One of the most frequently asked questions I receive from the Members of DirectEmployers Association has to do with how to build a successful military recruiting strategy, including specific sources to target to increase the company’s pool of qualified veteran applicants. Having built an award-winning military recruiting program from the ground floor for the nation’s largest Class I railroad, I have found many of the resources that will be shared through my Increase Your Pool of Veteran Applicants blog mini-series to be very valuable in attaining the nation’s #1 Most-Military Friendly Employer Award both in 2005 and 2006, and #2 in 2007. Since then, I have added to my list of recommended military recruiting sources and have shared it with countless employers. Because it is so frequently requested, I think you should have it too.
If you’d like to help me add to this military recruiting sources list, I encourage you to email me to share your recommendations and insight. I’d love to interview you and blog about your veteran hiring success stories so that together, as employers, we can better support our common goals to hire more veterans.
1 – Direct Compliance
One of the very best decisions I made when I was overseeing the system-wide hiring function at the railroad was to join DirectEmployers Association and use their Direct Compliance services to reach veteran applicants. If I had to resort to hiring a staff person to perform the services provided automatically by Direct Compliance, it would have cost at least five times more per year to manually post jobs to the state job banks and notify state veteran representatives about the company’s job openings. Direct Compliance is a comprehensive suite of programs and services to assist employers in complying with VEVVRA regulations, as amended by the Jobs for Veterans Act (JVA). DirectEmployers provides the most comprehensive 4212 VEVRAA/JVA compliance assistance through the JobCentral National Labor Exchange (NLX) initiative. The NLX was created through our exclusive partnership with the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA) , a non-profit association representing all state workforce agencies, plus those in the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
Employers who are Members of DirectEmployers Association have their job openings automatically indexed directly from their corporate career sites and made available to veterans through the NLX and VetCentral, which assists participating members in complying with JVA regulations. DirectEmployers Association surpasses the minimum requirements to distribute jobs to appropriate employment delivery systems in two concurrent ways:
1. through the National Labor Exchange that provides an automated job feed to state job banks, AND
2. through VetCentral – a unique service of the NLX which feeds jobs to over 3,000 local employment services offices via email. While VetCentral acts as the email distribution point for federal contractors’ jobs, it is also fully integrated into the National Labor Exchange. Member’s job openings are sent to the appropriate employment service delivery system via email and records are maintained for each transaction. In the event of an OFCCP audit, employers can easily show these records to the auditor to demonstrate compliance requirements.
If you are an employer who is also a federal government contractor, you will absolutely love the services that come with Direct Compliance—the value proposition simply can’t be beat—which is just one reason why so many employers have joined DirectEmployers Association. The Member benefits and products and services go much beyond what you’ll receive with Direct Compliance, so be sure to learn more about why a membership in DirectEmployers Association is so incredibly worthwhile.
In the next blog post, Increase Your Pool of Veteran Applicants – Part II, you’ll learn about a valuable acronym soup, including how One-Stop Centers and the Department of Veterans’ Affairs can support your military recruiting goals.
Tags: DirectEmployers, Increase Your Pool of Veteran Applicants, Jolene Jefferies
The book, The PERCEVD Principles, is a great read regarding the conditions and challenges facing transitioning Veterans. It illustrates how support, proactive intervention and innovative accommodations can create fair, flexible and conducive workplace environments. It is a useful tool to help spouses, family members and other stakeholders support Veterans. For more information, check out ThePercevdPrinciples.com.