November is the “official” month when America thanks our veterans for their bravery and service. However, it should also be the month when employers candidly ask themselves if they know what it takes to recruit, hire, and retain them. It’s true that veterans are broadly employed, with an unemployment rate of 3.5% in 2025 compared with 4.2% for nonveterans. What’s less evident, however, is whether current workforce systems fully recognize and tap veterans’ skills to help them secure quality jobs so they can better care for themselves and their families.
At the Ares Charitable Foundation, we fund efforts to prepare and reskill individuals for careers as a means to financial well-being, particularly for groups—including former military—that face unique employment barriers. Although the research points out their relatively low unemployment rate, we still need to examine the labor market challenges veterans experience as they transition from military to civilian life. Examining where and how conventional approaches fall short can reveal what redesigns are necessary if we want to build people-first systems.
TRANSLATE VETERAN SKILLS FOR IN-DEMAND JOBS
For many veterans, the first hurdle to mount is not lack of skills. Instead, it’s the difficult feat of translating military experience into a checklist that maps neatly onto job descriptions and résumés. The task of translating military service into terms that hiring managers and AI screening tools recognize usually falls to veterans themselves. They have to explain not just what they did, but also how it can add value for an employer. Research on veteran employment has identified this skills-matching challenge even within companies actively recruiting former military.
Despite this disconnect, veterans undeniably bring many of the capabilities businesses increasingly value. This is especially true as the workforce undergoes a major shift in the skills employers need. Leadership, decision-making, communication, teamwork, problem-solving, and the ability to perform under pressure while adapting to changing circumstances are all competencies that translate across industries and roles. These make veterans a significant workforce asset. However, failure to prioritize these kinds of highly transferable skills can create missed opportunities to smartly leverage veterans’ unique assets.
BETTER HIRING IS ONLY THE BEGINNING
Recruitment is only one piece of the puzzle. Companies wanting to build more viable pathways to support service members’ transitions from military to civilian employment should probe what shapes the employee experience from hiring through career development. It is especially critical at this watershed moment. A new RAND study finds that available data often can’t show whether efforts of America’s largest companies translate into enduring, positive career outcomes for veterans. This despite the public commitments to support them.
This dearth of data makes clear that employers need to design, test, and scale strategies that recognize and develop veterans’ talents even after they land jobs. This includes ensuring effective onboarding and talent development for continued learning and career development. The U.S. Department of Labor suggests tailored career development initiatives like skills building in leadership, civilian communication styles, and adapting military skills to the private sector. For employers, this necessitates equipping recruiters and hiring managers to better correlate skills with military experience. It also requires devising people-centered processes that facilitate employees’ abilities to identify and access tailored resources that help them achieve workplace success.
DESIGN FOR DISABILITIES TO BUILD BETTER SYSTEMS
The imperative for workforce systems redesign is even more important for veterans with disabilities. Around 34% of U.S. veterans contends with a service-related disability, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, representing a significant and frequently overlooked segment of labor market participants. While that may seem like a staggering metric, those who live the reality don’t always fit neatly into conventional veteran employment programs or standard disability-inclusion strategies. This leaves them underserved by both.
Closing this gap requires a more coordinated approach to talent development. Furthermore, that the gap even exists reveals an opportunity and responsibility employers have to strengthen their veteran employment and disability inclusion strategies. They should identify and mitigate impediments that hinder current employees and those they may otherwise miss out on hiring.
Ares Charitable Foundation is partnering s with Disability:IN to publish a report that offers a disability-forward analysis of veterans’ employment. The new research is part of an initiative that will also engage chief human resources officers in problem-solving challenges to recruiting, hiring, supporting, and retaining disabled veterans. In the future, these efforts will include a practical, actionable, and evidence-based playbook to better ensure disabled veterans’ workplace success.
HONOR SERVICE IN WAYS THAT MATTER MOST
With roughly 200,000 service members looking to transition into civilian roles each year, the time to rethink how employers welcome and support them is now. The lesson is bigger than simply hiring more veterans. Rather, it includes what employers need to understand about designing workforce systems around people rather than processes. That allows them to recognize the many different forms in which experience, skills, and capability come.
November, National Veterans and Military Families Month, marks an opportunity for our country to do more than just thank those who have served. We can help make the military-to-civilian workforce transition more seamless, and also truly honor their service by championing tangible opportunities for them to achieve economic mobility.
Michelle Armstong is president of the Ares Charitable Foundation.