Who Owns the Social Recruiting Channels on Your Recruiting Team?

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Social media is essential in today’s recruiting. In many organizations, a lot of time and effort goes into managing the channels, which can include everything from Facebook to LinkedIn to YouTube to Periscope. These networks connect us with candidates in an immediate and approachable way and are an important part of our job distribution, candidate engagement and employment branding strategies. They’re no longer just a luxury or something we can boast about because no one else is doing them. They’re a vital part of recruiting that deserve and require the attention that any other marketing channel demands.

Even though the majority of companies use social media, that doesn’t mean that every company has it figured out. In fact in many organizations, teams are still fumbling over how to manage it on top of everything else that they handle on a daily basis. It’s tough enough for a dedicated social media manager to ensure that voice, messaging and engagement is consistent, ongoing and effective, so it’s understandable why recruiting teams would experience trial and error before they find a rhythm and method that works for them.

So what’s the best practice for managing these social networks? Well, the answer is that it really depends on the team, its individuals and how much time each person can devote to it. There are essentially four ways to approach social media in recruiting:

1. Subject matter expert – Each recruiter manages a different social network, with it ideally being one they’re familiar and successful with. 

2. A single recruiter - One recruiter manages and engages on all the channels. This has its obvious advantages and disadvantages. 

3. Regional social recruiting - Some organizations assign social media accounts and activities based on locations or regions, often with the local recruiter or general manager overseeing the accounts.

4. Social recruiting shifts - Recruiters take turns managing networks during assigned shifts and time frames.

The approach that will work for you will depend on your people, organization size, expectations of your efforts and the time and resources you can dedicate. No matter what method you choose, remember that the key to social recruiting is that you ensure these four area of social success are being achieved:

Consistency

Your employment brand has a voice. Find it and use it consistently across all channels. Consistency also means that your channels are consistently active and updated.

Ongoing engagement

Social media is more about engagement than information sharing, so if all you’re doing is pushing out job openings, you’re missing out on an opportunity to build relationships and source candidates.

Response and follow up

In our day and age, candidates know they can reach a recruiter through social even when they can’t reach them through email or phone. They also expect quick response, so don’t let this area, one of the easiest ways to be successful in social, be something that leaves a lot to be desired.

Channel management based on the candidate community

Your efforts should be tailored and focused on those in your social network. That means that you’ll need to understand your candidate base, as well as understand the uniqueness of each network and who hangs out there. For instance, the expectations and demographics of a LinkedIn audience is probably going to differ from that of your Snapchat following, so tailor your approach accordingly. 

TalentCircles is the most comprehensive candidate engagement platform on the market. Take a product tour or request a live demo today. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology anthropologist specializing in HR and recruiting. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs and author of The HR Technology Field Guide. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

What Does Engagement on Social Recruiting Look Like? - Part Two

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Social recruiting is used by so many, but misunderstood by many as well. It’s become a regular part of most recruiters’ repertoires, but all too often it seems that we measure success by the number of likes or followers we get, when it’s really about the interaction that comes after that initial contact. In part one of this series, I gave five things that your social should be to go beyond the likes and shares, including being interactive, traffic minded and more.

Here in part two, I’ll share my take on a question that’s been around for as long as the social networks we use: how do you measure social success? We know that conversations, engagement and interactivity from candidates is key, but what does that get us in the long run? Rather than measuring success on likes or even engagement with our social networks, it’s all about what those things lead to. A retailer doesn’t measure its social success by shares but instead by purchases made through those shared links. The same is true of social recruiting, so here are five ways to measure your social recruiting success:

Sources of hire

This is the most obvious way to measure social recruiting success. Essentially, you want to know if a social network led a candidate to apply for your job opening. You can do this by looking at how many people are clicking the links you post, using your website’s analytics to determine how people got there and of course asking on your application where the candidate learned of the position.

Talent network growth rates

One attribute of social recruiting success is two-way conversations that lead candidates to your talent networks, where you can actually build relationships. You can measure the success of this aspect by looking at whether or not your talent network is growing. Thinking long term in this way means that you’re building communities for the long term that recruiters can pull and source from first.

Candidates by source

Often times, a candidate won’t use a direct link from your social networking site to apply for a position, or better yet, may connect with you on social long before they ever apply. That’s actually a good thing as one of the best qualities of social recruiting is the fact that it helps build long-term relationships. You can track candidates by source that follow this pattern by using cookies and url trackers, ensuring you get an accurate evaluation of where candidates are connecting with you.

