A Veteran Can Be Served and Still Not Be Moved

The weirdest part about the NASWA Veterans Conference was not the people who pushed back… I expected some of that.

The weirdest part was how many people came up afterward and said some version of, “You’re right, but I can’t say that where I work.” That has stayed with me for a while.

Because if the people closest to the veteran employment system know something is broken, but they have to wait for somebody outside the system to say it out loud, we have a bigger problem than a weak job fair or a bad referral process.

A few hours earlier, I stood on the main stage at the NASWA Veterans Conference in Washington, DC, and said the line that drove the whole briefing:

A veteran can be served and still not be moved.

That was not a keynote buzzword… That is the problem in front of us all.

A veteran can attend the workshop, get the resume, sit through the transition briefing, receive the referral, meet the employer, scan the QR code, shake the hand, close the case, and still not be any closer to a job that fits, a wage that works, a manager who understands them, or a career that can actually grow. The system can touch someone ten different ways and still not move them an inch.

That is what I went to DC to talk about.

Not the clean version we put in reports.

The real one.

NASWA’s Veterans Conference is built for state workforce agency staff and partner organizations serving veterans and transitioning service members. The 2026 conference was held July 8 to 10 at the Grand Hyatt in Washington, DC.

So this was not a random room… It was one of the rooms where this conversation had to happen.

There were state people. Federal people. Frontline staff. Partners. Vendors. Employers. People from across the country. People who sit across from veterans every day and try to help them figure out what comes next. Some are doing good work. Others are trapped inside bad incentives. Some people and groups are defending programs they cannot prove are working. And then some are quietly doing the real work around the system because the official process is too slow, too shallow, or too busy counting the wrong thing.

That is what I came home thinking about.

Not the stage.

The conversations afterward.

We keep pretending we are still a different America

I used old recruiting posters in my slide deck. World War II era stuff.

Everybody in. Everyone serving. Everybody has a role. The country pulling in the same direction.

I did not use those posters because I wanted to get nostalgic. I used them because we still talk like we are that America.

We are not.

There was a time when military service was woven much deeper into everyday American life. Your father, your uncle, your math teacher, your neighbor served. The guy hiring you might have served. The person sitting across the desk had at least been close enough to military service to understand that it was not some foreign object dropped into a civilian workplace.

That America had plenty of problems, so I am not trying to throw a filter over the past and make it all beautiful.

But service was closer to the household. Today, it is not.

So let’s stop pretending.

Less than 1% serves, while the rest of the country still borrows the pride like we are all storming the beach together. We are not.

Most Americans are protected by a force they do not join, do not understand, and often do not personally know.

Then those same service members come home, walk into a civilian labor market, and everybody acts shocked that the translation is broken.

Come on.

If the country gets farther away from service, it is going to get worse at understanding the people who serve. If it gets worse at understanding the people who serve, it is going to get worse at receiving them when they come home. And if it cannot receive them well, that is not just a veteran employment problem.

That is a national readiness problem.

The next generation is watching. They are watching whether service leads to opportunity or confusion. They are watching whether the country knows how to use the people it spent years building. If what they see is underemployment, empty referrals, job fairs, smoke, mirrors, and “thank you for your service,” why would they raise their hand?

Why would we want them to?

Hero, victim, inventory

We have three lazy veteran stories in this country.

Hero.

Victim.

Inventory.

Hero when we need symbolism.

Victim when we need sympathy.

Inventory when we need hiring numbers.

The hero story looks nice on a poster. Put the veteran on stage. Run the video. Play the music. Everybody stands up. Everyone claps. Everybody feels good for about nine minutes.

Then Monday comes, and the same company has no idea where that veteran fits.

The victim story is worse. That is where military experience turns into a warning label. Broken. Risky. Damaged. Hard to manage. PTSD. Liability. Charity case to throw money and tears at.

Then there is the inventory story.

That is the one the system loves because it is easy to count.

How many veterans came through? How many attended? Did we add new profiles are in the database? Did we make any referals? How many resumes did we collect? How many bodies were in the room?

Hero. Victim. Inventory.

