You expose a contradiction when you indicate that civilians should be accountable for doing research and ensuring that their resumes demonstrate their qualities while military personnel for some reason should not. Are military personnel not to be held accountable for doing research and demonstrating their skills and abilities? They have access to the same resources as civilians.

I’m not advocating against giving military personnel a break. However, I do think we have to be very careful that we apply such breaks fairly and evenly across a spectrum of professions, not just the military. Others deserve the same consideration.

Which returns me to my problem: how DO we determine who gets the breaks, and how do we avoid pure subjectivity in our appraisals?

I have quite a few friends who are excellent employees, and who have sub-par resume skills. Should we hold them accountable for learning how to create a great resume, or should we give them the benefit of the doubt and set up a phone screen?

This points up the larger issue of resumes in general: are the REALLY an accurate indicator of someone’s employability? How much ‘translation’ do we need to do to find the ‘true’ person? And, as anyone who has actually done textual translation will bring up, another major problem arises: how much of ourselves do we interpret into the text?

Great article. As a former Naval Officer (10 years) and now a full time staffing professional (3 years) I appreciate and support your comments. During their transition period, many military personnel struggle with their ability to translate their own skill set to a corporate equivalent. In addition, they face huge challenges making the cultural shift from a strictly autocratic structure to one that provides less direction and more flexibility.

Once an ex soldier, sailor or airman has crossed the bridge successfully, they can be a great asset to any team providing demonstrated leadership and management experience and being very decisive with regard to making key decisions in high pressure situations (as you stated in your piece). The tough thing is for them to ‘release’ themselves from the military state of mind and embrace their new found ‘freedom’ in the corporate world. Once this is achieved, and employers truly understand their potential, they can add great value to any organization.

Obviously, I recognize that I coming from a position of bias!

Regards,

US Business is figuratively ’shooting ourselvs in the foot’ for not taking advantage of the training and leadership these young people have received.

For practical and pragmatic reasons alone we should be fighting over this wellspring of talent.

Let me know if you need some intel from actual disabled-vets (and regular vets) about how they are being handled upon returning home. It’s nice that we’re initiating conversation from our side of the fence, but it would also benefit for us to hear from them as well.

This way, the conversation isn’t just one-sided as our vets have a great deal to teach us as well.