Strategic Staffing Solutions Launches Military Pilot Program
DETROIT -- Transitioning from the military to civilian life can be a challenge. After spending four years or more in the service of our country, those leaving the military have to decide what roads to take to shape the rest of their lives.
They have strong backgrounds, contacts and experience that can be transferred to the business community. According to militaryleaders.com, more than 70 percent of Fortune 1000 executives are former military members.
With that in mind, Strategic Staffing Solutions developed and launched its first pilot military program, the S3 Combat Recruiting Support Team. Under the program, four military veterans joined S3 as sourcers in the San Antonio office. Sourcers reach out to qualified individuals who fit the job descriptions required by S3's customers and then turn those names over to the recruiters.
"We want to give our customers the best consultants possible and that means fishing in the right ponds to find them," said S3 president and CEO Cynthia J. Pasky. "The military is certainly one of those ponds. The military requires its people to think fast, learn quickly, adapt easily, build solid relationships and have strong ethics and that fits S3 to a T. We are so pleased to have this new team onboard and are confident they will be able to bring many former military people onboard as consultants."
The individuals S3 hired have strong credentials, which re-enforces the value veterans bring to the workforce and how those skills can transfer to the private sector. Two are retired Air Force senior noncommissioned offers and former Air Force recruiters (one with an MBA from Columbia Southern). One was an intelligence analyst in the Army led 300-plus combat intelligence missions in Iraq and Kuwait without loss of life or equipment and has a bachelor's degree in sociology from Texas A&M-San Antonio. Another retired noncommissioned officer was a field medic in the Navy attached to the US Marine Corps and is now completing his military career as a senior instructor at the Tri-Service Radiography School, Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio.
"Military people know the value of teamwork and of being resourceful," Pasky said.
The new team works out of S3's Southwest Branch in San Antonio but will also provide sourcing support for the company's branches across the company.
"The focus for our program is to get talented people from the military and help them become recruiters," said Ken Huxley, Southwest branch manager and a retired Air Force colonel, "We will grow from within. We offered them the opportunity to come in and learn the staffing industry from ground up. The team is in a sourcing role so they can learn the technology and get the lay of land. Then, as they get experience with customers across country, they will transition from sourcer to junior recruiter and then senior recruiter."
Strategic Staffing Solutions is an international, woman-owned, $200-million-plus IT services company based in Detroit. It provides IT consulting, customized project solutions, vendor management programs and an executive search service to financial institutions, energy companies, telecommunications, government agencies and retail and health care entities worldwide. It has approximately 2,000 consultants and is one of the Top 10 diversity companies in the industry. S3 has 26 offices, 22 in the U.S. and four in Europe.
