THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, April 22, 1996 TAG: 9604200234
SECTION: BUSINESS WEEKLY PAGE: 08 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY WES PORIOTIS
LENGTH: Medium: 73 lines
A retired Army colonel paints houses for a living. A former general sells used cars to make ends meet. At least they're not on food stamps, as are thousands of other vets.
The ranks of unemployed and underutilized ex-GIs are swelling at a rate of 275,000 each year. This will continue into the millennium as the military downsizes into post-Cold War budgets.
There was a time when the highly trained technician, the commander of regiments and the manager of multimillion dollar budgets could hang up a uniform for the last time and easily slip into a decent civilian post.
That was when the leaders of corporate America understood that dedication, a work ethic, leadership, commitment, teamwork, loyalty and respect were valuable assets.
They knew that because their own resumes listed tours of compulsory military service, experience that helped boost them up their chosen career ladders.
That also was when the gatekeepers of corporate employment routinely weeded out women and minorities. ``I don't care how good they are, they just won't fit,'' was their common wisdom, a stereotype that would fade only after years of patient teaching and hundreds of court cases.
Today's human resource specialists, who have learned a great deal about work in an environment with fewer glass ceilings, routinely fill their waste baskets with unread resumes submitted by recently released officers and non-coms. Khaki, it seems, is a color they have not learned to deal with.
To find out how widespread the problem is - and acting on behalf of the Joint Chiefs of Staff - we conducted a survey of newly released military personnel chosen from among 17,000 names.
All those who were asked to fill out the 10-page questionnaire were former military personnel who were actively seeking a job.
They were evenly divided between officers and enlisted men from the four military branches, and selected to represent every category of recently departing service men and women. The results were staggering.
More than half of those polled sent out at least 50 resumes. Another 30 percent mailed out more than 100 resumes. Three out of every four of them received no reply.
Only one out of every six who heard back received even a single job offer. Among those who accepted, 80 percent earn less than $20,000. Overall, military personnel laid off since the 1991 Gulf War suffer more than 70 percent under-employment.
Eighty-seven percent of the respondents were 26-45 years of age, with the greatest concentration (22 percent) in the 26-30 range; 29 percent were between 26-35.
Executive recruiters regard this age range to be among the most highly employable.
Why not military veterans? Why have they become America's new underclass? The reasons are many. Chief among them is the old ``they just won't fit'' attitude.
As familiarity eases one set of former cultural aliens into jobs they're well-suited to perform, this new set is taking their place.
But the Pentagon is also to blame. It does a poor job teaching military personnel the art of finding a civilian job.
Its effort, which costs the taxpayers $50 million a year, is centered on writing resumes - resumes that are so poor they end up in the waste basket before they are fully read.
But the largest share of the blame goes to civilian employers themselves who are woefully ignorant of the range of skills and depth of experience veterans can bring to a job. They, too, it seems, have a great deal to learn. MEMO: Wes Poriotis is vice president of a New York-based executive recruitment
firm. He wrote this for the Journal of Commerce. by CNB