The job market is tight and that doesn’t make things any easier for the thousands of vets returning home and wanting to re-enter the civilian work force.

According to the Family Work Institute, vets who have served since 2001 and returned to civilian life have higher unemployment rates (men, 9.5 percent; women, 8.3 percent) than their civilian counterparts (men 8.1 percent; women, 7.7 percent).

In other words: Our youngest and most recent veterans are having a harder time finding jobs than the average civilian.

During a TODAY Money web chat on Thursday, Ken Matos, director of research at the Families and Work Institute, spoke with vets who need a job and with employers who want to hire them.

“Our conversations with employers and veteran job candidates have pointed to two big problems,” Matos explained. “First, many employers are just now building up the programs and processes to streamline the recruitment, retention, and development of veteran employees and their families. Second both civilian employers and military veterans can get tripped up by some basic communication issues around understanding the significance and relevance of military experiences to civilian workplaces.”

JT: How can we use military service as a selling point to get a job? Should I play it down or up in my resume?

Ken Matos: That's a common and important question. My answer is yes, you should mention your military service. However, how you present that information is important.

When describing your military experiences, you will want to translate your position titles and tasks into terms that employers can understand. Many military terms are daunting to civilian recruiters.

Some great free online tools for rewriting a military resume to match civilian job descriptions are available at sites like Mynextmove.org, vetsuccess.gov and military.com.  

Bobbie: I'd like to hire vets but I hear mixed things about how they do in civilian jobs. What do you think? And where do I start if I want to hire them?

Ken Matos: Some of the common areas where there can be friction is in recognizing that the military is a very different work culture than many civilian workplaces. It emphasizes teamwork and tight coordination.

Yet, a few open and supportive conversations can make a big difference in helping vets and their coworkers understand each other's perspective and smooth out those rougher interactions.

Sometimes it’s as simple as pointing out what their new priorities should be and giving them a chance to make that a reality.

Read the rest of the Q & A below:

Veterans have to get out of the military mindset if they’re going to adapt to the civilian workplace. And that means gearing up for a new outlook even before they leave the armed forces behind.

While it’s important to be proud of military service, it’s also critical for a vets career to know how to play up and play down their years serving your country, advised Randy Plunkett, the director of community and government outreach for Military.com, during our live web chat Wednesday.

“Two common mistakes transitioning military make are to not start early in transitioning and to use military jargon on their resumes,” he told readers.

One reader, Phil, a captain in the Army with a degree in history from West Point, asked Plunkett: “What kind of jobs are available for someone with my background?”

Plunkett’s response:

“Think about your ancillary experience. Not only do you have a degree, you have more than just your army job. You are a human resources manager - talking with soldiers about their careers, you supervise and manage extensive training programs, you actively participate in performance reviews, and you have extensive diversity and inclusion workplace experience.”

It’s all about taking your experience in the military, he explained, and pointing out how what you did can fit into the real work world.

“We need a fundamental change in thinking,” he stressed. “Military members have to think in terms of their big picture, large category experience, not just their classification.”

Here’s the entire Q&A with Plunkett:

 Join us next Wednesday for another live web chat with an expert that will address money or work issues.

Employers value the leadership and other characteristics associated with military duty, but they also have trouble figuring out how military experience might translate into civilian job skills, a new report finds.

The Center for a New American Security, a think tank that examines national security and defense issues, conducted in-depth interviews with representatives of 69 companies in an effort to understand why employers either hire or don’t hire veterans.

The report sheds light on why so many veterans might not be having any luck getting a job once they get out of the military.

The unemployment rate for veterans who served since Sept. 11, 2001, was 12.7 percent in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, versus the national rate of 8.2 percent.

The problem is only expected to get worse as more veterans enter the civilian job market because of drawdowns in the Middle East and the possibility of military budget tightening.

The report found that employers see good reason to hire veterans, and it’s mainly for the skills many associate with military experience. Those include their leadership and teamwork skills, dependability and maturity.

The public relations value of hiring a veteran ranked very low on the list, with only about 10 percent of the companies citing it.

But the researchers found that even those companies that are actively recruiting veterans find barriers in hiring them.

Those biggest problem: It’s difficult to figure out how to translate military skills into applicable work experience in civilian life.

The report noted that even junior officers may have had the type of experience employers are looking for, such as responsibility for a big project or management of a team of workers, but many veterans don’t know how to present their military skills to accentuate those talents.

More than half of the employers also expressed concerns about post-traumatic stress and instability after deployments.

Employers also said another problem was a mismatch between the skills veterans have and the ones they need for  civilian jobs. Another common concern was whether work would be interrupted by deployments.

The research was funded by large companies including Prudential, JPMorgan Chase and BAE Systems, although the researchers said they retained editorial control of the project.

Tip of the hat to USA Today, which earlier reported on this study.

Related:

Younger veterans want to work but face roadblocks

Many recent vets face another battle: Finding a job

Defense cutbacks worry some military families

Ralph Orlowski / Getty Images

The unemployment rate for 18- to 24-year-old veterans who have served since Sept. 11 was 30.2 percent in 2011.

The job market in this country has been gradually improving, except for some veterans: A new report finds that the situation has actually gotten a little worse for recent veterans who are trying to find work.

