<p>Callie and Mark talk veteran hiring including the GSD (Get Stuff Done) mentality, how it's best to start small with a veteran initiative and how it takes work on both sides (employee AND employer) to get it right.</p>
Callie and Mark talk veteran hiring including the GSD (Get Stuff Done) mentality, how it's best to start small with a veteran initiative and how it takes work on both sides (employee AND employer) to get it right.
Callie Zipple:
Hi, everyone and welcome back to Honest HR. I am your host Callie Zipple, and I just want to take a second to thank you all for being here with us. If you've listened before, great, and keep telling your friends about us. If you're new, we're happy you're here. We're happy you found us, and we hope that you'll enjoy today's topic. If you don't, that's cool, but know that we switch up our topics and guests each week so we hope you'll try us out again, sometime in the future. Today, I am excited to say that I'm joined by Mark Hocker from my neighbor state, Illinois. And we're recording this podcast the day after Green Bay beat The Bears.
And that's all I'll say about it, but I'm excited to have Mark here and we'll be talking about veterans returning from duty and entering the workforce. And so as our listeners may know, this is a huge initiative that the SHRM Foundation is supporting and has been supporting for a couple of years now. So it's a great topic to discuss on this podcast, and I'm super excited to have Mark here to share his background and his story with you all. So Mark, welcome. And thanks again for taking the time to chat with me. If you don't mind, tell us a little bit about your time in the military, and what you're doing now with Deloitte.
Mark Hocker:
Hey, Callie. Thanks for having me. I didn't know I was going to get punched in the gut right away with that Bears Packer's comment, but it was two different teams playing almost last night on both sides, but to get to your question I'll start with the second part first. I currently work for Deloitte and I work in a subsection of talents called partner matters. And for the majority of the year, I work on a process called admissions, where Deloitte is a partnership. So we have partners and principals who own the firm. And then we also have managing directors, which are the top employees. And so the admissions process sees senior managers go through different stages and steps to become partners, principals, and managing directors.
And then during the summer, I worked on managing director performance management with my military experience. So I joined the army national guard in 2000, when I was still a senior in high school. And at that time, I decided to be a paralegal. I wanted to be a lawyer, which I ended up not doing later on. And because I chose to be a paralegal, it's what we call a low density MOS, which is military occupational specialty, which is the job you choose whenever you join the military. And because it's low density, that means very few people go into that job skill. And so I wasn't able... They pushed back my basic training because there was only so many people that could fit in a paralegal class at each time.
So I wasn't leaving to go to basic training until October of 2001. A month before I shipped out for basic training, 9/11 happened completely changed the world. I had joined the guard originally to just pay for college because in Illinois, if you went to a state school, you could get free tuition, and then the GI bill on top of that. And so throughout late 2001 and 2002, I went to my basic training and my job skill training at that time came back, started going to college. And then I had my one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer for the training with the guard unit I was in. And then in December of 2004, I was actually leaving a final for a college class that I just completed. And I got a phone call and it was telling me that I was deploying to Iraq in three weeks.
So January 2005, we shipped off to Fort Stewart, Georgia did training there for four months. Went to California for a month to do desert training, came back to Georgia for a month, and then shipped over to Iraq, where I was there for a year. And during that time as a paralegal, I was doing several different things. One, I was explaining rights under Geneva conventions to detainees, taking care of non-judicial punishment for soldiers, which is similar to a misdemeanor in the civilian world. Also working on article 32 investigations, which are similar to grand juries. And then also courts Marshall, which of course are like felonies. Also, sometimes I'd have to work on claims. So if a local nationals car was hit by a US Humvee or something, then we have to pay the claim out.
And then also I worked on claims for soldiers who possibly lost something while they were moving between Kuwait and Iraq or something like that. And so when I came home finally, I had one year of college left and was able to finish that up and then went back to doing the one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer guard duty. In the spring of '08, I had the opportunity to go on active duty for the national guard. And so to kind of give that some more context, most people in the national guard do the one weekend a month, two weeks in the summer, but there's a small contingent of people who work on active duty for the national guard full time, every day, making sure that everything runs correctly between training dates. And so that role was my first true HR role.
