What is the Value of a Skills Profile?

There are hundreds of skill assessments for employers and workers out on the market, each with its own merits. The bottom line: hiring on skills yields success.

For Employers

Your employees are your brand. They are responsible for your customers’ experience, your products and services, and even the satisfaction of their peers. Your most valuable employees should feel valued, and recognized for their skills and contributions. By recognizing the value of your employees’ skills, and providing them opportunities to grow, they gain a clear understanding on how to improve and consider new opportunities within your organization. Additionally, it reinforces your investment in them which attributes to their retention. For your employees who are veterans, this is especially important.

 America’s veterans are some of the most highly skilled and well-trained workers in the world, and yet they are disproportionately underemployed. Why? Because their skills are typically misunderstood or missed entirely. Hiring managers, who are accustomed to civilian resumes, often don’t understand a veteran’s resume or their military service record. Assessing a veteran’s skills therefore requires additional effort. It requires managers to recognize military job codes and understand how to assess skills by interpreting those military jobs. Veterans are accustomed to well-defined work, chain of command, skill requirements which point to a clear path to promotion. Their productivity and motivation are highest when the skills needed for the job are clear and their own skills fully recognized.

With historically low unemployment rates, finding talent is tougher than ever. Employers who make the effort to fully assess their veteran applicants, not only position themselves for greater success, they let veterans ascend.

For Veterans

In the military, it is never about YOU. As a civilian, it is all about YOU. Get comfortable because it is essential to your new mission. You need more than a stellar service record and commendations; you need a skills profile as your foundation as a job candidate; one with confidence and pride in the value you add to the civilian workforce. Remember, more has been invested in developing your skills than the vast majority of your peers, and these skills are extraordinarily valuable.

They are also commonly misunderstood.

With a military background and service record, your transition to civilian employment will be jarring, but the strengths of your military background give you an edge and an opportunity to further excel. Know your skills profile inside and out so you can readily project confidence and describe your skills and the experiences where you gained them. And know precisely how your skills and experience will add value to an employer in the job before you as well as across your employer’s organization. You are the commanding officer of your transition. You must own it.

It won’t be easy, but there was nothing easy about your patriotic service in the military. Stay true to your integrity and don’t settle for easy as a civilian. Don’t settle for an employer who doesn’t value a veteran or one who doesn’t recognize your skills. You deserve more, and America’s employers need more.

They need you. It is time once again to ascend.