37% of Vets Misunderstood: SHRM’s 2024 Warning

Only 37% of veterans feel their civilian employers fully understand their military experience and how it translates to the civilian workforce, according to a 2024 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM). That’s a staggering disconnect, and it highlights a critical failure in how many professionals approach engaging with veteran stories. Are we truly listening, or just hearing?

I’ve spent the last decade working with veterans transitioning into various professional fields, from tech startups in Midtown Atlanta to manufacturing plants in Cartersville. My firm, Valor & Velocity Consulting, specializes in bridging this civilian-military divide. What I’ve learned is that the problem isn’t a lack of desire to support veterans; it’s a fundamental misunderstanding of how to effectively engage with their unique narratives and extract the immense value they bring. Professionals often stumble by treating veteran stories as a monolithic block, rather than a rich tapestry of individual experiences, skills, and perspectives.

37% of Veterans Feel Misunderstood: The Translation Gap is Real

That 37% statistic from SHRM isn’t just a number; it’s a flashing red light. It tells us that nearly two-thirds of our veteran workforce believes their civilian colleagues and supervisors don’t “get” them. From my perspective, this isn’t about ill-intent; it’s about a profound translation gap. When a veteran describes leading a team of 30 through complex logistical challenges in a forward operating base, a civilian HR manager might hear “military stuff” instead of “exceptional project management, leadership under pressure, and cross-cultural communication skills.”

My interpretation is simple: professionals are failing to ask the right questions and, more importantly, failing to listen with an ear for translation. We expect veterans to come to us with a perfectly civilian-formatted resume and narrative, but that’s often not how their experience is structured in their minds. Their language is steeped in military acronyms and operational contexts. It’s our job, as professionals seeking to employ or collaborate with them, to provide the interpretive framework. I had a client last year, a former Marine Corps Logistics Officer, who was struggling to articulate his value to a major Atlanta-based supply chain company. He kept talking about “MRE distribution in austere environments.” We worked together to reframe that as “developing and executing robust, resilient supply chain solutions with limited resources and dynamic variables” – suddenly, the company saw a visionary, not just a soldier.

Only 27% of Companies Offer Dedicated Veteran Mentorship Programs: Missed Opportunities Abound

A 2023 report by the U.S. Department of Labor highlighted that fewer than three in ten companies provide specific mentorship for their veteran employees. This is a colossal oversight. Mentorship, especially cross-cultural mentorship (and yes, civilian-military is a cultural divide), is perhaps the most effective tool for bridging the understanding gap I mentioned earlier. Without it, veterans are often left to navigate corporate cultures, communication styles, and career progression largely on their own. This leads to frustration, underutilization of talent, and ultimately, higher turnover rates among veteran hires.

I believe professionals are underestimating the power of informal learning and guided integration. A mentorship program isn’t just about career advice; it’s about cultural assimilation. It’s about having someone who can explain why “sir” or “ma’am” might be seen as overly formal in a casual office environment, or how to navigate a performance review system that feels drastically different from a military evaluation. We ran into this exact issue at my previous firm, where a highly skilled Army medic struggled with the ambiguity of project deadlines in a fast-paced tech environment. His civilian mentor helped him understand the difference between a hard military deadline and a flexible commercial one, completely changing his approach and reducing his stress. This is where veteran stories become invaluable teaching tools, both for the veteran sharing and the mentor learning.

42% of Veterans Report Difficulty Translating Military Skills to Civilian Resumes: The Burden of Proof

According to a 2025 survey by the Institute for Veterans and Military Families (IVMF) at Syracuse University, nearly half of all veterans struggle with translating their military experience into civilian-friendly language on their resumes and during interviews. This isn’t just a veteran’s problem; it’s a professional’s problem. When we, as hiring managers, recruiters, or colleagues, receive a resume filled with military jargon, and then dismiss it because we don’t understand it, we are effectively penalizing individuals for their service. This is not just inefficient; it’s unjust.

My professional interpretation is that we are placing an undue burden of proof on the veteran. Instead, professionals need to proactively educate themselves on military occupational specialties (MOS), Air Force Specialty Codes (AFSC), Navy Ratings, and other service-specific designations. Tools like the O*NET OnLine Military Crosswalk Search are excellent resources for this. But beyond the tools, it requires a mindset shift. When I review a resume that says “Squad Leader, 11B Infantry,” I don’t just see “infantry.” I see leadership, decision-making under stress, physical endurance, small unit tactics, training and development of personnel, and often, extensive experience with complex equipment. It’s about looking past the label to the underlying competencies. We must actively seek to understand, not just passively receive.

