Unlocking Military Talent: A Skills-Based Approach to Building Stronger Workforces

Employers across industries continue to struggle with persistent skills gaps that threaten growth across America’s critical industries. At the same time, thousands of highly trained service members transition from the military each year with technical expertise, leadership experience and a demonstrated ability to learn quickly. 

Why, then, does military talent remain one of the most underutilized sources of skilled professionals? 

The challenge is not a lack of relevant experience. It is often a failure to recognize how military experience translates to the civilian workplace. 

Orion Talent CEO Greg Summers recently joined Mike Wood on HR.com’s Totally Talent podcast to discuss how employers can overcome that disconnect, expand their talent pipelines and build a more effective skills-based approach to hiring.

Skilled Talent May Be Hidden Behind Unfamiliar Experience 

Traditional hiring processes tend to favor candidates whose backgrounds look familiar. Recruiters search for recognized job titles, conventional career paths and experience performing the same work in a similar environment. 

Military careers rarely fit neatly within those parameters. 

A service member may have led teams, managed highly technical equipment, maintained complex systems or coordinated time-sensitive operations without ever holding the civilian job title an employer expects to see. When hiring teams focus too narrowly on titles and credentials, candidates with the right capabilities can be screened out before their experience is fully understood. 

This is one reason employers must become better at identifying potential and transferable skills, rather than simply matching candidates to familiar résumé profiles. Military talent offers a powerful example of why that shift matters.

Skills Translation Is the Critical Bridge 

Effective military hiring requires organizations to look beneath that language. What work did the candidate perform? What equipment, processes or people did they manage? What problems were they responsible for solving? Which civilian roles require those same underlying capabilities? 

This does not mean lowering hiring standards. It means recognizing that qualified talent can acquire relevant skills through more than one path. 

Employers can start by reviewing job descriptions and separating truly essential requirements from customary preferences. If a degree, certification or exact industry background is not necessary to perform the role successfully, it should not become an automatic barrier. 

Recruiters and hiring managers must also be equipped to evaluate military experience consistently. Skills translation should be built into the recruiting process, rather than left entirely to candidates who may be navigating the civilian job market for the first time. Organizations can use a structured assessment to determine whether their military talent strategy is moving from intent to execution.

Military Hiring Offers a Blueprint for Skills-Based Hiring 

The value of this approach extends beyond veteran recruiting. In fact, military hiring offers a proven blueprint for building a skills-based workforce. Organizations that learn to translate military experience become better at evaluating transferable skills across their entire talent pipeline. The same principles can help employers recognize the potential of early-career candidates, skilled tradespeople, apprentices, career changers and workers from other nontraditional backgrounds. 

Instead of asking whether someone has already held an identical position, hiring teams can consider: 

These questions help employers move from a résumé-matching exercise to a more practical assessment of what candidates can contribute. For example, Siemens Mobility is building a future-ready military talent pipeline by connecting transitioning service members and veterans with roles that draw on their mechanical aptitude, troubleshooting ability, initiative and leadership. 

That shift is increasingly important as technology changes jobs and organizations compete for emerging skills. Employers may not find enough candidates who meet every traditional qualification. They will need to recognize adjacent experience, invest in development and create more pathways into critical roles.

Technology Can Help Employers See More Potential

Technology and AI are giving talent acquisition teams new ways to identify skills, match candidates with opportunities, and uncover connections that may not be obvious from a job title alone. 

Used thoughtfully, these tools can help employers recognize transferable capabilities and surface qualified people from a wider range of backgrounds. But technology cannot solve the problem if it is built around the same narrow criteria that caused employers to overlook those candidates in the first place.