Veterans Day arrives each November with predictable rhythms: parades, ceremonies, social media posts saluting service members and heartfelt thanks for our heroes. These gestures matter. But for the approximately 200,000 service members transitioning to civilian life annually, many settling in North Texas, gratitude without opportunity rings hollow.
Dallas businesses face persistent shortages in several tech areas like complex data processing, software planning, IT architecture, cybersecurity and program management. Yet they routinely overlook veterans who have performed these exact functions at global scale, under pressure and with life-or-death consequences. The disconnect isn’t capability; it’s translation.
When I left the Navy and entered the corporate world, I experienced firsthand how military expertise gets lost in translation. Today, as I help veterans navigate transitions into technical and management roles, I see the same pattern: exceptional talent hidden behind unfamiliar terminology and misaligned credentials.
Research from the Institute for Veterans and Military Families confirms this reality. Veterans bring proven competencies in precisely the areas where employers report critical shortages, but hiring systems fail to recognize military experience without explicit translation.
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Two evidence-based practices can immediately improve outcomes for both veterans and employers: competency mapping and targeted, credential-backed pathways. This means translating their experience into business language and providing industry recognized certifications that signal their capabilities to employers. Companies should incorporate these into their hiring processes.
Studies from the Society for Human Resource Management and the U.S. Chamber’s Hiring Our Heroes initiative show that companies using this approach see faster onboarding and better retention.
This Veterans Day, I challenge Dallas employers to move from appreciation into action. Rewrite job descriptions in terms that welcome military experience. Create veteran hiring cohorts for hard-to-fill roles. Fund targeted credentials aligned to your needs. Provide structured mentorship during onboarding. And track the results to prove what research already shows: Veterans deliver exceptional value when their skills are properly translated.
Veterans don’t need special treatment; they need accurate translation of their capabilities and clear pathways to demonstrate them. The companies that master this translation gain access to a talent pipeline others miss, disciplined operators who have already proven themselves under the toughest conditions.
When we properly map military experience to business needs, everyone wins: Veterans find meaningful careers that value their service, companies fill critical roles with exceptional talent and our community benefits from the continued contributions of those who have already given so much.
This Veterans Day, let’s go beyond saying thank you. Let’s create the competency maps and credential pathways that truly honor our heroes by recognizing their knowledge, training and enduring value in the workplace.
Jesse Sprague is a U.S. Navy veteran and the CEO of Boots to the Boardroom, a Dallas-based organization focused on veteran pathways into business technology careers.