January 14, 2019 at 4:17 p.m.
'Mission Wisconsin' aims to recruit veterans
'Mission Wisconsin' aims to recruit veterans
Rebecca Deschane, talent initiatives director for Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (WEDC), and Tait Strand, local veterans employment representative with the Department of Workforce Development (DWD) in Wausau, offered an hour-long briefing on the program, dubbed Mission Wisconsin, at the Fieldside Center.
"When WEDC was formed almost eight years ago now, we were kind of asked to do more with branding the state's business climate, making sure that people had all the opportunities from a business perspective. We've done a really good job with that, we've seen a lot of growth over the last several years," Deschane explained, adding that companies are now communicating the need to attract new talent to the state.
This feedback has prompted the WEDC to focus more of its marketing efforts on attracting workers, she added.
"The Department of Tourism does a phenomenal job telling you how much fun you can have here in Wisconsin and we wanted to build upon that," Deschane said. "How do we continue to share that quality of life and career opportunities so that we start to shift those perceptions of what is going on and available in Wisconsin."
After a lot of research, WEDC staff decided to focus their marketing efforts toward three specific target audiences - millennials living in the Midwest, college and UW system alumni and service members preparing to leave the military.
"The Department of Defense provides one paid move of your household goods when you exit service," Deschane said. "How can we get them to make that move here to Wisconsin?"
The initial marketing efforts included a multi-media campaign aimed at millennials that attracted national media attention, further adding to the effectiveness of the campaign. As a result of that campaign, a story in a national magazine rated Wisconsin third in the top 10 states to live and work, Deschane noted.
WEDC used polling and website data to further gauge how effective the campaign was in the six months it was active.
"And we saw significant positive changes as it relates to people's perceptions about Wisconsin, most notably the increased likelihood that they would consider moving to Wisconsin," Deschane said. "Wisconsin went up by over 5 percentage points, which is good."
The campaign involved web and social media as well as traditional print and broadcast advertising. The designers made it so that any ad could be used by a specific region or municipality to tie their brand to the state's efforts, the presenters explained.
The same approach was used to target recent graduates from post-secondary schools who have moved away. The agency even created video "snapshots" of alumni who had moved away from the state only to come back and find greater success.
She then explained how the state is reaching out to those leaving military service.
"We did a strategic analysis and found that with the dollars we had, partnering with the Hiring Our Heroes (HOH) Foundation, which is a piece of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation (was the best approach)," Deschane said.
The HOH holds numerous events at military bases around the world geared toward giving service members and their spouses as much information as possible about their post-military options.
WEDC and the Department of Veterans Affairs send representatives to these events who explain the veterans benefits the state offers as well as access to programs that can pair these individuals with job offers to go with their military discharge papers.
She said the approach has worked so well that HOH president Eric Eversole has called it a "national model."
Like the alumni portion of the campaign, WEDC and DWD have created ads featuring success stories of veterans who made the leap of faith to move to Wisconsin upon discharge.
The first step for potential employers of veterans is to look into becoming a "Veteran Friendly Workplaces," Deschane added.
"We've created an online portal at WEDC.org/hireveterans, and there is an inquiry form that allows a business to fill out their information and share a little bit about what they might be interested in. And then they will get a phone call either from myself or one of the other team members to talk them through it a little more, find out more about how their company can be involved, how the community can be involved going forward," she explained. "The beauty of how we set up the Mission Wisconsin Initiative is that it can work for any size company."
WEDC has also started creating fellowships where service members can spend the last few months of their careers "assigned" to a potential employer that has been matched to them. Since the service member is still being paid by the government, it gives companies a chance to train a potential hire before hiring them at little cost to the company.
Strand said his job is to help make those connections at the grassroots level, and as a veteran himself, he has an understanding of what these individuals face.
"When I got out, we had nowhere to turn," he said. "We didn't have transition schools when I got out. They didn't help you with unemployment or education, we didn't know where to go. We've come a long way."
LakeTime Mangement, LLC and The Groundskeeper, LLC were the two Minocqua businesses at the presentation, along with representatives from the Rhinelander Area Chamber of Commerce, city of Rhinelander, and various Oneida County and regional economic development agencies.
Jamie Taylor may be reached at [email protected].
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