Arlington<\/a>, hundreds of former service members filed past booths for banks, law enforcement, and health care, among other industries, seeking careers that match their skills and sense of purpose. Organizers said more than 1,000 candidates registered for the event and more than 60 employers signed on, underscoring the scale of demand on both sides of the hiring table.<\/p>\nFor many veterans at the fair, the pitch to employers starts with adaptability. Former Army Capt. Joshua Kane, who served six years as a military police officer, now works as a financial adviser at Northwestern Mutual. He said veterans\u2019 value begins with their adaptability.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re given a mission and they\u2019re given mission parameters, but it never goes that way,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Veterans also understand the chain of command, deadlines and standard operating procedures, Kane said, which means employers don\u2019t have to teach time management or self\u2011regulation from scratch. \u201cIf you hire this 22-year-old that\u2019s done four years in the military, I know he\u2019s gonna show up to work on time. \u2026 I know he\u2019s probably gonna stick to the rules,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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Job seekers mingle with recruiters during the DAV and RecruitMilitary job fair in Arlington on Thursday, Feb. 6, 2026, as employers look to connect with veterans for roles in the North Texas workforce.<\/p>\n
Wilborn P. Nobles III<\/p>\n
For retired Air Force 1st Sgt. Windy Cox, who spent 24 years in the military before moving back to Texas and pursuing work in human resources, the message is that veterans are trained leaders used to operating in high-stress environments. She said they bring loyalty, a strong sense of commitment and extensive people-management experience, even when their resumes don\u2019t read like traditional corporate HR. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe were given leadership training from early on and continued that through our career,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Employers say those traits can be more important than whether a veteran has held a nearly identical civilian job. Dwight Kirkpatrick, a former Army master sergeant who now works at Bank of America, described the transition from being \u201ctop of the food chain\u201d in uniform to \u201cone of a million\u201d civilian job seekers. <\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
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What he realized, Kirkpatrick said, is that leadership, operations and people skills are \u201clife skills\u201d that carry over anywhere. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you have a manager and you\u2019re not a good leader, you feel that. Doesn\u2019t matter what the job is,\u201d he said. \u201cYou can put me somewhere where I don\u2019t even know the job. \u2026 I can lead people, because we know how to take care of people.\u201d <\/p>\n
For veterans, Kirkpatrick\u2019s advice is to remember they\u2019ve managed million-dollar equipment and complex projects before. \u201cThe battlefield gets shifted. Still do the same thing you do \u2026 what they hire you to do is get stuff done,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Several veterans at the fair said the job market remains challenging, especially in saturated fields like information technology and business analysis, and that employers sometimes treat veteran outreach as a box to check. <\/p>\n
Army veteran Dominique Hansberry, who has struggled to land IT and analyst roles since moving to North Texas two years ago, urged recruiters to see veterans as more than a number. At one speed-networking event, he said, some companies talked a good game about valuing veterans, but \u201cit\u2019s all a facade\u201d once the event ends. <\/p>\n
Hansberry wants employers to invest the time to really understand candidates\u2019 military experience, and he encourages his peers to bring patience and a realistic view of the market. \u201cOn the civilian side, that\u2019s not always the case\u201d that doing everything right guarantees a result, he said.<\/p>\n
Related<\/p>\n
![\"Dallas](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/E7OS6IQCKZEF5FMIKXLE7NV75A.jpg\")
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Still, Crosby said the Dallas fair showed what can happen when the system is built around veterans rather than expecting them to navigate alone. He praised organizers for detailed profiles, proactive outreach and a network that felt serious about veteran hiring, saying he\u2019d tell other former service members to make full use of events like this. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of us \u2026 looking for either new work or adjacent work or better work,\u201d he said. \u201cIf any veteran was to read this, use the resources.\u201d<\/p>\n
For veterans interested in attending future job fairs, and access to additional no-cost resources, go to jobs.dav.org<\/a>.<\/p>\nThis reporting is part of the Future of North Texas, a community-funded journalism initiative supported by the Commit Partnership, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, the Dallas Mavericks, the Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Lisa and Charles Siegel, the McCune-Losinger Family Fund, The Meadows Foundation, the Perot Foundation, the United Way of Metropolitan Dallas and the University of Texas at Dallas. The News retains full editorial control of this coverage.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Air Force reservist Jay Crosby has attended enough job fairs in the past few months to tell when…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157022,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[324,411,286,10449,2184,64627,27,29,28,12450,290],"class_list":["post-157021","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-dallas-fortworth","tag-future-of-north-texas","tag-future-of-north-texas-workforce","tag-inspired","tag-jobs","tag-technology-jobs","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news","tag-veterans-and-military","tag-workforce"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157021","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157021"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157021\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157022"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157021"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157021"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157021"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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