Successful Tactics for Hiring Female Veterans in the Heavy Equipment Industry

Human Resources: Recruitment of Females and Veterans of the U.S. Military

Companies wishing to work with the federal government must focus on hiring females and veterans, among other groups. Females are among the classes protected by the federal government's antidiscrimination laws. In addition, the federal government requires the recruitment and hiring of veterans. Consequently, at least some of the Human Resources Department's strategic plan must include efforts tailored to recruiting and retaining females and veterans.

In order to work with the federal government, companies must show their compliance with federal anti-discrimination laws protecting certain classes of individuals, including but not limited to women (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2008) and veterans (U.S. Department of Labor, n.d.). As a result, a strategic Human Resources plan should include well-developed efforts to recruit and retain women and veterans. While there are a variety of recruitment tactics at a Human Resources Department's disposal, the HR Department will want to hone its strategic hiring plans specifically for females and/or veterans and ideally for female veterans. Observations of other heavy equipment companies show that internships, veteran-tailored job fairs, focus on hiring female veterans as well as male veterans, and broad public exposure of hired female/veteran employees in powerful positions all work well.

One leader in recruitment and retention tactics for females and/or veterans in the heavy equipment industry is Caterpillar. Caterpillar does an admirable job of recruiting and proudly displaying its female and veteran employees. Caterpillar has recruited, hired and put in obvious position of authority women, veterans, female veterans and females related to veterans (Caterpillar, 2013). Stressing the "strong work ethic and values that were honed during their service time" (Caterpillar, 2013), Caterpillar aggressively recruits veterans and their spouses. One highly successful recruiting tool was the Caterpillar job fair called "Hiring Our Heroes" (Caterpillar, 2013), which focused on male and female military veterans. This job fair was designed to attract the best talent -- male and female, tell them what Caterpillar offers for employees in general and for veterans in particular, and give greater exposure to the Caterpillar brand (Caterpillar, 2013). Some of the Caterpillar recruiters at the fair were male and female military veterans, themselves (Caterpillar, 2013). Another recruiting aspect is the internship that Caterpillar offers to veterans who are college students, so experience at the company can be gained while the person is still receiving his/her education (Caterpillar, 2013). Finally, Caterpillar orchestrated a large media release before and after the job fair (Caterpillar, 2013), which not only attracted desired veterans, some of whom are female, but also provided very positive company publicity to the general public. As with strategic plans for hiring and retaining any other group, the HR Department must: calculate the workforce composition needed to comply with federal antidiscrimination laws; calculate the company's actual composition; determine the gaps between where the company is and where it wishes to be in order to comply; develop plans to attract, hire and retain targeted protected groups; periodically assess and "tweak" its process goals and plans. In this way, the company will attain and maintain compliance with its female/veteran hiring/retention requirements.