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Resources for Hiring Military Veterans

By recruiting and hiring military veterans, you can potentially gain some of the most skilled and loyal employees you’ve ever had.

Opportunities to recruit military veterans who are entering the civilian workforce are more plentiful than most business owners realize, says Tony Lee with the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). 

“There are many agencies out there that are working with veterans to find employment,” Lee says. “The retailers should not be putting in their ads, ‘veterans preferred,’ but they can say to the agencies, ‘We would like to interview veterans qualified for this job.’” 

Lee offers the following tips for recruiting returning military veterans:

  • Look into SHRM’s digital toolkit and other resources for hiring veterans.
  • Contact state employment offices and notify them that your business has a preference for hiring military veterans. Unemployment offices offer people who are looking for work training and connect them to potential job opportunities. 
  • Reach out to local military bases and ask for contacts at offices that assist military families transitioning to civilian life. 
  • Post specific online job listings with clearly described responsibilities to help veterans understand how their experiences could qualify them for a position. In addition, list as much information as you can about compensation and benefits. If the wage range your business offers is beneath what a veteran wants, then you will eliminate candidates up front.
  • In your regular job listings, state that your business is interested in hiring military veterans. 

Other opportunities to share your job opportunities with military veterans:

  • Check out the U.S. Department of Labor website for employers who are interested in hiring veterans. The agency’s CareerOneStop site offers tips for posting job listings to state job banks and instructions for connecting with veterans employment representatives through American Job Center. American Job Centers’ veterans employment representatives are tasked with finding veterans jobs. The website also refers employers to My State Job Bank, which allows companies to post job listings on veterans.gov.
  • Visit the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs website for employers. The site details subsidies available to companies that hire military veterans, including vets with disabilities. 
  • Contact your local Veterans of Foreign Wars post and ask if you can potentially advertise job listings at their post or if you can support VFW members through donations or hosting fundraisers at your business. You can do the same thing with other local veterans organizations, if you have them. 
  • Look into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Hiring Our Heroes program to get involved in job fairs and other veteran employment initiatives.   
  • Post job listings through the AMVETS website

About Kate Klein

Kate is profiles editor for Hardware Retailing magazine. She reports on news and industry events and writes about retailers' unique contributions to the independent home improvement sector. She graduated from Cedarville University in her home state of Ohio, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English and minored in creative writing. She loves being an aunt, teaching writing to kids, running, reading, farm living and, as Walt Whitman says, traveling the open road, “healthy, free, the world before me.”

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