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For young vets, jobs are hard to come by

Paul Briones thought he had done everything right to relaunch his career in the civilian work force.

After serving five years in the Army as a radio operator and GPS tracking specialist, the 26-year-old had become an expert in his field and banked on his military experience to help him land a job.

But he left the service after a deployment to Iraq and now finds himself unemployed - and frustrated with what some say is an increasingly unforgiving job market for young veterans.

“I feel lost - it’s crossed my mind that no one might need my expertise,” Briones said. “If I have to go flip burgers, or if I have to go back and become a stocker at a grocery store, then that’s my last resort and that’s what I’ll have to do.”

Many young veterans are finding themselves in the same predicament. They are leaving the military and entering a healthy but competitive job market. They have endured varying degrees of combat trauma. Some - like Briones - don’t have a college degree, and many expect salaries and job responsibilities equivalent to their military posts.

While the unemployment rate has been dropping steadily for veterans ages 25 to 29, the rate for vets ages 20 to 24 has spiked, according to recent data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 86,000 service members in that age group left the military last year.

Young men are faring the worst.

Looking at the first quarter of 2005, the most recent period for which quarterly veteran-employment data is available, men ages 20 to 24 are posting an unemployment rate of 20.4 percent. That is nearly twice as high as the unemployment rate posted by their civilian counterparts.

And the employment gap appears to be widening. In 2004, young male vets had a 13.6 percent rate vs. 10 percent for civilian men.

Veterans Affairs Secretary Jim Nicholson has called the findings “troubling” and is pushing employers to find ways to hire more young veterans.

But Department of Labor officials caution against reading too much into data from a period as short as three months for such a narrow group.

“I would be more cautious than saying there’s a real problem right now,” said Sharon Cohany, an economist with the Bureau of Labor Statistics. “There is certainly cause for concern and for further analysis, but these higher rates are something that we’ve found over time for the youngest veterans.”

But local transition workers say that young vets, some of whom may be waiting to enroll in school or are looking for their first civilian job, are indeed finding it harder to find work.

Many are leaving the military to spend more time with their families but are being blindsided by the tough job market.

“We have a war going on - a lot of these guys are just tired, we’ve burned them out,” said Claudia Dugan, who manages the transition assistance program at the Fleet and Family Support Center at the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base in Fort Worth, Texas.

“I don’t think they have any idea about the job market,” Dugan said. “I think the older ones have done their research, but I would say most of the younger ones are - I would hate to say clueless - but I would say most of them have not done much research on the job market when they get out.”

Dugan says the biggest mistake young vets make is holding out for jobs with the same salary and level of responsibility as their military posts.

“They all want to make a lateral move,” she said. “And it’s very hard for them to understand that every time you change jobs, sometimes you have to start over and work your way up.”

Aside from the post-traumatic stress that is now complicating some transitions, many young vets are also finding that their supervisory experience in the military doesn’t take the place of a four-year college education.

“Now that they’re veterans, especially the combat veterans, they have more of a feeling of empowerment,” said Dan Paredes, a veterans employment representative with WorkSource for Dallas County.

“They want that big job like they had in the military,” Paredes said. “But in interviews with employers, the first thing they’re asked is, `Where’s your degree?’ If they don’t have one, they’re put in the discard pile. And there’s some bitterness and disappointment about that.”

Paredes recommends that instead of looking for the dream job right away, young vets should use their GI Bill benefits and go for a college degree, which they usually have 10 years to do.

“This is an employer’s market, and employers now are requiring a degree,” he said.

But just having a college degree doesn’t guarantee a job offer.

Arkansas native Sonja Glover, 26, left the Army in March after serving three years as a combat medic in Germany.

Though she has a marketing degree and prior civilian experience in health care, she moved to Dallas for a teaching job that fell through and then struggled mightily to find another job.

“I honestly thought about taking the military part off my resume or not stressing that that was part of my experience,” she said.

But Glover ultimately landed a job as a marketing assistant by doing shoe-leather research on interesting local companies and contacting human-resource managers directly.

“Saturation is what worked for me,” she said. “I knew that if I threw enough applications and resumes out there, eventually someone would hire me.”

Briones, the GPS tracking specialist, has started working with a headhunter to find a job in communications. He says he regrets not lining up a job and getting help with his resume before he left the Army.

“The hardest thing to get used to is not working,” said Briones, who spends most days cleaning the Plano, Texas apartment that he shares with his wife, an accountant, and their three dogs. “I’m a person who has to work. I guess you could call me a workaholic.”

Briones says he has enough money saved up to last another three months.

“But I want to find a job, and I want to find it as soon as possible,” he said. “It’s just weird not doing anything after doing something 24-seven for five and a half years.”

Luckily for Briones, who has retooled his resume and is optimistic about his chances, the employment data for his age group looks promising.

For the first quarter of 2005, male vets in the 25 to 29 age bracket posted an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent versus 6.4 percent for non-veterans.

Most experts recommend that vets get in touch with their transition-assistance office as soon as possible after separation to start the job search. Counselors can help craft a resume, network with local employers and sign people up for educational and other benefits such as unemployment.

But Eduardo Ontiveros found that his best leads came from hiring a headhunter - and staying flexible about location.

The 24-year-old electronics technician left the Navy in February after a nine-month deployment in Iraq. He walked straight into a handful of job interviews.

After about two months, he took a job fixing medical equipment. He had to move to San Antonio, but he’s single, and the firm nearly doubled his military salary.

“Before I got the job, I had an uncertain future,” he said. “I was feeling like a lot of people are right now - you feel like your time in the military won’t pay off. But this is proof that it does pay off in the end.”

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HOW TO GET HIRED

Janet Farley, workplace columnist for Stars and Stripes and author of the Military-to-Civilian Career Transition Guide, offers these tips for young veterans entering the work force:

“Don’t be a job snob.” Be willing to take a job with less responsibility than your military post. It takes longer to earn supervisory roles in the civilian workplace.

“Lose the military jargon.” Get an objective reader to scan your resume for errant military code. Express your skills and abilities in plain, direct language.

“Get qualified.” The government will pay for certification courses and a college education. Don’t wait; enroll while you’re looking for work.

“Pull out the darn Yellow Pages.” Learn as much as you can about local businesses. Cold-call businesses that interest you; you never know who’s hiring.

“Attitude is everything.” Make the best of a bad situation. Stay flexible about relocating and keep an open mind about fields you wouldn’t normally consider.