VETERANS - Why Are Their Skills Not Being Valued in the Job Market?

Note that it was my electronics and instructor training in the U.S Navy that gave me my civilian carriers after Navy retirement.  Also there is the management and leadership training, and the work ethic learned in military service that should have value.

"Are veterans’ skills under-employed in the workplace?" PBS NewsHour 11/11/2014

Excerpt

JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour):  For all of today’s tributes and ceremony, a new book argues that Americans are not truly honoring the newest generation of veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts for what they are capable of contributing to post-combat life.

Chief foreign affairs correspondent Margaret Warner has more on that.

MARGARET WARNER (NewsHour):  It’s the work of an unlikely pair, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who has pledged to hire 10,000 veterans in the next five years, and Washington Post reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who spent years covering U.S. fighting forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The book is “For Love of Country:  What Our Veterans Can Teach Us About Citizenship, Heroism and Sacrifice.”

Thank you both for being here.

On this Veterans Day, we’re honoring all our veterans, but you write in your book that we thank them, we applaud them, but we don’t really know them.  What is it about this post-9/11 generation of veterans that Americans don’t understand?

HOWARD SCHULTZ, Starbucks:  This is a very unusual situation, because this is the first time in modern history where there’s been an all-volunteer service.  Only 1 percent of the American population has served.

So the unintended consequence of the all-volunteer service is most of Americans have not had a direct relationship with anyone who has served.

MARGARET WARNER:  But what is it that we don’t understand about this generation?

RAJIV CHANDRASEKARAN, The Washington Post:  So, with so few serving, it’s created real misperceptions among the civilian population of our country.

They see veterans often as people who are — need to be pitied, who are broken, who are ticking time bombs.  And the reality couldn’t be further from that.  You know, seven generations ago, 1946 as members of that greatest generation were coming home, if your neighbor was out wandering the street at night, crazed from shell shock, you knew that not every veteran was crazy, because your husband or your son or your father or your brother served.

Today, we don’t have that universal shared experience in our country.  So when people see news reports of a veteran doing something outrageous, like shooting up a base, there are a lot of people who think they’re all like that, and it’s — couldn’t be further from the truth.