With more troops heading home, it reminded me of a long standing issue that bothers me quite a lot. The military is terrible at responding to requests for employment verification. Returning Veterans are looking for work in large numbers but are often at a disadvantage because the very organization they worked for can take several weeks (and frequently months!) to return simple data requests for employment verification. This puts veterans at a very distinct disadvantage in an already tough employment marketplace. It is understandable that part of this reason may be national security – or even privacy rights – but in the case of the military that is not the whole story. Each of the military branches are separate and maintain their own data – that seems reasonable – but then within each branch the employment data can be housed within a myriad of different departments, branches and groups. And of course – each location has its own rules, processes and forms for completing the pre-employment verification request. Employment screening services companies generally have figured out how to navigate this morass – but ask an individual employer to do it and they probably give up and hire someone else. But – even when you do find the right organization within the military – it still takes them weeks (and months) to respond to the employment verification request. Companies like Tandem Select work hard to make sure veteran records are quickly and accurately reviewed as part of the employment verification process. It is a shame that with today’s technology and tools that the US military does not centralize and standardize this process. There is a huge outpouring to help our returning vets find jobs; it seems to me that the military’s employment history process creates an avoidable obstacle to veterans competing for those jobs.