Recruiters lose out on top talent by overlooking military skills

Recruiters can miss out on worthy candidates by not taking advantage of the transferrable skills possessed by military veterans’, or knowing what to look for. The result is that almost half of former soldiers feel that they are forced to take a step backwards in their careers on joining the civilian workforce.

That is according to new research conducted by the newly launched Veterans Employment Transition Support (VETS) programme. The scheme is a partnership between a mix of companies and military charities. Barclays is one of the companies behind the new programme.

Stuart Tootal is the Head of Barclays Armed Forces Transition Employment and Resettlement (AFTER) programme. He tells Executive Grapevine that ex-military personnel have a vast range of transferrable skills, but that recruiters tend to overlook those skills on a CV.

Tootal explains: “At the recruitment process itself, one of the major hurdles that we find our veterans face is positioning their CVs in a way that makes sense to a civilian employer.