For David DeQuattro, managing principal of Providence-based RGB Architects, hiring veterans to work at his architecture firm is important.
“I’ve always been a big supporter of the [National] Guard and military personnel,” he said. “You get a better worker, a better professional, and they understand hierarchy well.”
DeQuattro, who served for the Air National Guard between 1984 and 1996, is looking to add another five to eight people to his firm over the next year. He’s adamant about looking for some veterans to fill those slots, putting him among a majority of Rhode Island business owners who are looking to hire veterans, according to a recent survey by Providence Business News.
In June, PBN surveyed nearly 3,000 Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts businesses comprising various sectors, including health care, defense, technology and business services.
About 70.5 percent of the 44 respondents said they would actively recruit military veterans over the next 12 months.
RGB, which currently employs two architects who are veterans, was among the respondents. Veterans, DeQuattro said, are great representatives for the company, especially when it comes to working on government contracts, or with other companies that also employ veterans or are owned by veterans.
“It’s a small circle,” he said. “When you find that connection, it’s like meeting someone from elementary school that you haven’t seen in a while.”
But DeQuattro’s enthusiasm surrounding hiring veterans isn’t shared by everyone.
Indeed, while more than two in every three respondents to the PBN Veteran Employment Survey said they planned to actively recruit veterans, fewer than half said they were making it a high priority.
Specifically, 43.2 percent of respondents said it was a high priority, while another 40.9 percent said they were willing to address it. The remaining 15.9 percent of respondents said they would not address it.
At the same time, nearly three-quarters of respondents – 72.1 percent – said they didn’t have a military veteran employment initiative and just 9.1 percent allotted a specific amount of their recruiting budget toward hiring military veterans, according to the survey.
General Dynamics Electric Boat was among the 9.1 percent that do spend time and money on hiring veterans. The submarine builder two years ago hired Anthony Paolino, head of military and veteran affairs, to concentrate on filling the workforce pipeline with ex-military.
“We wanted to ramp up our recruitment opportunity,” Paolino said, describing his mission when he first came on.
Paolino, who served in the U.S. Air Force for 12 years ending in 2014, has broken efforts into three phases: recruitment, retention and outreach.
The idea is to recruit veterans, hire them and then leverage their experience in the armed forces to reach out to other veterans – or active personnel nearing the end of their service – to consider working at Electric Boat.
Veterans working at Electric Boat is a natural fit, he added.
“Veterans love connection to mission and doing something that’s bigger than themselves, and Electric Boat provides that,” Paolino said. “We’re working on submarines that hundreds of U.S. sailors will be serving in at some point, and there’s a lot of pride to provide the best possible product that they can.”
Paolino couldn’t immediately provide specific numbers, but the company uses a rough estimate of veterans comprising about 18-20 percent of its total workforce. Using those estimates, the veteran employment at Quonset Point – where the company employs about 3,723 people – could total up to about 744 veterans, according to PBN research.
But there are some challenges associated with hiring veterans, Paolino said. Military personnel move a lot while on active duty, creating geographic and relocation challenges. A bigger issue is skills – and more specifically, the translation of skills – as Paolino notes a common disconnect between skills acquired while in uniform compared to the skills required in the civilian workforce.
“That emphasizes the importance of my position, because your average human resources [representative] may not know how to translate your skills to the skills necessary in the defense industry,” he said.
DeQuattro agreed, saying there isn’t a large pool of veteran architects.
Good news for veterans in Rhode Island, however, is that most respondents – 70.5 percent – said they would accept military experience instead of certification, or the civilian equivalent in level of training.
That means, Rhode Island employers are at least open to the idea that military experience is transferable to the civilian workforce. And while the PBN survey isn’t scientific, it does open a window into how local employers are thinking. And in Rhode Island – for the most part – employers are thinking positively about the prospect of hiring veterans.
“It’s very vital and important to us to be able to provide an opportunity for exiting service members,” Paolino said.
Eli Sherman is a PBN staff writer. Email him at Sherman@PBN.com, or follow him on Twitter @Eli_Sherman. 
