Do you know what my military occupational specialty (or MOS) in the Army was?
Human Resources Specialist.
Now, as you can imagine, the Human Resources field in the military is a completely different world than the private sector. In the Army, it was records management, ID cards, life insurance. In the “real world” it’s payroll, conflict resolution, and candidate selection. For what it’s worth there is some overlap with benefits.
But for the most part, my military specialty out here was pretty worthless.
And as myself and thousands of other struggling veterans fight to survive we’re especially missing that definition of skills.
You can only imagine what it’s like with combat arms. Infantry, artillery, and other similar positions.
Almost all of them are corralled into security (a field I’ve worked in for years as well).
But it’s hard to nail down a career.
Yes, there are countless organizations collecting government appropriations that tease connecting veterans with employers, but at the end of the day, they have no more influence than your average applicant.
Some of them just relay positions through Indeed.
At the end of the day it all comes down to the capabilities of the applicant.
And if the veteran can’t properly define their skills, then they’re sunk before they’ve even left the port.
It’s all terribly frustrating. We should be able to roll our military work background right into the private sector almost seamlessly, but many of us will just fall right into the military to civilian transition trap.
And we’ll be on the street and in shelters wondering if what we worked so hard to learn really made any difference at all.
Friends. Times are really tough right now. If you can help out the blog below, I’d be grateful. If you have any questions about my circumstances you can write me at Torres.fjr@gmail.com.
NEXT: Read about how homelessness takes a toll on the health of military veterans HERE
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