The brave people who serve our military go through extensive training, not only to learn how to be physically and mentally equipped for battle, but skills for leadership and specialties that can involve some of the most advanced technology. As they transition out of the military, veterans go through additional career transition training to prepare them for the civilian workforce. But is it enough to set them up for success? Should we, as a country and community, be doing more to help them thrive after they’ve dedicated a portion of their lives to protecting ours?
The Benefit of Employing Military Veterans
Military veterans possess a unique mindset, experiences and skillsets that can greatly benefit any organization. Their dedication, problem-solving abilities and leadership qualities are invaluable assets that can drive success in the civilian workplace. Organizations that engage and leverage these skills can enhance their team dynamics, increase productivity and foster innovation.
LinkedIn’s Veteran Opportunity Report showed that veterans remain with their initial company 8.3% longer than nonveterans. They are 39% more likely to be promoted earlier than nonveterans, are 160% more likely than nonveterans to have a graduate degree or higher and those with bachelor’s degrees have 2.9x more work experience.
Challenges to Finding a Job for Military Veterans
But in the same report the data suggests that when it comes to the corporate world, having a military background can get in the way. It showed that 33% of veterans are underemployed and are 15.6% more likely to be underemployed than nonveterans. To add to these challenges, 38 of the top 50 industries employ veterans at a proportionally lower rate than nonveterans.
According to Prudential’s Veterans’ Employment Challenge report, two-thirds of veterans experienced a difficult transition from military to civilian life. In the report, veterans name “finding a job” as the greatest challenge in transitioning, with transferring military skills to a civilian environment a major hurdle. Only two-thirds said they received transition support. The primary source was the Transition Assistance Program, which less than half found effective.
The Support Gap for Veteran Transitions to the Civilian Workforce
Ensuring military veterans have a career trajectory beyond their service is critical to a country who wants to honor their service and continue having a voluntary enlistment approach to staffing our troops. It can be easy to forget that the individuals coming out of service signed up voluntarily to protect millions of people that they don’t even know. Strangers who they are now relying on to give them a chance to put their years of training and advanced capabilities to work.
Raymond Toenniessen, deputy executive director at the D’Aniello Institute for Veterans and Military Families shares, “We don’t do a great job of helping service members become informed consumers of what they’re life will look like after they leave. We need to help them determine when they take the uniform off, what do they want to do with the rest of their life? There are efforts to do that in the transition process, but it often falls short of what’s needed to fully move into the civilian workforce.”
The Role of Corporate Responsibility
Is it realistic and even effective to put all the weight of transition support on the military? Just Capital is an independent nonprofit that tracks, analyzes and engages with large corporations and their investors on how they perform on the public’s priorities. Their mission is to help build a more just economy. According to their recent report on veterans in the workplace, 87% of respondents said they agreed that America’s largest companies have a responsibility to actively recruit veterans to their workforces, 57% said that most employers are not doing enough to help veteran workers.
In addition, according to their report, roughly only 23% of companies have both a recruiting and supplier policy in place for veterans and 49% have neither. America’s largest companies have a long way to go in support of veterans in the workplace. Why aren’t these numbers higher? Part of the challenge is how disconnected our civilian population has become from the military and its service members that protect them. 50% of participants in Just Capital’s Veteran’s Day survey identified as neither they or their family members are serving or have served in the military.
Recruiters and hiring managers can benefit from developing a greater skill in identifying and valuing transferrable skills, broadening their ability to spot value in potential new hires. Also, familiarizing themselves with military cultural norms and how that aligns or differs from their organizational culture can help them integrate new hire veterans into their workplace.
Toenniessen explains that the D’Aniello Institute works to help build the bridge between corporate and veteran needs. “We work to develop aligned connections and talent pipelines. We start with partnerships in the corporate sector. They tell the story of what their current needs are. We keep updated on what kind of resume software they are using, what are the keywords, formats, etc. that set the resume up for success. We clarify how to describe military experience in the right way so it’s getting picked up by the scanners and effectively translating to recruiters and hiring managers.”
How a Veteran’s Job Search Needs May Differ from a Nonveterans
It’s important to understand that veterans face unique challenges compared to their nonveteran counterparts when navigating the job market. Some of the most common issues include:
An Open Job Market – Veterans are moving from a highly structured and controlled environment to an open job market. Many have never gone through an interview or put together a resume since the military doesn’t have an apply-to-jobs approach to how they engage and promote their personnel. It can be a huge shock when veterans aren’t prepared for the level of rejection, lack of communication and nuanced expectations when applying for jobs in the civilian job market.
