T-Mobile Pledges to Hire 10,000 Veterans by 2023

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Donna Wright- I'm Donna Wright. I'm the senior manager of Military and Diversity Sourcing, for T-Mobile. Military is a huge part of our diversity initiatives. And we've made a commitment to hire 10,000 veterans in the next five years. So by 2023, our hope is that our employee population increases by 10,000 veterans and spouses. Unless a veteran has gone through a formalized program to really help them understand how to translate their service, often time that role lands on the recruiter. And sometimes we get into these ruts where we just talk in our own terms. In corporate environment, we use acronyms every day. I will walk into a room and throw around a term that I just assume that everyone in the room knows. Same thing in the military, they're speaking their common language. So we need recruiters that are equipped to translate that. So we talk about being able to decipher and decode a military resume. What does that actually mean? And how can we help a veteran translate their experience into a corporate culture? It's a challenge every day. So we don't wanna create these mental shortcuts, right? We don't wanna create an opportunity where recruiters can just guess. We really want to empower our recruiters to know what it is, and the best way to do it is to have a conversation with a veteran. The other thing that's interesting is in the military, they wear a uniform. And that uniform tells people when they walk into a room, what I've accomplished, what I've done, who I am, what campaigns I've served in. If I've been deployed. They're decorated in a way that says, you should know these things about me, when I walk in the room. We take that uniform off and you're walking in in civilian clothes, and nobody knows what you've done just by looking at you. It can feel very bare. So if you talk to them and get to know who they are as a person, what they're interested in doing, learn more about their background and experience. And there's a broad range of veterans. So you might have a young veteran who has served four years, didn't have a job prior to joining the military, gets out after four years and they're just ready to go to work and they wanna learn something new and they wanna dig in. They just need that first job opportunity. They're probably in their twenties. And so taking a risk in that space, we already know that the skills that they've learned in their first four years of military can make them successful, in most of our entry level roles. You could be a really great call center rep. You'd be really great in a retail store, because you've worked under high pressure situations before. You understand what it's like to work on a team. Good thing that I don't have to deal with, I think a lot of other recruiters have too, is our upline leadership already seasoned understands those transferable skill sets. The senior vice president of HR is an army ranger, and so he helps to evangelize that message for us as well. I come from a military family, for me this is the way that I continue to honor them. I've seen how difficult the transition from military service into civilian life can be. I think there's a very big opportunity for corporations today to look at the under-employment of veterans, instead of just a job for a veteran. Let's make sure they're able to do meaningful work. When you are you, you're your best self. And that's what we try to encourage for all of our employees.

T-Mobile empowers recruiters to help veterans translate their military experience into a corporate skillset through conversation.