Ted Daywalt
President, VetJobs.com, Inc
Captain, USNR, Retired

We are gathered here today for the purpose of commemorating the souls of our comrades who are buried in this beautiful setting and for what they did in the past to defend our great Republic. It is patriotic with ceremonies like these that the citizens of our country offer a grateful homage and affectionate tribute annually to the memories of those who dared all, periled all, and in many cases lost all, for the country they loved.

Our gathering today marks the journey of advancing time and the resulting cause of a reunion of hearts engendering common sympathies. By gathering together we perpetuate the deeds of many a noble Soldier, Sailor, Marine, Airman and Coast Guardsman. By this custom we commemorate the dead, thereby enshrining their memories in the hearts of succeeding generations, and causing the service of those buried here to be imitated by younger generations who come after them.

We do not meet on these Memorial Days to weep for the dead. Time heals the scars of conflicts in which our nation has been involved, and we can calmly contemplate the great lesson of patriotic devotion, and rejoice today that the nation to which we belong produces such honorable men and women noble enough to die for that which they value so much, that being freedom.

We are here today to foster patriotism, in view of the most tremendous sacrifices ever willingly made by a people on the altar of freedom. That the sacrifices of past conflicts deserve this rank is validated by the fact that these sacrifices were made primarily by volunteers.

Under our Constitutional Republic, protection and allegiance are reciprocal. When one ceases the other expires. Not only is it the duty of the patriot to defend, but to save liberty, to save rights, to save amidst perils and dangers that appall the stoutest of hearts. To preserve liberty takes great courage which I fervently pray many in our government today will develop.

And while today we decorate these graves of our honored dead with beautiful garlands, and while the ground beneath in which these patriots are taking their final rest will glisten with floral wreaths, let us be not unmindful of the duties that we give this hallowed land for which those before us so honorably served and have since passed on.

Such is today’s military, patriots all, whose grand deeds and heroic achievements rise resplendent above the tears and groans of mortal agony and bereavement. The fame of the American military person, they who cut the most sacred ties of their family and walked away from a position of ease and comfort to offer up, if necessary, their lives in the maintenance of and defense of a grand and immortal principle, that of freedom in our free market society governed by a Constitutional Republic.

In a cemetery in Virginia is the inscription: NOT FOR FAME OR REWARD, NOT FOR PLACE OR FOR RANK, NOT LURED BY AMBITION OR GOADED BY NECESSITY, BUT IN SIMPLE OBEDIENCE TO DUTY AS THEY UNDERSTOOD IT, THESE MEN SUFFERED ALL, SACRIFICED ALL, DARED ALL, AND DIED.

Those words were written by a Confederate veteran who had later become a minister. This simple sentence speaks for all American military in all wars. Men and women who must always trust their lives to the judgment of their leaders, and whose bond thus goes to individuals rather than to stark ideology. Citizens who desire more than anything to sleep with the satisfaction that when all the rhetoric was stripped away, they had fulfilled their duty as an honorable member of the United States military and who in the end must not only judge their acts while they served, but be judged by their successors.

And so I am here with you today to remember.

Love of our country still resonates strong in this great nation. The patriotism that was so strong in the founders of our Republic is still a moving force in our country today. But we are a different people from those hearty souls who came, settled and formed these United States of America. We are now a country comprised of people from all the nations of the world who seek freedom and escape from tyranny, socialism and communism.

There are two important lessons for us to take away from this day of remembrance.

The first is one our leaders should carry next to their hearts and contemplate every time they face a crisis, however small, which puts our military in harms way. Such decisions should resound in their conscience from the power of millions of patriot graves. It is simply this: You hold our military members’ lives in sacred trust. When a citizen has sworn to obey you and follow your judgment, and enter a battlefield or go to an area of conflict to defend the interests you define as worthy of their blood, do not abuse that awesome power through careless policy, unclear objectives, or inflexible leadership.

And to the members of Congress I say you must take care of the men and women in the military irrespective of the costs, for without those willing to join the military, your policies would not be upheld, America would become weak and we would not have our freedoms!

