Mission Critical. Michael Abrams
and Seriously Ambitious—but Stuck
When Marshall Carter applied for his first white-collar job as a civilian in 1975, he dutifully submitted eighty-five résumés and cover letters. Yet an education at the United States Military Academy at West Point, two master’s degrees, and an outstanding military record—including a Navy Cross for heroism as a Marine Corps infantry officer in Vietnam—failed to earn Carter a single job interview. In fact, his military accomplishments worked against him: “There were two problems. First, because people hated the war, they seemed to hate the people who fought in it. Second, the way companies dealt with the political nature of the Vietnam War is that they wouldn’t give you an interview,” Carter says. He finally landed a position at Chase Bank through a connection to another veteran who worked there and recommended Carter as his replacement. Easing the transition to Chase for Carter was his manager, who was a veteran of the Korean War, and other veteran buddies at the firm. Carter’s manager advised him to seize the opportunities, visibility, and relationships that helped him rocket up the ranks at Chase. “Once I got in the door at Chase, luck hit me,” Carter recalls. “I got a boss who looked after me, and connected me with a corporate budgeting position in which I got to meet with David Rockefeller twice a month. The visibility was unparalleled, and I was off to the races.”
Over the course of the forty-year career that followed, Carter’s meteoric rise continued. When he hit a hierarchical roadblock at Chase Bank, he left the company to become CEO and chairman of State Street Corporation, and went on to serve as chairman of the New York Stock Exchange.
Contrast Carter’s story with that of Jessica,* a former army captain who left the military in 2012 after being deployed twice to lead military intelligence missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. Jessica quickly landed an internship and job at a financial organization in New York, thanks to a veterans career network that she joined, which gave her access to both its career coaching and networking resources. “I knew that in addition to my experience with leadership and military intelligence, I could do logistics—and that my attention to detail and protocol could sound attractive to a hiring manager,” Jessica says. “I saw it as an opportunity to get a foot in the door.” Indeed, her logistics skills from the military translated easily to the event planning role she took at the company, coordinating meetings and gatherings for the company’s global board of directors.
Yet the moment she walked into her new job, Jessica felt underutilized by her managers and misunderstood by her colleagues, many of whom expressed surprise and made assumptions when they learned that she was a veteran. Unlike Carter, Jessica had no help in navigating her new environment. “It was a lonely time,” she says. “My female colleagues made small talk about things I wasn’t really interested in. My male colleagues seemed intimidated by my past. And people didn’t seem to consider my military experience as valid work experience.”
Most of all, Jessica missed leading others, and didn’t see leadership opportunities in her current role—or a clear pathway for advancement in the future. “In the end, it became an interim transition job, instead of a pathway to the career I wanted to pursue,” Jessica says. Feeling stuck, she left the company after a year, still unsure of the career direction that would bring her satisfaction and success.
Jessica and Carter illustrate how the corporate landscape has changed for veterans in the US over the course of four decades. In 1975, veterans couldn’t get their feet in the doors of corporations—but once hired, their leadership skills propelled them to the top of the ranks. Today, candidates like Jessica, especially those who served as officers, are snapped up by recruiters who believe that veterans have the skills and drive to thrive in the corporate world. They’re right—our research shows that veterans indeed possess those skills, along with the ambition to fuel their rise.
But once veterans get in the door, we find (by having conducted roughly 40 interviews and having surveyed 1,022 US veterans employed in white-collar jobs), the experience they bring, the extraordinary skills they’ve developed, and the commitment that compelled them to serve their country fail to translate into career progression. Like Jessica, they languish, and—to the extraordinary detriment of both themselves and their employers—they check out.
Skilled, Committed, Ambitious
Today, Carter regularly mentors veterans to help them navigate the transition to civilian careers. Carter knows that civilians are now better able to distinguish between a war they may have disagreed with and the veterans who fought in it, but he sees managers continually underestimate veterans as a valuable resource at work. “People have no concept of what we’re actually doing in the military. So they have no idea of the concrete skills that veterans come into the workplace with, and the incredible abilities that serve them well in a professional context,” he says.
In our survey, we find that large majorities of military veterans have leadership skills highly prized by corporate employers, confirming the common wisdom about veterans as valuable recruits. Our survey shows that vets possess these skills regardless of whether they were officers or enlisted service members.
For instance, veterans often take personal accountability for the outcome of projects they engage in. Across all veterans in our sample, 82 percent say they have this skill. Christian Henkel, today a senior director at Moody’s Analytics, developed a keen sense of personal accountability, or ownership, patrolling a ship on a police action in Haiti during his Naval career. “When you go on watch at midnight, you better be on time to relieve the folks on the shift before yours right at midnight. Otherwise, it affects their sleep, their attention, their ability to do their job, and the safety of the ship, and it would be my fault,” Henkel says. “I left the Navy understanding that the right way to give someone a task was to tell them what the task is, how it fits in the big picture, what resources they have to learn more about it, but to make it clear: this task is yours. And you will be held responsible. When I complete a task, I take the same approach.”
A second skill many veterans (81 percent) bring is their ability to work towards a given goal. According to Chris Grail, head of Boehringer Ingelheim’s US-Americas Region in Infrastructure, Safety, Environment, and Engineering and a former officer in the UK Royal Navy, the goal-oriented military mindset works particularly well in finding efficiencies or tackling large assignments. “When handed a large project or an aggressive timeline, most people will say, ‘Our leaders are demanding too much. We can’t possibly deliver this.’ Whereas I can break that goal down into pieces, and make it into a mission, just as I was taught to do in the military,” Grail says. Not only does his tendency to make and meet targets improve efficiency at his company, Grail uses it to foster a more positive, optimistic outlook among his colleagues. “They develop immense pride and satisfaction when we meet targets that seemed impossible at the outset,” Grail adds.
Another desirable asset 78 percent of the veterans in our survey say they possess is communications skills. Interviewees shared their experiences dealing calmly with negative feedback or angry reactions from managers or clients. Peter Macakanja employs this strength regularly as global ultrasound customer care manager at GE Healthcare. “If an ultrasound scanner wasn’t functioning, I could leverage my listening skills to understand the underlying problems, focus under the pressure, and find solutions, instead of wasting time with defensiveness or recovery from a tongue-lashing,” Macakanja says. Indeed, the same portion of our sample of veterans (78 percent) say that they have the ability to handle stress and work under pressure, likely due to years of practice in the military.
Perhaps due to their need to produce results in high-pressure situations, 71 percent of veterans say they are decisive. In interviews, several shared their frustration at the inability of their civilian colleagues to make a tough call. “I’m used to making quick decisions about life and death midair,” says one former Air Force pilot. “When I hear, ‘I think we need another meeting to discuss this cost and see if it’s justified,’ my jaw drops.” Early in her civilian career, she developed more patience for her less-decisive colleagues. “I’ve learned over time to sit through the meeting to get to the decision, but usually I’ve already come to the conclusion that it takes others far longer to reach,” she says. Today, she counsels other veterans to temper their own impatience, showing another common strength among veterans in our survey—65 percent say