Veterans Move Into Technology Jobs

January 17, 2012

By Bridget Quigg, PayScale.com

The job news for veterans returning home from Iraq and Afghanistan is anything but pleasant. Veterans have an elevated unemployment rate compared to the rest of the population, the economy is only just starting to grow again and, for many, transferring their military skills to the civilian work world proves an intimidating task. In an effort to help our returning military find work, online salary database PayScale.com posed the question, “Where do military veterans usual work after finishing their service?” The results point mostly in one direction: technology.

PayScale.com looked at many aspects of veteran employment, including the jobs vets typically choose, their earnings, the companies that hire them and the skills they most commonly possess as civilian workers. While more data from their study will be released soon, their most outstanding discovery came up in the following two points.

1. The top fifteen most common, well paid and quickly growing professions veterans choose are the following.

Do You Know What You're Worth?

Job Title	Median Pay (5-8 YE) [Annual Pay]	BLS Growth Projections (2008-2018)
All Veteran Jobs	$52,900	NA
Management Consultant	$87,000	24%
Program Manager, IT	$91,000	17%
Systems Analyst	$70,500	20%
FBI Agent	$77,600	17%
Field Service Engineer, Medical Equipment	$62,400	27%
Systems Engineer (Computer Networking / IT)	$67,300	23%
Information Technology (IT) Consultant	$74,000	20%
Intelligence Analyst	$69,500	17%
Helicopter Pilot	$58,600	19%
Network Engineer, IT	$62,500	23%
Project Manager, Construction	$66,000	17%
Technical Writer	$53,400	18%
Business Development Manager	$72,200	12%
Network Administrator, IT	$50,000	23%
HVAC Service Technician	$42,000	28%
Fireman	$41,900	19%

2. The top 10 job skills veterans report having are:

Top Skills

Emergency Room (ER)

Computer Security

Microsoft SQL Server

Electronic Troubleshooting

Security Risk Management

Security Policies and Procedures

Leadership

Cisco Networking

Contractor Management

Program Management

The common thread that PayScale found in all of their data was that veterans possess strong technical abilities, compared to the average worker, and mostly in information technology. And, fortunately, according to The PayScale Index, which tracks wage growth by job category, information technology workers are a hot commodity these days, well paid and in high demand.

With all of this data in mind, PayScale has produced its “Veterans Move into Technology” infographic. It highlights both the need to find jobs for veterans, the federal government’s efforts to support veterans and where veterans should look for work.

“A lot of times when people think of veterans they think of ground troops, they don’t think of the technical equipment that they maintain and use. This technical know-how gives vets a lot of offer in today’s work world,” says PayScale’s analytics manager and lead researcher on the study, Katie Bardaro.

See the full “Veterans Move into Technology” infographic and methodology and clicking on the image below.