Though nonveterans can find this experience demoralizing, most have some familiarity and exposure to this being a common experience as part of the process, while veterans can feel a deeper cut and disillusionment. Many are coming from mission critical roles where they were part of a community and felt their contributions mattered. They may already be experiencing levels of separation and disconnection. The indifference of the job market can exacerbate feelings of resentment, hopelessness and anxiety. The more they get familiarized with norms of an open job market, the less they will take on as a personal issue and will be able to ride the waves of uncertainty and opportunity that come with it.
Corporate Cultural Norms – Successfully transitioning from a military culture of obedience to a corporate culture of collaboration can take some time and guidance to fully adjust. Veterans are coming from years of obeying direct orders from their superiors. This may seem appealing to managers looking for better alignment with their direct reports, but the reality is corporate environments rarely want or benefit from this high level of compliance. Instead, they are expecting greater levels of dialogue, collaboration and respectful debate, even in hierarchical cultures compared to a military one.
“Companies can do a lot to support veterans. Setting up a veteran affinity group to help new hire veterans to navigate the nuance of the company’s unique culture is a great start. Going a step further and partnering them with a mentor during onboarding can set everyone up for more success,” advises Toenniessen.
Connecting Transferrable Skills – Unless the veteran is transitioning into military related work that has immediate need for their specialized work experience, they can come against challenges with translating their core talents and skills to the civilian workforce. This is not due to a lack of transferrable skills. This is truly a translation opportunity. But many of the dedicated professionals working in the military’s Transition Assistance Programs have, themselves, only worked in military related fields and organizations. Veterans need translation assistance to help them connect the dots beyond what they did in the military to include how they did their job and how those experiences translate into a wide variety of civilian settings and job opportunities.
Job History vs. Career Goals – Something many civilians don’t understand is that most service members do not get to choose the job they have while serving. It’s usually chosen for them by the recruiter they originally enlist with. The recruiter is going off of priority needs of the military at the time of enlistment. They will also use certain tests such as the ASVAB to determine what job fields the individual may be qualified to be trained in. Some may get guaranteed jobs based on their college background and whether they are going in as enlisted personnel or officers. But most have very little say in their assignments.
The good news is the military invests a great deal of job training into the individual to skill them up in their assigned specialty. However, if the individual finds they don’t care for the specialty they’ve been assigned they can’t just quit or apply to a new job. There are options but they are limited and often require arduous efforts to shift their role. Remember, the military is a deployment machine. The level of structure isn’t designed to answer to the unique interests of individual whims or life interests.
In the military it’s the commitment of service in however you may be needed that takes priority. But in the civilian workforce, veterans have an opportunity to carve out a career path unique to their interests. Toenniessen highlights that what veterans benefit from greatly is guidance and support around what that unique path can look like. “It’s important that we don’t just assume that if someone did something like drive trucks or work as an air traffic controller that that’s what they’re going to want to do for their career after their active service is over.”
Career Management Savvy – Because the majority of service members have spent a few to over 20 years in the military, they’ve not developed some of the career management savvy that most nonveterans pick up on through navigating jobs in the private sector. There are programs designed to help veterans but many veterans are either unaware of them or struggle with getting quality, comprehensive guidance.
Toenniessen emphasizes the importance of veterans not going it alone. He encourages veterans to engage in programs like the D’Aniello Institute’s Onward to Opportunity (O2O) program. It is a career training program that provides professional certification and employee support services at no cost to transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses.
The program provides end-to-end career preparation and training for transitioning service members, veterans and military spouses, as well as members of the National Guard and Reserve. They train participants on both technical and soft skills, serving as the gateway to employment by providing over 40 professional certifications in in-demand career fields. They also do extensive coaching regarding job search skills to include interview preparation, resume writing and insights on hiring trends. On average, the program helps more than 1,000 learners a month and has graduated nearly 100,000 participants to date.
The Clearinghouse for Military Family Readiness at Pennsylvania State University recently finished evaluating more than three years of data on the Onward to Opportunity program. The study concluded that graduates of the program experience a significant increase in post-service employment opportunities and success. The two-part report found that O2O graduates were twice as likely to find better employment opportunities and, on average, earn $7,000 more than their peers who did not take part in the program. For those enlisted service members with a paygrade of E-6 or below, the program shows even better results with an average starting salary $13,000 higher than their peers.
“We include training on how to work in for-profit and matrixed organizations. Our goal is to ensure veterans are set up for success on day one of the job and beyond,” emphasizes Toenniessen. “We use activities such as scenario-based interviews, setting up LinkedIn profiles and practicing with virtual reality to help individuals get comfortable with and ready for interviews and onboarding.”
Toenniessen emphasizes that veterans can benefit greatly by balancing their ability to take ownership of their careers, while also reaching out and leveraging all the resources available to them. But he also calls out that we as a community need to own our responsibility to take care of those that voluntarily enlist in military service, many risking their lives to protect us. We must ensure there is not a penalty experienced for their honorable service. We should be ensuring there is a path to career success for every veteran.