On this 2021 Veteran’s Day

Thanking veterans for their service is wonderful. Hiring them for their knowledge, skills, and abilities is even better.

If you have ever been part of one of my programs, you might remember that I mention my siblings. Depending on the keynote topic, I might reference them by how we communicate by text (short and choppy sentences) and that we use abbreviations and acronyms (SOD, ETA, ect). I mention them because they are a huge part of my life, my best friends, and I am proud of them.

We are all veterans. We married veterans (except 1). My cousins are veterans.

We stay in touch with other veterans, such as classmates from the Naval Academy, those we served with, and we are all involved in veteran groups as Blue and Gold Officers, the Patriot Riders, the VFW, and others.

When I work with organizations now often hear that their leaders struggle to get their teams focused on their mission and vision. Achieving goals is challenging. Working on strategy is often neglected because they are too busy managing the crisis-of-the-day. Their teams are not working as teams.

One of the questions I often ask is, “how many former military people do you have?” And the answer is often, “None. We would like to hire them. We don’t know how to find them.”

At a recent event for VAREP, the Veterans Association of Real Estate Professionals, a group dedicated to increasing sustainable homeownership for the active-military and veteran communities, it again raised the issue of how to find veterans.

I shared this challenge with Sam Richter, and Sam solved it. He developed a search function system to find veterans.

Click Here to learn more about the Veteran Search Engine.