Veteran unemployment in March was 4.1 percent, up slightly from the March 2017, but comparable to the overall national unemployment rate of 4.0 percent. But despite this improvement in veteran job prospects, veterans still face an additional set of hurdles in their job search.
There are roughly 20 million veterans of all ages living in America, less than 10 percent of the adult population. The current active military end-strength is less than one percent of the population. According to a 2011 Pew Research Center study, only a third of people between the ages of 18 and 29 had an immediate relative — which Pew defined as a “spouse, parent, sibling or child” — who had served in the military. With so little direct exposure to veterans, people form their opinions of what military service entails through the news and entertainment media.
Therein lies the problem. As a public service, here is the first installment of common misconceptions people have about veterans. Recruiters, please know that these are all wrong; veterans, please understand that many people continue to believe these things are true, and you will have to overcome them in your job search.
Our management style is just screaming
The veteran community lost a legend this month with the death of actor and Marine veteran R. Lee Ermey. His portrayal of Gunnery Sgt. Hartman, the Vietnam-era drill instructor in the film Full Metal Jacket, was a masterful performance. It remains one of the most creative uses of insulting vulgarity in cinematic history. But it’s not representative of what life after basic training was like in the 1960s, and it’s not even a realistic representation of what basic training is like today.
Managing people in the military is little different from managing them in the civilian world. While it’s true that service members are legally bound to follow orders, they can be punished for telling their bosses to get bent, and they can’t quit, good leaders know that “do it because I said so” is not the best way to get the best performance out of an employee. It has been said “bravery means being the only one who knows you’re afraid.” Anyone who can motivate soldiers to go into combat knows how to motivate people to get their TPS reports done on time.
We’re all mindless robots
There are certain advantages to military life. You don’t have to decide what to wear, you alway know exactly where you’re supposed to be and when you’re supposed to be there, and much to the delight of Lean Six Sigma practitioners, there’s a process for just about everything. But veterans are more creative that they often get credit for.
General George Patton once said, “Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” Patton knew what he was talking about.
Veterans are some of the most creative problem-solvers you will ever meet. Throughout the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, we have posed challenges to our young leaders that no amount of military training could ever teach them to overcome. They have literally rebuilt local governments from the ground up, solving real problems for real people daily. And they did it while people were shooting at them.
There’s no field manual for that. There’s no checklist or training aid to guide them. And yet they made it happen. Turn a veteran loose on your company’s most challenging problems and you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised by the solutions they devise.
Unless the Third World War starts, I’ll pick the list up again next Friday. In the meantime, happy job hunting.
