Esse Quam Videri: JP Sniffen on Leadership, Loyalty, and Why Companies That Understand Veterans Outperform the Ones That Don’t
- Camille D. Ford | Founder & Editor-in-Chief
- Feb 11
- 13 min read
SUMMARY
JP Sniffen was born at Camp Lejeune, served in the Marine Corps reserves at the University of Notre Dame from 18 to 22, then as an active duty infantry officer from 22 to 27, and has spent the 25 years since building one of the most respected military talent practices in the country. As Practice Leader at Korn Ferry, he and his teams have helped more than 50,000 veterans find their footing in corporate America, not through charity or feel-good hiring programs, but through science, psychology, and the unshakable belief that veterans are the best employees a company can hire. This is the story of the man who translates warriors, and why changing lives is reward enough.
JP Sniffen was 22 years old, standing in the middle of the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 110-degree heat, when he first understood what the rest of his life would be about.
Within 20 yards of him: a gold gloves boxer, a doctor, and a triple murderer. All waiting to see who deserved to enter the United States. All his responsibility.
“I remember thinking: wow, what did I get myself into?” he says. “Like, this is a lot of stuff.”
He didn’t quit. He didn’t panic. He did what the Marine Corps trained him to do: he acted on what he knew, in the chaos he was given, with the end state in mind. Five years later, he walked out of the Marines at 27.
Twenty-five years later, Sniffen sits in an office in Charlotte, North Carolina, where he leads a military talent practice he’s spent a career building, now housed at Korn Ferry. The philosophy, the methodology, the approach: all his. The stakes are different now. No guns, no internment camps, no triple murderers within arm’s reach. But the principle that carried him through Cuba is still the one he lives by.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” he says. “The second I walk out into the world, chaos could happen. And I have to be prepared for that.”
In 25 years, he and his teams have helped more than 50,000 veterans find their footing in a world that doesn’t always speak their language. Not because he owes them something. Not to hang a flag in the lobby and call it diversity.
He does it for the human connection. That’s it. That’s the whole thing.
“No plan survives contact with the enemy. The second I walk out into the world, chaos could happen. And I have to be prepared for that.”
Born Into the Brotherhood
Sniffen didn’t choose the military the way most people make decisions. The military was simply the air in his house.
He was born at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. His father, a Marine from Bayonne, New Jersey, spent 33 years in the Corps. Three older sisters. A household where service wasn’t discussed because it was assumed.
“He never pressured me,” Sniffen says of his father. “It was never talked about.”
By junior year of high school, Sniffen had done the math. Three older sisters. One youngest brother. College tuition for four kids. “Nothing was happening for me, right?”
So he found his own way: a Marine Corps scholarship. Interview. Physical fitness test. Grades. Test scores. The whole gauntlet. He got it. Four years at the University of Notre Dame in ROTC. Then active duty. Then Cuba. Then Korea, where it was 15 degrees and he was freezing to death, watching his friends back home in coffee shops, living normal lives, and thinking: I’ll look back one day and be glad I did this.
He served on active duty from 22 to 27. Infantry officer. Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines. The kind of work where if you don’t do your job right, someone dies.
When he got out at 27, he went straight into construction. Specifically, sewers. “People say, wasn’t the Marine Corps hard, and you’re muddy and dirty,” he laughs. “My first job out of the Marine Corps was in sewers.”
It wasn’t glamorous. But nothing about JP Sniffen’s life has ever been about glamour. It’s always been about the mission.
You Lead a Willing Heart
There’s a common misconception about military leadership that Sniffen has spent decades dismantling.
People hear “military” and they picture rank. Orders. Someone barking commands at people who have no choice but to comply. And yes, the structure is real. The rank is real. But that’s not how the best leaders operate. Not in uniform. Not anywhere.
“All truly great leaders throughout the history of the military know one thing,” Sniffen says. “You lead a willing heart.”
He pauses to let it land. “It’s why all-volunteer militaries typically defeat conscription. Because they are willing. They are willing to be led when they believe in their leader.”
Under bad leadership, he says, people half-step. They do the minimum to stay in the room. They breathe on the mirror. Just enough fog to prove they’re still alive.
