June 12, 2023
Why MaxSys Recruits Veterans and Reservists
CEO & Chairman, MaxSys
Across Canada, MaxSys places over 15,000 individuals per year in jobs. Of these, almost 1000 are from the greater military community. This community is composed of veterans, reservists, and family members.
Since 2010, the effort to hire veterans and reservists has ramped up exponentially. There really are hiring fairs, expert head-hunters and entire human resources departments devoted to recruiting veterans for civilian companies. Here is why…
1. Veterans & Reservists Are Entrepreneurial.
“Entrepreneurial” doesn’t mean veterans or reservists necessarily want to run off and start their own businesses. It means vets tend to have the same attributes that successful business owners have: self-efficacy, need for achievement, they don’t need to be managed, are comfortable with uncertainty and make good decisions under pressure.
2. Veterans & Reservists Assume High Levels of Trust.
Integrity is a value instilled in service members from the start. Almost every branch of the military mentions integrity in their creed, core values or elsewhere. Veterans and reservists are not only trustworthy to co-workers and managers; the trust they build between themselves, co-workers and managers also spreads between teams and into the whole organization. The result is a high-performance culture.
3. Veterans & Reservists Are Adept at Transferring Skills
The first casualty of war is the plan. In the military, troops learn to make do with what they have, wherever they are. Military members are trained to deal with situations when the plan goes awry. In response, military personnel will reorient their skills to deal with the evolving situation.
Employers want people with the ability to use training in an unfamiliar environment or task with little or no oversight, and chances are good veterans and reservists have been doing this for their entire careers.
4. Veterans & Reservists Acquire Advanced Technical Training.
Every soldier may be a rifleman, but they also have some kind of advanced technical training. Though the rest of the environmental services don’t have the same rifleman ethos, every service member who joins the military is either trained in a technological career field or is exposed to advanced technology at some point in their career.
This means veterans and reservists are adept at working with new and emerging technologies, learning to use them proficiently and can transfer the skills they acquire to new areas of expertise, even if those areas are disparate from their original training.
5. Veterans & Reservists Are Comfortable with Chaos
Many veterans and reservists employees pride themselves on their ability to thrive in chaos. Military experience positively correlates to the cognitive ability to evaluate an evolving situation or environment and act effectively in the face of uncertainty.
Businesses, especially those in information and technology sectors, are constantly changing and evolving, and they’re looking for future employees who can work efficiently and effectively in these kinds of environments.
6. Veterans & Reservists are Resilient.
Resiliency is successful adaptation, even in the face of adversity, hardship and trauma, to new and changing situations. It is also developing competencies in those situations that allow an individual to excel. It means bouncing back from failures, either personal or professional, and veterans and reservists overwhelmingly exhibit resiliency in their everyday lives.
7. Veterans & Reservists are Team-Builders
The military is a team, composed of smaller teams, all working together toward goals that make up the military’s missions. Being in the military not only makes its members believe they can serve effectively as a team member, it enables high performance as part of that team. Military service specifically enhances individuals in three key ways:
• Organizing and defining team goals and missions
• Defining team member roles and responsibilities
• Developing a team’s plan for action
8. Veterans & Reservists Show Strong Commitment.
A surprising feature of any strong social group is that the identity of its key members becomes intertwined with the identity of the organization. Military branches are particularly adept at this kind of institutional socialization, and as a result, veterans can bring this strong organizational commitment and loyalty to a civilian workplace.
9. Veterans & Reservists Have Cross-Cultural Experiences.
Increased globalization in world economies means that individual employees in world-class businesses and corporations need to accept and operate in multicultural areas and transcend international boundaries. Reservists and veterans have had experience in three important multicultural areas, compared to non-veterans in their peer groups:
• They have more international experience.
• They speak more languages, more fluently.
• They have a higher understanding of cultural sensitivity.