Need to Hire Military Veterans - An Important Reminder from MSPmentor

A few weeks back, Joe Panettieri, executive VP of Nine Lives Media, blogged on MSPmentor.net a very important reminder to U.S.-based IT channel companies: 

Take extra care to consider hiring U.S. military veterans for open job positions.

(See Hiring U.S. Veterans: An Open Letter to Technology Companies.)

The Back Story

Panettieri was at the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit in June when he heard an Ingram Micro executive use a small part of his keynote speech to encourage attendees to hire returning military veterans. 

Then the following week Panettieri and Amy Katz, President of Nine Lives Media, spoke with another IT channel executive who leads a managed services company and is actively recruiting U.S. military veterans.

Help Spread Panettieri’s Important Reminder

Touched by the need to spread the word, we immediately tapped into social media by tweeting Panettieri’s post and adding the article to the SP Home Run Facebook page. 

“Joe Panettieri (of @thevarguy @mspmentor Nine Lives Media, etc.) is looking to raise awareness of the need for the IT channel to get more U.S. veterans into jobs. We 100% agree with and applaud what Panettieri's looking to do. Please read the following post. And if you know of a U.S.-based IT channel company with job openings, please Share his post, Tweet it, and blog about it.”

Reiterating My Thoughts from the Comments

My immediate reaction: There’s got to be a way to aggregate IT channel job openings and get those job listings into the hands of returning U.S. veterans; kind of like a Monster.com platform for this niche and need. 

I suggested that Nine Lines Media might be an interesting company to coordinate a project like this, because it sounded like Panettieri already has very solid commitments to recruiting returning U.S. veterans from both Ingram Micro and CompTIA. 

I wondered too if Nine Lines Media might already have corporate sponsors who would underwrite the cost of developing and administering a job listing site that connects the IT channel and returning U.S. veterans. As of today, I still don’t really know if a site like this already exists elsewhere and just needs some extra grassroots visibility. 

As a trade group and the world leader in vendor neutral IT certifications, CompTIA would be even more uniquely-qualified to build and administer a job listing site that connects the IT channel with returning U.S. veterans. Just think about the sheer number of CompTIA members with open hiring needs at any given time. Not to mention the even larger volume of individuals completing related IT certification tests in any given month. 

On a related note, we blogged earlier this year about how TeamLogic IT Offers Fee-Free Franchises to Veterans.

It’s Not Just U.S. Military Veterans that Need Career Opportunities

Stuart Crawford, President and Chief Marketing Officer of Ulistic, provided another really important reminder in his posted comment: 

The United States isn’t the only country with returning military veterans that urgently need jobs. 

Crawford, whose company is based in Calgary, is a Canadian military veteran and would welcome the opportunity to hire a Canadian soldier. 

My guess is that if you ask IT channel executives in the UK, or Australia, or most other nations around the globe, you’d find similar national pride, where other things being equal, the military veteran is the preferred candidate.

What Can You Do?

Obviously, the most direct impact you can have is to consider hiring returning military veterans for any open jobs that your company has. I’m not an HR expert, nor an attorney (seek your own advice on this), but I don’t think there’s anything in the U.S. equal opportunity employment laws preventing you from preferring to hire returning military veterans. 

Next best thing? If you know returning military veterans and know of job openings, spread the word. 

At the minimum, please do what we’ve done: Take two minutes to tweet out Panettieri’s post.

Then add a post about Panettieri’s article to your company’s Facebook business page. And of course, if you blog, write a simple post like this that helps to shed just a little more light on the important reminder that Panettieri and MSPmentor raised: hiring returning military veterans is good for your business, it helps your local economy and job market, and it can make an enormous difference to someone and their family that risked everything to protect our freedom. 

Do you have any other ideas on how IT channel companies can get returning military veterans into high-paying IT jobs? Please share your thoughts in the Comments section below.

And as we spot further developments on this topic, we'll keep you posted in the SP Home Run Weekly Update Newsletter.

Creative Commons Image Source: Wikimedia Commons U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Jennifer A. Villalovos