Marching to a different beat
Published: 06 August 2008
The recruitment industry is experiencing an upsurge in the numbers of soldiers, sailors and pilots making an exodus from military life to join or set up their own agencies.
Recruiters unfamiliar with the military's acronym-riddled, battlefield lexicon often find it hard to understand an ex-military member's experience or potential. So the recruiter who 'speaks the same language' has a definite advantage in spotting diamonds in the rough.
Hitting revenue targets in a recruitment agency is less a matter of life and death than striking strategic targets in a wartime situation. But their familiarity with high-pressure environments gives these new recruits a perfect outlet through which they can excel and sell their peers' battlefield skill-sets to others.
The Ministry of Defence reports that some 17,700 servicemen and women left the military in the past year.
John Amos was a navigation specialist in the Royal Navy who gave up that career to become a recruitment consultant at Leeds and Manchester-based financial recruitment consultancy, Ardent, where he runs the part-qualified desk.
"In terms of the navy, I am proud of what I achieved. Both areas of work have the same formula for success — hard work, and dedication. Do the basics and hard graft and you will reap the rewards," he says.
He told Recruiter he chose recruitment because he loved working with people and it was a profession where he could take advantage of the interpersonal skills he learned during his time in the Navy. "Recruitment is one of those occupations where you can be successful without industry-specific qualifications," he says.
The days of ex-service men and women being able to find work only as bouncers on doors of pubs and nightclubs have long since passed, according to Jean-Claude Hedouin, a former army telecommunications specialist. Hedouin set up military recruiter Ex-Mil Recruitment in 2005 after working as a recruiter for several years.
Hedouin says ex-forces personnel now leave armed with a variety of specialist skills. He says recruiters should look to the potential growth areas of IT telecoms, project management and security consulting for ex-forces staff.
Security companies, he adds, welcome ex-military personnel as they bring discipline, positive mental attitude, knowledge, and awareness of possible threats and an ability to counteract them.
Hedouin, whose candidate database has more than doubled from 4,500 to 9,500 in the past year, says that other skills can easily be transferred to the civilian world, such as telecommunications. Hedouin's approach appears to be working — he turned over £40,000 in his first year and £100,000 last year. "This year I am looking at £150-£200,000," he says.
Stephen Wildridge, a former army cable technician, who founded 4ex-Military in 2001, has enjoyed similar success. During his first year of operation in 2004 during the Iraq war, when there was a huge demand for ex-military personnel to work as private security staff, turnover was £1m. Since then his firm has regularly recorded a turnover around the £200,000 mark.
Wildridge, who left the forces in 2000, agrees that, in the future, security will be a growth area, as well as telecoms. He says senior officers are also increasingly attaining human resources degrees, so management and business development are also potential revenue streams.
So why should an agency owner hire ex-military people to staff their agency?
Hedouin, who only employs ex-military consultants, stressed that his firm's ethos was "by ex-military for ex-military" because ex-military personnel, he says, like to talk to other ex-military personnel.
Hedouin says: "I have been a recruiter for 14 years and the one thing I notice is that I could only trust the ex-military guys. They tend to be more honest, hard-working and up front. They are not so money motivated. They are also more organised. In the field, a life could be in your hands so they are more structured and organised.
"The reason why so many ex-military personnel thrive in the industry is they don't take no for an answer and they look at problems as challenges."
The former army telecommunications expert has enjoyed such success that he is working with partners on a global expansion plan. Areas earmarked for future office openings include France, Canada, the Middle East, South America, Australasia and China.
Richard Osborne, who heads up executive search firm Macallam's, recruiting senior officers, captains and rare specialists, says military personnel bring with them management skills "invaluable to a career in recruitment".
Osborne says military personnel adapt well to recruitment because they have acquired project and operations management skills, have an appreciation of technology, and can communicate to people at all levels, from a 19-year-old straight out of college to the holder of a doctorate.
"I had to work with police in Liverpool in the firefighters' strike," he says. "I had to speak their language and immerse myself in an unfamiliar environment.
"I think that is what we are good at doing; learning what the situation is, what we have to do, what our role is and how to be successful.
"All military people are trained to think about problems in a particular way. They look at the pros and cons of an action, and when they leave, add monetary value to those decisions. They are able to make the best decisions for themselves and their company."
In a results-driven industry, ex-forces personnel's strengths really come to the fore. "They are good at breaking down the stages of how they go about this and come up with a plan to make sure they achieve all their goals and hit targets within the given time period."
Recruiters looking to add ex-military people to their team should also look beyond a candidate's CV to the equivalent military skill in civilian life.
For their part, candidates will be surprised by what they have achieved, says Osborne.
The forces are increasingly a breeding ground for honest, loyal and diligent recruiters. It would seem as if the military's losses are recruitment's gain.
Survey shows trend towards recruitment and HR
Ex-military members were showing a bent toward recruitment even a few years ago, according to a Ministry of Defence survey.
The survey of Army, Navy and Royal Air Force personnel, who left the military during 2005-06, showed that 6,497 entered a recruitment or HR role — a figure three times the number of those who took on more traditional security roles (1,692) or the 1,392 who joined the public sector.
The survey was the first, and to date, only one to examine the post-military career plans of members of all three service branches. A total of 9,000 servicemen and women responded to the questions.
Source: MoD
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