Joan Lynch, chief content officer at WorkingNation.com, told CBS Eye on Veterans that many companies are desperate to hire veterans right now.
“It’s actually a real exciting time for veterans and their spouses,” she said.
And the skills that veterans have are exactly what’s needed for the millions of open jobs in the fields of cyber, healthcare, trucking and more.
“We are now dealing with changes in technology and the way that Space X and others are hiring, you don’t need to have a four year degree to have a career,” she said. “That message is one that resonates for veterans who have been in for two years or who have been in their entire career.”
WorkingNation is a journalism and media company helping America rethink what it takes to be career-ready and how to find your personal pathway to a quality job.
According to Lynch, there are 660,000 cyber technology jobs available throughout the country right now.
“A lot of people coming out of the military have experience in this and often have these certifications because they have to have these certifications to get top clearance,” she said.
There are also over two million open jobs in the healthcare field currently. Lynch said health care employers are not only looking for front-line workers but for those who can support them in a variety of administrative and other positions.
The recently passed Infrastructure Bill is also fueling an increase in transportation-related jobs across the country, Lynch said. She added that trucking jobs have changed and that many companies offer routes that are within the state where the driver works so they can be home in the evenings.
Lynch also said that an Ad Council campaign discusses job seekers who are STARS, or Skilled Through Alternative Routes, such as those who have served in the military.
“Sixty-one percent of veterans are STARS,” said Lynch. “That means they don’t have a degree, but they have skills, crazy skills that we need.”
She also noted that many colleges are offering free online certification courses for a variety of job fields and stressed that those courses can be taken while serving on active duty.
“The military gives money every year for these active men and women to advance their education,” she said. “People should just be upping their certifications no matter what field they are in. You should be adding to your LinkedIn page all the different things you are learning.”
Lynch added that she could be a little critical of higher education and said recruiters are "better at this point and saying where are the jobs, how do we get people into them."
And when veterans are hired, their retention rates are not worse than those of college graduates, she said.
Lynch said job searchers should not simply rely on websites such as Linked In for employment leads. Instead, they should reverse engineer their job search, look at the area they want to live in and find out what companies are dominant there. Then, they should research what certifications the jobs they are interested in require and pursue those.
“There’s so much opportunity, it’s just about this communication, which is what we focus on,” explained Lynch.
Many companies are now focusing on skills based training and not simply on whether an applicant has a college degree.
“I’m more optimistic now than I’ve ever been for these men and women coming out of the military because I think the language has changed, the understanding has changed, their value as workers in this country has gone up and the bottom line is our economy needs them,” Lynch said.
Reach Julia LeDoux at Julia@connectingvets.com.
Reach Phil Briggs at Phil@connectingvets.com.