By Vanessa Fuhrmans 

After a collective push to hire more than a million U.S. military veterans in recent years, business is wrestling with a new challenge: holding on to them.

Hiring initiatives by Verizon Communications Inc., Amazon.com Inc., Union Pacific Corp. and hundreds of other companies have helped cut unemployment among younger veterans -- in the double digits six years ago -- to close to the 4.7% national average, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But many veterans stumble in the transition to civilian careers, landing in jobs in which they don't earn enough, encounter culture clashes or struggle to translate military skills to the corporate world.

A 2016 U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation survey of 1,000 veterans found 44% left their first post-military jobs within a year -- a finding similar to that of a 2014 Syracuse University study involving more than 1,400 veterans. The result, company recruiters say, can mean delays before veterans find meaningful employment and high turnover costs for employers.

"One of the biggest mistakes employers can make is not understanding how to take advantage of veterans' skills" despite wanting to hire them, said Brian Stann, a former captain in the Marines and head of Hire Heroes USA, a nonprofit that helps veterans find jobs and prepare for the corporate world.

Some companies are adjusting their veteran strategies to smooth the entry specifically for those coming into their first civilian jobs.

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. recently launched a pilot project dubbed "Pathfinder" that pairs newly recruited veterans with a more experienced veteran peer to guide them through areas in which company research showed they often need more support. Those include setting first-year goals and navigating corporate nuances such as forgoing "sir" or "ma'am" when addressing colleagues and the how-tos of networking, a largely foreign practice in the military, where hierarchy typically sets career paths instead.

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP is rolling out a program for hires who recently left the service that applies quality-control-like checklists to their coaching, such as regular chats with a veteran "buddy" for advice. Later this year, the firm plans to systematically train human-resource managers on the challenges veterans face, including, in rarer cases, the stresses of grappling with physical combat injuries or post-traumatic stress disorder.

Financial-services firm USAA -- where veterans and military spouses are nearly a quarter of its 30,000-employee workforce -- began last fall targeting exiting service members with business leadership potential for specific jobs, such as financial analyst. The recruits go through a 12-month program covering everything from how the company's lines of business intersect with one another to "flexing your leadership style when you don't have your rank on your collar," said Sean Passmore, USAA's head of military hiring.

Even well-paying white-collar jobs can discourage some veterans. "I felt like [my employer] didn't know how to utilize me," said James Klein, a retired lieutenant commander in the U.S. Coast Guard. After 23 years with the service, he joined a Fortune 500 telecom company in 2014 but left the next year after his project-manager position was outsourced overseas.

In the Coast Guard, his work included commanding a patrol boat in the Persian Gulf. In contrast, much of his 15 months at the telecom company was spent on spreadsheets and writing equipment-installment instructions. It was a frustrating comedown. Supervisors dismissed his problem-solving initiatives -- such as a proposal to better acclimate new hires -- as coming from someone who "doesn't understand how things work here," he said.

"In the military, you see a problem, you fix it," said Mr. Klein, now an operations manager at a Dallas-area engineering and architecture firm he says is a better fit. "Corporate America sometimes moves a bit slower."

Before PwC's public-sector group launched a veteran support network roughly a decade ago, only about 20% of the practice's veteran hires were staying a year or longer, according to Michael Donoghue, a PwC principal who helped start the network. Within several years, that improved to more than 95%. PwC has since established the network companywide.

The network "is one of the main reasons I'm still at the firm," said LaTesha Ford, whose nearly five years as a naval officer included overseeing care, custody and control of some 600 detainees in Iraq.

Hired by PwC just over six years ago as a consultant, she turned to her assigned mentor frequently, including for communication help. She and her team "weren't clicking 100%," she said, and she worried she was too short and direct, a style to which she was accustomed.

She said her mentor from the veteran network helped her adjust her delivery to a more conversational tone, such as prefacing requests by asking colleagues about what work they already had on their plates. "Before, I thought, 'That's flowery -- let's just get it done,'" she said.

Now a senior associate working on cybersecurity and other projects for PwC's government clients, she says she gives pointers to other veteran hires and attends veteran career fairs to help identify where potential recruits can find the best fit in the firm.

"We retain veterans a lot longer," she said, "because we try to put in that legwork at the beginning."

Write to Vanessa Fuhrmans at vanessa.fuhrmans@wsj.com

 

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

March 28, 2017 08:14 ET (12:14 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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