Most companies hire a military spouse by accident. Someone good applies. They move in two years. The role was never built to survive that move. So a strong hire walks, and the company calls it bad luck.

A spouse hiring program fixes that. Not a job posting. A program. It has an owner, a budget, roles built to travel, a partner network to source from, and numbers you track. That is the difference between hiring one spouse and hiring spouses on purpose for years.

This guide is for a midsize company. You do not have a giant talent team. You do not have a veteran-hiring office. You have real openings and a manager or two who can own this. That is enough to start.

One note before we begin. This post is about building the program: the structure, the policy, the partnership, the measurement. The sourcing mechanics for distributed teams live in a separate guide. I will point you there so I do not repeat it here.

Why Build a Program Instead of Just Posting a Job?

A posting catches whoever is looking that week. A program builds a pipeline you can count on. The gap matters because of one number.

The 2024 Department of Defense Survey of Active Duty Spouses put military spouse unemployment at 20%. That is not a skills problem. It is a moving problem. These are degreed, trained, experienced people who keep losing jobs every time the service member gets orders.

That same survey found 69% of spouses are in the labor force now, up from 64% in 2021. The talent is there. It wants work. It is sidelined by geography, not ability.

For a midsize employer, that math is a gift. A program lets you reach a trained pool that bigger companies fight over. You get loyalty too. Spouses who find an employer that keeps them through a move tend to stay.

A one-off hire gives you none of that. The role breaks at the next PCS. The knowledge walks out the door. You start over. A program is how you stop starting over.

Who Owns the Program and What Does Leadership Have to Sign Off On?

A program with no owner dies in a quarter. Pick one person. Give them the program as a real part of their job, not a side task they squeeze in after everything else.

The owner does not need to be senior. They need three things: time on the calendar, a small budget, and air cover from a leader who will defend the program when hiring gets tight.

That air cover is the part you cannot skip. Get one executive to sponsor it out loud. When a manager says "I just want the local candidate," the sponsor is who reminds the team why this exists.

If you need help winning that sign-off, the case is easier than people think. Walk through it in the internal business case for veteran hiring. The same playbook works for spouses: lead with turnover cost and time-to-fill, not goodwill.

Write a one-page charter. It does not need to be fancy. It needs four things on it: who owns this, what leader sponsors it, what the budget is, and what you are trying to hit this year. One page. Signed. Done.

How Do You Build a Role That Survives a PCS?

This is the part most companies get wrong. They hire a spouse into a role that was never built to move. Then they act surprised when the role cannot follow them to the next base.

A PCS-proof role is built on output, not a chair. The work gets measured by what gets done, not where the person sits or what hours they are online. If the role only works in one office, it will not survive the first set of orders.

Here is what makes a role portable.

Write a move policy into the role. Spell out what happens during a PCS. Maybe it is two weeks of light duty. Maybe it is paid moving leave. Whatever it is, decide it before the move, not during it.

Build your remote roles to cross time zones too. A spouse stationed overseas can be your morning coverage while your home team sleeps. The same trait that makes them hard to hire locally makes them valuable on a distributed team.

Where Do You Source the Spouses?

You built the program. Now you need people in it. The single biggest lever here is the Military Spouse Employment Partnership.

MSEP is a Department of Defense program that connects employers with military spouses. Since 2011 it has grown to more than 1,000 partner employers who commit to recruit, hire, promote, and keep spouses. Joining puts your jobs in front of a spouse-only audience.

And here is the part midsize employers miss. MSEP has a small-business partnership track built for companies near installations. You do not need to be a national brand to join. You can apply to become a partner as a small or midsize firm.

MSEP is the anchor, but it is not the only door. SECO and Military OneSource run spouse career programs. Spouse networks and base family centers can point candidates your way. And BMR is a direct line into the pool too. More than 1,000 new profiles get added every month, and over 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. Many of those are spouses with the exact PCS-proof skill set your roles need.

The day-to-day sourcing tactics for distributed teams are their own subject. I cover them in depth in the guide on recruiting military spouses for distributed and remote teams. Use this post to build the program. Use that one to fill it.

How Do You Read a Spouse Resume Without Punishing the Gaps?

Your program will fail at the screen if you train your team to fear gaps. A spouse resume often has them. Those gaps are PCS moves, not a lack of drive.

Teach your screeners one rule. A gap on a spouse resume is the cost of moving, not a red flag. The person who left a good job because their family got orders is showing you commitment, not flakiness.

Look at the work, not the timeline. A spouse who held a role for 18 months, moved, and found new work fast is a strong bet. They will do the same for you when the orders come.

Bake this into your hiring rubric. Write it down so every screener uses the same lens. A program without a shared rubric just spreads one manager's bias across the whole team.

The same skill applies in the interview room. Train your interviewers with the guide on how to interview a veteran candidate. The move-and-adapt story is the asset. Ask about it.

What Roles Should the Program Target?

Hire for the trait set, not the last job title. A spouse who ran a remote bookkeeping gig and an office coordinator role has the same core skill: get the work done from anywhere with little hand-holding.

These role types fit a spouse program well.

Notice these are not entry-level only. A spouse pool runs deep on project management, operations, and admin leadership. Many have run things before. They just had to restart in a new town.

Start your program with two or three role types. Prove it works. Then widen. A program that tries to fill every job at once spreads too thin and shows nothing in the first year.

How Do You Measure and Defend the Program?

This is the part that keeps the program alive past year one. If you cannot show numbers, the budget gets cut the first time the company tightens its belt.

Track a small set of metrics. Do not drown in data. Five numbers tell the whole story.

Report these once a quarter to your sponsor. Keep it to one page. The retention-through-a-PCS number is your headline. It is the proof that your PCS-proof design actually works.

Set targets you can hit. Two or three spouse hires in year one beats a big number you miss. Read the guide on realistic veteran hiring targets for how to set a number that holds up.

How Do You Keep the Spouses You Hire?

Hiring is half the program. Keeping people is the other half. A spouse who feels supported through a move becomes your most loyal employee.

Three things drive retention. Keep the role remote, even after a move. Flex hard during PCS week. And give a growth path so a portable job does not become a dead-end job.

That last one matters most. Spouses get stuck in roles that never advance because they keep moving. If your program offers a way up that follows them, you have something almost no other employer offers.

A veteran or spouse resource group helps here. It gives your military hires a place to land and a voice inside the company. The setup is covered in the guide on how to start a veteran employee resource group. The full keep-them playbook is in veteran employee retention.

For a full view of how a spouse program fits into your wider hiring motion, the veteran recruiting strategy playbook ties the pieces together. A spouse program is one strong arm of that strategy.

What Does the First 90 Days Look Like?

You do not stand up a full program overnight. You build it in stages. Here is a 90-day path a midsize team can actually run.

Ninety days gets you a real program with a couple of hires and numbers to show. That is enough to ask for more budget. Small and proven beats big and stalled every time.

Build It on Purpose

A military spouse hiring program is not a charity move. It is a smart way to reach trained, loyal people that bigger companies overlook. The 20% unemployment number is not their failure. It is your opening.

You do not need a huge team to start. You need one owner, one sponsor, a few roles built to travel, and a partner pipeline to fill them. Track five numbers. Defend the budget with retention. Grow from there.

The hardest part is the first hire. After that, the program runs on proof. Each spouse who stays through a PCS is your case for the next one.

BMR connects employers to a steady pool of veteran and spouse talent. More than 1,000 new profiles every month, with PCS-proof skill sets built for exactly this kind of program. If you want a direct line into that pool, partner with us and let us help you fill it.