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THE
FOR
IRING
hree years ago ,
P resident O bama announced a
challenge to the U.S. private sector — hire or train 100,000
unemployed veterans or their spouses by the end of 2013.
Many companies nationwide took on that challenge and started
veteran-hiring job fairs to attract military talent but found this
initiative difficult.
Companies across America have answered the call to recruit
and hire very talented veterans but struggle to decode the
complicated military specialties and rank structure. So this
article and its “HR Decoder” are intended to simplify it for mutual
success.
Over the past 40 years, since the end of the U.S. military draft
in 1973, the nation has assembled the greatest, most talented
fighting force in the world, but its all-volunteer, professional
nature has divided our service members from the nation they
represent. Military members come from all around the country, but
they are less than one percent of the U.S. population of more than
300 million. Once upon a time, every family had at least one close
relative serving our country, but that is no longer so common.
Did you know that only about 10 percent of the U.S. population
18 to 30 years old is even qualified to join the military, given
educational testing requirements and health factors? Those who
understand the full benefits package in military service quickly
find that the military is one of the best new employers in the
country, with job security, medical benefits, education benefits and
30 days paid vacation to name just a few of the advantages. But
life in the military isn’t easy!
We in the United States don’t have basic education in military
structure, responsibility and opportunity to serve. Most of what we
know comes from the movies, and most people have a hard time
even identifying the five armed services (Army, Navy, Air Force,
Marine Corps and Coast Guard). Military recruiters are challenged
daily to fill that education gap, and veterans are equally challenged
www.HRCI.org
to identify their skill sets for civilian employment. One company
tried to develop a guidebook of all military ranks and titles. To be
honest, though, even after boot camp, those of us in the military
have a hard time deciphering the structure of the different
services, so I can understand how challenging it must have been
for the company.
After talking with HR hiring professionals who were struggling
to figure out the military, I decided to create a decoder. I thought
there had to be an easy way to convey this information to the
general public, so I researched civilian business models of
expertise levels and then aligned military pay grades to them.
I had to be especially sensitive to the cultural aspects at the
senior enlisted levels from the joint service perspective. For
instance, in the Navy, there is a big difference between E6 and
E7. The promotion to E7 means that the individual’s leadership
and professional abilities enabled him or her to be selected by
a very competitive board to become a Chief and join the Chief’s
Mess (any room that is off-limits to anyone not a Chief, except
by specific invitation). The same applies to officer promotions
from O6 to O7, when the officer joins the Flag and General Officer
Community.
Next, I worked on salary-range targets. This was the most
elusive task, given that our base pay is misleadingly low, and I
wanted veterans to understand what salary they would have to
make in order keep their standard of living. I factored in national
pay averages, comparable housing allowances, exceptional medical
benefits and other significant tax advantages for military personnel.
The salary targets are within an approximately 15-percent
range, depending on the area of the country and the desired
skill sets. If a veteran doesn’t have a highly competitive skill set,
then he or she will be on the low end of a target. However, if the
veteran is a nuclear-trained engineer, for example, he or she will
most likely exceed the 15+ percent limit. Each veteran has to
negotiate his or her unique value to an organization.
The Basic Military Veteran HR Decoder that is included
in this article helps bridge the military-civilian gap for better
understanding and veteran-hiring success (see decoder on page
8). The core element that naturally integrates the two experiencebased systems is the “military pay grade” located at the bottom of
each civilian specialty building block.
There is a similar white-collar and blue-collar structure, with
officers (O’s) and enlisted persons (E’s) progressing in seniority
from 1 to 10. The relative size of each pay-grade block represents
the relative population of that block compared to the others. The
majority of service members range from E1 to E4. They enlist at
age 18 and serve one or two tours of duty ranging up to six years
of service.
What makes military