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Creating Opportunities for Veterans: Nestlé & Hiring Our Heroes

CARMINE SOLIMINI: Nestle got involved with Hiring Our Heroes in 2017 to increase our outreach to veterans and transitioning military members. Veterans offer some of the best experience that we could hope for in a candidate, and there's so much knowledge and experience to tap into, so it's really been a really great asset to our company to really focus on hiring veterans and transitioning military members.

ELIZABETH GUEVARA: Our partnership with Hiring Our Heroes allows us to connect better with the military community-- with transitioning military, with veterans, with the military spouses, and with student veterans, as well. All of these folks can help us to fill more critical roles within the company.

ERIC EVERSOLE: Businesses can get out and talk to these young servicemembers and their family members, and talk to them about the great opportunities that exist in their business, how they can grow in that business. But more importantly, how they can realize the American dream by utilizing their military skill sets in a way that both helps that servicemember but also the company.

CARMINE SOLIMINI: Some of the goals of our partnership with Hiring Our Heroes has been to fill some critical gaps in roles within the organization that veterans and transitioning service members really have a unique opportunity to fill.

PAUL GRIMWOOD: I think the hiring of the veterans is a mutually-beneficial practice for both Nestle and the veterans, simply because I think we're a company that applauds, and welcomes, and works very well alongside somebody who's got an ex-military background. I think there are a lot of great similarities with the way we operate to the way the military operate-- courage to act, commitment, loyalty, a passion to win, a passion to succeed.

I think these are all things which, frankly, work hand-in-hand. But at the end of the day, the overriding thing that strikes me about the veterans that we employ is that they're a strong, all-round package deal, good all-round skill set, which really makes them very strong members of the Nestle team.

CARMINE SOLIMINI: As an Air Force veteran, I've had a wonderful transition into Nestle. The core values of the Air Force are integrity first, service before self, and excellence in all we do. Working at Nestle has let me really apply a lot of my leadership skills that I learned in the military.

One of the great initiatives we have is called Creating Shared Value, so being able to make a difference in the communities that we operate in and being able to impact the communities that we work with has been a really fantastic part of my transition, and I still get that sense of duty that I did in the Air Force.

ELIZABETH GUEVARA: Two million jobs in the manufacturing field will go unfilled over the next 10 years. And to recruit from the military community, to develop a talent pipeline from this community, or to develop apprenticeships to bring them into roles will allow us to be able to fill that unemployment gap.

PAUL GRIMWOOD: Nestle's adapted, like many in the marketplace, to retain a really modern workforce by doing a number of things. Developing a thing called Project Opportunity, which is about our commitment to developing people at whatever stage they are in the business, at whatever age they are in the business. We're very committed to significant levels of internship with the company.

We also do online development programs for anybody who's interested. And last, but certainly not least, one of the big elements of our Project Opportunity is our commitment to employing veterans, and that's a key part of our recruitment strategy. I tell a veteran who's considering applying to Nestle, please do so, because at the end of the day, we're a company that is the number one food and drink company in the world. We won a variety of awards recently and in the past for what we do and we do what we do well.

But I think the biggest thing is we've been around 150 years, and our job is to leave the legacy for another 150 years. We're not a company that's here today and gone tomorrow, and we want people who are committed to the plan that we've put in place, and that's to be the world's biggest nutrition, health, and wellness company. And we feel that veterans can play a key part in helping us develop that.