SkillBridge: The Best Transition Tool in the Box

A former Navy officer, just today, published an opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal criticizing the DOD SkillBridge program as harmful to retention and a waste of money. I strongly disagree.

Challenging His Claims:

1. SkillBridge Hurts Retention As a retired officer with six years of experience assisting transitioning service members, I’ve mentored 600-700 individuals and overseen programs supporting 30,000-40,000 transitions. I engage with 8-10 transitioning service members daily and always ask, “Why are you leaving the service?” The top answers: more family time and dissatisfaction with military lifestyle. Not once have I heard, “Because I can make more money.” On the contrary, the vast majority of transitioning service members—especially mid-career enlisted personnel and officers—take an initial pay cut when moving to civilian careers. Money is rarely the driving factor. The decision to leave is being made long before exploring civilian career options.
2. The So-Called Manpower Crisis The author compares today’s officer manning levels to 2010—an unfair comparison. Back then, we were overstaffed (125-150%) due to surging forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. Entire teams of senior officers and NCOs were deployed for advisory missions that no longer exist. Additionally, Stop-Loss policies kept many from separating. Post-war force reductions are expected, not a crisis.
3. SkillBridge Is for Enlisted Only The claim that SkillBridge should be reserved exclusively for enlisted personnel is baseless. The program has always served both enlisted and officers. Of the estimated 20,000 annual participants, 75-80% are enlisted (E4-E7), with only a small fraction being senior enlisted, warrant officers, or officers. The notion that swarms of officers are racing to the exit seduced by SkillBridge and the promise of riches is a fallacy—most officers who separate from service take a pay cut.
4. SkillBridge Is Too Expensive: Regardless of your political affiliation, I think we can agree that there is enough waste in the government that meddling with people programs should not be the priority. If we are, however, to assume that the WSJ has its numbers right ($119M), that is still less than the cost of one F-22 and less that a single day of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. While the military struggles to recruit and retain talent, cutting programs like this would be a self inflicted wound, a signal that the force is generally unconcerned about you, once you have decided it is time to hang up the boots.

Bottom Line:

Transitioning from civilian life to military life can take 6 months to a year, depending on the specialty. It requires a huge physical, psychological, cultural and emotional evolution on the part of the new servicemember. Successfully making the move back to civilian life and starting a new career requires more than just a resume and a DD-214. Congress agrees, and so we have transition support programs, like DOD SkillBridge. Studies show that transitioning servicemembers who use SkillBridge in their transition, regardless of rank, have better job satisfaction, higher salaries and longer job retention. SkillBridge transitions are the most successful transitions. To lobby for less of that is pure folly.

When servicemembers have made the decision to pursue a civilian career, we invite them to visit us at www.recruitmilitary.com.

There you will find hundreds of thousands of career opportunities.... and , yes, a n extensive list of DOD SkillBridge programs.

RecruitMilitary #recruitmilitary #transitioningservicemembers #dodskillbridge Dave Schantz, DoD SkillBridge Champion