Michael Chan & Andrew Roberts
Helping Employers and Veterans Speak the Same Language
Joining the U.S. military is the textbook definition of commitment. Service members develop discipline, organizational skills, and leadership abilities that serve them throughout their lives. And yet, some 80 percent of them leave their first post-military job within two years.
U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Michael Chan (EMBA-SL, ’21) knew lifetime service members often struggled with transitioning to civilian life, so after joining the Executive MBA – Strategic Leadership (EMBA-SL) program at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville’s Haslam College of Business in 2021, Chan and classmate Andrew Roberts (EMBA-SL, ’21), a recently retired U.S. Marines major, teamed up on a joint Organizational Action Project (OAP).
Their goal? Bridge the gap between what traditional veteran service organizations (VSOs) provide and what potential employers need. Veterans to Volunteers, an idea to tackle the problem of veteran attrition in civilian jobs, was off and running.
Identifying the Skills Gap
The first roadblock veterans hit when trying to find a job is their lack of hard skills. They often can’t even get an interview, as Chan learned after retiring in November 2021. “I heard a lot of ‘noes,’” he says. “I have 30 years of military experience, leading people and managing cross-functional teams, but my identity was military, not private sector.”
The problem, says Roberts, is even more glaring for those whose jobs are the most military-specific. “Infantrymen and artillerymen don’t translate at all to the corporate world, whether blue collar or white collar,” Roberts says. “Employers think, ‘Well, you know how to blow stuff up, but what can you do for me?’”
Companies insist they want to hire veterans for the traits military service cultivates. Many businesses list themselves with the U.S. Department of Labor as “veteran friendly” to attract former service members, but the effort often ends in failure to hire or quick turnover.
Chan and Roberts recognized the chasm between military and civilian cultures. Veterans’ indelible sense of identification with their military service can make it hard to find purpose and meaning in civilian jobs. Most employers don’t know how best to help them.
Paddling in Both Directions
To bridge this disconnect, the duo worked both sides of the employer-employee equation. A sharp language divide exists between veterans and the business world. Veterans express their abilities and desires in an insider lingo that the military understands, but which the corporate world doesn’t. Chan is designing a training module to help human resources teams decipher military-speak and spot the soft skills hidden between the lines. He and Roberts also plan to teach veterans to break down even the most military-specific roles into their component abilities to strengthen their resumes and help them land interviews.
For example, service members with experience in infantry and artillery might highlight their ability to withstand stress in a high-pressure environment, their capacity to either lead or follow depending on what the objective requires and their ease in handling group dynamics—emphasizing conflict resolution, collaboration and effective communication.
Chan and Roberts now work as strategy and business consultants, but they received so much positive feedback on Veterans to Volunteers that they’re taking the next steps toward launching as a certified nonprofit.
“Especially because Andy and I are fresh off our transition to civilian life, this is our passion, this is our core,” Chan says. “This is our ‘why.’” —Scott McNutt