We are none of those things.

Veterans are not mascots or charity cases. We aren’t a pile of resumes. We are national assets.

If the military spent years building leadership, technical skill, mission ownership, decision-making, discipline, adaptability, and the ability to operate in chaos, and then the civilian system squeezes all of that into the wrong job because nobody can read it, that is waste.

Wasted talent. Wasted taxpayer money. Wasted earning power. Wasted trust.

And it is stupid.

Not unfortunate.

Stupid.

The old scoreboard counts the wrong wins

Here is what the old scoreboard counts:

Served.

Referred.

Attended.

Placed.

Engaged.

Closed.

I know why those things get counted. There are grants. Required case notes. Federal reports due. There are state systems. Supervisors asking for numbers. There are rules people have to follow… Fine.

Count what you have to count.

But stop pretending those numbers automatically mean the veteran moved.

If I send a veteran to a job fair and they drive an hour and a half, put on a suit they do not want to wear, print 50 resumes at Staples with money they probably should not be spending, walk table to table, collect stress balls, get told “thank you for your service” and “go apply online,” what moved?

The event happened. The veteran attended. Employers engaged. The referral got made. Everybody got to check a box. As a matter of fact… everyone there got paid for the day before the job was even done.

But the veteran and/or military spouse lost a day and a little more faith in the system.

That is motion.

Movement is different.

Motion is what the system records.

Movement is what the veteran can actually feel.

It means the veteran leaves with a clearer target, a real next step, and one less loop to get stuck in.

It means somebody owns the handoff.

It means the employer brought real roles, real wages, and someone who can make a decision.

It means we did not just pass the veteran around like a hot potato with a DD-214 and clap because the paperwork looked clean.

Motion vs. Movement

 

Motion	Movement
Veteran attended	Veteran left knowing where they are actually headed
Resume completed	Resume was aimed at the right role, not sprayed at everything
Referral made	A real person owned the next step
Employer showed up	Employer brought real jobs, wages, and decision-makers
Case closed	Someone checked whether the outcome held
Partner was listed	Partner proved they move veterans, not just collect names
Veteran was “served”	Veteran got closer to fit, stability, growth, and a paycheck that makes sense

The reporting is not the veteran’s life. It is only the paperwork around it.

I sold the machine

This is the part I have to own.

I sold the machine.

Job fairs. Job postings. Resume databases. Employer branding. Magazine ads. Clicks. Open rates. Booth traffic. Access.

All the stuff everybody wanted to believe was the answer.

In my past life, I sold companies comfort and the feeling that they were doing something. I sold them the idea that if they bought the booth, sponsored the event, posted the job, got their logo in the right place, and got access to veterans, they were doing something meaningful. And I watched it not work. Week after week, year after year, until I finally decided to leave the machine and build something better at BufferSprings.

I saw well-intentioned employers show up looking for engineers in rooms where engineers were never going to be. I watched veterans walk table to table collecting brochures, QR codes, stress balls, and vague instructions to “go apply online.” I saw companies leave feeling like they supported veterans, while veterans left feeling like nobody understood them.

Everybody counted the event. Nobody owned the outcome.

So no, I do not believe in surface-level access anymore.

Don’t get me wrong… Access is important. But access without alignment is theater.

A room full of veterans does not mean the roles fit. A resume database does not mean anyone knows what those people can do. A job posting does not mean the employer is ready. A job fair does not mean there is a pathway. I know because I sold it.

And I am not spending the back half of my career pretending the machine worked just because the banners looked good.

The hallway conversations told the real story

The keynote was one thing… The real stuff happened afterward.

In hallways. At tables. In side conversations. At night, when people were away from the stage, and the name badges and the official posture.

Some people basically said, “You said what we cannot say.” I have thought a lot about that, because it means there is a lot of truth trapped inside this system.

People know parts of this are broken. They see it. They live it, and know the referral is not always enough. Many know their partner lists are just names on paper. They know that a lot of employers show up with no real roles. They know which events waste the veteran’s time. They know some vendors are selling access to the room instead of proving they move anybody. But saying that out loud can get complicated when your paycheck, your agency, your grant, your supervisor, your partner network, or your conference sponsor sits inside the same ecosystem.

