I went back to civilian life for two years of business school. That eased my transition. I was also fortunate to leave the military without a disability or family challenges. I was fortunate that my family understood why I entered the military and what I experienced during my service.
As a smaller percentage of the US population enters the military or has a family member who serves, veterans’ experiences grow more unfamiliar to the average civilian, exacerbating the stigma and alienation veterans face upon their return. CTI’s research also shows that veterans of color face a double burden of bias in the workplace as both veterans and minorities, and that they tend to avoid talking about their veteran status to compensate. In my experience, people tend to see me as a woman first and may or may not realize that I am a veteran. So I do everything I can to educate others about how my time in the military shaped both my leadership style and my core identity. I believe that having female veterans actively self-identify and champion their military service can help change assumptions from their peers.
It is important to realize that the obstacles veterans face are not insurmountable. Leading companies are already working to ease veterans’ transitions, with help such as skills translation programs, résumé-writing workshops, and awareness training. But the real key to building a better transition program is to provide opportunities for veterans to leverage their military experience as they confront new challenges. In my view, having mentors and sponsors who are sensitive to veterans’ issues or are veterans themselves is invaluable. By taking the time to truly understand and invest in veterans, companies can help them adapt their military leadership strengths to stand out in the corporate sphere. Veterans are always going to feel a little bit different, and that’s as it should be. In the right environment, those differences will make them shine.
—Linda Huber
Executive Vice President and CFO
Moody’s Corporation
September 2015
Introduction
“No veteran who fought for our nation should have to fight for a job when they come home,” declared President Barack Obama nearly ten years into the second Gulf War, when young returning veterans faced the highest rates of unemployment in decades.1 In the four years since, a combination of ambitious government action (including tax incentives for hiring veterans), academic and think tank research, and massive private sector recruiting initiatives seem to have made the president’s words come true:2 employment among veterans has risen to near-nonveteran levels, and corporate hiring of veterans is up 11 percent.3 The radical improvement seems almost too good to be true—and perhaps it is.
In 2014, an initial survey conducted by Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) found that nearly half of veterans leave their first postmilitary position within a year—only 16 percent of them were laid off or fired. More frequently, they cited reasons for leaving such as lack of career advancement (31 percent), disappointment with the quality of their work (29 percent), and dissatisfaction with their supervisor (20 percent).4 Plus, recent recruiting efforts have not proven successful across all veteran populations. Most corporate outreach efforts target officers to the exclusion of enlisted veterans, and unemployment remains high among female veterans and veterans of color.5 Most disturbing: we simply don’t know much about how veterans fare after they are hired.
A look at the existing research on the veteran talent pool makes it clear why. In some ways, veterans are the most studied and statistically mapped population in the US. Innumerable organizations and journalists track their progress and reintegration into society as they leave the military. But once they transition to civilian careers, veterans are among the most poorly understood of employee populations. The vast majority of the public—71 percent according to a recent Pew poll—say they have little or no understanding of the challenges facing returning veterans,6 and just 13 percent of organizations that hire veterans are familiar with the few resources available to help veteran candidates.7 Media coverage of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) fuels stereotypes and fear among civilians, impeding the transition of these brave men and women into the workforce and undermining their chances of success once they’re in it.
That lack of understanding may explain companies’ persistent focus on recruitment over transition and engagement: hiring veterans allows employers to check a box and feel they’ve done right by the heroic men and women who have served our nation. Helping them to realize their potential, however, demands that employers understand the challenges veterans contend with, their motives and aspirations, and the way in which they engage and prefer to be engaged. Absent that knowledge, companies that have invested significant sums in sourcing, hiring, and training returning veterans stand to lose their investment—a cost they can ill afford. Corporations like WalMart, Charles Schwab, Ernst & Young (EY), Hilton, JPMorgan Chase, Verizon, and General Electric (GE) have poured vast resources—often as much as 30 percent of their considerable recruiting budgets—into bringing in veteran talent.8
Untapped Assets
What talent specialists know about hiring vets comes largely from recruiting entities and consultancies, which help veterans translate their résumés for civilian jobs, and connect them to potential employers. The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) points out that veterans come to the workplace with a variety of advanced technical skills and a strong, performance-oriented work ethic as a result of their military occupational training.9 McKinsey and Syracuse University’s IVMF determined that veterans tend to be entrepreneurial, dedicated, resilient, adept at teamwork and team leadership, and comfortable working in dynamic, high-stress environments and in cross-cultural settings—precisely the characteristics corporations prize in new hires.10 Korn Ferry’s report on military experience and CEOs concludes that officer veterans are more likely to charge to the top of the corporate ladder in top companies and stay there.11 A similar study conducted by Efraim Benmelech and Carola Frydman of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) determined that CEOs with military experience perform better during periods of industry turmoil and are less likely to be involved in corporate fraud.12
But in addition to its narrow focus on translating the military experiences of veterans to the corporate context—which often overlooks veterans’ potential and ambitions—this research also tends to focus on a veteran profile that HR already ostensibly knows best: an educated white man. Private-sector veteran outreach programs commonly target officers rather than enlisted veterans, leaving out an enormous segment of the veteran population.13 And America’s veterans have never been more diverse: among post-9/11 veterans, 15.4 percent are black, 11.9 percent are Latino, and 11.6 percent are women—numbers that are only expected to rise.14 Yet female veterans and veterans of color are the least likely, studies suggest, to find employment in the civilian workforce. Veterans of color, who experienced some of the highest rates of unemployment in 2011, have seen relatively small change in unemployment as compared to white, male veterans. And the unemployment rate for post-9/11 female veterans has remained stubbornly three percentiles higher than unemployment among female nonveterans for the past three years.15 Female veterans also experience more severe mental health issues, are more likely to go through a divorce, and are more likely to be single parents than their male veteran counterparts.16 Since social support has been found key to successful transition from military to civilian life,17 it is tragic (but perhaps unsurprising) that female veterans ages eighteen to twenty-nine commit suicide at nearly twelve times the rate of women nonveterans in the same age group.18 And although no authoritative studies exist, initial research suggests that depression, PTSD, and sexual assault experienced during military service negatively affect female veterans’ ability to find civilian employment.19 Studies examining the unique experiences of female veterans once they begin their civilian careers remain rare.
The challenges facing black, Asian, Hispanic, and Native American/Pacific Islander veterans have also gone almost completely unaddressed. Some researchers have hypothesized that veterans of color may experience more
