Investing in veterans profitable? This man wants to prove it
MICHAEL Hansen was little more than an entry-level salesman when he started pushing his employer to do more for veterans.
He had been a decorated Marine in the Iraq War before embarking on a rocky, tumultuous transition into the business world at the height of the recession. After failing to find a national security job and completing a few semesters of graduate school, he found himself in Greenbelt, Maryland, at the bottom of a corporate hierarchy in which every decision had to be tied to profitability.
His job at Power Home Remodelling, a national homeimprovement firm that made US$ 520 million last year, was to meet customers at their homes and sell them remodelling services. He noticed that Power had only a few veterans among its sales force - but the ones it did have posted outstanding numbers. He was certain that the company would benefit greatly if it employed more veterans.
So he pitched his managers on a novel idea: Set up an independent department within Power responsible for helping veterans build careers after the military, with its own budget dedicated to integrating them into the company’s core business operations.
Hansen says his goal was to help fellow veterans “redefine the sense of purpose that we had in the military” by creating communities for them in the civilian world.
“When you get out of the military, you may be competent and capable, but it’s the application of your skill sets that can determine how effective you can be,” Hansen says. “Transitioning that to the corporate sector is doable, but it depends on how fast you can build up your support network.”
After at first getting little traction, he went directly to the top, approaching chief executive Asher Raphael at a company dinner. Hansen showed Raphael data that he’d analysed demonstrating that the average veteran at Power sold more and stayed longer at the company than their civilian colleagues. And the remodelling jobs they oversaw tended to be “cleaner,” with fewer customer complaints.
“We found that the military vets we did have were not just successful, but they were disproportionately successful,” he says.
Raphael approved Hansen’s idea to establish the Power Home Remodelling Department of Military Affairs and put him in charge of it. Today, the company allocates between US$ 2.25 million and US$ 2.5 million annually for staffing and support.
Citing the support they get from management to grow and succeed in their careers, employees in The Washington Post’s Top Workplaces survey ranked Power No 3 among midsize firms.
Skilled or well- connected veterans have long had a unique place in the Washington area’s business community, where some of the biggest employers are government contractors serving US defence and intelligence agencies.
A few such companies made the 2018 Top Workplaces listing: Columbia, Marylandbased government contractor IntelliGenesis, for example, holds employment workshops for people transitioning out of the military. Procentrix, a Herndon, Virginia-based software company, solicits resumes through the Wounded Warrior Project, a charity that serves veterans.
But Power Home Remodelling is different in that it has no government or defence ties. Thus, it’s often a challenge for Hansen to convince managers - many of whom have no connection to the military - that people like him are a worthy investment.
“We want to highlight that vets are a success,” Hansen says. “They vote more. They serve communities more. They build successful businesses.”
Hansen’s transition to civilian life didn’t go as smoothly as he had hoped.
He had joined the Marine Corps in the early years of the US war in Iraq, also known as Operation Iraqi Freedom. His service over the course of four deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan earned him a promotion to the rank of sergeant as well as a Navy and Marine Corps Commendation Medal.
He left the service for the first time at age 22 and immediately
He pitched his managers on a novel idea: Set up an independent department within Power responsible for helping veterans build careers after the military, with its own budget dedicated to integrating them into the company’s core business operations.
landed a high-paying job at an insurance company. Then when the recession struck, his company went under, and he was laid off without a pay cheque. His family lost their house and his marriage fell apart.
He ended up returning for another tour of duty before making his way to Washington, where he had hoped to leverage his military background for a career in government or defense contracting. He spent three years there, sleeping on a friend’s couch, working as a bartender and pursuing a master’s degree in the evenings.
Then another friend from the military helped him get a sales job at Power, and he was surprised to find that the work suited him. It tapped into his interpersonal “soft skills” that he had honed working in military intelligence.
“I had developed a career that essentially was successful in the military because I got good at navigating people,” Hansen says, “and that was a skill that I was able to transition into the commercial sector.”
From there he swiftly moved up the ranks, netting two promotions in his first year there. After 18 months he became a “million- dollar rep,” joining an elite group whose members had single-handedly closed US$ 1 million in home-improvement sales in a single fiscal year.
But he never lost sight of his ties to the military, and he kept lobbying his managers to set up a military affairs department.
Today, from his perch in the firm’s corporate headquarters in Chester, Pennsylvania, Hansen finds himself in a position to influence a serious hiring machine with national reach: Power employs close to 2,300 people in the United States, including about 270 in the Washington area.