So people talk around it.

And then we all act confused when nothing changes.

Other people defended their programs.

Fine… Defend them.

But then answer the question.

Based on what?

You are one of the top states? Based on what?

Your program works? Based on what?

Your employers are strong? Based on what?

You care more? I believe you… But I cannot measure care.

Who are the top employers hiring veterans in your state? What roles are they hiring for? Who owns those relationships? Are veterans staying and/or advancing? Are they coming back into the system six months later?

If we cannot answer those questions, what exactly are we bragging about?

A lot of people could tell me what they were doing. Not enough could tell me what was working. Those are not the same thing.

The real work was happening in the gray area

This might be the biggest thing I took home.

When people told me what was actually moving veterans, the best answers were rarely the clean program answers.

They were gray area answers.

Veterans taking care of veterans. Someone making a call they were not required to make or following up after the referral even though the system already counted the referral as done. That seasoned DVOP warning a veteran not to waste time at an event that looked good on paper, but yields no results. That LVER calling a partner and asking, “I sent you five veterans. What happened to them?” Someone telling an employer, “No, I am not sending my people to your commission-only sales jobs so you can call yourself veteran-friendly.”

That was the stuff that moved people.

Not always the official process or the clean line in the manual. Sometimes it was somebody who got tired of watching veterans get swallowed by the void and decided to do the thing that actually worked.

A few good people breaking pattern is not the same thing as a good system.

Veterans taking care of veterans in the gray area is not a scalable strategy.

It is proof the real one is missing.

Underemployment is the real warning sign

The veteran unemployment number gets used like a victory lap.

Low unemployment… the system must be working, right?

No.

Read past the headline.

Low unemployment does not mean good fit and it does not mean wage alignment. Low unemployment does not mean the veteran is using the capability the military built, or that the employer knows how to retain and advance that person. It also does not mean the veteran did not have to reset the clock, or take steps back in their career path.

Low unemployment does not mean the job makes sense.

Research on post-9/11 veteran transition has reported underemployment around 60% after separation. Penn State’s VETERANetwork policy brief cites 61% of veterans reporting underemployment after separation, and Syracuse IVMF has referenced 62% of veterans remaining underemployed 6.5 years past separation.

You can debate the exact number if you want… Fine.

Talk to ten veterans.

Ask how many are in jobs that actually use what they know. How many took a pay cut. Ask how many were told they had to start over. How many were shoved into the first available job because the system was more interested in placement than alignment. Ask how many are technically employed but nowhere near where they should be.

That is the real story.

And if we keep hiding behind a low unemployment number, we are going to keep missing it.

The question every program should ask

I went to NASWA already believing the veteran workforce system was broken in places people do not want to look.

I left even more convinced.

Not because people do not care… Plenty of people care. Care is not enough, and it’s not measurable.

The country cannot keep asking less than 1% to carry the burden, then process us like paperwork when we come home.

I have four sons. One is a United States Marine right now.

So no, this is not theoretical for me.

Before you send one more veteran to one more event, partner, employer, portal, program, job board, webinar, or resource, ask the questions.

Where does this go? Who owns it? How will we know if it worked?

And the big one:

Does this actually move the veteran?

Not did it happen, or did it look good, or did somebody clap. Not did the case close.

Did it move the veteran?

Veteran-friendly is not enough.

Friendly is fine… But friendly is not a standard. It is a sentiment. A gesture.

And we have enough sentiments already.

Military-effective is the standard.

That means veteran clarity, employer readiness, role alignment, partner accountability, and outcome ownership all connect around one thing:

Movement.

If it moves the veteran, build it.

If it does not, fix it or stop pretending.

Stop counting motion.

Start owning movement.

Bring this conversation to your team!

BufferSprings helps employers, workforce systems, and veteran-serving partners move beyond veteran-friendly language and build military-effective systems that actually work.

If your veteran strategy is creating activity but not movement, we can help you find where the handoff is breaking.

Let’s build what actually moves people.