vets-im-over-kyle-brown

A truly outstanding article. It brought up some great points that veterans (or anyone for that matter) needs to realize when applying for work.

At one point in my career, I supervised the recruitment unit at my police department. Being a Army veteran and Air Force Reserve member, I pushed hard to hire veterans. However, many veterans shot themselves down at the beginning of the hiring process. Our hiring rate is 1 out of 100 applicants get hired. Good jobs are highly sought after and there are many good candidates out there.

My advice for veterans is this:

1)Dump all social media sites that you belong to. They only tend to harm you and not help you. LinkedIn is your friend. Understand it and use it to your advantage.

2) Get your finances in order. Having large credit card bills, huge car payments, and other financial burdens makes you look bad.

3) Most important, understand the company that you are applying for. Its critical that you understand their culture and needs. Taylor your resume and oral presentation (interview) towards that company.

4) As far as your military experience, what the civilian workforce is looking for is not how fast your can field strip a M-4. Use your military experience to highlight your ability to resolve problems in a timely fashion, your attention to detail, that you are flexible and capable of working with others, you can successfully operate in a high stress environment, etc.

Veterans can make great employees, but being a veteran alone is not enough to get hired in today's environment.

Good article. I don't agrees with Mr Brown with a lot he has to say. But he does have a point here and there. All my time at the tire company I only saw one retiree that was a pain in the ass. All for most parts were study hard working people that rarely missed work and I saw people go 10 to 15 years not being late. I made it over 18 without a late, and that long without missing a hours pay.

When I retired and went to the interview with the tire company not that much was said about the military. They asked my job but I didn'to into a long drawn out discussion about it. But the company hired a lot of vets. Workers to Managers.