Why You Should Hire Coast Guard Veterans.
TL;DR: The Coast Guard makes LEADERS…who have learned to do more with less, and get the job done under less than favorable conditions.
The United States coastline is about 95,000 miles long. The US Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ or waters that surround the US) stretches out to 200 nautical miles and measures about 3.4 million square miles. Throw in Guam, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and other US territories and you can try to begin to understand the immense area that one service has been charged to protect. That’s the job of the United States Coast Guard.
How many people would you need to protect an area that large? 1.2M? Nope, that’s the Army. 350,000? Nope, that’s the Navy. 180,000? Nope…Marines. How about 44,500….wait what? Only 44,500 active duty personnel. That’s it. That’s all you get. That’s the Coast Guard. Roughly the same size as the NYPD…New York’s finest, and yet they’re charged with protecting America’s entire maritime interest AND protecting interests on high seas around the world (fun fact: the CG has arguably the widest jurisdictional authority of any service/agency in the US). How does one service do this year after year, with less money, resources, and people — yet seem to do it so well? The answer is with the PEOPLE of the Coast Guard. The success of the service is due it’s PEOPLE.
In the Coast Guard, you could have more leadership experience as an E-4 with under 4 years of service, and be put in more opportunities to exercise that leadership, than any other service operating under like conditions. As a junior petty officer in the Coast Guard you can qualify as a coxswain (boat captain) to conduct search and rescue missions as the sole person in the charge of the vessel and crew, and be ultimately responsible for the safety of all embarked on the vessel, operating with an autonomy not seen in other services. This type of leadership opportunity simply doesn’t exist elsewhere. Bad weather and rough seas? E-4 in charge. Vessel sinking at sea and people in the water? E-4 in charge. Homeland Security operations with mounted fully automatic machine guns? E-4 in charge. Boarding Officer responsible for enforcing federal laws and regulations? E-4. The level of responsibility placed on its junior members is unprecedented and is a proving ground for leadership. These are merely a few examples and I could go on and on. Where does this young E-4 end up at the conclusion of their military career? As a seasoned, experienced leader with an aptitude for decisiveness, a propensity for leadership and a bias for action. Does that sound like someone you want on your team?
The fact is, the Coast Guard doesn’t have the budget to make those fancy Hollywood commercials that makes the service look much cooler than it is. The fact is the Navy’s entire R&D budget is actually larger than the Coast Guard’s entire operating budget (i.e. their play money is more than all of the CG’s working capital 🤯). Example: America’s Navy: A Global Force for Good. Ever been on a Navy ship? Definitely not as cool as that commercial. The Army commercial where you choose your soldier type…you want to be a hacker or Special Ops, complete with cool CGI graphics? Reality: MRE’s…yum. The Marines…The Few, The Proud. Cue the enlisted guys with swords and Osprey’s flying in (ok, that’s cool). What does the Coast Guard get? I recently saw a Coast Guard ad on Reddit…with a picture…and comments disabled. I really don’t know what else 🤷 (except maybe the infamous Coast Guard rap song).
The lack of effective marketing definitely hurts the image of its veterans, when compared to the other services. The fact is, humans are susceptible to marketing whether you want to be or not. People see the hype of the other services and remember these images and marketing in the subconscious of their mind. Yet, when Coast Guard veterans apply for jobs after they leave the service, people often have no idea what the Coast Guard does — or worse, what their people do. Yet, the quiet professionals of the Coast Guard do their jobs day in and day out, saving your loved ones from the sea, making drug busts on the high seas worth BILLIONS, keeping the buoys of American commerce lit so shipping lanes keep moving, and much, much more — and they do it without the hype of large marketing budgets making them “look cool”. It’s definitely a tragedy to its people.
I learned a valuable lesson when I worked at Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center as an active duty Coast Guardsman. The Navy and other large branches have a pyramid of people, with multiple layers of people at every layer, setup in a way that its almost hard for its people to fail. Decisions get filtered down/up through all of the layers and risk is mitigated throughout the filtering.
The Coast Guard simply doesn’t have the number of people the other services do, so important decisions get made at much lower levels, and there are less fail-safes in place so you have to be right more often.
Risk management is almost everything in the Coast Guard and is exercised at almost every level. You’re forced to make important decisions daily and valuable leadership skills are thereby gained through exercising those muscles. You can’t buy that type of leadership experience but it happens daily across the service.
What about Coast Guard officers? In the CG, you can graduate the Academy, serve as the Combat Information Center Officer on a 210' cutter on your first tour, serve as the Executive Officer (XO) of a 110' patrol boat on your second tour, and serve as the Commanding Officer (CO) of a 154' Fast Response Cutter with a crew of 24 on your third tour as a Lieutenant/O-3. In 7 years time you can be the Commanding Officer of a naval vessel armed with 25MM stabilized machine guns, multiple 50-cal guns and a crew of 24 people to conduct a wide range of missions on the high seas and over waters which the US has jurisdiction over. That’s a level of responsibility not many people ever see in under 10 years at company/service, much less if ever.
It would take an entire book to showcase the full leadership capabilities of the people of the Coast Guard, and go through all of the different ways that the people of the smallest armed service in the US have opportunities to lead like no other service does. My intent is to not sound like a recruiter here (because I’m not), but to bring to light that if you have the opportunity to hire a Coast Guard veteran at your company, you’re likely getting a leader who has been through a diverse career and has likely led multiple teams of highly trained professionals on missions that blur the line between cool and downright dangerous. In the Coast Guard, when you’re on the ocean conducting operations, there is often a “gray area” that we operate in and have come to thrive in — because the ocean is unpredictable and unforgiving — but that’s the office! Whether you’re breaking through waves in small boat or you’re flying out in a helicopter to rescue the crew of a fishing boat in the middle of a storm, there’s no safe place to retreat to and take a minute to think — it’s courage, technical skills, bravery, decisiveness and leadership in action.
My challenge to you: next time you get a resume from a Coast Guard veteran across your desk, do yourself and your company a favor and dive deeper into that candidate — they are likely more ready than you know. Semper Paratus.
