Rant Blog - Veterans Need Careers

Hold the Parade, Veterans Need Careers

            Most people would say that veterans are held in high esteem. They are honored with numerous holidays, and thanked for their service. They are praised as heroes, and proclaimed as the defenders of freedom. They leave everything they have behind to fight for other nations and people whom they may never meet. Returning home, they are greeted by host of grateful citizens. On the very next day though, they will be forgotten. When the pedestal is torn down and the daily routines are picked back up, the service-member is left behind. I have been awakened to many of the injustices that veterans face as a veteran of the United States Marine Corps and a Veteran Services Coordinator in higher education. Prior service-members need more than holidays and parades.  Veterans should be given a better opportunity for stable employment.

            Skills translation is the number one reason a veteran is over looked by hiring managers. Veterans returning home from military service are immediately at a distinct disadvantage compared to their civilian counterparts. Their military experience does not translate well to the civilian world’s hiring managers.  Despite being familiar with the jargon from movies and video games, most hiring managers do not know what a “sergeant” really does. They do, however, know what a bachelor’s degree is. They also know that without one, the sergeant won’t get the job, regardless of his or her overqualifications.

            Veterans are also avoided by businesses because of the negative stereotypes sounding the military. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder has become synonymous with soldier, sailor, marine, and airman. It is amazing at how quickly unqualified civilians can diagnose veterans with a psychological disorder. Overexposure to PTSD by the media has automatically programmed civilians to assume that most combat veterans are psychologically damaged. Statistics show that only thirty percent of the veterans, who have been exposed to combat, have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder, leaving the majority of the military healthy. Those that do have a PTSD injury, seek treatment and are healed. Both facts the general public chooses to ignore.

In addition to PTSD stereotypes, veterans have another negative stereotype with which to contend. A stigma that “people only enlist in the military, because they could not do well in college” is rampant across educational institutions, and it is carried into the workforce. Despite the intense military training and the real world applications, veterans are still considered by most as uneducated. It can be easy to forget that in the 21^st century, military members are trained to operate GPS guided rocket systems, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, and state-of-the-art computer systems. Instead, it’s much simpler to revert to delusional assumptions leftover from Vietnam. However, based on my experience in higher education, veterans are more likely to graduate earlier and with higher grades than that of their peers.

Veterans are our nation’s heroes. They leave home at a young age and return with handful of ribbons and lifetime of experience. They are praised, saluted, and forgotten. For many of them, however, they find themselves having to pick up where they left off after high school graduation. They are told that they do not have what it takes to enter the workforce. They have also given more to their country in four years than most citizens will do in their whole life. At the very least, they should be given a genuine opportunity at a stable career in return for their self-sacrificing service.