In the past, as a paralegal, on weekend training, there wasn't always something to do legal wise. So I often got pushed over to the human resources team and worked with them. And so while I was on active duty, I had two HR roles there, one that was more of a generalist and one that was more of a manager role, and they were at different echelons. And so the one that was a generous role was at the brigade level. And so when you think about that, that's going to be like a business group that has subordinate business groups under it. And then the second role, it was at the company level, which is the lowest level. And so after a few years of doing that, I decided to transition back to the civilian workforce and that ended my time in the national guard.
Callie Zipple:
Wonderful. First of all, thank you for your service. Second of all, I appreciate you sharing your story with us. And I feel like I could ask you why you chose not to pursue being a lawyer, but at the same time, I feel like I don't have to ask you why you didn't pursue that. So my question for you, based on everything that you just shared is, what were some of the specific tasks that you had, specific to that HR generalist and HR manager type of role? Walk us through a little bit about what you were doing while you were in the military and in those HR roles.
Mark Hocker:
Yeah. So the first one I mentioned the HR generalist role. I said it was at that the brigade level and it got the subordinate units under it. And so a lot of what we did, we had a team of, it varied during the time I was there, but anywhere from three to six people on that team. And so a lot of what we did was analyze metrics, take care of more complex problems that the subordinate units maybe couldn't take care of. We also kind of were the final point of inspection as paperwork made its way up to our higher echelon. So if someone was being removed from service or if there was an award or recognition that went above us, then we were making sure that everything was correct on it.
We also audited our subordinate units to make sure they were in compliance with the regulations. And with the army regulations, a lot of them just mirror civilian laws. And then we also had kind of stuff to do on the medical side as well, where we have kind of a mirror thing to workers comp and FMLA that we also dealt with on that side. Now at that level, I probably wasn't speaking directly to soldiers that much, but in my second role, when I was in the HR manager role at the company level, that was more employee relations training. And when I talk about training there, everything we do is training almost.
And so I was in charge of creating the training calendar and the budget for each training year for the unit. The unit as a whole, but then each individual soldier has to complete training as well to make sure that they're proficient in their job skill or at their correct level. So if they're a non-commissioned officer or an officer, they have to have certain training just really kind of solidifies the leadership skills they already have. And then as I mentioned, employee relations, taking care of pay issues, submitting pay. A lot of stuff had to do with people's retirement, because there's certain ways that has to be processed and accounted for.
And then just oftentimes when people are going to leave the guard, trying to retain them. Working with our recruiting team to see what bonuses are eligible for people who we might try to retain. And then also on the other side of that is people who are being involuntarily separated. So maybe we have somebody who is caught doing drugs or failed their physical fitness test, something like that. And all that paperwork would be generated from the level that I was working at. And then of course, just the myriad of general employee relations questions that you get every day.
Callie Zipple:
So I was taking notes while you were giving your answer, and this is really important to the rest of our conversation that people really gather what I'm about to say. So I'm going to recap all of the various HR duties you had just mentioned. So you said, employee relations, training, paperwork, pay, payroll, retirement or benefits, retention, terminations and recruiting, just to name a few. And again, I was just sort of taking notes as you were giving your answer. So the reason that we have you on today, Mark, and the reason that this topic is so important, I feel, for HR individuals to hear is that you have so much HR experience based on your time in the military. And yet you had struggled, right? After you decided to transition back into civilian life.
And I know that because we've had this conversation and we've talked about this topic at length, right? So I want you to share with our listeners that transition period. So you gained all these valuable experiences and knowledge, and then you start to transition back into civilian life and you begin looking for a job that allows you to do similar things that you had been doing in the military. So given your exposure to HR, as I just mentioned, you'd think that it would be an easy thing for you to find an HR role, but that wasn't necessarily the case. So tell us about the experience that you had trying to translate your military experience to professional experience.
Mark Hocker:
Yeah. Let's see. It probably took me two and a half years to find a new role outside the military. As I mentioned earlier, I had gone onto active duty in March of '08. And my wife had actually lost her job in that time period as everybody recalls, it was the start of the economic downturn. And so that's why I had taken on that role on active duty with the guard. And so when my wife had found a new job and was stable, I kind of started poking around seeing if there's anything out there that I might want to move over to.
Something that interested me, something that I could easily transition my skills I learned being an HR professional in the military to. And so it just took a while, and I have a... I should say, this is my experience. This isn't every veteran's experience. So what I say some people might, might resonate with them. Others might not have had these issues at all. But I have a couple anecdotes that I can share that just really kind of just brought me down, I guess, whenever I was doing those job searches.