Candidates by recruiter

Since recruiters are the ones connecting with candidates on your social networks, they can provide qualitative and quantitative evaluations of how many candidates they’re connecting with, the quality of those candidates and whether or not they apply.

Influencer relationships

Not all candidates are the same, and not all social followers are the same. Who’s connecting with you that you consider influential, interesting, a leader and someone you want to recruit and engage? If you’re reaching people that fit in these categories, count that as a success.

The truth is, you don’t have to have 300,000 followers on Twitter or 100,000 likes on Facebook to leverage social recruiting. Think quality over quantity and measure your efforts to make sure it’s a sound investment of time and resources.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

What Does Engagement on Social Recruiting Look Like? – Part One

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Social recruiting is widely misused and misunderstood, but many recruiters may not even know there’s a better way to use it. We all know that the first step to successful social recruiting is to have a strategy in place, but knowledge of social recruiting doesn’t extend very far past that. Many people look at it in terms of quantity, evaluating re-tweets, likes and shares as their measure of success. But it’s really what’s behind all those actions that counts. You can have a slew of social interaction with nothing to show for it. Real social recruiting engagement is about the quality of hire, engaging with candidates and building a talent pipeline for future company growth opportunities.

Overall, we’re misusing the technologies placed in front of us. Social recruitment isn’t solely a candidate-sourcing tool or a job broadcast network. It’s a delicate dance that combines engagement, relationships, sourcing and strategic content placement and builds relationships with the candidates now as well as helps you build a candidate pipeline that supports your long-term growth strategies.

To achieve social recruiting success, there are five qualities things social needs to be:

Interactive

All too often, I see companies using their social networks just to post job openings or find candidates. The problem with these approaches is that while you may be active on them, your candidates are not. You’re not giving them an opportunity to be part of the conversation or at the very least participate in some way.

Resource focused

Believe it or not, your job opening isn’t enough to make candidates want to be part of your social networks. And even if it was, you’re not going to build a candidate pipeline through social recruiting unless people have a reason beyond job openings to visit your social networks and like, follow or re-tweet you. Provide unique resources that will lead people back to your social networks and make them remember you.

Value added

What does a candidate get out of connecting with you on social media? You can add value by providing information, resources, pictures and other content that they can’t get on your careers page. If your social network accounts are an exact mirror of your careers page, what value are you adding by having them?

Unified

Social networks provide an opportunity for you to flex your employment brand. While you should be able to differentiate from one network to the next (see above), you should have a unified look, feel, tone, story and level of interaction across all your platforms.

Traffic minded

The main purpose of social recruiting is to get people to engage in some way and hopefully one day be interested in working for your company. However, your call to action should be directing potential candidates to your talent network rather than just applying for a job opening. This gives you a way to connect with interested parties even when you don’t have an open position and helps to build a long-term candidate pipeline.

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

Social Recruiting Needs Strategy

By Jessica Miller-Merrell 

Like any business, having a plan almost always leads to better and more successful results. It’s the reason retailers set financial goals for the year and financial institutions ask bankers to sign a certain number of customers up for loans. In the recruiting world, it’s the reason we agonize over our campus career fair calendar and religiously analyze our recruiting dashboards. We know that creating a plan will keep us from shooting in the dark and hoping we get close to our target.

Social media is no exception, but it’s often treated as such. Some think that it’s not necessarily a planned portion of the overall recruiting strategy because it often appears to be spontaneous and in the moment. The truth is, successful social media recruiting is planned and spontaneous, reactive and proactive, and above all else, strategic. In order to fully embrace social recruiting, you need a plan. One that goes beyond superficial social factors like re-tweets, likes, fans and followers, and focuses on the role it plays within your recruiting strategy framework.

Define your goals

Goals are important to have because they define where we want to be and provide hope that if we develop an effective strategy, we can get there. Going back to my college days, I can hear my marketing professor saying over and over again “Goals should be realistic and measurable.” Those words are simple but true. As you establish your goals, think about how your social networking goals help your recruiting team achieve its goals and of course, how these goals fit into the organization’s overall goals. Goals should speak to the social goal and the goal you hope to achieve as a result of that. For instance, if your goal is to have 1,000 new Facebook likes, how many more candidates do you hope that will connect you with?

