Providing security jobs for veterans

AlliedBarton actively seeks out and hires family members of veterans through employer assistance groups

AlliedBarton Security Services implemented its program to hire retired service veterans five years ago.

“Our CEO Bill (William C.) Whitmore announced one day that ‘we’re going to have a lot of American heroes coming home soon, and I want to give them jobs,’” said Jerold Ramos, Director, Strategic Recruiting and Military Liaison with AlliedBarton. “Bill thought it was the right thing to do.”

Pennsylvania-based AlliedBarton has earned praise from veteran assistance organisations for its program called Hire Our Heroes. “The Wounded Warrior Project says, for instance, that we are by far the largest employer they have in the country,” continued Ramos.

Other groups have recognised AlliedBarton’s commitment to veterans. Victory Media, publisher of G.I. Jobs and Military Spouse magazines, for example, has named AlliedBarton a 2015 Top 100 Military Friendly Employer.

About 18,000 of AlliedBarton’s 60,000 employees are veterans — 30 percent of the total.

Good for business

“Turns out, it’s more than the right thing to do,” said Ramos. “It has also been good for business.”

Some veterans, of course, have years of security experience — patrolling facilities and monitoring video, access control and alarm screens in security control centres. Their experience ranges from security officer to manager.

Ramos added that security is only one skill that veterans offer. “While we provide security services, we’re a large company in need of all the corporate support services that any large corporation needs: IT, HR, legal, financial, administrative, public information and so on. Veterans offer all of these kinds of skills.”

Moreover, veterans are accustomed to undergoing training and learning new disciplines, making them potential candidates for any company department, observed Ramos. Additional qualities include dependability and the ability to perform under pressure.

Finally, Ramos said that AlliedBarton found that employing veterans cuts costs. It has reduced training costs as well as high fees for background screening — veterans have already been well screened.

Companies can also earn tax credits, ranging from $3,000 to $9,600 per hire, for employing veterans.

Finding veterans

The hard part of hiring veterans may be finding them. AlliedBarton’s Hire Our Heroes program makes a science of finding veterans.

The company has formed partnerships with many military assistance groups that help veterans find employment. These groups include Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve, Wounded Warrior Project, HireVeterans.com, American GI Forum, Coalition to Salute America’s Heroes, the National Guard and others.

“At their sites, employers can post jobs and look up resumes,” Ramos said. “Our recruiting strategy includes visiting the local offices of our partners in person. We use the national office to find the local partner. I can’t emphasise how important knowing your local partners personally is.

“You also have to brand yourself as a veteran friendly company,” he adds. “We get calls from Afghanistan about employment. Their friends here have told them that we are veteran-friendly, and they call.”

The company actively seeks out and hires family members of veterans through employer assistance groups from the Veterans Administration and Department of Defense. Those efforts led Victory Media to name AlliedBarton as a 2015 Military Friendly Spouse Employer.

“Military families have different needs than civilian families,” said Ramos. “Because of military service of a family member, the family may live in an area with few job opportunities. We recruit in those areas.

“If a service member is deployed, and the pay isn’t enough to keep the family going, we want to provide a job for family members — if the family can’t make it, that service member will fail, too, and come home. We want to prevent that if we can.”