Callie Zipple:
Mark, before you share those anecdotes, the reason that I feel like this is so important is because HR talks about how important it is to have veterans initiatives. And sometimes in HR, we don't do a great job of it. And so that's why this topic and you are being willing to talk about your experience, you're right, it might not resonate with everybody. But for me, the point is that we need to make sure that we're taking care of our house, right? So if we have veterans initiatives, we need to look within the HR department and say, "How can we live? What we're preaching?"
And you are a perfect example of various HR departments or HR roles, not necessarily doing that. And so I appreciate you sharing the disclaimer that this absolutely is not everybody's experience, but if it's even one person's experience, I think it's important to get HR to realize that we need to be able to understand veterans' experience within their military career and how that can transition into a professional role. So I just wanted to say that I, again appreciate you sharing your disclaimer, but feel free to sort of go through your anecdotes that you were going to share.
Mark Hocker:
So while I was doing my job searches, I obviously was looking at everything HR I could find. I was on Monster, on Career Builder, on Indeed, USA Jobs, trying to find anything. And oftentimes it was the black hole that can be recruiting systems. And then also oftentimes it was just the automated message right back letting me know that they're looking at other candidates, but they'll keep me in mind, which of course, we all know, we've received those before. But I did want to share a few anecdotes about my experience trying to transition from a HR role in the military to an HR role in the civilian world. And the first one, this was probably 2010, 2011, there was this huge push for the 100,000 jobs mission to employ veterans.
And there was a website set up from job postings from all these companies. And I'm sure a lot of people had a great experience with this program. Mine wasn't so great. I found a job locally in my area that... I wasn't looking to be the director of HR. I knew my limitations. It was an HR generalist role, maybe only a HR coordinator role. I knew that that transition from military to HR, to civilian HR wasn't going to completely move over. So I wasn't looking to be in charge of everything or even at the manager level yet. But I found one that I applied to and a couple days later I received a call and I think I had missed the call and we ended up playing phone tag.
And when I finally got back to the guy, I thought he was a recruiter, but he was actually just somebody from the company asking if I had any questions about the program. I wanted to talk to a recruiter. I was interested about the job, but he didn't want to talk about the job at all. It was about just, "Hey, do you have any questions about this program?" I did end up talking to a recruiter about the job, and then I never heard anything back from them. And I know that happens. I've done recruiting before, but to have it where you have this veteran's initiative, but to not give the consideration to even send the email saying, "Hey, we're going with someone else," kind of puts a damper on everything.
The second thing was that the armory I worked out of was near downtown Chicago. So we were often used as kind of a props and as the background for government figures, when they were letting everyone know about a new initiative or a bill being signed. And this was when a bill was being signed in Illinois that provided tax credits to companies that hired veterans. And there were several local CEOs there that Ron hand to applaud the bill. One was the CEO of company that I had recently applied to. And it was probably two or three weeks prior to that. And I just happened to notice that he was from that same company and it was one of those jobs, again, I never heard back from them.
And if I hadn't been probably in uniform and so disciplined, I may have gone up and mentioned something to them, but once the bill was signed, him and the other guys were slapping each other on the back and they're going to get tax credits, but they probably don't have a program in place to actually look for veterans or to get their initiative going. It just seemed kind of wrong to me in a way. Now, my third story, I was at a veteran's job hiring fair in 2012. I was going around speaking with different companies, passing on my resume. I understand that job fairs, I've been to him before, you're unlikely to get a callback. But one thing that just struck me here was that I was talking with a person at the booth.
I can't recall if he was a recruiter or not, but he asked me what field I was in. And I said, HR. And he said, "Yeah, everybody is," kind of with a smirk. And so I kind of ended that conversation shortly after that. You don't say stuff like that when you're at a job fair trying to bring people in. Make them excited about your company. It's just not something to do. Those three things have always stuck out to me during my transition as things that just not to do. And I kind of, I guess, powered through them, because what I found out was probably the best places to look were smaller companies that didn't have veteran initiatives. But I think almost every single one I had an interview at, they said, "We're not big enough to have a veterans initiative, but we are trying to find veterans to hire."
