By all accounts, when Mike LeBlanc came out of the military he was more than qualified to take on any number of professional roles. After serving 13 years in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer and intelligence officer, he was looking to enter the corporate world. But more than 50 applications later, he still hadn’t landed a job.
“I think that what a lot of people were seeing at that point was that I had a lot of leadership skills,” LeBlanc says. “But I didn’t have a lot of the hard skills, like working with Excel, or any background in finance—whatever the particular job needed.”
So LeBlanc went back to school, earning his MBA from Harvard University and joining tech startup Cobalt Robotics, where he’s now president and chief operating officer. And though his Harvard education didn’t hurt, he doesn’t credit it with his success.
“As I’ve actually been in this role, it’s not any of the hard skills in finance, it’s not a discounted cash flow that helps me really make the hard decisions,” LeBlanc says. “It’s all of my background and experience from being a Marine.”
Veterans like LeBlanc recognize that a lot of their military experience can get lost in translation on a résumé: “When you look at a sheet of paper, looking at a military background can look like alphabet soup,” LeBlanc admits. But if startups can see beyond the literal to recognize the wealth of skills and experience veterans bring to the table, they may find these hires invaluable to their growth and success.
Grit
Though the stakes are different, the uncertainty and shifting demands of military service are similar to those of working at a startup; both require high levels of grit and determination. Stephen Giattino, an Army veteran and current chief of staff at healthcare startup Easy Health, sees that whatever-it-takes attitude as one of his fellow veterans’ most valuable assets.
“In the startup world, there’s constant adversity, there’s constant ambiguity. And you just have to be willing to put your head down and keep on moving—adjust when you need to, but keep on moving forward through it,” he says. “A veteran is going to have that grit and resilience. You give them a problem to solve, they’re gonna get from point A to point B.”
Adaptability
Though veterans who are seeking positions in the civilian sector may lack hard skills in business, their readiness and ability to learn can be equally valuable to the companies that hire them.
LeBlanc recalls an experience early in his career at Cobalt when his colleagues were looking to assemble a team to handle a new robot installation. That meant having high-level conversations with C-suite executives, managing shipping and logistics to transport a robot long-distance, and actually setting up the robot in their client’s office.
“To them, that was a whole very expensive launch team that we were going to need,” LeBlanc says. “I saw that as a problem for one Marine.”
And indeed, LeBlanc hired a single colleague from his time in the Marines to get the job done—to massive success.
“I knew that he had briefed enough generals that he could have a C-suite conversation. I knew that he’d run enough combat operations that he could get the logistics figured out. And I knew that he knew that he needed to be technically and tactically proficient so that he’d be able to figure out whatever he needed to on the robot,” LeBlanc explains. “What had been a strategic problem for our company for months before I’d gotten there, we solved within a week.”
Leadership experience
Startups often attract young industry newcomers. That’s great, but it can leave employees fumbling to learn how to be effective leaders on the fly. Veterans break that demographic mold, says Ben Walker, a former Marine who’s now chief of staff at customer data platform Simon Data.
“Even as a junior enlisted person, within two years I had, not what I’d call complete authority, but I had responsibility for groups as large as 40 or 60 in various training commands and through different areas,” Walker says. As such, even veterans with shorter tenures in the military can provide key leadership experience to a growing business.
Of course a team of pilots and a team of tech personnel have their differences, but the principles of leading a team are consistent across disciplines, says Giattino, who applies his experience as a platoon leader to his current day-to-day operations.
“People are people, and if you take the time to get to know them, what motivates them, what they want to get out of life, and what they’re doing in their work, it pays dividends,” he says.
Attention to detail
The military is known for its structure and discipline, qualities instilled in veterans that can prove invaluable, particularly to companies that are still finding their footing.
“You’ll get all sorts of humorous stories from military people about the awful things that happen to you if you forget your ID card,” Walker says. “You’re really inculcated in this sort of paranoia of allowing the details to fall, which is helpful. Startups can attract very creative and vision-oriented people. You need the balance of that to make sure that things get done.”
Ultimately, veterans are a largely untapped resource for startups seeking fresh talent. They exemplify why companies could do well to look beyond hard skills when hiring, for veterans and for all applicants.
“If we tried to hire like every other company was going to hire, we didn’t have all the money that we needed to get the talent that we needed,” says LeBlanc, speaking from his own experience of hiring veterans. “But if we could look for these people who were undervalued and who had larger talents and skill sets that we could bring in at a lower cost, we’d be able to move much faster.”
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