COLUMBUS, Ohio — Ben Noland served in the U.S. Marine Corps for eight years, then spent 18 months looking for a job.
“I’ve probably put my resume in to 300 places in the past year,” said Noland, 33, of Kenton. “The farthest I’ve ever got was a phone interview.”
Noland finally landed a job installing solar panels at Tipping Point Renewable Energy, a Columbus-based solar-power company that is hiring only military veterans for its installation crews at a time when unemployment among former service members is outpacing that of civilians.
Tipping Point’s efforts echo those of companies and groups nationwide to hire veterans in the green-energy industry. The Denver-based nonprofit Veterans Green Jobs is one of the largest, having trained or placed 370 veterans in the past four years.
And a pilot program by five of the nation’s largest energy providers, called Troops to Energy Jobs, provides training and credentials to military veterans, as well as college credit for their military training and experience.
About 240,000 veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have returned to the U.S. and are unable to find work. They make up a growing chunk of the 850,000 veterans overall who are out of work. The White House expects an additional 1 million service members to return to civilian life by 2016.
The veteran unemployment rate in October was 12.1 percent, compared with 9 percent for the U.S. overall. For veterans ages 18-24, that rate was 30.4 percent.
The renewable-energy industry is growing fast — solar and wind energy have grown more than tenfold in the past decade — and military veterans often make good fits for green jobs.
Part of the reason that unemployment among veterans is so high is that there is a lack of understanding among both veterans and potential employers, said Lt. Guy Zierk of the Marine Corps’ Wounded Warrior Regiment in Ohio. Part of Zierk’s job is connecting returning Marines with services and programs designed to help them return to civilian life.
“Civilians can have a hard time understanding the military. They don’t understand what a squad leader is — entry-level management,” Zierk said.
