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For Veterans transitioning into the civilian workforce, finding an organization that values their unique skills, experience, and leadership potential can be a mission in itself. While many companies claim to be "Veteran-friendly," how do you know which ones truly live up to the name? Understanding what it means to be Veteran-friendly and how to identify these organizations can make all the difference in finding your next career opportunity.
“Tell Me About Yourself.”
It’s one of the most common interview questions – and one of the hardest to answer. Where do you start? Your hometown? Your family history? The first job you ever had?
Pause. While your story is important, an interview isn’t the time for an autobiography. The goal here is to highlight your professional journey and what makes you the right candidate for the role.
Why Do Recruiters Get a Bad Rap?
You’ve heard the stories: recruiters who go radio silent, miss deadlines, or seem more focused on numbers than people. For transitioning Veterans, this can feel like just another roadblock — reducing you to a name in a database instead of recognizing you as a skilled professional. It’s frustrating to feel like your leadership experience and operational expertise are being overlooked.
America, we have a serious problem.
Leadership is at a deficit in our country, and it’s not just in politics. Business executives today are deeply concerned about their leadership bench -- 85% of executives say that they are not confident in their leadership pipelines. And that’s not all. The supply of leaders isn’t the only problem, the [lack of] leadership development in companies today are as well.
I went to the Army’s SERE C course (Survival, Evasions, Resistance, and Escape) in January 2010. It was extremely cold then, and I recall losing 20 pounds during our few weeks being “out in the woods,” but nonetheless, it was an incredible course that revealed exactly what you’re made of.
A Special Forces A-team (Operational Detachment-Alpha) consists of 12 Green Berets. Each member of the team is an expert in his speciality, whether it’s in weapons, communications, engineering, or medical (trauma) treatment. And for redundancy, there are two Green Berets who are trained in each of these specialty areas.
For nearly two decades, the United States has spearheaded the post-9/11 War on Terror throughout the world, and brave American men and women have volunteered to join our Armed Forces and defend our nation’s interests. Today, there are over 3.3 million veterans who chose to serve since September 11, 2001 and amongst them, an even smaller group of patriots who chose to lead.
Many of you have seen the study that Google launched called Project Oxygen, to prove that the quality of a manager didn’t impact a team’s performance. Their hypothesis was that some of Google’s mid-level managers and leaders are, “at best, a necessary evil, and at worst, a layer of bureaucracy” -- the study was supposed to help Google move towards a flat organizational structure without any managers.