November is the “official” month when America thanks our veterans for their bravery and service. However, it should also be the month when employers candidly ask themselves if they know what it takes to recruit, hire, and retain them. It’s true that veterans are broadly employed, with an unemployment rate of 3.5% in 2025 compared with 4.2% for nonveterans. What’s less evident, however, is whether current workforce systems fully recognize and tap veterans’ skills to help them secure quality jobs so they can better care for themselves and their families.

At the Ares Charitable Foundation, we fund efforts to prepare and reskill individuals for careers as a means to financial well-being, particularly for groups—including former military—that face unique employment barriers. Although the research points out their relatively low unemployment rate, we still need to examine the labor market challenges veterans experience as they transition from military to civilian life. Examining where and how conventional approaches fall short can reveal what redesigns are necessary if we want to build people-first systems.

For many veterans, the first hurdle to mount is not lack of skills. Instead, it’s the difficult feat of translating military experience into a checklist that maps neatly onto job descriptions and résumés. The task of translating military service into terms that hiring managers and AI screening tools recognize usually falls to veterans themselves. They have to explain not just what they did, but also how it can add value for an employer. Research on veteran employment has identified this skills-matching challenge even within companies actively recruiting former military.

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