Prominent construction firm launches new career track for veterans

Robins & Morton, a Birmingham, Alabama-based construction company that has an office in Tampa and is responsible for many significant projects in the Tampa Bay region, has again gotten creative in its efforts to unearth new talent.

In a news release, the firm says it has created a new construction engineer career track that, like its construction coordinator role, will be specifically for U.S. military veterans.

“We know that veterans have leadership skills and life skills, but maybe not direct construction experience,” Robins & Morton Recruiting Manager Liz Swack states in the release. “We have career tracks that recognize these unique skills, and both positions lead to greater leadership opportunities within our company. Equally important, it tells veterans that they belong, that we value their experience and that we have a career path specifically for them with opportunities for growth.”

The construction engineer position, the release states, places newly hired veterans above entry-level employees, but also provides them with development opportunities to gain construction-specific knowledge and experience. It’s open to veterans with at least eight years of service time in the armed forces, while the construction coordinator career track accepts veterans who served for less than eight years.

“I had a 22-year military intelligence analyst tell me, ‘I don’t think my that my experience will translate,” states Robins & Morton Assistant Superintendent Derek King — who managed construction projects in the Army as a special forces engineer — in the release. When King told the soon-to-be-released military analyst about the construction engineer position, “I saw the self-confidence he had as an officer come back.”