LinkedIn Veterans and Allies #InItTogether
Cory Boatwright
Head of Military & Veteran Programs and Partnerships @ LinkedIn | Business Development | Strategic Partnerships Professional
I joined LinkedIn two years ago, overjoyed to lead the efforts of connecting the military community to incredible career opportunities at LinkedIn. It has been a rewarding journey, and we’ve made a lot of progress. We have more veterans, Reservists, Guardspeople, and military spouses in our ranks, and we’ve built an active community of support where military employees feel they belong.
Over the last six months, a group of LinkedIn’s military community and “allies” (employee military community supporters) came together to leverage LinkedIn data to understand the veteran employment journey and inform ways to improve veteran hiring practices. We felt we could use our data to confirm our hunches about the community’s transition experience, like veterans are loyal and have higher retention rates, while also dispelling myths that veterans are less employable than their non-military counterparts.
Sarah Roberts, an Army veteran and Head of Military & Veterans Programs, and Melissa Boatwright, a current Air Force Reservist, and my favorite LinkedIn’er, lead the efforts. Insights Analysts, Andrew Waddell and Charlie Beagan, two Marines, and Army veteran Dana Hagist, used their data analytics expertise to create meaning from our data.
But what is truly special is all the allies that rallied to support the effort. Allies Judy Lin, Mark Corey, Nick Doulos, Bari Lemberger, Deanne Tockey, Derrick Chung, George Anders, Jacqui Barrett, Leonna Spilman, and Patty Zhong spent an incredible amount of time and effort, in addition to their regular obligations, to ensure our findings have meaningful impact for the military community.
In it together, we confirmed our hypotheses were correct: there are hundreds of insights that help us understand the realities of the veteran employment journey hidden within LinkedIn’s data. And now, we are proud to bring this information to light with our Veteran Opportunity Report!
While in many cases, the results confirmed what we knew to be accurate, a number of the findings blew us away. For example, we were surprised to find that veterans are more than 30% more likely to face underemployment, meaning their work doesn’t make full use of their skills or abilities.
Additionally, the results show that while veterans are less likely to be hired, they are 39% more likely to be promoted earlier than nonveterans. This is why it is so vital that all organizations, from startups to major corporations, give extra attention to their diversity, inclusion, and belonging programs, as well as educating the teams responsible for making hiring decisions.
My ask of you is to be #InItTogether with us in creating equitable opportunities for the military community. Read the report and share it with others. Hiring managers, ask your recruiting business partners to source military candidates for your open roles. And lastly, take the time to enrich your network by connecting with members of the military community at work and beyond.
Aspiring Software Engineer, with an unrelenting and systemic mindset to problem solving and streamlining workflow.
4yAttending a University composed of military personnel can sometimes be challenging. I have definitely experienced first hand, the "average civilian," stated, on online discussions forums one, too many times. This can become a little intimidating and place an invisible boundary on engagement, between current service members, veterans, and the "average civilian." The educational experience definitely bleeds into aspects of work culture as well and creates a work culture of entitlement, favoritism, and even at times nepotism. This is a great discussion for employers to open the table up to their employees without a certain demographic overpowering the other and being afraid to disclose authentic perspectives, which can bring to living color the hashtag InItTogether.
Master of Arts - MA at Technological University of the Philippines
4yGreat for these heroes!
Cory, great read. We need reports like this to display how veterans have been thus far underutilized and how we can continue to support those that are seeking to enter the civilian workplace.
Client Advocate, DIBS Influencer, Growth Mindset, Mom
4yWilliam Thibeau check it out!
SVP of Talent Acquisition
4yHow are you tracking applications? Applications generated/started via LinkedIn? There are no citations of where application data is pulled from nor is it covered in methodology. If using LI apps, exclusively, you are excluding Indeed, company job boards, CRMS, internal candidates, everything. Let’s say, generously, 25% of apps come from LinkedIn. I’d believe Vets make up a higher proportion of those applications, and are underrepresented in the other 75% of application sources. But you are still only counting 25% of apps (created via LinkedIn) but 100% of hires (as measured by job title changes). These funnel metrics will not be accurate if you aren’t using consistent sample sizes and methodologies. It’s not feasible to assume that the demographics of apps generated via LI correlate directly to the remainder of the apps that eventually hit the ATS from other sources.