By Victoria Lim for WorkingNation.
Broadcast version by Zamone Perez for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the WorkingNation-Public News Service Collaboration
Inadequate preparation. Rescinded offers. Dead-end jobs. Underemployment. These are all experiences military veterans share of their time seeking employment after the transition from active service to a civilian career.
Progress is inching upwards, but many decades-old challenges continue.
"They're still struggling to figure out how to connect into employment and use their skills in a way that really results in meaningful work," says Ross Dickman, chief executive officer of Hire Heroes USA, a nonprofit that helps veterans and military spouses find employment.
"One of the barriers transitioning service members face is they don't know what they want to do on the other side," says Jonathan Pride, vice president for field operations at NPower, a national nonprofit that provides free tech training, support services, and job placement assistance to military-connected individuals and others.
"[Veterans] come with a success mindset, because they've been in the military, through their training. But they don't necessarily know where to put that," says Christopher Breitmeyer, president of the Rural Community College Alliance (RCCA), a coalition that is addressing postsecondary education and economic challenges in rural communities, including for student veterans.
"At the same time, industries have a challenge with that as well," says James Rodriguez, assistant secretary for the U.S. Department of Labor for Veterans' Employment and Training Service (VETS). "Sometimes industries don't understand how to translate someone's military skills into what can be beneficial to them as a receiving company."
An estimated 200,000 military members move from active duty to civilian life every year, along with their families.
"Transition" is the common term, but should employment and training now be the focus?
Being Proactive About Post-Military Life
Rodriguez, Pride, and Dickman all served in the U.S. military and each went through the U.S. Department of Labor's Transition Assistance Program (TAP) as they prepared to transition into the civilian workforce.
Rodriguez spent two decades in the United States Marine Corps.
He recalls not receiving the information he was expecting, "I walk into the classroom and had no idea what to expect. The guy teaching the class had just retired. And I was like, 'Hey, what do you know about transitioning? What do you know about the civilian community?' And he's like, 'Not a lot. All I know is how to teach a class.'
"Basically, he just read from a book. Fortunately, it did put in me the spark that I knew I needed to do a lot of research on my own. I needed to really be the one that was my best advocate, right?"
Rodriguez knew he wanted to become a program manager in the civilian workforce. A mental shift led to his next steps - he told people he would be retiring, and he networked outside of the military community seeking information about the job. He talked to mentors who had already retired, and modified his resume to align his military skill sets and experiences with that of a program manager.
Importantly, Rodriguez figured out a way to talk about that alignment by the time interviews started coming his way. I said, 'Look, I've led an organization's companies...as an active duty first sergeant. I had almost 200 people that were in my company. I was responsible for all these different areas of pre-deployment, deployment, post-deployment.' And I broke those down into a program manager's life cycle.
"I put it in the context of what they wanted from that program manager, and apparently, I convinced them," he says.
Resources for Military Members and Their Spouses
Not everyone has the drive to take the initiative that Rodriguez had, or the mentors. A relatively new program, an expansion of TAP, aims to fill that gap. The Employment Navigator and Partnership Program (ENPP) specifically addresses employment and training for service members and their spouses with one-on-one coaching.
Launched in 2021 at 13 military installations, ENPP is now at 36 military installations in the U.S., Japan, and Germany. The program can connect service members to 1,500 American Job Centers across the country, and more than 69 industry partners.
As of August of this year, the program has assisted 18,204 clients, including 17,058 transitioning service members and 1,146 spouses.
"That individualized approach is working extremely well," Rodriguez says. "On top of that, we're seeing that veterans are having higher earnings when they use Employment Navigator. They're getting employed faster when they transition out of the military than someone who does not use Employment Navigator."
Looking ahead, the U.S. DOL is gathering data on its success and hopes to grow to all 200 military installations.
"I think our numbers tell us that the program is working, and the potential is there. However, we know that there may be some limitations in the future based off of funding, and so we're going to continue to educate people about the value of this individualized program," he says.
Coaching, Employment Assistance, and Purpose in Work
Nonprofits are another resource for military-related personnel who are returning to civilian life. One-on-one personalized coaching and intervention is also part of the Hire Heroes USA mission. CEO Dickman joined the organization after serving a dozen years in the United States Army.
He says the nonprofit "covers the gap" that the U.S. Departments of Defense and Labor programs do not.
"Things are moving in the right direction, but it's still a major problem," Dickman says. "I think the prevalence of [veteran] unemployment and underemployment rates based on skill utilization and leadership and pay equity for veterans is lagging significantly.
"It's lagging for women veterans. The time unemployed that women veterans, and women veterans of color face are significantly longer than their civilian peers. There's still a ton more to be done."
Most of Hire Heroes USA's clients (74%) are junior enlisted (E1 to E4) who do not have a bachelor's degree.
Guiding new civilians (service members and families) through the myriads of new opportunities, crafting resumes, interviewing skills, and mentoring are among the organization's job seeker services. Companies engage with Hire Heroes USA for prescreening and direct placements.
For the first time, the nonprofit has started rigorous tracking of the types of industries their clients are entering. Defense contracting, IT, health care, transportation, aerospace and aviation, educational services, retail trade, banking and finance, manufacturing, construction, and professional consulting services are the most popular.
Specifically, among their junior enlisted clients, IT, government, health care, manufacturing, construction, utilities, and private security are at the top.
But simply landing a job isn't the end goal. The organization also aims for upward mobility. Whether stuck in a mid-manager role, or experiencing circumstances that affect other aspects of their lives, clients can turn to Hire Heroes USA more than once.
"One client was driving about two hours a day total and it was a lot of demand in a high metro area. He wanted something that not only gave him more stability, but also that he didn't have to commute quite as much," Dickman says.