The second lesson regards those of us who have taken such an oath, and who have honored the judgment of our leaders. The lesson is duty. Duty is a constant, frozen in the context of the moment it is performed. Duty is action, taken after listening to one’s leaders, and weighing risk and fear against the powerful draw of obligation to family, to religion, to nation, and to the unknown future.

As one who was raised in a military family and then spent over twenty seven years in the Navy, I know personally that the duty of the military is to defend those rights guaranteed to the people by the Constitution which is still the law of our land and to yield obedience to our Constitutional Republic form of government which shields and protects citizens from wrong and oppression, irrespective of our personal political opinions and leanings.

The two things of inestimable value which our Constitutional Republic furnishes, and which we ought to preserve even with life itself, are liberty and law – or rather liberty in the law.

The old world gave us law, without which the freedoms of our American society would not exist. The American people govern themselves, not in one form of government alone, but in varying forms for national, state, county and municipal, down to the smallest school district and thousands of voluntary organizations that together form our Constitutional Republic. In each the methods by which the people’s will may be made supreme in designated affairs are clearly defined, so that the whole of united human effort is brought under the dominion of law. Men and women are willing to die that this liberty under law may not perish from the world, and that our free market society will persevere in liberty, not in the economic tyranny of socialism.

It must always be remembered that conflict and war is horrible and savage. I pray for a time when we are no longer called to participate in conflicts and war, but such will never be the case. The history of the world has shown that war is continuous.

So long as there are those who want to take away American liberties, so long as there are those who covet American freedoms and our successful free market economic system, so long as there are those who espouse fascism, socialism and communism, so long as there are those that demand the world believe in only one religion, so long as there are those whose religion enslaves others, there will be conflicts and war.

To protect ourselves America must resist the temptation to become apathetic. We must not resign ourselves to political correctness and the onslaught of socialism. It is imperative that we look back on our history and learn from the mistakes that were made in the past, both political and economic. Students in our schools must know and understand the differences between liberty with free markets and the economic tyranny of socialism. They must know what happened before so our beloved country does not commit the same mistakes in our future.

But political correctness denies letting teachers educate what happened in the past. Politically correct educators do not want history taught for fear we might offend or worse, our population will understand what is happening to them. And for the same reasons the history of our many wars are given scant, if any, attention in our schools and universities today. Our schools should teach these wars and American history not to offend, but to educate!

We need to remember what happened in the past so that we may realize that our comfortable life styles created by our free market society and Constitutional Republic are not guaranteed except by a strong military and our Second Amendment rights.

Whenever our country has had peace, it was merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous untamed streaming of a world that envies our free market economic system and the freedoms our Constitutional Republic affords. We must always be ready. We must always maintain a strong defense and military.

At Gettysburg, President Lincoln said: “…in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate…we cannot consecrate…we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to that great task remaining before us…that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion; that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain.”

You see, out of heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism.

George Orwell once noted: We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

The military men and women, who are buried in this and the other national cemeteries, and their families, understand on a personal level all that I have brought to you today. They know first hand that the military is the only work force in America whose contract includes a mandatory clause that says they may have to give their life to maintain the freedoms the rest of us enjoy.

So I would like to end with part of a poem by Oliver Wendell Holmes. It carries the reasoned sentiment of a veteran from the past, and speaks to those in the military of today. It goes like this:

And when the wind in the tree-tops roared, the soldier asked from the deep dark grave:
“Did the banner flutter then?” “Not so, my hero,” the wind replied.
“The fight is done, but the banner won, thy comrades of old have borne it hence,
have borne it in triumph hence.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave: “I am content.”

Then he heareth the lovers laughing pass, and the soldier asks once more:
“Are these not the voices of them that love, that love–and remember me?”
“Not so, my hero,” the lovers say, “we are those that remember not;
For the spring has come and the earth has smiled, and the dead must be forgot.”
Then the soldier spake from the deep dark grave: “I am content.”

Like our comrades who sleep here today, that soldier was content in the knowledge that he did his duty for his country with honor.

Thank you for your time today and the privilege to address you on this Memorial Day weekend. Let us always continue to have these celebrations and understand what they mean not only for us today, but for the future generations of our great Republic.

