Manufacturers find few veterans interested in filling roles
Sensing a need, the Massachusetts Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MassMEP) lobbied hard in late 2011 for more money to train unemployed veterans for careers in manufacturing.
But when the commonwealth's Department of Veterans' Services (DVS) granted their wish to the tune of $500,000, the Worcester-based organization was in for a surprise.
“Instead of having a flood of applications, it was a trickle,” said Ted Bauer, MassMEP's manager of workforce development programs.
MassMEP eventually filled all 85 slots in its 2012-13 veterans' workforce development courses, though it required a very deliberate effort to locate and recruit enough veterans to train, he said.
Returning members of the military tend to flock to places with active military bases such as Texas, North Carolina and California, Bauer said. Massachusetts has few active bases; therefore just 7.7 percent of its veterans are under age 35.
And even among those 28,820 young veterans, Bauer said, most will take advantage of the post-9/11 G.I. bill and go to college. Young veterans are typically still assimilating and not ready to make career decisions, said Lisa Derby Oden, MassMEP's workforce program coordinator.
“It (manufacturing) might not be the image people have in their minds for starting a career,” Bauer said.
Most Massachusetts veterans are members of the National Guard, who tend to be both older and already employed, Bauer said. The commonwealth's nearly 375,000 veterans are greying, with 30.8 percent between the ages of 45 and 64, and 53 percent over age 65, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.
MassMEP: Older seek aid
Most veterans turning to MassMEP for assistance tend to be over 50, said Leslie Parady, the organization's project manager, with ex-military personnel making up roughly 15 percent of the enrollment in the group's general workforce retraining courses.
But that could increase over the next three years, as 400,000 members of the military return from Afghanistan and try to enter the workforce, said Mike Aroney, principal consultant at Allied Reliability Group, a reliability and maintenance consulting company.
Returning veterans have often sought work as government contractors, Aroney said. But that option has largely disappeared due to military spending cuts, he said.
With two million Vietnam War-era vets set to retire over the next four years, Aroney said employers are more desperate than ever for qualified technicians and manufacturing professionals.
“We cannot find skilled craftspeople, fast enough,” he said. “As soon as I meet these guys, I find them jobs.”
A handful of nonprofits and colleges in Central Massachusetts offer crash courses in manufacturing, while several multinational companies with manufacturing operations in the region have initiatives to target and support transitioning members of the military.
But finding interested veterans remains elusive.
Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMS) employs several veterans at its biomanufacturing facility in Devens, yet has great trouble finding more despite offering a starting hourly wage of $18, said Vincent Perrone, president and CEO of Veterans Inc., a veterans' service provider based in Worcester.
Networking could help
Recent veterans conduct their first job search after being abroad for several years and disconnected from family and friends, Perrone said, and often aren't aware of all the opportunities out there.
“There really is no network to get them back into the workforce,” Perrone said. “They're on their own.”
Even if they're aware of a job, Aroney said, veterans often don't believe they're qualified despite the training and expertise they acquired while in the service.
“Just because the job listing says engineer, you don't need an engineering degree,” Aroney said. “What you need is good technical experience.”
Veterans often struggle to convey that experience, though, due to military terminology and titles that are frequently indecipherable to civilian employers, Aroney said. Groups like MassMEP attempt to bridge that gap by ferretting out usable, transferable skills from the military tasks, Oden said.
Veterans looking to make the transition to manufacturing have a multitude of training and employment options.
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