October 2014
Prepared by Lisa Lutz, President SOLID, LLC
Abstract
With the military drawdown in the Middle East, over one million United States military service members are expected to leave the service over the next four years. The majority of them will seek civilian employment. The challenge for these men and women who have devoted years to serving our country will be to find jobs in the civilian workforce. Trends in recent years show that unemployment among veterans is high.The Department of Defense currently spends over $1 billion a year on unemployment compensation for ex‐service members (UCX).
While civilian employers indicate a strong desire to hire transitioning service members and veterans, they report difficulty in translating military training and experience to the skills required in the civilian workplace. Facilitating the ability of military service members and veterans to attain civilian occupational credential can alleviate this problem by demonstrating the comparability of military training and experience. This paper explores seven best practices that can be undertaken to recognize military training and experience for occupational credentialing.