(April 23, 2007) Wow. Peter Weddle’s IAEWS has published an employment web site code of ethics. It would be lovely to see it take root (particularly the part about a slander free market place.) This is a great mov ofr the rentire industry.
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to see positive values articulated in ways that are easy to follow. Certainly the other elements of out industry would do well to follow this model of self-regulation.
From Their Newsletter:
The nay-sayers said it couldn’t be done. The industry critics opined that job boards didn’t have what it takes to set standards for themselves. Well, they were wrong. Thanks to the work of chairman Dan Honig, the members of the IAEWS Working Group on the Code of Ethics and others who contributed-notably Don Ramer, Ted Daywalt, Sunny Mokha, Manuel Francisci and Eric Shannon-the IAEWS has adopted the first ever Code of Ethics for the online employment services industry.
Is it perfect? Nothing is. Is it a credible start? Absolutely. Indeed, the guidelines that we’ve adopted set our Members apart from other, less reputable sites operating in our industry. They provide a tangible differentiator that will help sell clients and attract talent. No less important, they represent a commitment to excellence of which we all can be proud. The text of the code follows.
The IAEWS Code of Ethics
IAEWS Members are leaders in their industry. In acknowledgement of that role, they agree to adhere to the following Code of Ethics:
Confidentiality
We will maintain a privacy policy that is open and transparent. We will adhere to generally accepted principles for the use of information acquired online, to include the full disclosure of what personal information is collected and how it is used and/or released to others.
For example, Members will carefully protect hosted individual passwords and clearly indicate the use of all individual contact information.
Fairness
We will operate with respect for our customers and deliver our products and services as promised. In addition, we will compete fairly in the marketplace and not slander our competitors.
For example, Members will provide easy-to-find and up-to-date contact information on their sites for both employers and job seekers.
Honesty
We will not engage in deceitful or deceptive business practices. We will deliver our products and services as they are represented in our sales and marketing materials and provide accurate data on their performance and our operations.
For example, Members will make every effort to ensure that all job postings displayed on their sites are genuine employment opportunities.
Responsibility
We will serve the interests of all of our customers-employers, recruiters and job seekers. We will resolve customer issues to the best of our ability.
For example, Members will clearly state how long a resume will be archived on their sites and respect that commitment.
Self Regulation
We acknowledge that compliance with the IAEWS Code of Ethics is a condition of membership in the Association. We will adhere to the Code in all aspects of our business operations and expeditiously remediate any areas of noncompliance.
=====================================================
How Can You Put the Code to Work for You?
The Code is posted at the Association’s Web-site under the Mission tab. Members are invited to reproduce, link to and/or mention it in their promotional and marketing materials. In addition, the Association, itself, is beginning an aggressive promotional effort to announce the Code and underscore its importance for both employers and job seekers. Bottom Line: If we want the Code to set Members apart, we have to make sure our customers know about it and what it means

In April, twenty-five full-time MBA students spent a weekend at the Marine Corps’ Officer Candidate School (OCS) in Quantico, Va., where they tackled the same strenuous physical and mental challenges faced by men and women training to be Marine officers.

The experience is one highlight of the new Goizueta Advanced Leadership Academy, the business school’s newest and most strongly focused effort to train principled leaders for global enterprise.

“The marketing materials of every business school throw the word ‘leadership’ around a lot, but Goizueta is different in that we back our marketing with actual leadership programming,” says Kembrel Jones ‘00MBA, associate dean and director of the Full-time MBA Program.

“When you get right down to it,” Jones continued, “there is an assumption that just because you are in an MBA program you are a leader, which is not true. But leadership isn’t a fad. It’s never going to go out of style. We want employers to say, ‘I need a couple of leaders, so I’m going to get them at Goizueta.’”

With around 300 full-time MBA students, and about fifty in the one-year MBA program, Goizueta is the smallest of the top twenty business schools, and that small size can be advantageous where leadership development is concerned.

Born out of a spring 2003 branding study that identified leadership as the most desired quality in an MBA, the Goizueta Advanced Leadership Academy began its pilot year last fall. The academy is open to students who have taken leadership positions-with some 300 named student leadership positions available at Goizueta, there should be no excuse in missing this requirement-and have committed to the leadership concentration in their second year, and completed the communications-based Goizueta Plus program.

