Fewer Military-Ready Employers Attend This Year’s SHRM Conference

August 5, 2013- Many Department of Labor and Department of Defense representatives who strive to help veterans transition into the workforce were missing from this year's Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) conference in Chicago.

Veterans are having trouble finding jobs as they transition back to civilian life. The unemployment rate of veterans’ ages 18 to 24 is over 20 percent, 5 percentage points higher than the civilian unemployment rate for the same group. The problem is likely to grow over the next 12 to 18 months as the U.S. withdraws troops from Afghanistan.

The SHRM conference floor, with 700 exhibitors, included only a handful of those directly engaged in efforts to hire veterans. Few exceptions included either nonprofits or organizations formed with the idea of helping veterans -- vetjobs.com and Wounded Warrior among them.

One example of a private corporation reaching out to veterans was HRPlus, an employment and background screening firm and a unit of AlliedBarton Security Services.

Bill Tate, president of the division, acknowledged that hiring veterans can be tricky. “We don’t always speak the same language,” Tate said. “The terminology used by the military doesn’t always easily translate into civilian life.”

On the other hand, he said, HRPlus has found many veterans it hires to be well-disciplined, well-educated employees with “lots of leadership qualities, who come to work on time and don’t complain.”

The problems that many veterans struggle with – including health and emotional issues such as post-traumatic stress disorder – remain far from being resolved.   

SHRM has included a link on its website to America’s Heroes at Work, a site that offers employers a guide on how to hire a veteran, as well as material on how to address the needs of veterans with brain injuries or PTSD.



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