And that's where I ended up landing was at a great company in the Northern suburbs of Chicago that they weren't big enough to have a veteran's hiring initiative, but they understood what a veteran's experience brought to the table. And when I started that job, my boss had this list of training he wanted me to attend at local places, and just kind of get me brought up to speed on what I need to know to kind of transition fully. And I think that the bigger companies probably maybe have great intentions, but the planning and execution may not be there as much as they think it is.
Callie Zipple:
Yeah. Thank you so much for sort of sharing your path through your transition period. And I think some of the examples that you shared or those things that stick with you, I think we can all agree that that happens to people who aren't necessarily veterans as well, specifically that last one, right? He could have said that to anybody at that job fair, anybody that came up to his booth, it didn't matter if they were a veteran or not a veteran or in HR or not in HR.
But I think it's just really important for us again, to realize that when we do have initiatives and when we do say we want to hire veterans, if there's a veteran standing there and wants to talk to you about their experience, it's important for us to live what we preach, right? So again, thank you so much for sharing all of those fields as you were going through your transition. One question I have as well, and we sort of talked about this ahead of doing this recording, but based on your experience, what sort of advice do you have for recruiters specifically who are looking to be more proactive in their hiring of veterans?
Mark Hocker:
I guess I should separate this into two parts. If you're going to have an initiative, have it well thought out. And I'll go into things here in a minute about what they can do to gain some more knowledge about the military and veterans. But I think you just really need to have that thought out. Don't just do it to do it, but do it because you find that it's going to be valuable to both you and the veteran, and that you really want to make an impact. I'm not saying you have to go out and just hire every veteran that applies, but make it a solid program. And then if you don't have an initiative, that's great as well. These are some other...
I'm going to give you some examples of what you can do to kind of shore up your veteran programming or your veteran recruiting. If you're near a base, any of the active duty bases, larger ones are going to have a transition office for when people are leaving the military. And so you can always contact them and see what you can work with them on. I know that for people who are retiring out of the military, there's a transition assistance program called TAP, just an acronym, but that's going to be something that, if I remember right, it's one or two days where the retiree is going to the base and just kind of gain the resume and order gain all their VA benefits ready. And it's an opportunity for, if that base and that transition office does it, for you to possibly go there and explain what your company does and what initiatives you have.
As I mentioned my experience that veteran job fair, obviously wasn't great, but there are veteran job fairs all over the place. I get emails still for veteran job fairs that are happening almost weekly in major cities. Even I know the state of Illinois Veterans Department has them throughout the year as well. And then one thing, do your research. If you have somebody who is a veteran that's already working for you, talk to them, do focus groups with them, find out what went well when you hired them and, or other things that... What brought them to you during that time. You can, as I mentioned, talk to the base, the transition office and see if you can talk to some of the military personnel who are leaving or other military personnel about what's important to them or what they want to see when trying to be hired by when they leave the military.
Before I went to Deloitte another company I had applied for a job, didn't get it, but I was contacted by someone who worked in recruiting for that company and just wanted to make me a part of their talent network. They in the email they sent just said, "Hey, we try to have a veteran's initiative. We want to make sure you're part of our talent network. Here's some resources we have." And it seems to come from a real person instead of an automated system, which I'm not looking for a job, but that has always stayed with me as well that, that company might be a company I would want to apply to in the future because they actually are taking steps to have an initiative that works.
Callie Zipple:
Yeah. I think my favorite example or favorite suggestion you just shared is the one about going on base. The only thing I will mention is that, so my husband is actually in the army national garden now and we had to go to a base to get his military ID renewed. And I, for whatever reason, didn't bring my wallet with me. So I didn't have an ID. So I actually was not permitted to go on base with him, for him to go renew his military ID. So the only thing I'll say to people is give a call first and make sure that they're able and willing to accept you onto base and give you any sorts of information about how and what you need to do to prepare for the event.
So that's just a funny and embarrassing story I will share about trying to get on base with my husband. But the last question I think I want to talk with you about is just, and again, my husband would kill me for saying this, but military individuals do learn some "soft skills" while they're in the military. And I know that they would hate it being called soft skills because there's nothing really about the military that's soft, right? But because of these soft skills that these veterans have when they come out of the military, like leadership skills and communication skills and general GSD, or get stuff done mentality, that's a huge benefit to employers. So I guess my question for you, Mark, is if someone asked you why they should consider hiring a veteran, what would you say?