With an emphasis on Goizueta’s core values (courage, integrity, accountability, rigor, diversity, team, and community) the academy’s pilot class of twenty-five started with a skills and values assessment, workplace diversity training, and a module on improvisation and impromptu speaking to hone their ability to think on their feet.

But perhaps the most noteworthy part of their leadership training, and certainly the most memorable-was their thumbnail introduction to Marine training. And it was a bit more involved than the average corporate retreat.

In April 2004, Ted Daywalt ‘80MBA, arranged a meeting with Gen. Thomas Benes, then-president of Marine Corps University (Benes was named director of the Strategy and Plans Division, Plans, Policies and Operations, U.S. Marine Corps Headquarters, last May). Daywalt, a retired Navy captain and member of Goizueta’s Alumni Board, then led a contingent that included Jones; Ed Hess, executive director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Growth; and Robert Drazin, professor of organization and management, that flew to Virginia to tour the Quantico facility and met for more than three hours with OCS faculty to discuss a possible partnership.

While there, the Goizueta faculty saw first hand what the students would experience. The intense and often physically draining tests involve critical thinking, teamwork, problem solving, and communication˜all essential qualities not only in military officers, but business leaders, too.

Although the leadership academy is a new effort, it is getting noticed. In October 2004, BusinessWeek magazine ranked Goizueta the top business school in the country for leadership development.

“Leadership can take on different meanings for different people,” says Jones, adding that in 2005-2006 the academy will double to fifty participants. Also to be added are modules on specific practical skills, such as delivering bad news, as well as a more active mentoring program.

“What we want is for people to find their own style of leadership, so we want to give students the skill sets that every leader needs,” Jones says.
-Eric Rangus

http://www.goizuetamag.emory.edu/spr-sum2005/leadership_ranking.html

By Karen Jowers
Times staff writer
There’s good news for military spouses looking for jobs this year because many areas of the country appear to be heading into a labor shortage, experts say.
“We’re anticipating a severe shortage of skilled workers and a high rate of employee turnover across the country and across industry lines,” said Roger Herman, chief executive officer of The Herman Group in Greensboro, N.C.. “There are plenty of jobs for people who are trained or willing to get training.”
“For spouses, this next year will be the best out of the last five for good and meaningful employment,” added Ted Daywalt, chief executive officer of Vetjobs.com, a large military-related job board that includes a gateway for military spouses and dependents.
Herman said being a military spouse is now a selling point for employment.  ‘There’s a strong sense of patriotism in our country today and a lot of employers welcome the chance to show their support for the military. In some cases, they might give preference to military spouses.”
Spouses can help themselves by starting to think about job searches as soon as their service member knows a permanent change-of-station move is coming, he said. “Employers are looking ahead to what their needs are in the future,” so it’s good to let potential employers know that a job candidate will be arriving in a few months, he said.
And from an employer’s standpoint, with an increasingly mobile work force, “if they know they’ve got you for a certain amount of time, and that you’ll give them advance notice so they can find a replacement rather than be caught with someone leaving with short notice, that’s gold for an employer.”
Employers are increasingly recruiting electronically, so there’s a great advantage to using job boards to make connections well in advance, he said.
As of Jan. 12, Daywalt said about 300 spouses resumes were posted on the Vetjobs.com site, and more than 1,300 member companies such as Wal-Mart and The Home Depot have access to the resumes and post jobs they have available.
Daywalt said more than 17,000 jobs are available on the board, compared to just a few thousand on any given day a few years ago at the height of the recession.
Through a partnership with the worldwide staffing company Adecco, more than 5,900 military spouses have been placed in jobs in the past three years, said company spokeswoman Victoria Mitchell.
Adecco is one of 18 corporate and government partners working through a formal Army program to increase job opportunities for military spouses, and also works with the Air Force informally to help spouses find employment.
Spouses such as Air Force wife Wendy Molletti have benefited from a Defense Department pilot program at Scott Air Force Base, Ill., that provides placement services through a contract with the St. Louis-based IMPACT Group.
The pilot program is IMPACT JEMS (Jobs/Employment for Military Spouses), with links to 187 employers with a wide range of full- and part-time job opportunities. After Molletti submitted her information online in November, the program helped her find a job as a substitute teacher in a child development center.
More corporations are actively seeking military spouses. More than 10,000 spouses found jobs last year as the result of the Army’s Military Spouse Corporate Employment Opportunities, said Delores Johnson, director of family programs for the U.S. Army Community and Family Support Center. The program has a Web site at www.goacs.org.
The year-old program has partnerships with 15 corporations and three government entities and continually looks for ways to expand.
The Pentagon and Labor Department are working together on a variety of projects to foster employment opportunities for military spouses. Information as well as links to resources for civilian, government and military jobs, can be found online at www.military spouse.org.