Measurements and what they mean

Setting goals is important, but measuring and understanding results are what makes those goals worthwhile. In the same way that we desire to better understand which websites are the best candidate sources and how our job board or advertising spend is impacting our number of qualified candidates, we have to analyze social results as well. We have to know why we are measuring Twitter RTs, Instagram hearts and Facebook likes, or they’re no more valuable than the tiny icons themselves.  When you measure results, look for a cause and effect.

Don’t forget the strategy in your strategy

Goals are very important because they show where we want to be, but people tend to confuse strategy with goals, and social is especially susceptible to that because analytics provide us with a snapshot while the true purpose of these networks is harder to understand. A successful social strategy involves more than just how large you’d like your social networks to be, how much you’ll spend in Facebook ads to achieve that and how many new candidates that could potentially translate to. Your strategy should be just that – a strategy – or a road map to guide your postings and interactions. It should outline multiple tactics across all your platforms and include at least an overview of budget, timeline and responsible parties.

It takes time to build and grow a following. Companies must not only develop a strategy from the get go but also clearly define what success looks like, as well as ways to measure those results. The truth is that social media, like any recruiting channel, is an investment. 

Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She's the Chief Blogger and Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter at @jmillermerell.

How Social Recruiting Improves Your Time to Hire

By Jessica Miller-Merrell

As technology continues to improve all around us, one of the most significant effects it has on us is its ability to save us time. The way we use social media in recruiting is no exception to this trend, allowing us to source better and quicker than we have ever been able to. In fact, The Aberdeen Group’s study, “Getting Social About Sourcing,” revealed that companies that use social recruiting hire an average of 2.5 times quicker than those that don’t. Their cost per hire also decreases dramatically, which no doubt is due in part to the man-hours saved with each hire.

While most of us are probably using some sort of social recruiting, for the most part strategies tend to be lacking in focus and commitment. However, by using many aspects of social recruiting to develop a strategy, we can be more effective in our efforts.

Social listening

You probably know by now that social success comes from creating conversations and talking with, not at, candidates. But what you may not know is that much of the success is shaped before the conversation ever takes place. It begins with listening to the conversations all around you on social networks. What are people saying and asking about? What are other companies touting and what are people responding to? Social listening will also allow you to periodically check in on your efforts by evaluating whether or not you are ahead of your competition, if anyone is talking about you out there and of course, what’s working and what’s not. A little time spent listening could save you a lot of time because it gives you the data you need to know when your techniques need to be tweaked.

Job feeds

Some companies choose to utilize their social networks to create a social job feed. This is one of the most basic uses of social recruiting and is typically a company’s first step in making use of the tools they have available. The advantage of this type of job feed over  a job board or your careers page is that candidates have access to the most up-to-date postings and can even ask questions. Others can also share the postings through social, increasing your reach.

Social recruiting

While we’ve been talking about the overall term social recruiting throughout this article, the social recruiting I’m referring to here is the day-to-day social recruiting that has replaced much of the face-to-face recruiting we used to do. This is the grass roots recruiting that we’ve come to know and love, in digital form.

Sourcing

All too often we see short-lived, spray-and-pray strategies that are a gamble at best. In order to truly use social recruiting in a strategic way, you need to view it not only as another candidate source in which to fill single positions and job openings but also as a candidate pipeline source. This candidate pipeline should be powered by your social recruiting but candidate relationships should be fostered through a talent community that you direct them to and you manage.  

Employment branding

The opportunity to flex your employment brand across your social platforms is one of the best things about social recruiting. This also gives you the chance to leverage both the parts of your employment brand that you own (talent network, design, etc.) and the parts you don’t have control over but can benefit from (what people are saying about you, employee brand ambassadors, etc.). All of these pieces can come together to create a well-rounded image of your company that candidates can learn about through your social channels. 

 Jessica Miller-Merrell, SPHR is a workplace and technology strategist specializing in social media. She’s is the Chief Blogger & Founder of Blogging4Jobs. You can follow her on Twitter @jmillermerrell. 

The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick: A Handbook for the Art of Today's Eloquence

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

Most of us are frequenting social networks. However, 1) habit sometimes makes us become careless or sloppy and 2) we usually have signed up on sites at varying times and as a result we often end up coming across as a composite character. Being social is more than just signing up on social platforms: it is about understanding the "Art of Social," which entails leveraging the idiosyncrasies of each platform, honing our skills on each of them as well as managing our social life with a purpose.

