WASHINGTON – For 34-year-old Desmond Boyd, the six years since he left the military has meant cycles of unemployment between federal contracting jobs, the latest round spanning more than two months. He said his family of five is on the verge of being evicted from their northern Virginia home.
“I thought it would be easy [to find a job] being that I served in the military,” the former Army specialist. “[But] sometimes people don’t even take that into consideration.”
Veterans “get put on the backburner for a lot of things,” Boyd said.
But now, the former army specialist along with the nearly 9 percent of veterans who are unemployed may find a glimmer of hope in the form of a federal plan to put them back to work.
President Barack Obama announced an initiative earlier this month to help people like Boyd who are among the nearly 9 percent of veterans who are unemployed.
The initiative gives companies tax incentives for hiring veterans, particularly encouraging big-name firms to continue to draw on veterans’ unique skills. The president pressed the private sector to hire or train 100,000 veterans by the end of 2013.
A number of federal agencies help veterans with their job search, but this initiative encourages big-name companies to hire veterans with their unique skill developed in the military. Microsoft, AT&T and Siemens are among firms that already have committed to the hiring initiative.
One reason it’s difficult for veterans to find employment, said Bryan Goettel of the Chamber of Commerce, is “getting employers to realize that the skills that veterans gain in their time in the military can translate into the work force.” When applying for jobs, he advises veterans to emphasize their expertise in crisis communication and management and promote their leadership skills gained in the military while working under strict, tight time limits.
Goettel said the Chamber’s Veteran Employment Program is pushing to organize more than 100 job fairs in the next year.
Many of the companies highlighted in Obama’s plan already have comprehensive plans for hiring veterans. Siemens has surpassed its April commitment to fill 10 percent of 3,000 open positions with veterans, and will now up the amount to 50 percent.
Siemens spokeswoman Annie Seiple said many of the veterans hired are put into positions requiring high technical skills and familiarity with large, expensive equipment.
Matt Murphy, a former seaman who runs RecruitMilitary, a job board for veterans run by veterans, said it’s important that vets understand “the language of corporate America.”
He reiterated Goettel’s advice that veterans should translate their experiences in the military in terms that “that civilian recruiters could understand.”
“We’re already working with thousands of companies that already get it,” he says of veteran hiring practices. But he stresses that it’s not about hiring service members for the sake of being veterans.
“At the end of the day it’s got to be good business and it’s got to make sense from a financial return for companies to do this,” Murphy said.
Though Boyd was unfamiliar with the Obama plan, he hoped it “may help a lot of veterans seeking employment. But we won’t know that until it actually happens. “
“I’m just stuck,” Boyd said, hoping he too will get “a little bit of help just to get through the hard times.”