Imagine that you’ve been working on a nuclear submarine as a member of the U.S. Navy or been leading a platoon of Marines for the past five years. Now it’s time for you to transition back to civilian life. How do you know what you’d like to do? How do your skills translate across industries when your job title, experiences, and responsibilities are largely unseen?
When 250,000 veterans leave the military each year, they’re faced with the challenge of starting over. The military prepares veterans for life—solving challenging problems alongside people from every corner of America—but not necessarily for their next career.
About half of service members leave the military after their initial three-to-five-year commitment. The reasons for doing so mirror those with which people grapple in the modern workforce: Their job is going away. They’re proud of what they’ve done but can’t do it anymore. Or their preferences have changed, and they want to have a bigger impact. In other words, the questions military service members ask themselves are similar to those of someone who is up against automation, is burnt out, or is seeking personal reinvention.
But unlike many job seekers, most soon-to-be veterans have never interviewed for a job or made a resume, and don’t have a professional network. They want to find a path they can commit to but feel a deep sense of anxiety that they are behind their peers, and there’s no foreseeable path to catch up.
These challenges create a frustrating present-day reality: In major metropolitan job markets, 80 percent of veterans leave the military without a job offer. Almost 50 percent of them leave their first post-military job within 12 months. They aren’t finding the right fit.
When I left the military three years ago after serving as a bomb disposal officer, I asked myself similar questions. I didn’t see a clear way into the workforce where opportunities aren’t defined in four-to-five-year pathways. That’s why I decided to start Shift.
At Shift, a career-change company for veterans, I’ve committed my life’s work to this challenge. I now have the answer to the question of how to begin career exploration: with low-risk, high-reward, immersive work experiences.
Earlier this year, Shift partnered with the federal government to allow service members to start working in corporate environments, away from their home base, during their last few months in the military. We called it the Military Fellows Program, because the majority of people leaving the military are experienced professionals with a track record of success.
We focused on industries like media and technology, and in cities like San Francisco and New York City, where veterans are frustratingly underrepresented. The fellowship experience allows participants to maximize learning, build on military skills, and develop a valuable professional network in a low-risk environment. Fellows state that they have access to roles—in areas like operations, project management, customer success, and business development—for which they wouldn’t have been considered otherwise, and that a few months of on-site training allows them to significantly increase their value proposition. Perhaps most importantly, the program gives people leaving the military the conviction they need to pursue non-traditional pathways.
The result: Three months of on-the-job training results in an offer of full-time employment 85 percent of the time.
With a quarter of a million new professionals entering the workforce from the military each year, every company would benefit from a strategy around veteran recruiting. Compared to decoding unknown experiences and guessing about ideal fit, this approach is a radically different way for employers to assess and acquire talent from non-traditional backgrounds. Experiences like these could extend beyond the military to other affinity groups—like mothers returning to the workforce—seeking to change careers.
It’s time to create our vision of the future of work. Technology is transforming which jobs are being performed by humans and those that are not. If known pathways existed between industries that look different from each other, people would explore new careers more often. We’d be one step closer to a future where workers get credit for past experiences and can reinvent themselves when they’re ready for new challenges.