The twelve chapters of The Art of Social Media by Guy Kawasaki and Peg Fitzpatrick are informational, practical, entertaining, well illustrated and definitely worth the time you will spend reading them: they will help you move from your (most likely) makeshift virtual presence to a harmonized social reality that transparently merges with and expands our real-world presence.

The heart of the book is about who you are as a social media person and how to best communicate. It's also about you as an individual or as a business professional or both.

Who are you?

The book starts with the beginning of your profile and ends with your portrait as shaped by the digital assets that you amass over time.

I like the fact that Guy and Peg do not hesitate to open with the very foundation of our identity on social networks. When you first started using social platforms, you may have been too fancy or simply reluctant to say who you were. The days when social media skittishness was common are over. It may be time for you to drop the strange avatar that you picked a few years ago, feel more at ease, take responsibility for who you are, and come across as somebody people will want to follow or be associated with.

How effective and memorable is your screen name? How do you look on your picture? What's your mantra? How consistent are you across the various platforms you frequent? In short "an effective profile is vital because people use it to make a snap judgment about your account" and ultimately about you. Just as in real life, first impressions count and how you deliver on these first impressions will count just as much. So follow the book's excellent advice: use the incognito window to check how you come across.

The book is loaded with practical tips on how to best deliver on your persona — and even reminds you on what’s best to wear in a Google hangout: "Video cameras do strange things to clothes that contain complex patterns and stripes. The effect is called “moiré,” and it looks like waviness in the video. The way to prevent this is to wear clothes without patterns and to stick to solid colors."

Your social existence is a continuously expandable. Social networks are complementary venues that enable you to express the multiple facets of who you are, see more of the world at large and meet people whom you never expected to encounter. In the end, your social presence will enable you to connect faster when you meet in person the people you follow or who follow you. Virtual is a fast path to an enhanced connection to the physical world: "Social media can help you start, build, and maintain relationships with people all over the world. But meeting people face-to-face can make your relationship even stronger and better."

Social networks are the place where you can augment your influence and because of this, it's a personality/business amplifier. 

How and what do you communicate?

When we first start on social media, we wonder about what to share and if what we think is worth sharing. This behavior is largely conditioned by the fact that in our daily lives, we are rarely asked for our opinion and point-of-view and rarely involved in collaborative exchanges. However, in 2015, most of us have been able to see the exponential growth of "shares," which has encouraged us to swim with the tide and made us realize that presence on social networks is not simply about us, but just as much about how we interact with others. Social is less about ego marketing and more about interpersonal skills, less about self-affirmation of one's originality and more about contributing to a collaborative content value chain. E pluribus unum!

As a result, in addition to providing guidance on how to best word your post, the book offers invaluable recommendations on the art of feeding "the content monster."

  

Content curation may sound like an easy path to feed that "monster," yet it's also a way for you to demonstrate your openness, your desire to belong as well as your charisma: "it involves finding other people’s good stuff, summarizing it, and sharing it. Curation is a win-win- win: you need content to share; blogs and websites need more traffic, and people need filters to reduce the flow of information." Associate yourself with great curators and leverage multiple curation and aggregation services, such as Alltop, HolyKaw, Buffer, Google Scholar, SmartBrief, LinkedIn Influencers, Scoopit, Newsle, etc. Take a look at the extensive list provided at the end of the book!

You can read the Art of Social Media as a book "On Rhetoric, or the Art of Eloquence" for today's social environment with its own guidelines on convincing and influencing, reacting and letting it go, on conciseness and likeability. Writing a perfected short post or sharing images on social media entail a global communication style associated with solid fast reading skills as well as image decoding aptitudes. Becoming a super social media star is just as complex as becoming a great author. The book gives you all the tips you need to attract a loyal following base and create an integrated social media and blogging presence. In the end, however, your personal talent and your hard work will do the rest...

Ultimately, always remember that "social" is "social" regardless of the medium, be it virtual as social networks or any physical place; so understanding that you are in a communal environment with its rules and manners is essential, even if you do not communicate with your entire base but only with certain groups, circles or lists. If you want to come across as asocial or antisocial, it's your choice, but this may not be the most effective approach to command attention Enchant your followers and enjoy yourself!

Veterans Series: Community is key to attracting veterans: Conversation with Chad Sowash.

This post is part of a series that already includes conversations with:

Fred Wellman: If you don't find a job, create one!

Chris Norton: Veterans are social and connected

Lance Sapera: The service is a long version of University

Caleb Fullhart: An army recruiter changed my life forever

Arron Daniels: I Can Knock It Out of the Park!