By Karen Jowers
Times staff writer

The job outlook for military spouses this summer is a mixed bag, experts say, with the economy still sluggish but showing signs of turning around.
For military spouses, the difficulty in establishing contacts and getting information about the job market when moving to a new area might be balanced to some degree by companies? desires to support military families, some experts said.
?Since we mirror the civilian population, I would say that employment isn?t looking real good at the moment,? said Nancy Whitsett, manager of the family member employment program for the Army Community and Family Support Center.
To help spouses find what jobs are out there, she said, family member employment program managers at bases are doing more skills training for spouses and developing partnerships with local businesses.
Some partnerships with national civilian firms, as well as local partnerships at military installations, are creating opportunities. ?I?m seeing more and more job opportunities coming from the partnerships we have, which indicates the job market is on the rise,? said Natalie Galvin, manager of the family member employment assistance program at Marine Corps headquarters.
One such partnership is with Adecco, a staffing company with about 5,800 offices in 63 countries. The Navy and Marine Corps signed agreements with Adecco to provide job placement and training for spouses through their Career Accelerator program at their bases. This not only results in jobs but also offers continuity for spouses because they can work for Adecco at other locations and build up career benefits.
Adecco is also in talks with the Army and Air Force to bring programs to their bases, said spokeswoman Victoria Mitchell.
Adecco already is working informally with Army and Air Force spouses through its numerous offices around the country.
Mitchell said Adecco has received good feedback from companies about hiring military spouses. ?They want to support our military in whatever way they can,? she said. ?And if placing people in their companies can help people in even a small way, they?ll do that.?
Ted Daywalt, president of Vetjobs.com, said its job board has about 6,500 jobs posted by companies specifically interested in veterans and military spouses. Spouses can enter the site through their own portal and get specific information tailored to their needs.
Mitchell and others in the staffing industry point to Labor Department statistics that show an increase of 58,000 temporary positions in May.
?Often companies take on temporary workers as a prelude to hiring full time when they see the economy getting better,? Mitchell said. ?That?s a hopeful thing for the job market. Overall, it?s still slow, but there are signs like this that there may be a turnaround.?
Experts say industries that are hiring more people include financial; health care and medical; pharmaceutical; food service; residential real estate; and education.
nnnnMitchell said some skills in general demand include:

• Light industrial positions such as asFinance positions such as accounts payable and receivable, financial analysts, accountants, and collections personnel.
• Medical jobs such as billing personnel and biotechnology engineers.
• Call-center and customer service positions.
• Mortgage processors.
• Cooks and food servers.

The services? spouse-employment personnel have been focusing on trying to help spouses develop portable careers, and one area they?re targeting is virtual business.
Any military spouse can go to the Navy?s quality of life Web site, www.life lines2000.org/vbo, for information about opportunities and training. Some Air Force bases also train spouses to become virtual assistants and virtual business owners, said Debbie Laskiewicz, Air Force family support program operations manager.
Virtual assistants and business owners use various skills to develop businesses online.
Laskiewicz and other services? spouse-employment managers urge spouses to check with the base family member employment offices, which have connections with local businesses and information about training.
Programs vary from post to post. In Hawaii, for example, the Joint Employment Management System job bank gives service members, spouses, retirees and family members access to about 1,400 jobs in the local market through a password they obtain from their local family member employment office.
At Camp Pendleton, Calif., where few jobs are available, officials offer ?Spouse University classes? in a variety of areas.
At Cherry Point Marine Corps Air Station, N.C., officials from the Employment Security Commission visit every Wednesday to register and help spouses looking for jobs.