Under good leadership, something else happens entirely. People take ownership. They go further than you asked. They don’t need to be watched because they’ve bought in.
The difference, Sniffen says, is not rank or authority. It’s three things: truth, trust, and time.
“Be truthful. Be trustworthy. And then people know you care when you spend time with them.”
He gives an example. Recently, one of his employees came to him with personal problems weighing him down. Sniffen stopped him mid-sentence. “I said, ‘Look, you need to go take care of that stuff. If you can’t get your own house in order, you’re gonna be no good to me or the organization.’ I said, ‘Take the rest of the day. Go do what you need to do.’”
“If I just said, ‘Suck it up,’ he’s not working. He’s worried. You can be a caring human being and be business-smart at the same time. People lose that.”
This is what he tries to teach transitioning veterans: leave the rank on the door. Because in corporate America, nobody has to follow you. They choose to. And the only way they choose you is if you’ve already chosen them.
“All truly great leaders throughout the history of the military know one thing: you lead a willing heart.”
The Foundation: Learning to Ask the Right Questions
Before Sniffen could translate military talent for corporate America, he had to learn something more fundamental: how to listen.
It happened on recruiting duty. St. Louis. Late 1990s. Most officers treated it like a detour, a B billet, something to survive between real assignments. Sniffen treated it like a graduate program.
“A lot of people get taught on recruiting duty to just stand out there, and if someone walks by, you start trying to sell them,” he explains. “Like the kiosk in the mall where they don’t even know anything about you, and they’re trying to sell you shampoo.”
He never did that. Instead, he asked questions. What do you like doing? What’s exciting to you? Where do you want to be in 10, 15 years? Once he understood what drove someone, once he knew what they were actually chasing, then he could show them how the military might help them get there.
“What that taught me, and what I carry through my whole career, is the power of great questions,” he says. “You go in with hypotheses. You go in with ideas of what you think the client needs. But you validate it. You never assume.”
“You can be a caring human being and be business-smart at the same time. People lose that.”
The Rosetta Stone: Translating What Corporate America Can’t Read
Here is the problem Sniffen walks into every single day.
The percentage of veterans in the U.S. population is the smallest it has ever been. When he started his recruiting career in the early 2000s, 20 to 30 percent of CEOs were veterans. Now it’s under 10 percent. That means fewer executives can look at a military fitness report and understand what they’re reading. Fewer people in the C-suite have any frame of reference for what an infantry officer actually does, or what it means to lead 200 people through a mission in a foreign country at 24 years old.
So he builds the bridge. Using what they call the Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership (KF4D), they go beneath the resume, beneath the rank and the ribbons, to measure traits and drivers. Specifically, learning agility and people agility: how someone absorbs new information, and how they navigate human beings.
“Think about lifting the hood of a car,” Sniffen says. “Everybody can see what’s on a resume. What we do is go below.”
And what they find, consistently, is this: military veterans score higher in those two categories than their civilian counterparts.
“No one joins the military and does what they did in the civilian world,” he says. “Everyone gets trained in something new: electronics, infantry tactics, logistics. And they do it under pressure. These people come in with an open mindset. I need to learn. I never rest on my laurels. There is no shortcut on safety. There is no shortcut on quality. Because if you skip quality in the military, people die.”
He says it more directly to skeptical managers: “These people are coming from a situation where if they don’t do their job right, someone dies. No ifs, ands, or buts. That is the standard they were trained to.”
When he pairs that with the science, the case closes itself. But the science alone doesn’t always close the room. For a truly skeptical board, Sniffen has something else: proof. Before any search, his team builds what they call a success profile: a detailed picture of exactly what someone needs to look like to thrive in that specific role. Then they show how the veteran candidate maps to it, point by point.
“It’s not just take my word for it,” he says. “Here are six companies, similar roles, similar industries. Here are the retention rates. Here is the ROI. If it worked for a Fortune 500 company, it can work for you.” Most skeptics, he says, don’t need much more than that. “If you show them three competitors have done it successfully and done it well, most senior executives go: okay. All right. Maybe I should take a look.”