Rhonda Stickley: Embracing the Learn and Grow Veterans' ethos to understand leadership

Brenda Bell: Veterans will help your company succeed

Max Dubroff: Ten recommendations to veterans.

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

Chad Sowash retired from the Military after 20 combined years of service. He started in the online recruitment industry in 1998 working in sales at Online Career Center before it was rebranded as Monster.com in January of ‘99. After leaving Monster Chad took a leadership role as a Vice President at DirectEmployers Association for ten years. During his that time he led the collaboration between Corporate America and State Workforce in the creation of the National Labor Exchange.   

Chad enjoyed a short stint with RecruitMilitary as their Chief Experience Officer and exited shortly after the company’s acquisition. Chad has since teamed up with a colleague to start a firm, Catch 22 Consulting, whose purpose is to provide expert resource for companies which want to build meaningful hiring programs for veterans and individuals with disabilities and ultimately help companies better understand attraction, engagement and building of communities, as opposed to merely building resume databases.

Tell me about your history, what you did in the military?

I actually started my career in the military only six days after graduating high school. I knew I wasn’t ready to jump right into college, wanted to see the world and felt the military was a great option. I soon found that being stationed in the tropical paradise of Panama was wonderful just as long as I wasn’t receiving mortar and AK47 fire, which is what happened within the first few months of my tour during Operation Just Cause.  That’s right I started the first four years my 20-year stint with Uncle Sam in active duty Army and found myself carved into a hillside on the parameter of Fort Clayton ducking, covering and returning fire.

Fast-forward four years to 1993 where I found myself transitioning back into civilian life and in search of the same type of brotherhood, camaraderie and true community that I missed from the Army. That’s where I found and joined the Army Reserves. I finished up my twenty as a reservist where I was deployed back to active duty a couple times as an Infantry Drill Sergeant on Sand Hill at Fort Benning, GA. That’s right, Round Brown, push-ups, cadence, the whole deal as a full-time Infantry Drill for 2 ½ years, HOOAH.

Why did you transition out of active duty?

Back in ‘93 I was only an E-4 and you have to remember back then we were faced with major military budget cuts from the Clinton administration, so the likelihood of promotion was very bleak. Heck we were using the original Nintendo game systems for M16 weapons qualification instead of real weapons and live rounds, talk about scary. At that point it really didn’t make any sense for me to stay in the active military, so I made my move and chose to transition back into the civilian world. Fast forward to today, that’s pretty much what we’re going to be seeing with this huge drawdown: many aren’t going to want to stay in, and others are going to be pushed out for a myriad of reasons not due to bad conduct.

How was the transition to a civilian job from being an E-4 Specialist?

It was fairly easy. On active duty, my first job was as a quartermaster and chemical equipment repair, and luckily my new employer knew to look deeper or I would have easily been overlooked. Luckily I had an “inside scoop” to land a sales gig and once I started working in the job, the skills I learned in the military translated easily. My new boss knew that military teaches you much more — leadership, working within a team – those types of things that were very important in my transition. Over the years, I’ve presented to many groups about military and veteran hiring and I always ask how many people (in the audience) ever went through standardized leadership training to keep the job that they were promoted into? Usually you can hear a pin drop after that question, because in general, there are no leadership courses organic to organizational career pathing, like in the military. Most promotions above E-3, in the Army, come with leadership course “strings attached”. This means you must complete the prescribed leadership course to retain or achieve the next promotion. Not to mention, you must keep up with all of your certifications, new schools etc. That’s right the military has standardized leadership courses that are organic to the entire environment, because the military builds leaders and most organizations promote their achievers, which unfortunately in most cases are not leaders.

Would you have gotten your first job without having the “inside scoop”?

That’s a great question and to be honest, if I actually made it to the interview I would have been confident, but I’m not sure that I would’ve made it through the resume screen. As I said, my first job after transitioning into the civilian sector was in sales, where you obviously have to work with people on a daily basis and you have to be very detail-oriented. I was lucky because my “inside scoop” was my Dad who was the Regional Sales Manager and also an Army veteran. But if I didn’t have that “inside scoop” or connection would I have gotten hired into that position? Did my resume say that I had the necessary skill sets? Would a newfangled Military Occupation Code (MOC) translator say the job was right for me? Not in a million years. But I did have the skills, learned and honed from the military and was fortunate enough to be afforded the chance to prove myself.

