By Gregg Wartgow, Contributing Editor
Companies that are looking for loyal, disciplined, hardworking individuals need to look no further than the thousands of active-duty military members returning to civilian life every year. Organizations such as MilitaryHire, RecruitMilitary and Hire Heroes USA can help.
A job search for “equipment maintenance” at hireheroesusa.org returns thousands of results. Hire Heroes placed roughly 800 military veterans into maintenance and repair jobs over the past two years.
Plamp offers some advice on how companies can increase awareness and better entice veterans to look at opportunities within the construction industry.
Recruiting veterans
Veterans respond favorably to companies that publicly say they want to hire veterans. Certain companies (such as Home Depot) and industries (railroad, aviation) have been very good at this.
Some construction companies are also doing a great job. Take Branch Civil, for example, a Roanoke, Virginia-based company that provides a dynamic range of services including heavy civil construction, design-build and site development. Branch Civil is part of Branch Group. As of August 2018, Branch Group is a Virginia Values Veterans V3-Certified company. That means the company will be focusing its hiring and retention efforts specifically on military veterans.
Plamp says it’s also important for construction companies to not make their help wanted ads so restrictive. Asking for too much industry experience, for example, could turn a lot of promising candidates away. Asking for “equivalent experience,” for instance, could help get them into the pipeline for consideration.
Retaining veterans
Once a veteran is hired, it’s important for companies to acknowledge their military service in some manner. This helps with retention.
Some companies pair new hires with existing employees who are also veterans. This helps with the assimilation process. Some companies assemble all of their veterans into groups that meet on a regular basis. “Sometimes it is just company supervisors who simply acknowledge the veterans for the skills they bring to the job,” Plamp says.
Career advancement is an important area companies must consider. This is another perfect match for the construction industry, which must think beyond its equipment technician shortage. There will be some turnover of fleet managers over the next several years as many enter into retirement. Solid technicians who possess the characteristics of solid managers will be in increasingly high demand. That prospect of upward mobility can be very enticing to a military veteran looking to build a long-term career.
“By and large, if a veteran was doing vehicle maintenance while in the military, a vast majority are not looking to do vehicle maintenance outside of the military,” Plamp points out. “There is an exception if they see a path toward leadership and management. Because they were in the military, they’ve acquired a lot of those important soft skills like leading, training and safety. Because of that background, veterans would like to see some potential for rapid progression.”
Additionally, military veterans are self-sufficient, comfortable with responsibility and great decision-makers. This is why they often make for great entrepreneurs and franchisees. This is why they could also make for great fleet managers.
