Member company TEKsystems recognized the value that veterans and people with disabilities bring to the workforce, and wanted to expand on their outreach efforts by becoming an industry leader in both internal and external recruitment, hiring, and retention – all while meeting and exceeding regulatory requirements for OFCCP compliance. No small undertaking, but with careful assessment, strategy and implementation, TEKsystems has had remarkable success.
TEKsystems began with a focus on internal hiring and offices across North America. Once this was complete, they scaled the program to aid in external hiring efforts for their contract services.
As you will read, this plan required a lot of cooperation, coordination, outreach and tracking, but the company continues to exceed their goals. Let’s take a deeper dive into three key actions that made the program a success:
1) Established Resources and Processes Internally
TEKsystems hired a leader to run the veterans and disabilities outreach program, in addition to an employee to help perform state outreach for each position. The company also trained the college recruiting team, internal recruiting team, corporate recruiting team and leadership on OFCCP compliance regulations.
To more accurately capture hiring and interviewing metrics for veterans and candidates with disabilities, TEKsystems scrutinized and modified their internal hiring process to preclude local level interviews from happening unless the candidate applied to a position. This adjustment also allowed for self-disclosure of veteran or disability status to be more accurately captured and determine successful sources for finding those candidates.
TEKsystems changed internal hiring forms to allow self-disclosure before hiring, as well as the form for post-hiring. They also updated these forms to reflect the new status and definitions for veterans, such as “recently separated veteran.”
To tap into their current workforce, TEKsystems launched an Employee Resource Group, Honor@TEK, to create awareness for veteran hiring and foster collaboration of recruitment and outreach efforts. Honor@TEK also helps create policies to allow for a more inclusive environment.
Lastly, the company created a SharePoint portal to capture and document all outreach efforts and allow for in-depth reporting and analytics.
2) Forged Partnerships
TEKsystems partnered with several organizations to help achieve their veteran and disability outreach goals.
To meet online job posting requirements and create overlap of outreach to LVER’s, DVOPs and veteran advocacy groups, TEKsystems took advantage of their DirectEmployers membership benefits.
TEKsystems became a corporate partner and sponsor with the Student Veterans Association and GettingHired, a disabilities job placement service. In addition, they developed a partnership with the Counsel for State Administrators for Vocational Rehabilitation to grow personal relationships with local counselors and host open houses to attract candidates with disabilities.
TEKsystems also tapped into Wounded Warrior Project (WWP) Warriors to Work® counselors. Through weekly meetings, the two organizations reviewed all of the candidates and their desired locations to pair with TEKsystems openings. TEKsystems also invested in a program that trains and certifies Wounded Warriors in information technology and has bimonthly updates to go over each graduating class candidate to match openings with the candidates’ desired locations.
In addition, the company works with Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) state leaders to share internal positions and talk personally each quarter about efforts and barriers to hiring veterans and active guard/reserve members.
3) Targeted Marketing Efforts
TEKsystems evaluated and rolled out several marketing efforts as part of this initiative to better target veterans and people with disabilities. This included landing pages for veterans on their corporate website that featured reference to and comparison of careers, benefits, and roles within the company that match military occupational skills. DirectEmployers Association built out and managed military crosswalks to be used on these landing pages and aid veterans in their search for employment.
Third-party veteran owned and operated business, HirePurpose, was leveraged to market TEKsystems at military installation career fairs. Social media, electronic communication, and external hiring contacts for veterans hiring were included in their targeted marketing efforts as well.
Needless to say, all of the hard work is getting noticed. Awareness of the veterans program has spread to over 100 directors, resulting in sharper focus on hiring veterans internally and growing business for external staffing, as clients are selecting TEKsystems to help find veterans for their IT needs.
Weekly reporting of outreach efforts by employees keep all areas accountable, and any concerns are immediately addressed. TEKsystems’ portal has led to successful capture of outreach and given them a database of efforts that can be cross-referenced by location, organization, contact, date, and internal employee making the relationship. Other notable achievements include:
- Exceeded outreach goals for all 100 offices every quarter since 2013
- Increased candidate pools at local offices resulting in at least one veteran applicant per office
- Tripled the amount of veterans traffic to job postings
- Moved from 14 to 78 self identified veterans internally; externally (contract staffing), increased from 66 to 1567
- Received Patriot Award from the ESGR
Kudos to Member TEKsystems for their hard work and dedication to hiring veterans and people with disabilities. Stay tuned for a second overview of TEKsystems as we take a look at their top-notch candidate engagement initiative.
Meet and network with Members like TEKsystems at the DirectEmployers 2015 Annual Meeting & Conference, May 13-15. More information is available at DEAM15.DirectEmployers.org.
