I think one of the unfortunate things is that most people don't understand what the military experience is, and how it might help their companies. Veterans should do a better job selling it to help bring awareness too.
Veterans often deserve some fault as well - many don't make good decisions with their life due to some desire, and end up regretting their choices. I've seen many not make every effort to set themselves up for long term success, and often shoot for & encourage short term success, even if it ends up in a long term dead end. Perhaps they are not much different than a lot of the US population in that regard, but wishing for things to be different based on past experience is not going to do anyone any good.
>Veterans should do a better job selling it to help bring awareness too.
The problem is, there is no good way to do this. A lot of large companies and banks have veteran specific programs to get us in the door, which are great. Aside from those however it's an education game, and educating your potential employer who has no idea that you just got done running a program larger than their organization won't really help.
I think a lot of combat veterans don't understand that going into the private sector after 5 or more years in the military is akin to a software developer trying to get a job on an oil-field. Outside of specific military jobs that translate perfectly - like IT and for people with more time in service to management - it's a wholesale change. From a skills perspective you are at a disadvantage from someone who has been in the industry for those 5 years. It's hard to sell the veteran specific "soft skills" that are hard to impossible to quantify.
A big struggle for me was trying to break into the investor side of the tech world coming straight out of the military. So even though I had been working for years on my startup, had a co-founder, customers and an MVP - I had absolutely no network to raise seed money. I got lucky and hooked up with an Angel group that specifically targets guys like me (Hivers & Strivers Angel fund) and it ended up working out, but even though we passed that first hurdle, since I don't have that deeper network it's still an uphill battle because I am unproven in the tech startup world and my rolodex is very limited.
Veterans often deserve some fault as well - many don't make good decisions with their life due to some desire, and end up regretting their choices. I've seen many not make every effort to set themselves up for long term success, and often shoot for & encourage short term success, even if it ends up in a long term dead end. Perhaps they are not much different than a lot of the US population in that regard, but wishing for things to be different based on past experience is not going to do anyone any good.