In November 2025, the U.S. Department of Labor awarded Korn Ferry its fourth consecutive Gold HIRE Vets Medallion, the only federal-level recognition for excellence in veteran recruitment and retention. For a large employer to qualify, at least seven percent of new hires must be veterans and 75 percent of them must be retained for more than a year. Four straight years of that isn’t a campaign. It’s a culture.
“These people are coming from a situation where if they don’t do their job right, someone dies. No ifs, ands, or buts. That is the standard they were trained to.”
The Gold Standard
* Award: U.S. Department of Labor HIRE Vets Gold Medallion
* Record: Korn Ferry (4-Year Consecutive Recipient, 2022-2025)
* Why it matters: Recognizes the highest federal standards for veteran recruitment, retention, and professional development. Large employers must prove at least 7% of new hires are veterans and maintain a 75% retention rate for more than a year.
The Stigma: What Still Grinds His Nerves
Ask Sniffen what frustrates him most and he doesn’t hesitate.
“The stigmas,” he says. “Oh, you shouldn’t hire a veteran. Oh, he has PTSD. Whatever rationale people use to justify not hiring someone who served.”
He doesn’t pretend the issue doesn’t exist. PTSD is real. Some veterans are struggling. He knows that. But writing off an entire population based on the worst-case scenario is not just wrong. It’s bad business.
“You have to ruthlessly disprove it up front,” he says. “And then you have to ask: what are we putting in place to allow that person, with reasonable accommodations, to be successful? What are we arming the organization with if something were to happen?”
Korn Ferry runs a training called The Power of Choice, educating hiring managers and HR partners on the uniqueness of veterans, how to work with them, how to get the most from that workforce. They offer coaching once veterans are placed. They build environments, not just placements. “It is multifaceted,” Sniffen says. “You can’t just hire someone and walk away.”
Mission First, Boss First
Veterans are trained to be mission first. Corporations are often profit first. It’s a real tension, and Sniffen doesn’t pretend otherwise.
His advice: focus less on the company and more on the person you’d be working for. “The economy goes up and down,” he says. “Sometimes you gotta take a job. But if you have choices, look long and hard at who your boss would be.”
“Because at the end of the day, people quit people, they don’t quit companies.” He says it plainly. “You could be at a company that’s super profit-driven, but you love your boss, you have a great environment, you make it work. And you could work at the most beautiful nonprofit on the planet, saving babies, and if your boss makes your life miserable, you’re gone. It doesn’t matter what the mission says on paper.”
The military taught veterans to follow the mission. Sniffen spends a lot of time teaching them to choose the person.
Esse Quam Videri
JP Sniffen signs every email the same way: Esse Quam Videri. To be, rather than to seem.
The North Carolina state motto. But for Sniffen, it’s a warning, especially now, in an era when AI can write your cover letter, optimize your resume, and generate a pitch so polished it no longer sounds like you.
“The key is when you lose sight of the difference between a tool and a replacement,” he says.
He tells a story. An email landed in his inbox. The top three sentences read: “Below is a letter you would send to Korn Ferry.” The person had copied and pasted directly from the AI output. Didn’t even read it. “That’s an instant disqualifier,” he says. “You just got yourself out of the pool of people I’ll even talk to. Because if you make a mistake that simple, you will make mistakes on more complicated and more important things.”
His advice to veterans is the same thing he practices himself: use the tools, but never let the tools use you. Customize everything. Pick up the phone. Make a real connection.
“People have gotten away from that,” he says. “That’s the quickest way to cut through all of it. Because at the end of the day, your resume is not doing the job. You are doing the job. And it is still this type of interaction, human to human, that defines us.”
“People quit people. They don’t quit companies.”
Charlotte: Good Start, More to Do
Sniffen has been in Charlotte eleven years. He’s watched it grow. “Banking was the core,” he says. “But if a veteran doesn’t want to be in banking or finance or a call center, the options were limited. What I’ve seen is other companies coming in, Honeywell and others, and that’s what we need more of. You have to stabilize with other industries, otherwise you limit what veterans can do here.”
