Military services cite advances in credentialing members for civilian jobs

An early series of pilot programs to translate military skills to private-sector credentials has blossomed into hundreds of projects across the military service...

Three years ago, Congress told the Defense Department to study and fix a pervasive problem for military members transitioning into civilian life: Even if they’d trained and served as top-notch medics, truck drivers or logisticians in hostile conflict zones, their experience didn’t mean much to the civilian authorities who certify EMTs and issue commercial drivers’ licenses.

But military officials said Tuesday that they’ve done much more than simply studying the issue: they have dramatically expanded their civilian credentialing programs, partly because they’ve warmed to the idea that embracing nonmilitary certifications from a wide variety of public and private-sector credentialing bodies benefits both their members and their institutions as a whole.

In the Army alone, a 2012 congressional directive which required three pilot projects has since grown to 133 programs, all designed to match the skills soldiers already have by virtue of their military occupational specialties with certifications the private sector expects from civilian employees doing similar work. In 2014, the Army’s nascent program paid for 20,000 civilian credentials.

“What really excited us was some military-to-civilian mapping we did based on Labor Department statistics,” Col. Reed Hudgins, the director for credentialing, certification and licensing at the Army’s Combined Arms Support Center said during a Washington summit hosted by the American Legion. “One of them that astounded us was a maritime credential for our Army mariners: The training costs us about $300, but having that credential means a $20,000 difference in starting salary for that non-commissioned officer once he leaves the Army.”

As of last October, the Army, Navy , Marine Corps and Air Force now operate Web portals which let service members match their military specialties with the credentials they would need to be hired for similar jobs outside the military. A provision in last year’s defense authorization bill also requires DoD to foot the bill for any testing and training costs involved in getting those credentials. The Navy and Air Force already do so; the Army and Marine Corps plan to follow suit in short order.

But DoD’s new enthusiasm for civilian credentialing is not solely about ensuring future job prospects for departing service members. Officials also see it as a relatively low-cost way to import private sector workforce development practices and to maintain military readiness.

“It enables us to professionalize the force because industry best practices are what make up the credentials,” Hudgins said. “Those practices keep the credentials fresh and new, it’s education that comes in every year, and it’s research and development money we don’t have to spend. It’s also applicable to our total force including the National Guard and reserve. And within our sustainment community — our transporters, our cooks, our mechanics — everything that makes things move, 78 percent of that force is guard and reserve. How do you keep someone in the guard and reserve? Generally, you want them to have a job in the civilian world as well. So having credentials that are recognized in the total force keeps that Army family together.”

Over the past two years, the military services have also established venues to share best practices for civilian credentialing, including a joint council for their Web portals, each named Credentialing Opportunities Online (COOL). The Pentagon expects to roll out a central website within the next several months to link those portals together and expand its outreach to private employers and credentialing bodies.

Among the military services, the Navy has a significant head start. It has been building a robust civilian credentialing program since 2006 and has paid for 120,000 civilian credentials for its sailors since then. It is also the only service thus far to have mapped every one of its occupational specialties to at least one private-sector certification program.

“And 39 percent of the credentials we’ve funded were for sailors on the pointy-end of the spear,” said Keith Boring, the Navy’s credential program manager. “These are credentials they can get while they’re on board ships or overseas or at forward operating bases. But we’re not done growing, which is why we love the ability we now have to partner with the other services.”

For example, the partnership has already begun to incorporate contributions from the Air Force, a relative latecomer to the civilian credentialing effort.

One of that service’s first successes was to convince the Federal Aviation Administration that the skills military aircraft maintainers learn during their own arduous training programs meet — and perhaps exceed — the FAA’s training and education requirements for airframe and powerplant (A&P) mechanics in the commercial sector.

“Meeting the eligibility to take the FAA exams was one thing, and then taking the exams themselves was another story,” said J.R. Breeding, the associate dean for the Community College of the Air Force and a former Air Force aircraft maintainer. “We decided there had to be a better way, and the stars aligned so that we now have a very good working relationship with the FAA, and now we have a joint service program that is recognized by their headquarters so that all of our military services can receive their A&P certification. It’s also recognized by the airline industry, so it’s a win-win for the civilian sector as well.

The aviation industry is one field that’s long been seen as an example of low- hanging fruit among military credentialing advocates. Along with health care professions, there is relatively little to differentiate the training and certification demands the military would need from what’s required in the civilian sector.

But identical matches between military occupations and civilian training requirements tend to be the exception, not the rule, officials said. So the military services are crafting their credentialing strategies in such a way that if roughly 80 percent of their training requirements are similar to what’s required in a civilian career field, a service member should be offered the chance to earn industry credentials on the military’s dime.

Lisa Lutz, a consultant who has studied the military credentialing issue for decades, including for the Defense Department, said credentialing organizations in several industry sectors are also changing their practices so that a veteran who’s already met most of the private sector’s education and training requirements doesn’t have to start their vocational education from scratch.

“We’re seeing national certification agencies who are developing specific requirements just for the military,” she said. “The state licensing agencies have started to become engaged too, and that’s huge. I never thought we’d crack that nut.”

But there are still significant challenges when it comes to the state agencies that regulate everything from commercial driver’s licenses to barber shops.

Labor Secretary Thomas Perez said his department had made significant inroads toward mapping military specialties to civilian careers over the past two years: Labor has identified 962 distinct civilian occupations that match up with military experience.

In principle, he said state officials are very receptive to making their licensing programs more accommodating to transitioning service members. But the endeavor is complicated, since Labor and DoD are not just dealing with 50 separate governors or legislatures, but dozens of boards and commissions in each state.

“We’ve got to tackle this one state at a time, and that’s what we’re trying to do,” Perez told reporters. “The challenge is that there’s a nursing board and there’s another board for just about every occupation. It’s time consuming, but we’re doing our level best to make sure that you can be recognized for the competencies of the job. If you were an EMT working in a war zone, you ought to get licensed as a civilian paramedic much faster. That’s our goal.”

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