Mark Hocker:
You gave some great examples, Callie. One thing that I think that stands out, leadership stands out the most because everyone has a leadership role at some point in the military, even down to the specialist or sometimes the private first class are going to be in charge of the private. But responsibility during basic training and your job training and all training, it's being responsible for everything you do for your equipment, for the people that are to your left in the right of you. And taking that responsibility and all your responsibility serious, and making sure that everything is done correctly and that everyone's taken care of.
And those are very important things because you want to make sure that the mission's complete successfully and that everybody comes back. And that can translate, I think ,really well to the civilian world, especially when trying to meet tight deadlines, when trying to just, like you said, get stuff done. But it's that core thing that has always stood out to me as something that developed more in the military, even now with... I have two toddlers and a baby, and I don't want to say I make it like a military household, but I make sure that they try to take responsibility for their things and for what they do so that they have an appreciation for what they're given instead of just kind of throwing it to the side or it breaking or being lazy and stuff like that.
Callie Zipple:
And I think it's so important that you make the comment that what you learned in the military and the person that it grew you to be is not something that you lose, right? You're raising kids with the same sorts of things that you learned in the military. And so when people come out of the military, it's important for us as employers to recognize that they simply... You simply can't turn that off, right? So one of the things that I think I want to mention here is that Mark mentioned that responsibility is key and so is having clear expectations.
And so you have to be sure that when you are hiring veterans, that you're having honest conversations about the structure in which they'll work in. Because sometimes if the structure is so different and so laid back or so Laissez Faire or whatever the structure is, if it's so different from what they had in the military, they may not be successful in that environment. And so it's important for us to be as employers upfront about our workplace and what that's going to look like and how we work together, and what sort of supervisory experience or what our managing style is for these individuals. Because it's a way of life for them and it's ingrained in everything that they do.
So I just think it's so important for us to have realistic conversations with veterans when they do enter our workforce to make sure that they understand that they're getting into something that may not look exactly like their military experience, but we still want them to be a valuable contributor to our teams. So I'll just sort of add that on to what Mark had to share, but I'm excited that we're entering into the portion of our podcast where I ask you, Mark, for your mic drop or your sort of ending on a high note. So is there anything that you haven't shared that you'd like to share as final thoughts for our listeners?
Mark Hocker:
Everything I've shared has been my experience. I'm sure these aren't representative of every veteran's experience, but I would bet that quite a few have had similar experiences. I wish I had all the answers to make this easy for everyone, but I don't. It takes work on both sides. Veterans need to work to understand the environment that they're transitioning to. And while companies need to equip hiring managers and recruiters with the tools to understand their veteran applicants, I just hope everybody can take a little bit of what I said and use bits and pieces to think through what they want to have as their initiative, or their plan for hiring veterans.
Maybe don't go shoot for the stars right away, maybe start small and build to it. I think it's great that SHRM is making this a priority, because this is also a time that even though we have less people overseas and deployed right now, we still have people over there, but it's not something that you see on the nightly news. So it's something that is less in the spotlight. And so the general populace starts to forget about a little bit. So it's great that SHRM is keeping a spotlight on it so that we can, as HR professionals, keep it in our spotlight as well. And I just hope that everybody takes the time, do the research, plan it out, and hopefully they're successful.
Callie Zipple:
Wonderful. Thanks, Mark. If people want to continue the conversation or ask you a little bit more about your experience or wanted to chat with you a little bit more about your transition, how can they communicate with you or connect with you?
Mark Hocker:
The best way is probably on LinkedIn. I should be the only Mark Hocker that works for Deloitte. I know I am. I think there's only a few Mark Hockers in the United States, so you have a pretty good chance of making sure you got the right one
Callie Zipple:
Super. Well, thank you. And for those that don't know, his last name is spelled H-O-C-K-E-R. So find Mike, Mark, sorry. Find Mark Hocker on LinkedIn. And as he mentioned, he works at Deloitte. So Mark, thank you so much for your time. I appreciate you being here with us and I do hope our listeners reach out to continue this conversation. It is so important. It's one of SHRM's major initiatives right now via the SHRM Foundation.
So again, I appreciate you coming out, mark for our listeners. If you want to con connect with me directly, feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn at Callie Zipple and on Twitter or Instagram at shrmcalliez. We do post updates about the podcast, including new episodes at shrm.org/honesthr. And you can also find us on iTunes or Spotify or wherever else you listen to your podcast. So thanks again for coming out and we'll see you next time for a new episode of Honest HR.