Everyone in America saw it: a commercial from Google during the third quarter of Super Bowl LIII that highlighted their “Jobs for Veterans” MOS Translator. At last, many veterans watching at home exclaimed, Google has brought their unmatched search functionality to translate military skills and connect veterans to the right career opportunities.
“I was excited to try it out,” said Joe Bongon, a Navy veteran who now serves as an employment support specialist for veterans at the GI Go Fund in Newark, NJ. “Google makes everything easier; I was confident that they would help me find jobs for the vets I work with based off their skills.”
So, he entered in his military rating: Aviation Machinist Mate. The results were scattered, primarily offering jobs as a Food Service Specialist and Warehouse Worker.
“Unfortunately, it turned out to not be much different than a lot of the ones I’ve used before,” he said.
Such is the struggle for veterans looking for a system to accurately connect them to the right job opportunities. Military veterans have consistently performed tasks similar to those available in the civilian world, and have often done so under more difficult and stressful environments. So why do so many translators on the market, including the one recently developed by the most powerful search engine in the world, produce such underwhelming results? It’s all about the DATA!!!
Back in 1998, the Department of Labor (DOL) set out to provide veterans with a Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) Translator that would connect them to civilian job titles based on what they had done in the military.
They created “My Next Move by O*NET,” which translated approximately 900 military careers into civilian language, as well as a handful of corresponding job titles that related to the military skills. While DOL’s O*NET translator was innovative at the time of its creation 20 years ago, it is now a static relic, having received virtually no updates in two decades, kinda like the canteen in a camelback world.
This means that many 21st century industries, such as robotics, cyber security, software development, or advanced manufacturing, which have become staples of the modern workforce, do not show up as potential job opportunities for today’s veterans. Even worse, every military branch periodically updates its MOS codes – over time, this has resulted in thousands of additions to their MOS listings that are not recognized in O*NET. For example (and there are many similar examples), if a Marine separated from the military today with an MOS of “6325 – Aircraft Communications / Navigation / Electrical / Weapons Systems Technician, V-22” and used the O*NET translator, it would populate zero results because this MOS did not exist in 1998. This MOS is for a technician for the V-22 Osprey, a tiltrotor aircraft that the Marine Corps began crew training for only in 2000, and did not formally introduce to the field until 2007.
So the DOL, the agency that is tasked with ensuring all Americans are able to connect to the best job opportunities, has a military skills translator that is in desperate need of an update. Worse yet, virtually every private sector or nonprofit organization that has developed its own translator is relying on this same outdated data in O*NET. This, as one could imagine, has made the task of finding a quality MOS translator for the modern workforce difficult. We’ve spent years trying different MOS translators to find one that works for today’s veterans. However, we did find one translator that considers other variables besides just your MOS code; JobPath.
JobPath is built on the idea that a veteran’s rank, service, and experience also play an important role in finding the right job. While other translators fail to differentiate between ranks, and focus solely on the job category, which often leads to inappropriate matching between actual military experience and civilian positions, JobPath provides a glimpse into the type of leadership roles the veteran held, as well as their additional responsibilities within their units.
Justin Constantine, a retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel JAG attorney and author of From We Will to At Will about veteran employment hiring, tried MOS tool after tool over the years, but was continually disappointed. Most MOS translators produced less-than-accurate results. “One in particular said I should be a mascot or work in the company store,” said Constantine. “I didn’t become an attorney to stand around all day in a costume taking pictures and waving to kids. No veteran I know is looking for a job like that.”
That’s when Constantine, now the Chief Business Development officer at JobPath, took on the mission to build a more effective tool. In partnership with military leaders and HR professionals from Fortune 500 companies, JobPath developed their translator to ensure that their data is clear, concise, and modernized for today’s marketplace. They manually evaluated, rewrote, and matched every MOS code to the best job categories and compatible employment opportunities. The end result: over 7,000 military career codes mapped to the correlating civilian job openings utilizing the appropriate industry buzzwords and keywords recognized by recruiters and Applicant Tracking Systems.
“Our software intelligently connects veterans to the right job opportunities based on their military skills, education, rank, job training, and civilian work experience, each of which are important elements to understanding a veteran’s full work history,” said Constantine.
We are glad to see that there is a translator like JobPath’s out on the market, but one is not enough. Until major companies throughout the employment space build their translators the same way that JobPath did, most veterans will not receive the job translations they deserve.