Review of “Hiring Veterans” by Lt. Col. Matthew Louis

Score: 95(+)/100 (9.5(+) out of 10)

Loyalty, discipline, commitment, a high work-ethic, and specialized skills... these traits define the character of military veterans.

Why wouldn't you want people with these traits on your workforce? Imagine acquiring talent like that!

Unfortunately, however, military veterans are an underutilized and underemployed resource. What if we could harness these assets—these force-multipliers? What if we could make use of these extraordinary attributes and skills?

And what if we could do a better job at providing our veterans—who've given so much for our country—with the bright, promising futures they and their families deserve?

Hiring Veterans is yet another exceptional military veterans resource book by Lt. Colonel Matthew Louis, the award-winning author of Mission Transition. Hiring Veterans is, indeed, a worthy sequel and follow-up to Mission Transition. This book isn't just aimed at military veterans and their families (like the previous book) but also business owners and leaders, particularly senior leaders.

This book is a powerful and impactful reminder to the movers and shakers of the world of the largely-untapped potential coming out of our armed forces.

And the potential is enormous!

Military veterans tend to have extraordinary transferable skills in things like engineering, sciences, and leadership. They tend to be more disciplined, loyal, and trustworthy. They are more willing to commit themselves to a cause bigger than themselves. They tend to be more resilient and steadfast.

Furthermore, they also tend to be more educated than the general public. Almost all military veterans have at least a high school degree if not higher. They have hands-on experience and, usually, at least some technical training. They know how to take directives and to follow instructions.

Those veterans who have been deployed also tend to have greater cultural sensitivity, know other languages, and have international experience.

Another benefit that the author continuously brings up is that they also tend to have a higher security clearance by default. This means that they have pretty much passed a background check and have earned themselves a great degree of trust, especially considering that many of them were entrusted with some degree of national security responsibilities.

This is “not about charity.”

The author makes it clear that businesses shouldn't just be hiring veterans because it's the kind, charitable, or even right thing to do. Businesses should be hiring veterans because it's in their best interest and because veterans do tend to be truly exceptional workers for the reasons described above.

One key trait of veterans is their loyalty, commitment, and dedication to an organization and/or a cause. This could, in theory, translate into lower turnover rates of employees. If you don't already know, turnover is one of the most crushing costs to any business, partly because it means losing training, skills, and experience, then having to recruit and train new people—an expensive proposition in time, manpower, and money.

One of the key takeaways from this book is to have trained advocates and “affinity” specialists on staff who have experience as veterans and can help with the transition of veterans to your workforce.

Another takeaway is to pay attention to, be aware of, and to address potential issues that veterans may have in this transition. For example, they no longer have military ranks in their new role and no longer give orders/commands or take order/commands. It's now more collaborative than directive, in other words. They also enjoy a greater degree of freedom than they did in the military and should be encouraged to enjoy life outside of work rather than making life all about work, which is good for their mental health. Furthermore, they should be encouraged to ask questions and/or to let it be known when they need help or don't understand something. Asking questions and asking for help is often seen as a weakness by those in the military. However, as a civilian employee, it could be an opportunity to learn and grow.

This book also covers some of the ins and outs/dos and don'ts of hiring veterans. For example, there are certain questions you can and can't legally ask. You need to stay in compliance.

This book provides great examples of questions you can legally ask, particularly advocating for the CCBI interview type.

This book also features invaluable contributions by veteran employment specialists from Walmart, JP Morgan Chase, and Amazon. This really raised our respect and appreciation for those companies.

Check this out on Amazon!