7 lessons learned from today's LinkedIn Forward D&I Recruiting Education event

WOW! Did you get a chance to watch the live stream of today's LinkedIn Forward event? So many great points on the importance making diversity and inclusion foremost in your recruiting efforts. If you missed the session, you can catch the replay here.

Here are my top 7 learning points from the live stream, and the implications for military/veteran recruiting.

1. Laura Long, Vice President, National Equity, Inclusion and Diversity at Kaiser Permanente, said in order to increase diversity, companies need to look beyond their top 10 schools for diverse candidates for internships and leadership development roles because your top 10 schools may not be diverse enough. When I work with clients building out their veteran programs, I constantly iterate that point, as many veterans can be found at community colleges and other universities that may be overlooked by college recruiting teams because they are not in their Top 10 schools. We focus on developing a student veteran sourcing strategy to fill internships and leadership development programs with veterans from all types of schools.
2. Another panelist stated "Achieving diversity without a target is relying on hope". We need to hold managers and business unit leaders responsible for achieving diversity goals. We hold them responsible for sales/revenue targets and other business metrics, so why don't we take diversity hiring metrics just as seriously? What gets measured, gets done. Too many managers look at military/veteran recruiting as just a nice thing to do, a patriotic thing to do, and they aren't educated on the business benefits of hiring veterans, much less held accountable for the recruiting results. Talent Acquisition/Diversity leaders need to make the veteran recruiting business case clear and then measure, measure, measure.
3. Several panelists discussed employer's new realization (#ThanksCOVID) that many jobs can be performed from home and under flexible work arrangements. That reality is not changing anytime soon - companies see cost benefits to reducing office space and job seekers are demanding these opportunities. This convergence of needs can significantly improve the results for military spouses who need those same arrangements to keep working while their service member serves his/her country. 95% of military spouses are women, so adding a military spouse component to the veteran recruiting effort can also help companies in industries that struggle to hire woman (technology, manufacturing, etc). Remote and flexible work can also improve employment options for veterans with disabilities who benefit from similar arrangements.
4. A LOT of conversation was had around a resurgence of skills-based recruiting. Hire for skills rather than looking for specific past job titles or a previous stint at a competitor. This is where educating your recruiters and hiring managers on how to interpret military experience becomes one of the single largest predictors of a company's veteran recruiting success. Can we just admit that many military resumes are difficult to read? You will learn far more by talking to the service member and asking about how certain skills were used in their military job than you ever will by screening the resume for 30 seconds.
5. Continuing on the skills based recruiting topic: top trends includes high demand for digital skills (like cloud computing) and human skills (like collaboration, creativity, leadership, etc). Veterans excel at the human skills, no matter what their previous job title in the military. Employers often say they want employees who are team players, have integrity, are mission focused, communicate well up and down the chain, are problem solvers and leaders. Well, those skills are exactly what the military teaches every service member, no matter how junior. It goes beyond training them, though - these veterans have significant practical experience in using these skills. Its one thing to sit through a 1-hour leadership class and think you know something about leading people. Its a whole 'nother thing to actually HAVE to lead people through challenging, stressful and sometimes dangerous situations.
6. Another panelist encouraged the audience to "Screen in, not out". I've long advised my clients to look for reasons to INCLUDE veterans, not EXCLUDE them when screening candidates for open positions. Recruiters have long been trained to (too) quickly screen out job seekers, and the poorly translated military resumes often hold veterans back from being considered, if the resume even made it through the applicant tracking system's algorithm in the first place.
7. Addressing the question "how do you implement diversity initiatives and not alienate non-diverse populations?" the discussion turned to communicating how "benefits cascade out, not up" using the example of the creation of curb cut outs for people who use wheelchairs. Curb cut outs were implemented to help wheelchair users more easily navigate their surroundings, but its benefit cascaded out to help stroller users, dolly users, etc. Veterans ARE a diverse population just by nature of our experiences, and our population includes 35%+ minority, 25%+ women, people with disabilities and LGBTQ. The cascading benefit to implementing veteran recruiting initiatives is that anything you put in place to improve recruitment of veterans will also serve so many other diverse communities.

If your company is looking to improve recruitment of veterans or start a veteran recruiting program, I invite you to participate in my next free live webinar on Wed, April 14th entitled "How to Develop a Veteran Recruiting Program". The session will be recorded, so even if you have a date/time conflict, register anyway and you'll be the first to receive the link to the recording. Register for this webinar at: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/4016171331988/WN_4UYjIzBJRB-RhHiylUwuVA

#linkedinforward #veteranrecruiting #militaryrecruiting #diversityrecruiting #talentacquisition #diversityandinclusion #diversity #inclusion #militaryspouse #disability #veteran #veterans #recruiting