The Short Answer

Why This Question Matters in India

Like most countries, India too has a lot of shortage of talent, what we call, a lot of shortage of trained talent.

And like most of the countries globally, India too is putting in a lot of effort to see how people from the armed forces can be assimilated into the corporate life.

The Core Question

So, today we are going to spend a little time trying to understand, do people from the armed forces really add value to the corporate entities, specifically because the goals that the corporate entities are trying to achieve and what the armed forces are trying to achieve are not in similar lines.

What This Discussion Is Not About

What we want you to do today, as we discuss about this topic, is not talk or not think that the reason for hiring from armed forces has got to do anything from patriotism.

Not to focus on jobs which are related to administration.

And not to focus on jobs which are purely linked to security.

The India Context

Unlike a lot of our Western countries, India doesn’t have mercenary armies and those kind of roles.

So, we won’t be discussing those kind of roles where the job that a person in armed forces performs is almost copy pasted into the corporate entity.

Those kind of roles are very few in India.

The Two Fundamental Aspects of Contribution

At the base, let us start from the singular concept, and that concept is, for any individual to be seen as a successful person or a person who’s contributing to the organization growth, you would normally look at two aspects that the person should be demonstrating.

1. The first that we try and focus to see is the skill, that basically means, what is the level of knowledge that the person has?

   What is the ability the person has? What kind of intellect the person has?

   It’s more linked to the power of the brain, how things are done, what needs to be done?

   Can the person use that knowledge to solve things that will happen in future or that will come up as problems?

   So we call it the skill. Anything that is supposed to be known to be able to do an activity.

2. The other aspect, which is an important aspect which you will really find and which as HR professionals, we normally find organisations trying to really deal with or trying to address is the ability or the discipline to implement something.

   Or what we call is the discipline to implement.

   What this means is the person will normally have traits of taking ownership, traits of demonstrating accountability, having the ability to not give up, finding alternative ways of achieving the objective that they’re trying to achieve, building a strong team and following commands.

   What you tell them to do, they do.

   And most importantly, being ethical.

Skill vs Discipline

Broadly speaking, we club all of these aspects into another area called as the behavioral or the soft skills or whatever names we give.

So primarily we bracketed into two groups, the skill and the implementing ability or the discipline to implement.

Skills in the Armed Forces

Now, Armed Forces has a lot of skills that they train their employees on.

I mean, that’s the right word to use. They are members or they are employees of an organisation.

Though the organisation’s objective is Armed Forces of a Nation, but they are an organisation, and they perform very specific roles, which may not really be useful in the corporate life.

Where Adaptation Is Possible

But, there are some which can be adapted and they can be put into the corporate life.

We have pilots, the role they perform, little bit of adaptation and they can get into the corporate life.

Navy pilots, Navy sailors, the various people who are performing roles on the ship.

Then you have mechanical, electrical, and telecommunication engineers, some kind of adaptation and they can be fitted in.

The Larger Armed Forces Talent Pool

But what about the majority of the rest of the armed forces?

We are of the opinion, and we believe like most of the people who have analysed armed forces professionals trying to get into the corporate life, that the fundamental behaviors that are necessary for a person to be successful in an organisation are ingrained in an armed forces professional.

the discipline to implement is ingrained, or almost a guaranteed behavior that any person coming out of an armed forces profession will bring

A Useful Analogy

For example, when you go to hire a technical engineer from a very renowned technical college in India, you are sort of taking a guarantee that the skill of a particular technical engineering topic is going to be world-class.

Similarly, we are of the opinion, and we believe that if you were to hire a person from the armed forces, the behavioural skills which we have classified as the discipline to implement would be sort of guaranteed to be ingrained in these individuals.

What Organisations Must Be Ready For

So, as long as the people are willing to learn from scratch, as long as they are willing to start new careers right from the bottom, and as an organisation, most importantly, as long as you have strong training programs, we believe that it will be a great way to hire talent.

Having at least one aspect which they are strong at.

The Final Value Proposition

If your training programs are strong, you can build people who can ensure that they can deliver to your organization’s expectations.

They can deliver to the objectives of the organization.

And most importantly, they can add value to the progress of the organization.

This article is based on the transcript of the original podcast of the same name featured in India HR Guide.
The transcript has been translated into this article with the support of AI and a human‑in‑the‑loop process.