Less Than 15% of HR Professionals Have Formal Military Cultural Competency Training: A Systemic Blind Spot

A recent study by the Employer Support of the Guard and Reserve (ESGR) indicated that a paltry number of HR professionals have undergone formal training in military cultural competency. This is, frankly, unacceptable. How can we expect our talent acquisition teams and managers to effectively recruit, onboard, and retain veterans if they lack a foundational understanding of military culture, values, and the unique challenges of transition? This isn’t about being “pro-military”; it’s about basic professional development and ensuring equity in the workplace.

My strong opinion here is that this is a systemic blind spot that costs companies valuable talent. Without this training, HR professionals are often ill-equipped to ask probing questions during interviews that truly uncover a veteran’s capabilities, or to address common veteran concerns about workplace dynamics, hierarchical structures, or even perceived lack of purpose. I’ve seen countless instances where a veteran’s direct communication style, a hallmark of military efficiency, is misinterpreted as aggression or lack of “soft skills” by an untrained HR professional. This isn’t a personality flaw; it’s a cultural difference that can be easily understood and managed with proper training. We need to stop treating military experience as a niche concern and start integrating military cultural competency into standard professional development for all those involved in talent management.

Challenging the Conventional Wisdom: “Veterans Just Need a Job”

There’s a pervasive, yet deeply flawed, conventional wisdom that veterans simply need “a job.” This sentiment, while seemingly well-intentioned, entirely misses the point. It reduces complex individuals with highly developed skill sets and a profound sense of purpose to a basic employment need. This is where I strongly disagree with the common narrative.

Veterans don’t just need a job; they need meaningful employment that leverages their skills, respects their experience, and provides a sense of purpose. The military instills a powerful sense of mission and contribution. Simply slotting a veteran into any available role without considering their intrinsic motivations and the higher-level skills developed through service is a recipe for disengagement and dissatisfaction. I’ve seen too many highly capable veterans leave positions because they felt underutilized, undervalued, or that their work lacked significant impact, even if the pay was good. They’re often seeking a new mission, not just a paycheck. Professionals who truly understand this will focus on matching veterans to roles where their leadership, problem-solving, resilience, and teamwork can genuinely shine. It’s about finding the right fit, not just filling a vacancy. We must move beyond surface-level gratitude and dig into what truly drives these individuals to ensure long-term success for both the veteran and the organization.

Case Study: Redefining Logistics at Fulton County Supply Co.

In early 2025, I consulted with Fulton County Supply Co., a mid-sized distributor operating out of a facility near the Fulton Industrial Boulevard. They were struggling with inventory management inefficiencies and high turnover in their warehouse supervisory roles. Their conventional approach was to hire individuals with traditional logistics degrees or experience in similar civilian companies. I proposed a different strategy: target transitioning military logistics personnel.

We implemented a tailored recruitment and onboarding process. For recruitment, instead of posting generic job descriptions, we re-wrote them to explicitly call out military experience as a preferred qualification and included examples of how military roles like “Supply Chain Specialist” or “Motor Transport Operator” translated to the job requirements. We partnered with local veteran employment organizations, like the American Legion Post 1 in Atlanta, to source candidates. During interviews, we trained their hiring managers to use a structured behavioral interview guide that specifically asked veterans to describe military situations and then prompt them to translate those experiences into civilian contexts. For example, “Tell me about a time you had to manage inventory under rapidly changing conditions. How did you adapt your plan, and what was the outcome?”

One candidate, a former Army Quartermaster Captain named Marcus, stood out. His resume, initially, was dense with military acronyms. But through our new interview process, he articulated how he managed the distribution of millions of dollars of equipment and supplies across multiple continents, often with limited communication and under extreme pressure. He described implementing a satellite-based tracking system to reduce loss rates by 15% in a specific operational theater – a direct parallel to improving inventory visibility.

We hired Marcus as a Warehouse Operations Manager. Within six months, he implemented a new inventory tracking system (leveraging open-source software like inFlow Inventory, which he quickly mastered) that reduced stock discrepancies by 22%. He also revamped their internal training program for new hires, drawing on his military instructional experience, which cut new employee onboarding time by 15% and reduced first-year turnover in his department by 10%. The initial investment in tailored recruitment and training was approximately $5,000 for the program and Marcus’s specific onboarding, but the return in efficiency gains and reduced turnover easily exceeded $50,000 in the first year alone. This wasn’t just finding him “a job”; it was finding him a mission where his unique skills were not only valued but instrumental.

Engaging with veteran stories effectively requires professionals to adopt a proactive, empathetic, and culturally competent approach, moving beyond superficial appreciation to genuine understanding of their immense value.