The unemployment rate for veterans who have served since Sept. 11 was 12.1 percent on average in 2011, according to a government report released Tuesday. That’s slightly higher than in 2010, when the average unemployment rate for the year was 11.5 percent.

That’s the opposite of how it is for nonveterans. The unemployment rate for nonveterans averaged 8.7 percent in 2011, down from 9.4 percent in 2010.

The situation is especially dismal for young vets. The unemployment rate for 18- to 24-year-old veterans who have served since Sept. 11 was 30.2 percent in 2011, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports. For 25- to 34-year-old veterans from that era it was 13 percent.

Unemployment is a particular problem for those veterans who have served since Sept. 11. The unemployment rate for all veterans, including those who served in previous conflicts, averaged 8.3 percent in 2011, down just slightly from 8.7 percent a year earlier.

Experts say young veterans are at a disadvantage in part because they have been serving in the military while other young people were going to college or a trade school and making connections in their field of choice.

These more recent vets also may be finding that the skills they learned in the military don’t translate directly into a new job because they lack the certification or training that they need to do the same job in civilian life.

In general, the unemployment rate for younger workers also has been higher than for older workers over the past few years.

Private groups, government agencies and some elected officials have been working to smooth the path for young veteran jobseekers. It’s a problem that’s expected to get worse as more troops withdraw from the Gulf and the military grapples with budget cutbacks.

“Our veterans have made sacrifices on behalf of the nation, and I ask all employers to renew their commitment to veterans, because the best way to honor our veterans is to employ them. No veteran should have to fight for a job at home after fighting to protect our nation,” Labor Secretary Hilda Solis said in statement Tuesday.

Related:

TODAY sponsors job fair for veterans

Defense cutbacks worry some military families

We are the median: Living on $50,000, military-style 

Friday is Veterans Day, and chances are some of the nation’s most recent vets are hoping it’s the day they get a job.

The unemployment rate for veterans who have served since September 2001 — referred to by the Bureau of Labor Statistics as Gulf War II-era vets — was 12.1 percent in October. That's well above the comparable, non-seasonally adjusted rate of 8.5 percent for the broader population.

It’s also higher than the overall jobless rate for all veterans, which was at 7.7 percent last month.

The unemployment rate for post-9/11 vets has bounced around dramatically over the past few years, in part because it’s a relatively small slice of the population. But it has generally been above the national average.

The 12.1 percent rate for October translates into 240,000 veterans of the most recent wars who were looking for work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Joe Sharpe, economic director of the veterans’ organization The American Legion, said the biggest issue facing recent vets is the same one facing millions of others: The weak economy.

But he said the tough job market is even worse for young veterans because they have been serving in the military rather than going to school and making professional connections.

“They’re just not as competitive that way as their peers, those that are not deployed, those that have the opportunity to network or finish (their) education or get certified in specific skills,” he said.

Sharpe would like to see ways for veterans to more easily get certified to use the skills they learned in the military, whether it’s health care or pipe fitting. He thinks that would make it easier for them to find work.

“They’ve already been trained (and they) already have a great deal of experience, so it really doesn’t make sense to spend additional money learning,” Sharpe said.

The situation could get worse in the coming months as U.S. troops pull out of Iraq and more enter civilian life.

Earlier this week, President Barack Obama pushed for tax credits for firms that hire veterans, as well as a program to give extra help to veterans seeking work.

Related:

Good Graph Friday: Going to college but never getting a diploma

Unemployment is the problem, but Americans see no clear solution

Help for veterans searching for work

The Great Recession has sometimes been called the “Mancession” for the huge numbers of men who lost their jobs during the economic downturn. That goes double for veterans, especially male veterans, who left the military since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, a new report from the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee shows.

The report, released on Memorial Day, says the unemployment rate among veterans who served on active duty since that fateful day almost 10 years ago averaged 11.5 percent in 2010, versus a jobless rate of 8.7 percent for all veterans and a 9.4 percent rate for non-vets. Bureau of Labor Statistics data for April 2011 put the unemployment rate for post-9/11 veterans at 10.9 percent, compared with the 7.7 percent rate for all veterans and 8.5 percent for non-veterans.

The congressional report also states that the current unemployment rate for post-9/11 male veterans between 25-54 years old is 9.9 percent. It’s even starker for younger male veterans between 18 to 24 years old: 26.9 percent. Four-fifths, or 81 percent, of recent veterans are male and most leave active duty during their prime working years of 25 to 54.

Why have male veterans been hit so hard by joblessness? Aside from the numbers, the report says the skills these veterans received in the military translate into experience for industries that were hit particularly hard by the Great Recession: mining, construction, manufacturing, transportation, utilities, information and professional and business services. They were less likely to be employed in sectors that added jobs during the recession such as education and health services.

In addition, many went on to work in the public sector because of programs that placed an emphasis on hiring veterans. The report says that 30 percent of recent veterans work in the public sector, versus 14.8 percent for non-veterans. “Although Post‐9/11 veterans are only slightly more likely than nonveterans to work in state or local government, ongoing budget shortfalls and a

slowdown in hiring by state and local governments could adversely affect veterans’ employment in the future,” the report says.

Tip of the hat to the New York Times “At War” blog for highlighting the report.