What’s missing, he says, is earlier exposure. He’d like to see companies partner with high schools and colleges on internships and career paths, with veterans as a key part of that pipeline. “I didn’t know what half the jobs out there were when I was young,” he says. “If I’d gotten that exposure earlier, I might have made different decisions.”
He points specifically to the SkillBridge program, the Department of Defense paid internship that lets transitioning service members work with civilian companies during their last 180 days of service. Not enough Charlotte companies use it. “I would encourage every company in this area to look at that program,” he says. “North Carolina has a massive veteran population. If you want to keep them here, give them a reason to stay.”
You Lead a Willing Heart
When asked about the one story that defines what he does, Sniffen doesn’t reach for a single name. He reaches for a pattern. “I am always blown away,” he says, “by the number of men and women that I got an entry-level job for 20 years ago, who are now VPs. Presidents. Senior leaders. All because someone took a chance on them and they jumped into a new career.”
That’s what he is to them. Not a headhunter. Not a placement service. A man who starts you down the road. “Kind of like the Wizard of Oz,” he says. “I just start you down the yellow brick road. And the adventure they’ve gone on since then. That’s been great to see.”
“Your resume is not doing the job. You are doing the job. And it is still this type of interaction, human to human, that defines us.”
He wants to be clear about something: this is not charity. This is not a feel-good program. Veterans make companies better. They come in loyal, disciplined, trained under pressure, allergic to shortcuts. Companies that understand this don’t think they’re doing something nice for a veteran. They know they’re acquiring an asset. The companies that have figured this out are watching competitors close leadership gaps faster, retain talent longer, and build cultures that perform under pressure. The data is not ambiguous. Veterans stay. They lead. They execute.
“The side benefit is that you’re giving a job to someone who defended the country. But that’s the side benefit. The main thing is, you just hired an all-star.”
After 25 years and more than 50,000 veteran placements made alongside his teams, he is still not done. There are still veterans out there who haven’t found their next mission. Still companies that don’t understand what they’re missing. Still a gap between two worlds that speak different languages and need someone who can translate.
And there is still only one reason JP Sniffen keeps showing up to close it. Not for something in return. For the human connection.
Resources for Veterans
Career Transition Resources
Korn Ferry Military Practice
SkillBridge Program (U.S. Department of Defense)
Nonprofit & Mentorship Support
Hire Heroes USA
Free career coaching, resume assistance, and job placement for transitioning service members and veterans
American Corporate Partners (ACP)
Mentoring program connecting veterans with business professionals during military-to-civilian transition
Federal Recognition
HIRE Vets Medallion Program (U.S. Department of Labor)
VA & Benefits Support
U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs: Benefits, healthcare, education, employment, and transition support
Crisis Support
Veterans Crisis Line: Dial 988, then press 1 | Text 838255
Additional Reading
Notre Dame Alumni: Using the Alumni Directory | myNotreDame
Another Lost Year on Guantanamo
Marines TV
About JP Sniffen
JP Sniffen is the Practice Leader for Military, Information Technology, Physical Security, and Human Resources Centers of Expertise at Korn Ferry Professional Search, a global organizational consulting firm with more than 50 years of history placing leaders across every major industry. A Notre Dame ROTC graduate and Camp Lejeune native, Sniffen served on active duty as an infantry officer with Kilo Company, 3rd Battalion, 2nd Marines from 22 to 27, with duty stations including the Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Okinawa, Japan, and South Korea. Over a 25-year career in executive search, he and his teams have helped place more than 50,000 veterans into civilian careers, partnering with Fortune 500 companies to build the business case for military talent through science, data, and the Korn Ferry Four Dimensions of Leadership (KF4D) framework. Under Sniffen’s leadership of Korn Ferry’s Military Center of Expertise, the firm has received the U.S. Department of Labor Gold HIRE Vets Medallion for four consecutive years (2022-2025), the only federal-level recognition for excellence in veteran recruitment, retention, and professional development. He lives by the North Carolina state motto, Esse Quam Videri, meaning To be, rather than to seem. He is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Veterans navigating their transition and companies ready to make the business case for military talent are welcome to reach out directly at JP.Sniffen@KornFerry.com. The first conversation costs nothing.
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