Did the military teach you to adjust to new circumstances?

Absolutely! Flexibility is a necessity in the military, because you never know what’s going to come at you, literally. You have a mission, but you have the autonomy within that mission to get it completed, and you have to map out all of the different contingency plans, visualize outcomes, alternate opportunities and anticipate problems. You can’t just go into a mission thinking there’s one way to achieve the goal. So when I transitioned back into civilian life the entire thought-process and mindset was perfect for business.

What else did the military teach you?

The military taught me many things, but I believe leadership and the “driver” instinct was important, which for me was a perfect match for the business development and sales world. I also knew that I wanted to work with people, which is ingrained in us on Day One in Army Basic Training where you are issued a Battle Buddy, even before your toilet paper, a bunk or even wall locker. This sets a precedent that teamwork is paramount and starts the wheel of camaraderie and community in motion. I firmly believe that specific mindset translates very well into the civilian workforce, yes we might be a tad more direct than our civilian counterparts at first, but everything can become copasetic after acclimating to our new environment.

So what are some recommendations you would give to hiring companies?

I could go on for days, but here are a few that I think every company should think about deeply.

1) Get an expert to provide a fresh set of eyes

It takes a very specialized skill-set to build a successful veteran hiring program and you cannot fathom how many gaps you’re missing. So bring in an expert who can provide a fresh set of eyes and the expertise you desperately need. Over the past 10 years I’ve seen many companies fail when trying to build a DIY veteran hiring program because they felt they knew what they were doing. They didn’t…

2) Focus heavily on community

Much like I did when transitioning out of the active duty, other veterans will look for the same military-like community. Can your organization provide it? Are you using community to retain your current veteran population? Do you even know who your current veterans are? If so, how are you engaging them and using them as a business asset?

3) Ask the right questions

Civilianized questions won’t work well with prior service, especially newly transitioning military.  It’s incredibly important for organizations to understand who we (Veterans) are so they may ask the right questions allowing them to truly tap into the most relevant responses.

4) Focus on outcomes, not just compliance

The OFCCP is pushing very hard on federal contractors to have a better understanding of military talent and how it relates to their open positions. I have watched the same organizations drop the “veteran hiring ball” many times over the years because they are focused on checking the box and not actual hiring outcomes. Organizations may someday get veteran hiring right IF they focus on building sustainable veteran hiring pipelines that are graded against outcomes, not audits. Compliance should be an advisor at the table and NOT the driver.   

Veterans Series: If you don't find a job, create one! Conversation with Fred Wellman

This post is part of a series that already includes conversations with:

Chris Norton: Veterans are social and connected

Lance Sapera: The service is a long version of University

Caleb Fullhart: An army recruiter changed my life forever

Arron Daniels: I Can Knock It Out of the Park!

Rhonda Stickley: Embracing the Learn and Grow Veterans' ethos to understand leadership

Brenda Bell: Veterans will help your company succeed

Max Dubroff: Ten recommendations to veterans.

By Marylene Delbourg-Delphis

Fred Wellman is the founder-CEO of ScoutComms, a social enterprise communications, advocacy and philanthropic strategy firm supporting veterans, military families and organizations committed to their well-being.

How did you get into the military? What did you do and for how long?

I “rebelled” as a teenager and instead of going to the University of Missouri like the rest of my family I got crazy and went to the United States Military Academy at West Point. I graduated in 1987 and was commissioned as an Aviation officer and eventually found myself as a Scout helicopter pilot in various units around the world and in Operation Desert Storm. I served 13 years before leaving the Regular Army for the Reserves only to be mobilized on 9/11 and return again to the active force. I deployed with the 101^st Airborne Division for opening year of Operation Iraqi Freedom and while in Iraq found myself supporting the local population and eventually in the news. The division commander was then Major General David Petraeus and he decided to make me the division public affairs officer when we returned. I later served as his spokesman in Iraq as well as then Lt. Gen. Martin Dempsey who is now the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. I attended grad school at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and was assigned to the Pentagon. After my third Iraq tour in 2008 I decided to retire after 22 total years of service.

If you don’t find a job, create one! Right?    