By DAVID KOEPPEL (NYT) 1140 words
Published: February 16, 2003

AFTER 20 years as a career naval officer, Richard S. Richard Jr. did not expect his transition from military to civilian life to go quite so smoothly.
Mr. Richard joined the Navy in 1982, right out of high school, and spent the next two decades crisscrossing the country from San Diego to Groton, Conn., to Bremerton, Wash., his final posting. Then, at 38, he retired from the military last November and embarked on the first job search of his life.
He assumed that the naval training he had received in data systems and electronics and the leadership skills he had acquired as a chief petty officer would give him an edge in a weak economy. What he did not foresee was the esteem that his military background would inspire.
”Everybody I spoke with seemed to believe it was a plus,” Mr. Richard said. ”My maturity and hard-won experience in difficult environments, that’s something that the average college guy doesn’t have.” Since the Persian Gulf war, the public’s perception of the military ”has changed for the better, and it’s been strong ever since,” he said.
Within three months, Mr. Richard received several job offers. Though he and his wife wanted to return to their native Long Island to raise their 3-year-old twin sons, he reluctantly turned down a $60,000 position with the Brookhaven National Laboratory there to accept the same salary as an information technology analyst in Virginia Beach, where the money would stretch further.
Many corporate recruiters who specialize in placing former military personnel agree with Mr. Richard’s assessment. They say that despite the uncertain economic outlook, it is a good time to be a veteran looking for work in the private sector, particularly for those with strong technology skills.
And, they say, with the nation on a war footing and patriotism on the rise, corporate America is taking an increasingly sympathetic look at the intangibles of leadership, teamwork and trustworthiness that are the mark of military life. That is good news for the estimated 250,000 men and women who leave the armed services every year.
Ted Daywalt, president of VetJobs.com, one of the largest Internet job sites for veterans, said that those with strong technology skills, health care experience and sales ability are in demand, while those seeking administrative and human resource positions are having a more difficult time.
There were 38 new job listings for the New York metropolitan area posted on VetJobs.com in January, with companies like Home Depot, Philip Morris and Young & Rubicam seeking applicants for management, sales and finance positions. Combined Insurance Company of America, a unit of the Aon Corporation, hired 115 veterans who posted résumés on the job site, many in its New Jersey office, according to Mr. Daywalt.
Home Depot has been particularly aggressive in courting veterans, and has teamed with the Department of Labor and military headhunters to lure them into its two-year management training program.
”Leading a platoon is like leading a store,” said John Simley, a spokesman for Home Depot. ”There’s a fine line between combat and retail, but both have the same objective, to beat the competition. Both require creativity and improvisation and understanding of risks and rewards.”
Last year, the U.S. Alliance Group, a corporate recruiter with offices in New York and Virginia, placed about 100 candidates in the Home Depot program, according to its president, Alfred Schreiber.
”I think 9/11 was a double-edged sword for the military,” said Mr. Schreiber, whose firm specializes in matching employers with military personnel. ”It was a tragedy that woke people up to the contribution the military can make.”
It is not that all employers have dropped all their reservations about soldiers. Recruiters say some hiring managers persist in viewing military men and women as being too ”dictatorial” and having trouble ”developing consensus.” And, said Mr. Daywalt, himself a former Navy captain, an executive once surprised him by asserting that veterans lacked ”real-world experience.”
One problem, he said, is that many human resources managers do not know anyone in the military. ”For many, there’s still an image of a gun-toting John Wayne or an incompetent Beetle Bailey,” he said. ”It’s so far removed from the reality.”
To combat such preconceptions, Mr. Schreiber advises clients to unlearn some of their military ways, like excessive formality. And they should shed military jargon, especially as it can mask their accomplishments. A fire control technician on a submarine, for example, might be misperceived merely as someone who can put out fires, whereas in reality the job requires familiarity with sophisticated technology like missile-guidance radar systems.
Unemployment among former military personnel has stayed fairly consistent over the last five years, at a half point or so lower than the general population. The preliminary figure for last year was 4.7 percent, compared with 5.2 percent for nonveterans, though in New York State it was 4.6 percent, slightly higher than the jobless rate of 4.4 percent for nonveterans.
While veterans with technical expertise or management skills are doing well, lower-level soldiers and sailors are having a tougher time of it. Wesley Poriotis, the chairman of Wesley, Brown & Bartle, a New York executive search firm, and the founder of the Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives, a nonprofit organization and advocacy group, says veterans sometimes have difficulty getting licensing for the same tasks, like driving trucks, programming computers and repairing aircraft engines, that they mastered in the military.
Frederico Juarbe Jr., assistant secretary of labor for veterans employment and training, said his agency was working to ensure that licensing officials give greater recognition to the accomplishments of servicemen and servicewomen.
Gordon Berg, a spokesman for Mr. Juarbe’s division, summed up his position. ”Clearly, we’re trying to eliminate the redundancies,” he said. ”If someone can fix jet aircrafts, clearly they can fix a 737. But the F.A.A. says they have to prove it.”
Mr. Juarbe says that the image of veterans has improved a great deal since the Sept. 11 attacks, and many former military members say they have noticed the change.
”There’s a better appreciation of what uniform veterans bring to the work force,” he said. ”Punctuality, leadership experience, experience in teams. It translates into greater value that they bring to employment.”
Photo: Richard S. Richard Jr., at home in Virginia Beach, left the military last November and says he has encountered an esteem for experience in the military on his job search. (Gary Knapp for The New York Times)

