Stop Building Veteran Hiring Strategies. Start Building Veteran Employment Strategies
by Emily King Grandinetta
Most organizations say they have a “veteran hiring strategy.” That’s not the win. The win is a veteran employment strategy—a system that spans the entire employee lifecycle and protects your investment long after the offer letter is signed.
Here’s the mistake I see most often: leaders underestimate the degree of change a veteran experiences when transitioning out of the service. They assume a veteran will show up with the same tacit knowledge a civilian lateral hire brings (expense reports, performance reviews, unwritten power maps, the real meaning of “initiative” here). They won’t. That’s not a deficiency, though; it’s a context gap.
A real veteran employment strategy covers these breakpoints:
1) Attraction & Recruiting: Set reality, not headlines.
Replace vague “mission” statements with a week-in-the-life preview.
Connect candidates to a current veteran employee who can translate culture.
Stop filtering by MOS (Military Occupational Specialty) and assuming they want to keep doing it. Most didn’t choose it; many don’t want to repeat it.
2) Selection: Ask for impact, not acronyms.
Ditch “What was your MOS or ?” and instead ask “Do you want to keep doing what you were doing?” If the answer is no, determine what the candidate wants to do and direct them to the relevant roles. If the only roles they see are based on their most recent MOS, they may pursue them as the only options available, then opt out when they are, predictably, dissatisfied with the job.
Ask: “What work energized you most? What did ‘great’ look like? What outcomes did you drive? In what environment did you thrive?” This gives the candidate appealing options while opening the window to other roles they may be a fit for.
You’re hiring portable strengths and transferable impact, not military codes. And you’re hiring real people who know how it feels to find purpose in work and want to see it again, outside the military.
3) Offer-to-Start (Day 0): The handoff is the first trust test.
Recruiter → HRBP → Hiring Manager → Trained Sponsor (veteran, current employee, engaged performer).
Send a Day-1 map and a “how things really work here” primer.
4) Onboarding (Days 1–30): Orientation is not onboarding.
Give parameters for work: goals, decision rights, budget/time constraints, escalation paths, “what good looks like here.”
Hold check-ins at Days 7/21/30: not “Any questions?” but “What’s unclear in how we work?”
Do not bury veterans in generic onboarding. Tailor for context.
5) Manager Enablement: Prepare the receiving leader.
Teach translation: “direct vs. disrespectful,” “initiative in this org,” “authority without rank.”
Provide scripts for feedback that reframe style without shaming identity.
6) Development & Mobility: Promotion ≠ development.
Use deliberate stretch assignments and coaching before expanding the scope of responsibility - this applies to any new hire, not just a veteran.
Pace matters more than speed. The goal is sustained impact, not a fast title.
7) Alumni & Referral Loop: Your real “military-friendly” list.
If your veterans wouldn’t refer, you don’t have a brand; you have a brochure. Do you survey your customers on NPS (Net Promoter Score)? For those who don’t know this metric, it asks “on a scale of 1-10, how likely are you to recommend this/us to others?“ To stay ahead of attrition, don’t wait until someone is walking out the door - gauge their NPS periodically throughout year one. Caution: Brace for impact: you may not like what you see, but you’ll have actionable insight from the responses!
If you want results, shift from veteran hiring to veteran employment. That’s where retention lives, ROI shows up, and leadership potential becomes peak performance.
More about Emily King Grandinetta
is a behavioral scientist, Master Certified Coach with 25 years of experience in the veteran employment space, and author of At Ease: The Guide to a Smooth and Successful Military Transition and Field Tested. As the founder of Grandinetta Group, the first and only provider of industry-accredited training regarding military transition, her solutions focus on increasing job retention, decreasing job churn, and bringing an end to rampant underemployment and its devastating consequences for the veteran talent segment.
