In today’s world, hiring the right employees is a critical part of a company’s success. Managers want skilled employees that bring diversity of thought and diversity of experience. Employees want to work in skilled positions with competitive pay. This environment creates fierce competition between employers for talented, well-trained employees. Yet, there is at least one source of talent, skills, and experience that remains underutilized by employers: veterans returning to civilian life.
According to the Veterans Association, about 200,000 military veterans leave the military to return to civilian life every year.1 Upon returning, veterans are faced with many challenges, including underemployment and skill translation. While these challenges create significant difficulty for former service members, they represent an excellent hiring opportunity for employers. To leverage this opportunity, employers must understand the challenges of underemployment and skill translation. With this understanding, managers can then make educated decisions with regards to hiring veterans.
Underemployment
Unemployment is a commonly understood idea to most people. Someone is unemployed if they do not have a job. While similar in some ways, underemployment is separate and distinct from unemployment.
Underemployment is when an individual is working in a job that does not utilize their skills, or when an individual does not have enough work to do. For example, if a person with a law degree from Harvard works at McDonald’s, they would be considered underemployed.
While the veteran unemployment rate is lower than the non-veterans’, the underemployment rate is much higher.
A study conducted by Cathy Barrera, the chief economist for ZipRecruiter, and Philip Carter, an adviser to the Call of Duty Endowment, found that veterans are 15.6% more likely to be underemployed than non-veterans.2
A high underemployment rate and low unemployment rate means that veterans are working, but not in the jobs that they have the skills and talent for. Veterans are often overqualified for the jobs in which they work. The good news is when veterans are looking for new jobs, they become a source that employers can tap into to look for skilled employees.
In addition to the high underemployment rate, employers should be aware of the challenge of translating skills and experience learned in the military to a civilian job.
The Challenge of Skill Translation
Service in the military provides men and women with a wide variety of technical and “soft” skills. Depending on the service member’s role, they may find it easy to translate the skills they learned in the service to jobs in the private sector. The roles that translate skills easiest are typically technology based.
Others may have roles that are more specialized specifically to the military, such as combat roles. Even though the skills learned by these men and women are more difficult to translate into regular civilian employment, those skills remain an asset to their potential employers. Service in the military teaches veterans many skills:
- Leadership
- Teamwork
- Problem solving
- Performance under pressure
- Flexibility
- Decision making
- Attention to detail
- Persistence
Unfortunately, many veterans are not taught, when leaving the military, how to leverage these skills to get civilian jobs.
To tap into this source of talent and skills, employers must be aware of the skills that military service commonly teaches. In a research article published in 2016, Dr. Valerie E. Davis (former veteran of 24 years and the founder and CEO of KEVAL, LLC) and Dr. Sarah E. Minnis (Assistant Professor at Western Carolina University and Military Career Transition Coach) discuss the necessity of employers increasing their understanding of the veteran experience.
“For veterans to be hired and retained within organization systems that account for their military experience, employers must engage training on military cultural competency with a particular focus on the transferrable skills veterans bring with them. HRD practitioners, hiring managers, and organizational leaders need to learn how to effectively evaluate military work experience and ask questions about veterans’ service so they can get a more informed perspective of military veterans’ knowledge, skills, and capabilities.”4
When they are aware of the difficulty that veterans face in translating their skills, hiring managers and HR departments can actively seek out ways to help veterans describe what skills they have and how they could be beneficial to the company. By enabling veterans in this way, employers are more likely to find hidden sources of skill and talent that they can add to their pool of employees.
Our veterans have much to offer the private sector. Though their military service, they have learned to be effective leaders and team members. Many have traveled in the military, gaining a better understanding of the world in the process. They learn how to handle a variety of challenging situations. These attributes can be as applicable to the civilian workforce as they were during a veteran’s military service. Employers benefit when they understand the value and potential of each veteran.
In addition to learning how to help veterans translate their skills, managers need to be aware of their own biases and preconceptions about veterans.
Dangerous Preconceptions
Most people have fairly positive sentiments regarding former members of the military. To many, veterans are considered heroes. While this is certainly not a negative perception in and of itself, researchers Steven Shepherd, Aaron C. Kay, and Kurt Gray discuss in their article, “Military veterans are morally typecast as agentic but unfeeling: Implications for veteran employment,” how this perception can cause people to view service members as unemotional or unfeeling, and how this can negatively affect veteran employment opportunities.
In the conclusion of their article, they summarize their findings in the following: “Although ‘hero’ is an honorable label, it may not always have positive consequences. By considering veterans as action-oriented heroes who bravely face danger, one may forget that they have a rich mental life that is capable of feeling deep emotions, and that they have much to contribute to careers and domains that require this ability.”5
in any group of people, stereotyping veterans has the potential to limit their opportunities. As mentioned by Shepherd, Kay, and Gray in their article, veterans that
are stereotyped as unfeeling may be unknowingly excluded from employment opportunities in certain fields.
Managers seeking to fully utilize veterans as skilled employees must remember that in addition to being heroes, these men and women are individuals that have a great capacity for feelings. Reflecting on their own potentially biased views of military veterans, managers can avoid mistakenly ruling out a veteran applicant who may otherwise be the best fit for the job.
The Opportunity
Employers have an amazing opportunity to create a win-win scenario for themselves and returned veteran applicants. By being aware of the challenges of underemployment and skill translation, employers can look at veteran candidates through a different lens. They can look at the increasing veteran population with an increased understanding of how much each veteran has to offer.
Employers with this understanding can see 200,000 veterans returning to civilian life each year as a steady source of talent that they cannot afford to let pass them by. And in the process, these employers will be honoring the men and women who served this country.
With an increasingly competitive market in nearly every industry, employers must make smart hiring decisions. Not every veteran will be right for every job opening. Decisions about hiring must be made on a case-by-case basis. But awareness of the experiences of veterans will help employers to find talented workers and veterans to find skill-utilizing jobs.
- US Department of Veterans Affairs, “Your VA Transition Assistance Program (TAP),” VA.gov: Veterans Affairs, accessed March 25, 2021. DOI: https://www.benefits.va.gov/transition/tap.asp#.
- Cathy Barrera and Phillip Carter, “Challenges On The Home Front: Underemployment Hits Veterans Hard,” Call of Duty Endowment (2017). DOI:https://www.callofdutyendowment.org/content/dam/atvi/callofduty/code/pdf/ZipCODE_Vet_Report_FINAL.pdf.
- US Department of Labor, “Latest Employment Numbers,” Veterans’ Employment and Training Service, accessed March 25, 2021. DOI: https://www.dol.gov/agencies/vets/latest-numbers
- Valerie E. Davis and Sarah E. Minnis, “Military Veterans’ Transferrable Skills: An HRD Practitioner Dilemma,” Advances in Developing Human Resources,19, no.1 (2017): 6–13. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1523422316682961.
- Steven Shepherd, Aaron C. Kay, and Kurt Gray, “Military Veterans Are Morally Typecast as Agentic but Unfeeling: Implications for Veteran Employment,” Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes153 (July 2019): 75–88. DOI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0749597818301171
- Line of Soldiers Walkin. Prexels (20116). DOI: https://www.pexels.com/photo/sea-people-service-uniform-40820/.
