For many veterans coming home after multiple tours over 14 years of
war, getting a job in the civilian world has been their most personal
battle yet, marked by disappointments and dead ends.
But, thanks to a slowly improving job market and active efforts by
veterans' groups, officials and recruiters in private-sector companies,
that dim outlook is beginning to brighten.
Though still higher than the national average, the unemployment rate
among recent veterans has steadily declined. Veterans' advocates say,
perhaps most importantly, the mindset in corporate America is starting
to change.
It boils down to this: Seeing that hiring a veteran is not just a good deed. It can be a smart hire.
"I think there is a commitment by the corporate community and
associations and groups like ours that are trying to make people
understand ... We make it a point that veterans should be viewed as an
investment, not as a charity," said Mark Szymanski, a spokesman with the
Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of American (IAVA).
This is only the start. Tens of thousands of returning veterans are
still looking for work. And the mission of IAVA -- founded in 2004 to
help returning vets reintegrate into the workforce -- and similar groups
has become only more critical as the Iraq war ended (despite the
subsequent return of U.S. forces to combat ISIS) and the U.S. combat
mission in Afghanistan drew to a close.
The progress, though, can be charted. At its peak, joblessness for
those serving since 9/11 (which labor statisticians refer to as Gulf
War-era II vets) was nearly 12 percent in 2011. In January, the Bureau
of Labor Statistics announced that number had fallen steadily to 7.2
percent in 2014. On a monthly basis, the latest BLS figures show that
among all post-9/11 veterans, the number was 6.9 percent for April, up
slightly from 6.5 percent in March.
First lady Michelle Obama, speaking in April on behalf of the four-year-old
Joining Forces White House initiative to support vets and their families, credited employers across the country who she said heeded "the call."
"[These] companies were seeing for themselves that hiring our
military members and our spouses wasn't simply the patriotic thing to
do, it was the right thing to do for their bottom line," she said.
The first lady said that businesses have hired or trained more than
850,000 veterans and military spouses, which she called an "outstanding"
number.
Their unemployment rate is still higher than the national one, which
was pegged at 5.4 percent for April, and 6.7 percent at the end of 2014.
According to recruitment officials who spoke with FoxNews.com, there
are several factors at play. Aside from fierce competition in the job
markets, many vets don't know where and how to get assistance in finding
the right job. All of their contacts are inside the military, and
largely unhelpful for networking. Some don't know what to do after years
of being told what to do.
Finally, employers themselves don't always understand the value veterans could bring to their workplace.
Many are trying to change that. Since 2011, Verizon has had an active
veterans' advisory panel and a robust recruiting program that also
includes job-seeking assistance offered at job fairs across the country,
and virtual workshops, according to Evan Guzman, the head of Military
Programs & Veteran Affairs at Verizon's corporate offices in New
Jersey.
"It really started out as a campaign of winning hearts and minds [of
the internal organization]," convincing executives that hiring vets was a
win-win for everyone, Guzman said. Verizon has hired 3,000 post-9/11
vets since 2013.
Aside from its own efforts, Verizon is also part of the Veterans
Employment Initiative at the Northern Virginia Technology Council
(NVTC), which brings together greater Washington, D.C. firms, many of
them defense and technology contractors, to recruit and mentor vets
through transition.
This includes resume building, interviewing and, of course,
networking. "It's one thing to leave the military with a resume," said
Guzman, "but if you can't network, you're going to find yourself
stuck."
NVTC's member companies told FoxNews.com that they have tens of
thousands of applications coming into them every week (there are
currently 198,000 veterans' resumes on file at
NVTC's website). NVTC has worked with 368 vets directly for transition and placement, and provided one-on-one mentors for 78.
"There is a lot of outreach going on," said Gabe Galvan, the Veterans
Affairs portfolio director for the MITRE Corporation, a nonprofit
organization that operates research and development centers for the
federal government. Some 20 percent of its workforce are veterans,
including severely disabled. "We have a supply of people leaning in who
can deliver these structures of support to the veterans," he said. They
also have also designed a "boot camp" to get other employers on board.
Eric Bartch, who runs the veterans outreach program at CACI, a major
federal defense contractor based in Northern Virginia, says its
important that the employers are providing a pipeline for vets, and
veterans seek that connection out. Otherwise, they are sending resumes
blindly to companies, which might as well be a black hole. CACI gets
over 1,400 veteran applications a week, and over 5,000 a month, he said.
Right now its workforce is 30 percent veteran, and of that number, 7
percent are disabled.
"There is just so much competition," Bartch said. "[Veterans] really
need to have someone inside the company to be their advocate, look for
those military support teams that most companies have now -- reach out
to them first." He said CACI is part of a healthy network of companies
in the area, along with Joining Forces and other groups, providing a
bridge. Veterans that are in demand include those with IT,
cybersecurity, security, logistics and litigation skills.
But outside the Beltway, the job market is not as flush with federal
contracts, and not every company has a small army of people working
solely in veterans outreach. The economy is still struggling, especially
in America's small towns and rural areas.
"The gap is closing but the economy is still sluggish. The companies,
in many cases, don't have the openings," said Rep. Tim Murphy, R-Pa.,
who as chairman of the Oversight & Investigations subcommittee has
been at the forefront of probes into the rash of scandals at the
nation's VA health care facilities.
"In Kentucky and West Virginia, coal companies are closing down. This
is hurting people because they can't come home and work. A lot of your
grunts come from small towns, they hope to make a new life for
themselves and then come home to find their town just isn't hiring," he
told FoxNews.com.
Many of the young vets coming home from war have a double strike by
being out of the civilian workforce for years -- if they ever were in
it. Young infantrymen and women for example, don't know what their
battlefield skills are good for. Then there is prejudice.
"People are still concerned about hiring a vet with a disability and
mistake a disability for inability, though I think some of those
concerns of five or six years ago have gone down. But it has been
difficult for employers to understand," Murphy said.
Veterans offer "safety, teamwork, loyalty and knowing how to get the
job done," he told FoxNews.com. "I just met a former general in charge
of hiring for a company who said he is hiring veterans because they can
read maps. You just can't train someone on the assets the military
builds into you."
This is where groups like IAVA come in. They work with employers to
make sure they are not just in "reactionary" mode, hiring vets to plug
gaps in low-wage paying jobs, or because they feel compelled to. They
also want to take that "grunt" and help him or her sell themselves to
the employer.
Matt Ross, project manager for the employment programs at IAVA, is planning the group's
May 18 Career Boot Camp in New York City.
He recalls one of his own early interviews when transitioning out of
the military. "I told [the interviewer] I was a rifleman," he recalled.
After she asked what that meant, "I drew a blank, I hadn't prepared
for that. I could have said, it meant accountability for equipment, [and
experience in] logistical and operational planning."
It's that type of prep work the Boot Camp hopes to offer.
Employers will be there, too. "We're not out there begging for jobs,
or to give people a break," said Szymanski. "We're saying, invest in a
veteran, invest in their programs, because they will pay off and our
country will be better."