The hiring chair · Preparing to interview
A veteran or military spouse
The rails What you may not ask
- What type of discharge did you receive? Discharge status can correlate with protected disability and is rarely job-necessary.
- Did anything happen on deployment that would affect your work? Assuming service means damage is a stereotype with legal consequences, and veterans hear the assumption instantly.
- Anything about VA disability rating, PTSD, or treatment.
The rails What you may ask
- What they did, what they were responsible for, how many people and how much equipment.
- Whether they hold a specific certification or clearance the job genuinely requires, asked as a job requirement.
- Guard and Reserve scheduling as a logistics matter. USERRA protects the obligation absolutely, so this is coordination, never a qualification question.
General information for interview preparation as of August 2026, not legal advice. Your employment counsel owns your policies.
Avoid this The mistake most employers make
Thanking them for their service and then failing to translate it. The resume arrives encrypted and the interviewer, not wanting to look ignorant, never asks what an E-6 actually did. Ask directly: how many people did you lead, what were you accountable for, what was the consequence of a mistake. Run the role through the O*NET military crosswalk before the interview if you want to arrive prepared.
Instead What actually predicts performance
Structured behavioral questions about scope and outcomes translate service better than anything else. When Northwestern researchers studied military records, enlistees with felony records showed no higher involuntary turnover and were promoted faster than peers (Minor, Persico and Weiss, 2018).
Worth knowing The evidence
The retention concern employers raise is real but usually reflects a first civilian job aimed wrong, not an unwillingness to stay. Asking why this job, this month, surfaces that better than asking why they left the service.
What is actually available to you
- WorkOne veteran services operate under federal priority of service.
- WOTC has a veteran target group, currently in hiatus along with the rest of the credit.
- IVMF (Syracuse) publishes free employer research on veteran hiring and retention.
Both chairs Practice the moment
Reading the other chair is the fastest empathy training available, and it is free.
Before you move on: one if-then
When a veteran's resume arrives full of acronyms I do not recognize,
I will… pick one or write your own
Stays on your device. Never sent to us. See all your commitments →
Naming a specific if-then plan improves follow-through by a medium-to-large margin over holding the same goal without one (Gollwitzer and Sheeran, Implementation Intentions and Goal Achievement: A Meta-Analysis of Effects and Processes, 2006; update Sheeran, Listrom and Gollwitzer, 2024).