Rivera Consulting Group founder: Veterans in the work force 'get it'

Joey Rivera founded his company, Rivera Consulting Group Inc., in 2002 as an army of one.

But since the U.S. Marine Corps. veteran and U.S. Army reservist founded the company, it has grown rapidly. Rivera Consulting provides software, cybersecurity and systems engineering for large-scale enterprises — many of which are governmental entities.

The Sellersburg-based company employs about 100 people, and Rivera expects that it will double its work force within about three years.

In 2017, Rivera said, the company expects to opens its new headquarters, a 54,000-square-foot facility in Jeffersonville's North Port Business Centre.

Most of the new employees will be programmers, analysts and testers, Rivera said. And he hopes they will be the type of employees who challenge him.

"I want the creative thinker that is willing to stand and argue with me toe to toe," Rivera said. "I so love that. Conflict is healthy because the best ideas always survive. The best solution will always sustain an argument."

The company lists at the bottom of its website that it seeks "creative minds that don't want to fit within the boundaries of shirt-and-tie corporate America."

Rivera said he already has an eclectic group of employees, who have dubbed Rivera Consulting "mini Google." He estimated that about 30 percent of his employees are veterans.

Hiring veterans is a common practice for Rivera, who said that those who have served in the military often fit in well at Rivera Consulting Group.

He explained that when people in the military are given an objective and told to accomplish the objective, without being told how to do it. As a result, he said, it is not uncommon for a veteran to struggle at a company that has defined boundaries, because it stifles their creative thought process.

Braden Lammers covers these beats: Financial services, residential real estate, law, property and casualty insurance, construction, unions, engineers, architects and agriculture.