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The Conference Board Review® Article
The Military Advantage
Why don't more companies seize it by recruiting veterans?
By Rebecca Zicarelli
Rebecca Zicarelli is a contributing editor for Veteran's Business Journal.
There's a talent pool of workers who are disciplined, skilled at overcoming obstacles and achieving objectives, understand teamwork, accept responsibility for their actions, communicate clearly, and live their lives with integrity. And chances are, you're ignoring it.
Coors Brewing Co. was -- that is, until Carl Barnhill, the company's chief revenue officer, realized that the company needed a better pipeline for developing its future leaders. So Barnhill, a former Marine himself, began recruiting Marines ready to enter the civilian world through military job fairs for his sales staff. Coors puts its recruits through an intensive twelve-week boot camp that teaches business basics -- profit and loss and the art of sales -- and which Barnhill describes as "either up or out -- you either pass the test or you leave the company."
Those who don't wash out get assigned to Coors' toughest markets. "The people who have graduated from the boot camp are the best salespeople in our company," Barnhill says. His Marines typically achieve a 5 or 6 -- or even higher -- percentage increase in annual sales in those markets, a phenomenal feat in an industry with an annual growth rate of less than 2 percent.
The magic of their success isn't just a result of Barnhill's boot camp. The veterans he recruits have qualities, developed in the armed forces, that are crucial to the company. They have the essentials of leadership.
The "M" Word
Coors isn't alone in its efforts to recruit veterans. American Express, Hershey, 7-Eleven, General Motors, Home Depot, and Johnson & Johnson also regularly seek to hire from the armed forces. But these and a handful of other companies remain exceptions.
In a 1995 report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff on veterans' experiences seeking private-sector jobs, author Wesley Poriotis, chairman of the diversity-recruitment agency Wesley, Brown, & Bartle Co., cited a corporate bias against veterans entering the workforce. That prejudice, which Poriotis called "the 'M' word," persists today.
But the "M" word didn't always inspire such sneering. Soldiers returning from World War II were heroes. Educated via the G.I. Bill, some went on to become corporate leaders. Navy veteran Charles Brown rose to become CEO of AT&T, and Don Regan served in the military before becoming CEO of Merrill Lynch and later President Reagan's treasury secretary and chief of staff.
Anti-veteran bias developed during the 1960s, when much of the nation turned its back on both the unpopular Vietnam War and the soldiers who fought it. With the elimination of the draft in 1971 and the return to an all-volunteer armed forces, corporate America eventually lost touch with the military skills that transfer laterally to the workforce.
In his report, Poriotis wrote, "The gate-keepers making private-sector hiring decisions have little or no experience with career military people and are screening them out before they gain access to meaningful job interviews." The veterans who responded to the survey consistently viewed their leadership ability as one of their most valuable skills, but the report noted a "glaring disparity": "The military stress[es] leadership and management skills but the private sector hires 'functionally'" for all but the highest levels of businesspeople.
Comments? Write a letter to the editor.
Return to the January/February 2005 The Conference Board Review® issue.
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