Do you source for military Veteran candidates? Have you heard of Rally Point? John Zappe wrote about this site back in 2014. If you have seen/heard about this site, it deserves another look now that it has grown exponentially updated a few times. If not, you should get acquainted with the site.
Rally Point is a Veteran owned and operated private company that is focused on current and former service members from the United States military to help them advance their military careers and to be a resource for them once they separate. The creators Yinon Weiss and Aaron Kletzing founded Rallypoint in 2012 as a “LinkedIn for Veterans;” it has roughly 722,000 users that’s about 50/50 Veterans vs active Servicemembers.
It’s exclusive purpose is networking to assist military members while they are still serving and their transition as they separated from service. They have several business solutions to chose from to include company pages to post job listings marketing solutions, and a recruiter account with a free demo.
You can start connecting with Veterans immediately by creating a Civilian Supporter account (check out Glenn Gutmacher’s account) , however the search options are a bit limited and they have safeguards in place for spam (so please don’t be that guy/girl that ruins it for the rest of us).
There are groups to follow, you can take part in discussions, and start one of your own as well, provided that you have interacted with the community on a points system (gaining an influence score of 150) by commenting on discussions, profile viewed/viewing profiles, and inviting/adding connections.
The search feature is decent (not really boolean friendly), but here are a few quick points to get the most out of this site from a sourcing point of view.
- Build out your profile – people want to know what you’re about and participate in the community.
- Check all of your search options under the “People” and “Search People” section there are a couple handy filters there like Job Seeker
- Check out their groups directory
- Search by pay grade and MOS (Military Occupational Specialty)
- Have a reference tool for military base locations like this one or a handy Wiki page
- There are filters galore i.e. Aviation Officers,
- And of course there is the handy dandy site: command to view results in Google like this
I was able to contact Yinon via email with a couple of questions.
Do you see Rally Point taking a more direct role assisting government transition programs?
“We believe that government transition programs are often too late for a lot of people. We want people networking continuously, and connect with civilian employers long before ETS. The key to transition is networking, and it’s a bit late to start building a network from square 1 when transitioning…”
What’s on the horizon for Rally Point?
“Bringing on board organizations onto the platform, both non-profits and for-profits, to represent their Veterans.”
What is your favorite thing to do for PT?
“I’ve been getting into crossfit lately, but I mostly enjoy backpacking.”← For all you fitness buffs in our community.
As sourcers, it’s up to us to to find new ways find new candidates and it’s an easy way to get involved with recruiting Veterans and it should be a part of your search strategy just as much as diversity. Happy hunting, and hire a Vet.