"We are seeing a lot of interesting call outs from them in terms of what purposeful work means for them. We're wanting to make sure that we're connecting them to role types that give them that opportunity too."
Hire Heroes USA reached a significant milestone, recently placing its 100,000th unique veteran in a job. Because it supports returning clients, the organization has facilitated 101,807 job placements.
A Personal Mission to Provide Access to Opportunity
It's not a surprise to Jonathan Pride that information technology careers are a high preference among veterans and military spouses.
Pride calls it a universal language that connects a hyper-digitalized world and has many opportunities with upward career mobility. NPower's tech career programs include certifications and on-the-job training.
NPower is a U.S. DOL Registered Apprenticeship provider and has placed clients in jobs with starting salaries of $47,000-$60,000 a year. Pride says every placement helps convince companies that hiring a military community member is an investment with a big ROI.
"It creates a talent pipeline for workforce planning for that employer. We need more apprenticeship opportunities across the organization for veterans," he says. "But more importantly, we need more of our employers to look past the requirements of a college degree and look towards certifications and life experiences that can be translated."
NPower helps veterans break through the "paper ceiling" - the barrier that prevents workers without bachelor's degrees from accessing higher-wage jobs - with skills training as well as wraparound services including transportation, food, childcare, and housing.
Calling his current work a "deeply personal mission," Pride explains he was a military intelligence officer who earned certifications, a bachelor's, and master's degrees before retiring from active duty.
He recounts, "I had everything I thought I needed to transition. And about a month before separating from the Army, I had a job pull their offer. So, leaving the military, I was unemployed."
Eventually finding his way, Pride credits his college degrees for providing him a path. He shares the story of a fellow soldier with similar military experience who met with a tragic end.
"Around the same time of [my separation] from the military, I had a soldier who was also separating without the degrees and without the experiences. Unfortunately, that soldier couldn't land on their feet like I did and made the very fateful decision to commit suicide.
"The only difference between the two of us was I can lean on a college degree, right? But is that fair?" he asks.
Meeting the Needs of Veterans in Rural Areas
Rural America is a popular destination for U.S. veterans. A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs report finds that nearly 25% of veterans - approximately 4.4 million - live in rural communities.
Breitmeyer of Rural Community College Alliance agrees wraparound services are important for returning veterans. He says working to earn certifications and credentials can have challenges including access to childcare and the lack of mental health support.
"There are some veterans, particularly if they were in combat or other kinds of stressful situations, who come with a set of stressors that are unique to them, and being able to meet their needs is really important," he says.
Additionally, students at rural community colleges can face the lack of consistent broadband connectivity which can hinder distance learning.
"There are a lot more robust online courses...but then they have to have access to high-speed, high-quality broadband and many of them don't," Breitmeyer says.
The solution - a lot of flexibility. Breitmeyer cites Clatsop Community College in Astoria, Oregon as an example. It offers skills-based programs that combine in-class and online education.
"You can come for a weekend to get a certification, and [the instructor] might not see you again for six months or a year, but then you can come right back in and pick up where you left off to get the next certification," he explains.
"Having modularized instruction is really important, because these folks often have families. The majority of them are working, and so we've got to be there when they want and ready for them when they come. It's being student-ready rather than asking the students to be ready to come to college and recognizing that that's a challenge."
Military Spouses: 'Service is silent'
While there's been increases in the number and effectiveness of programs to support veterans, the unemployment rate of military spouses has remained at 20% for more than a decade.
"It's actually kind of scary, how bad it is compared to the rest of the population," says Besa Pinchotti, chief executive officer of National Military Family Association (NMFA).
Like the active-duty member, spouses move every two to three years to places they likely didn't choose. They're focusing on family and home needs, trying to build community, looking for a new job, and then having to do it all over again in a new location.
That's why NMFA provides millions of dollars in scholarships to enable military spouses to earn degrees, certifications, and cover licensing, entrepreneurial expenses, and childcare. NMFA also advocates for licenses and certifications to be recognized in multiple states, so spouses don't have to repeat the process with every move.
"We know that when a service member serves, the whole family serves along with them, and a lot of times that service is silent and it's in the background," says Pinchotti.
"When you meet your neighbor, you don't see that that kid in your community is a military kid, or that spouse is a military spouse, because they just look just like the rest of you. Meanwhile, they're carrying a huge load for our whole nation."
She says without care, service members may choose to leave the military. "That decision to stay in the military really does happen at the kitchen table. If it's untenable, then we lose that service, that group of people who are raising their hand to serve, and then our whole nation is in a rough position."
More than 10,000 spouses apply for scholarships every year. NMFA awards about 10% of them with an average scholarship of $1,500. The top three types of degrees and certifications military spouses are pursuing, based on scholarship applications, are teaching, nursing, and mental health positions.
Pinchotti says, "While $1,500, $2,000 or however much [is] not going to cover all of your education, necessarily. It's the vote of confidence that is so meaningful for them. They feel like someone is saying, 'You can do this and we support you in this endeavor. We believe in you.' And so that belief, that vote of confidence, is just as important to them as the money."
'Lifting up that family'
Hire Heroes USA's Dickman echoes Pinchotti, saying, "By doing this work, we're not only lifting up a single veteran or hundreds of thousands of veterans - we are lifting up that family.
"It does make a difference in strengthening a community. It does make a difference in making organizations better. It makes the country better, and it provides roadmaps that can help us take that care level to the next community of need."
He continues, "I just think it's really important that we keep that in mind as we do this work, to sustain such a beautiful thing as this diverse, amazing selection of humans who have chosen to serve."
Victoria Lim wrote this article for WorkingNation.
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