How to Develop Career Opportunities to Attract Veterans
Creating a welcoming environment is a good start, but hiring—and retaining—skilled, quality veteran workers are going to take more than that. You’ll need to implement a strategy to develop good career opportunities for veterans that will attract them to your
Consider Expanding Current Positions
Employers are often so focused on maintaining the status quo and filling existing vacancies with the best candidates that they lose sight of the future. When this happens, you’re limiting your talented workers to being stuck in dead-end jobs unless they are prepared to change employers.
Review your current positions and brainstorm ways to:
- increase responsibilities of the incumbents,
- promote deserving employees to a higher level, where they will undertake additional focus areas, or
- create break-out jobs at either the upper or lower end of existing positions, which allow you to add responsibilities and split the work into two, different-level positions.
Any of these options will result in offering your employees a career path within the company, which will attract former military veterans because it offers upward mobility.
Look at Natural Progressions Outside the Company
As much as you’d like to keep your good team members, there might come a time when you have to let them go. To benefit from their capabilities in the interim, however, is better than not having them at all, so attracting quality candidates depends to a large extent on where their position with you fits into their overall career plan. Research the positions that incumbents leaving your company go on to accept, and build preparatory training and experience for these positions into existing job descriptions. If prospective employees know your company is a solid stepping stone to the future they want, they’ll be drawn to working for you while they gain the experience they need.
Establish an Extended Training Program
Giving workers additional tasks and responsibilities only benefit them if they receive training that enables them to perform these. To really attract quality veteran candidates to your company so you can benefit from their remarkable leadership and skill sets, you’ll need to offer a comprehensive training program that goes beyond teaching them how to do their current jobs. Implement advanced training opportunities that candidates can see categorically offers them a future career in your particular industry, even if the positions you have internally are limited.
Offer Incentives for Personal Development
There’s an old saying about leading a horse to water that applies in this case. Even if you offer a sound training program combined with attractive career options, getting your workers to take advantage of these resources sometimes requires a little extra motivation. Implement a strategy that encourages long-term personal development among your staff, to stimulate their interest in improving their knowledge, position, and earnings. Some companies pay for studies related to the worker’s position, for example. This is beneficial both to the recipient as well as the institutions, which uses it as a tax write-off.
The secret to attracting and retaining valuable staff has always been to provide them with the opportunities and resources to grow personally. Even if that means losing them eventually, you’ll benefit from the time you had them far more than you would from not having them at all.
For more information on how to list your available jobs and attract former active service members and military veterans to your workforce, please contact us today.
