For a long time, Tina Covey had to remind herself she didn’t have to report to her boss that she was going to lunch.
After 12 years in the Navy, the 39-year-old Aurora resident had to relearn the nuances of daily life that didn’t involve military lingo, uniforms and accountability to a chain of command.
“It’s so deeply ingrained in you from habit and training, it’s hard to shed,” Covey said of her reintegration. “We’re our own keepers out here.”
Many former military personnel such as Covey face challenges when shedding their uniforms to re-enter civilian life, one of the first steps being to find a job. Some organizations hope to facilitate the process with career fairs, such as the one RecruitMilitary, a Cincinnati-based recruitment agency, held Thursday in Denver.
Nearly 200 service members who have left or are considering leaving the military milled about at Wings Over the Rockies Air & Space Museum with their resumes, looking for civilian work.
Event manager Jasen Williams said about 35 organizations showed up to recruit for open positions. Among them was defense contractor Raytheon Co., where Covey has worked for eight months.
There are 220,000 people who leave the service every year, said Bill Offutt, executive director of national outreach campaign Hire Vets First.
Only 10 percent are retirees, and most veterans will look to transition back into the workforce, which Offutt said can be daunting when many have never had to draw up a resume or prepare for an interview.
Phong Hoang, who is leaving his personnel job with the Marines in a month, said qualifications can sometimes be an issue.
“A lot of jobs in the military don’t transfer as well as if you had gone to college,” said Hoang, who plans to get an engineering degree to better his odds.
Mikael Bohon, a former Air Force signals analyst, found another complication: declassifying her resume to transition from blue to gray, or from military to civilian.
Bohon said she was excited to find employers such as Lockheed Martin who could better understand her skills.
Besides “hard” skills in fields such as avionics or electronics that some take with them, Williams said employers appreciate the “soft” skills the military instills — leadership, trainability, discipline and experience working in a large organization.
Offutt added that the unemployment rate for veterans was 3.8 percent last year, slightly lower than the national average of 4.6 percent.
Centennial-based Liteye Systems Inc. was a first-timer at the fair, recruiting for technicians.
“With their past training with the military, we have a better chance of finding individuals who’d be successful with us,” said Rick Sondag, Liteye vice president for North and South American sales.
Sondag added he is looking forward to getting veteran feedback on new product designs for military equipment before prototypes are sent for field tests.
Alex McCarthy: 303-954-1381 or amccarthy@denverpost.com
