extend the life, which we're all thankful for, what that does is actually lowers your labor force participation rate because more and more people are exiting the labor force and enjoying retirement for a longer route. Also, our population isn't growing as fast as developed populations grow. Their birth rate lowers. And then also we're getting that our younger populace 18 to 25, 26 are entering the labor market later. They're getting a not, they're getting more people are going to college, which is again extending their ability to get into the labor market by four years. So we're seeing that dip and right now we're at 61.7% as far as a labor participation rate, which is still 1.6% below February's 2020 numbers. So wanted to give you that point as well. And again, what this is here for is really to empower those hiring authorities, recruiters, talent acquisition people to understand the battle space you're in. And then as you veterans that are looking for employment, it's really to understand, hey, why is this economy moving so fast? Why are you getting so many emails, so many text messages, so many messages inside LinkedIn or Facebook, wherever you may enjoy the Internet about career opportunities? It's because of this that we're just in a very wonky supply demand shift. Another thought I had was not just understanding what the labor market is and where veterans are looking for employment and where corporate America is looking to hire, but if you are looking to hire a veteran in the United States, are the veterans there? And that is, here's a quick graph just to show you where the majority of veterans live. And it's pretty interesting. Of course, California, fifth largest economy in the world. Texas, a lot of military installations there. Florida, a lot of military installations. North Carolina, Virginia. What is interesting here though is Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, those are, you don't have a lot of military there, so you get a lot of veterans. You know, with North Carolina, Virginia, you have some very large military installations. So people will exit the military and stay in that state. But what we're seeing here, as you can see, as you go through the center of the United States, you may have some more difficulties in finding that local talent. But what's really good and what a lot of people don't understand, and you as veterans, if you're transitioning out of the military, you need to make sure that you put this on your resume or you let them know. But in the military, when you transition out, you actually have what's called military relocation. So for you, corporate America, if you see a resume come in and that person isn't local, that doesn't mean that you have to pay relocation to get that person there. So the way it works is wherever you join your military, wherever you join the military is called your, your home of record. Point A, wherever you exit the military is your last duty station. Point B, Uncle Sam will move that person in any direction, the distance between B and A. And if they are retired, either medically or have served their 20 plus years in the military, Uncle Sam will move them anywhere in the lower 48. So if you are a hiring authority and you see a resume that isn't local of a transitioning military person, and you interview that person, make sure you ask them, hey, what's your home of record? That way you'll know if they have relocation to get to your place. And if you are a transitioning military member and you are looking for work in your home of record or looking to Work somewhere outside of where you're currently stationed. Make sure you put that in the top of your resume. Military relocation to move or letting them know in that, in that application that they're not going to have to pay relocation. I know it's small, but it really is impactful because not a lot of corporate recruiters, talent acquisition, hiring managers understand how military relocation works. So it's up to us to get that word out. And really what we saw in the slide before really lines up with what we're seeing here. It's where do veterans want to go? And when they transition out there? Again, a lot of them stay where they're transitioned. Texas, California, Florida, North Carolina, Virginia. But outside of that, we get a lot of interest in Colorado, South Carolina, Pennsylvania and Ohio. It's a lot of veterans serve there, not a lot of people know. But the highest death per population density of Vietnam was West Virginia and that Midwest, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio. So a lot of people that serve come from that area and want to go back there. One other thing too, when I talk about that, I know I mentioned it last episode, but just because you're from a small area or your site is located in a rural area doesn't mean that we don't want to go there. You know, I was raised in a, in a village of 320 people, no stoplights, four stop signs. So for me, when I got out, I loved my time when I travel in the Marine Corps and to get these big cities of San Diego and see them. But in the end I wanted to go back. I wanted to see a lot of green space, not so much cement. So make sure you understand that a lot of us are looking for those opportunities in rural America, but we just don't understand where to look. So don't be afraid of that or intimidated by it. And I wanted to walk through some final thoughts I had as well. And again, if anybody has any questions, please pop them in. What I wanted to talk about, and thank you for the comments, Sean is managing those right now, is I wanted to give some people some insights on how to interview military candidates properly. And really what I hear a lot is on the leadership side, you know, if you're looking for a military leader, your company has a supervisor role, management role, leadership role. Remember that the leadership is the skill set you're looking for, not the corporate, hey, have they used this program before or do they know our terminology? That's not the important part. You're coming to military leaders because of their military capabilities. We in the military Are trained to go find the answers, ask the right questions, to get smart on something quickly. Our military officers, they transition roles every 16 to 24 months and they go to a new position they've never done before. And they have to get smart on that role quickly. Identify who are their top players on their team, who they can lean on and get that, those subject matter experts and get that information. So make sure when you're interviewing, you're asking those type of questions, leadership based, not industry based, but one of the thoughts I've seen or one of the questions or pitfalls I should say that I've seen over my time is when you're interviewing a military leader and you say, give me a time that you drove your team to accomplish a mission, you're asking that question in a singular format and you're expecting a singular response. But we as military leaders are taught to be servant leaders, right? There's nothing, never me above the team. So any win that we have was accomplished by the team. Any failure