GE Careers Blog.

As some of you may have seen GE has committed to hiring 5,000 veterans over the next 5 years. Why do you think GE made this commitment? After spending 21 years in the Navy (9 years as a nuke machinist mate and 12 years as a pilot), and working with all of the branches, GE Healthcare Quality Operations Program Manager Keith Sherer provides many reasons. Here are a couple of the traits that former service members will bring with them to GE.

General Electric pledged in February to sign on 1,000 veterans in each of the next five years, and it hired 276 in the first quarter, according to Dave Ferguson, GE’s head of military recruiting. “Make no mistake, this is a biz strategy,” Ferguson said. “We think there’s fabulous talent in the U.S. military and we’re going after it. This is not charity.”

Aurora Sinai Medical Center and GE Healthcare are among 66 Wisconsin companies nominated for the 2012 Secretary of Defense Employer Support Freedom Award. More than 3,200 companies were nominated nationwide, and 15 will be chosen for the award and honored in Washington, D.C., in September. The Wisconsin nominations were made by Wisconsin Guard and Reserve members.

Veterans “may not be able to convert their skills and abilities, and sometimes we’re not sure what their skills might be,” said Dave Ferguson, General Electric Co. (GE)’s manager of military staffing and recruiting. In addition to the discipline and teamwork that comes with military service, he said, some veterans have repair and maintenance skills such as the ability to repair the gas-turbine engines GE sells to the Navy. Those who’ve seen the most combat, though, often have skills and training that are harder to translate to the civilian world. GE has pledged to hire 1,000 veterans a year for five years. That would amount to about 10 percent of all new hires annually, “a pretty lofty goal” that the Fairfield, Connecticut-based company hasn’t met in previous years, he said. The transition programs offered by the military vary by service branch, each offering at minimum a three-day workshop that teaches skills such as resume writing and job interviewing.

One of the nation’s largest employers of U.S. military veterans, GE has committed to a third year as presenting sponsor of the Marine Corps Marathon (MCM) and will remain the title sponsor of the MCM Health and Fitness Expo.