To make our comparisons between military and civilian pay, we started by asking service members what they do, how much they are paid and where they are assigned.
We then called chambers of commerce, businesses and institutions in the same region – the same city or county, if possible – to obtain salary information for civilian workers with similar jobs and years of experience.
For a military air traffic controller, we called a local airport to gauge salary levels for that job near the location where the member is stationed. For a finance specialist, we called local companies to find out what their payroll supervisors earn.
In many cases, we talked to personnel officials and wage-and-benefits specialists. Sometimes we talked to civilians with identical jobs. Most civilian employers and workers were responsive, courteous and curious about military salaries.
After determining local salaries, we did a similar exercise, using additional data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and other resources, many of them Web-based – such as Vetjobs.com – to get a national average for each service member’s equivalent civilian profession.
Making such comparisons is an inexact science that leaves plenty of room for debate. Many military jobs match up readily with civilian counterparts – law enforcement, aviation, health care – but others, particularly in the combat-arms fields, don’t translate as easily.
In most cases, we compared combat-arms troops to corporate managers with similar levels of responsibility who would supervise roughly the same number of people – a Marine expeditionary unit commander with the CEO of a medium-sized business, for example.
Then we did calculations on the military compensation for each service member. In many cases, the military pay figures in our comparisons are higher than what the individuals see on their pay stubs.
We started with basic pay. Then, to ensure consistency and put a price on the value of government housing, we assumed all service members were receiving Basic Allowance for Housing at 2002 rates, even if they lived in on-base housing.
Next, we used standard 2002 rates for regular Basic Allowance for Subsistence – $1,996.44 a year for commissioned and warrant officers, $2,899.20 for enlisted personnel.
We also included the continental Unites States cost-of-living adjustment, if applicable; and overseas COLA for those based in Hawaii and Alaska; special pays, such as hazardous duty or flight pay; and re-enlistment and continuation bonuses, prorated annually. For example, if a member got a $15,000 re-up bonus for three years, we added $5,000 to his annual military pay.
Finally, because a large portion of military pay consists of tax-free military allowances, housing and food, our military pay figures include the average value of the military tax advantage as calculated by the Pentagon.
Troops see this advantage in the form of higher take-home pay.
Contributors to this report: Military Times staffers Karen Jowers, Vince Crawley, Deborah Funk, Laura Bailey, Bryant Jordan, C. Mark Brinkley, Christian Lowe, Gordon Lubold, Diane Tsimekles, Seena Simon, David Castellon, Bruce Rolfsen, William H. McMichael, Christopher Munsey, David Brown, John Burlage, David Craig and Chuck Vinch. Free-lance writer Tranette Ledford.