Current transition and education programs may not be enough to help veterans succeed in post-service life because the culture change can be too much to handle alone.
At a roundtable discussion sponsored by the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, Navy veteran Julius Clemente, who left the military after seven years of service and a deployment to Iraq as a hospital corpsman, said attending college was hard after living in a strict military environment.
“Life is more complicated and challenging than we think,” he said. He got out of the Navy in 2005 but only now is nearing completion of a two-year college degree, after becoming involved in the Elevate American Veterans Initiative, a program aimed at helping veterans succeed.
A veteran might find his way, but that isn’t enough if the family faces other pressures, such as a spouse being unable to find a job, said Air Force veteran Nicholas Riggins, who works for the initiative. A spouse of a veteran generally does not get preferential hiring or any help finding a job, Riggins said.
The problems come despite the recognition that veterans can be great employees, said Brad Smith of Microsoft Corp., sponsor of the Elevate America program that since 2010 has included a veterans’ initiative and partnership with the Labor Department and several nonprofit groups.
Veterans, as a group, “make great employees,” said Smith, Microsoft’s general counsel and executive vice president for legal and corporate affair said. “They are smart. They are talented. They work well as individuals and work well on teams.”
Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., the veterans’ committee chairwoman, agreed. “This is the most employable group of people in the world,” she said.
Smith said the problem of veterans finding jobs would not exist if the national unemployment rate wasn’t greater than 9 percent. “If unemployment was only 5 percent, we would be having a different conversation today,” Smith said. “Smart, talented, dedicated people are not finding it easy to find their next job.”
Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina, the committee’s ranking Republican, said veterans might be helped if the military provided a more detailed statement on discharge records of how military experience translates to civilian skills. He also said it is worth looking at the possibility of waiving civilian certification and licensing for military members with similar skills.