In honor of Memorial Day yesterday, we’re taking a look at how and why construction companies should hire Veterans to fill their open positions. Last year, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that the construction industry has pledged to hire more than 100,000 veterans to serve in a multitude of different roles.
Why You Should Hire a Veteran
Besides the fact that our veterans put their selves in danger to keep America safe, there are plenty of other reasons that make veterans great employees. Military.com actually determined 10 Reasons to Hire Vets, which include: an accelerated learning curve, leadership, teamwork, diversity and inclusion, performance under pressure, respect for procedures, technology and globalization, integrity, high health and safety standards, and triumph over adversity.
Forbes agrees with the post referenced above, and even wrote their own article, titled Why a Veteran Might Be Your Next Best Hire, citing many of the same reasons. Additional reasons the Forbes article cites are an ultimate team player mentality, relentless attention to detail, and habitual goal orientation.
If all of those reasons aren't good enough, the construction industry still has a major workforce shortage and hiring qualified veterans can only help our situation.
How to Hire a Veteran
There are several services available that can connect you and your business to veterans looking for a job in your trade:
Career One Stop has some great resources for you to post your job openings and contacts to call to get in touch with qualified veterans. They suggest posting your job opening in your appropriate state’s job bank, which can be found here. Another tip they give is to let the American Job Center know that you’d like to hire a veteran. You can search for the appropriate job center in your area here.
Hireveterans.com also has places for employers to post jobs specifically for veterans and allows veterans to search for those same job openings.
Hire Heroes USA sponsors Career Opportunity Days which are small events that allow around 15 employers the opportunity to have one on one interaction with veterans looks for jobs.
10 Reasons to Hire Vets | Military.com
It’s no secret that the construction labor force has been in a decline for the past several years. Much of the blame for the shortage falls on our nation’s increasing focus on graduating high school students getting into college and the lack of available technical colleges. Workforce shortages can not only affect individual jobs and their schedules, but may also have a broader impact on the nation’s economy. Not only do we have a current workforce shortage, it will continue to get worse as our labor pool is aging and millions of workers are expected to retire in the next 10 years.