Yes! After leaving the military, I joined a small firm but soon found out that it wasn’t a good fit. Then I interviewed for jobs, but no one was hiring me in November of 2010; so I struck out on my own.  I saw there was a niche for someone who understood the military, defense and veterans’ worlds at larger PR firms. So, I started my own firm essentially as a professional sub-contractor to larger PR firms. Gradually we just grew on our own merits and kept picking up unique opportunities and partners. Our big break came when The Home Depot Foundation decided to focus on veterans housing issues and brought us on to their team for the launch and program three years ago and since then more and more of our work has focused exclusively on veteran’s issues. For the last year or so, a significant part of our work has focused on veteran family issues, on military caregivers for our wounded and disabled veterans, and on supporting the Get Skills to Work program bringing veterans to work in the advanced manufacturing industry. We also got involved in supporting the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University, which does a lot of the thinking on these issues and focuses on entrepreneurship and job training. So really, that’s our thing.

ScoutComms, my company, which is based in Virginia, has now been around for three years and at the beginning of this year we turned it into a social enterprise ‘Benefit Corporation’. So we now have a structure as a benefit corporation with social mission focused on veterans and military families.

We’re really a weird little company. It’s foundation are communications-based initiatives; advocacy, being experts in our field; helping craft philanthropic strategies and reach veterans and military families. It’s just sort of a unique niche, and we’ve gotten pretty good at it. A lot of people first hire us as PR, but also look to us as a military expert, if you will, even though I hate that term – “expert.” Then, when we grew, since all we did was veterans and military families, we thought we would go out and meet non-profits for them, we’d vet them for the client, we would look for opportunities for them to apply their mission to new ways, sniffing out fakes or poorly run non-profits. I think we’ve done it all, as far as being people who understand the veteran’s space and help our clients navigate this unusual sector.

As a PR firm, what do you exactly do?

We are specialists in focusing on the military and veteran’s media and target audiences. Take The Home Depot for example. On the corporate side we’ve quite a bit and won awards for our work with them. Our biggest project was the Mission: Transition campaign last year. We partnered with the MSLGroup on that one and we were brought in by The Home Depot to serve as the military focused extension to the campaign. We handled the military focused media, government media, and outreach to the military transition programs to reach potential attendees. We did a lot of outreach to the Army, for example the Army’s Soldier for Life campaign and the Army’s community relations program to get as many soldiers as possible to attend the workshops with postings in every Army transition office around the world. We also leveraged our extensive relationships with the veteran’s service organizations and non-profits to get the word to their members and reach more of the veteran population. In the end every workshop at over 100 locations were filled and the campaign won several awards including two Silver Anvils from PRSA.

Tell me more about the Get Skills to Work program

We have been very fortunate to be part of supporting GE’s leadership of the Get Skills to Work program. Just over a year and a half ago, GE recognized they faced a skills gap of employees in the manufacturing industry. To address it they decided to focus on bringing veterans into the industry, but they wanted to go beyond just a hiring program – they had that already. So they partnered with the Manufacturing Institute, which is a part of the National Manufacturing Association here in Washington and several other companies and non-profits.  Now they’ve built a coalition of now over five hundred companies, ranging in size from twelve-man operations here in Fredericksburg, VA to GE, Alcoa, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, the founding partners. And they’ve also built a coalition of over fifty schools, where veterans can go Get Skills to Work training, at community colleges and technical schools, to get advanced manufacturing certifications and qualifications. We’re talking CNC Machine Operator, Machinist, Welder, Logistics Analyst’s there’s some eleven specific career fields, and then these guy and girls find jobs in the manufacturing industry. The program is growing every day and is really just getting its legs and making a difference in the community.

What are your top recommendations to organizations?

I apply the “kitchen sink” approach to working with the veterans and military family communities. In other words the challenges for these communities is that they don’t have just one solution so we need to throw everything and the kitchen sink to solve the problems. I tell organizations to look for areas that aren’t being addressed. For example, while young veteran unemployment is finally coming down to manageable levels we continue to see our military spouses struggle to find work and it impacts the military community. I believe organizations should seek opportunities for impact giving instead of throwing out “cardboard checks” where possible. In other words, find quality non-profits that are making a difference in the communities and ensure your money is making as big an impact as possible. I believe giving should align with a companies core principals and priorities. If your company is oriented on the health and wellness of its employees then seek out organizations like Team Red, White & Blue which use physical fitness activities to bring veterans and their communities together. Don’t believe the hype about veteran’s challenges fitting in companies and especially all of us having PTSD or other problems. The overwhelming majority of veterans in poll after poll are well adjusted and better for their service. There are clearly those in our community struggling but don’t assume all veterans are in that place.