that occurred rests on our shoulders. So when you're asking a leadership question to a military leader, I understand it's in the singular format, but don't be surprised if it comes back in the plural response meaning, hey, what we accomplished. So, hey, Justin, give me the time where you're able to drive results in your team for X, Y and Z. And I respond, well, what we were able to accomplish because the leader, it's not you, it's us. And again, going back to that subject matter expert, identifying the top players on your team, we're going to leverage those assets so that the team wins. Not me, the team. But then on the other side of that, if you're asking that military leader of a time about failure or getting input for your team, how do you get input for your team and make a decision? In corporate America, we have spread the responsibility of decisions across more people than we ever have. In the challenge customer book, they talk about 5.4. Every major corporate decision has an average of 5.4 people associated with that decision. In the military, we don't have that opportunity. We don't have that. So that leader owns the order. They own it. So if you ever ask a military leader about, hey, how do you get input for your team to make a decision? Don't be surprised if they say, yep, I ask those SMEs, I asked my top performers, I asked my senior NCOs, but then ultimately, I'm the one that makes the decision. Sometimes that can come off as maybe not, maybe a little Abrasive, maybe not really a team player. But understand that that just comes from the onus of a leader. Really what you want, just like going back to that servant leadership question, you want a good decisive leader that puts the team above them but also puts all accountability on their shoulders. So I highly recommend when you're interviewing for leaders coming out of the military, that you put that in thought. Even though you're asking a singular question about how to drive results as a leader, understand that a servant leader is going to respond in the plural. And then also when you're asking about how do leaders get information and make a decision and how do they move forward with that, that they're going to put onus on themselves. And then from you, the veteran job seeker, understand the same thing, that corporate America again has flattened out those leadership decisions to that 5.4 average and that understand that yeah, I am listening to my team but ultimately I'm the one that's accountable to the decision and I'm the one owning that mission. So hopefully that was working for you. Again, what we're seeing out there in market is that, hold on is again, we have a huge gap in our participation rate. We're still down. It was 63.3 just over a year ago. We're missing 2.9 million citizens in the market. So it's never been more expensive to target specific experience. But those soft skills, what I call human skills, are out there and to work with your leadership team and understanding how to build an interview process to capture those top performing humans so that you can upload those harsh skill sets on them and then you, as a job seeker, it is really your, your job and your responsibility as a veteran to understand and how to translate that military experience into corporate America jargon. So even when it comes to those leadership roles, right, understanding the I versus the we and how that's perceived in corporate America, understanding how leaning on your, Your, on your NCOs or on your teammates, but still owning the order, how that's perceived. So again, thank you so much for the questions. I'm going to address these as we get, we get through it, but we're going to do this every month, the first Friday of every month to go through the jobs report and see where there's opportunities for growth. Again, I understand the hospitality industry is really hurting right now for talent. I think that's part of the great resignation as they talk about it, the shift of people working in that industry that have started to look elsewhere. But also what we're finding those People that have migrated from hospitality, which is customer facing, very interactive roles that are going into manufacturing, they're paying much more, are realizing that they really like the social aspect of their previous role. So that's why I think that from 5 million to 5.7 million, that 0.7, that 700,000 citizens right now that are kind in limbo, I think that's what we're dealing with. We're dealing with those humans going from one industry that's saying I don't want this anymore to another industry, but finding that still getting the social aspect they're looking for, but a more, more targeted career growth that they might be looking for. So hopefully this was helpful. If there is anything else that you think would be helpful to you from a, from a veteran hiring or veteran statistics standpoint, please let me know. I'm going through every month and trying to find more and more information to give the team. I think in October, you know, we'll cover September's numbers. We'll cover. Also the backfill, which I forgot to mention was both June and July's job numbers were increased. June's job numbers were. They added an extra 24,000 hires in June and 110,000 hires in July. Meaning we went from. We had 938 openings filled in June. Sorry, 962,000 job openings filled in June and over a million, 1,053,000 roles filled in July. So I know a lot of us were expecting over 700,000 roles filled this month. It was a disappointing 235,000 roles. But still, when you look at the three months combined, we're over 2 million roles filled in in three months. So we're on the right track. It's just working with your hiring team and understanding how do you put human skills at the forefront of the interview process instead of heavily focusing on experience. Because again, in this marketplace, experience is just one, not there. And if it is there, it's extremely, extremely expensive. Again, I want to thank everybody that, that joined in here. Please. You can reach out to me anytime on LinkedIn. Justin Henderson, recruit Military Pretty easy to find. I have a pretty big database. Please reach out, give me messages, let me know what resonated with you because I am learning and growing. This is my first time doing this. Well, second time today, but first time stepping out like this. So I want to make sure my message is resonating with you that I'm helping your team if you're on the corporate side, get smarter, get faster at identifying military experience and getting those people on board. And if you're a veteran, I want to make sure that we're helping you understand how to articulate your experience so that you will find that right career path for you and then also understanding really where you can get the biggest bang for your buck. You know, what industries are hiring, what locations are a really good asset for you. So again, it's Justin Henderson with Recruit Military and Bradley Morris. I truly, truly appreciate your time. Thank you so much for spending a little bit of time with me, everybody. Enjoy the long holiday weekend, and we'll see you out here next month.