You have an open job description on your desk. Maybe it is a logistics coordinator. Maybe it is a network admin. Maybe it is a project lead. You know veterans would be strong here. But how do you find the right ones?

Most recruiters start with a candidate and ask if they fit. That works backward. The better move starts with the job description itself. You break it into must-have skills. Then you find the veterans who built those skills in uniform.

This guide walks that path step by step. You will take one real job description and turn it into a short list of matching veterans. No guesswork. No hoping the right resume shows up. You drive the search from the role you actually need to fill.

Why Start From the Job Description?

The job description is the only fixed thing you have. It is what the hiring manager signed off on. It lists the work, the skills, and the bar a person has to clear. Start there and you stay anchored to a real need.

Starting from a candidate is the opposite. You see a strong resume. You try to find a slot for it. That is how good people end up in the wrong roles. It is also how recruiters waste days chasing fit that was never there.

The job-description-first method also fixes a problem unique to veterans. Their resumes often read in military terms. A recruiter who scans for civilian words alone will miss them. When you start from the skills the role needs, you learn what to search for. Then you can spot those same skills hiding under military job titles.

How Do You Break a Job Description Into Must-Have Skills?

Most job descriptions are bloated. They list 15 bullet points when the role really needs five. Your first job is to cut it down. You want the few skills that actually decide the hire.

Read the posting once. Then sort every line into one of three buckets. This keeps you from chasing nice-to-haves while the real needs slip by.

Take a logistics coordinator role as the example. The posting might run 12 bullets long. But the must-have skills boil down to a few. Plan and track shipments. Manage inventory. Use a warehouse or supply system. Lead a small team. Work to a tight deadline.

That short list is your search target. Five skills, not 12 bullets. Now you know what a strong candidate has to prove. Everything else is a bonus.

One more step. For each must-have, write it as a plain action, not a buzzword. "Manages inventory" is better than "supply chain optimization." Plain words map to what people actually did. They also map better to how a veteran describes the work on a resume.

Which Military Jobs Produce Each Skill?

Now you flip the skill into its military source. For each must-have, ask one question. Which military jobs build this skill every day? This is the step that turns a civilian job description into a veteran search.

Take the logistics example again. "Manage inventory and track shipments" is the daily work of an Army logistics specialist. The same skill lives in Navy and Marine supply roles. Run each must-have skill through this lens and you get a list of military jobs to look for.

You do not have to memorize hundreds of codes. The free O*NET Military Crosswalk lets you type a military job code or title and see the civilian work it maps to. Use it in reverse: start from the skill you need, think of the military work that builds it, then look up those codes to confirm the match.

Here is how a few common roles map back to military work. These are examples, not the only paths. A skill can come from more than one job.

Want to see how deep one of these goes? BMR keeps a full civilian career guide for each military job. The Army 92A logistics specialist guide shows the exact civilian roles that work matches. The Army 25B IT specialist guide does the same for tech roles. Use these to confirm a military job really produces the skill you need.

This is also where you should trust the work over the label. A military job code is a starting point, not a cage. Two people with the same code can have very different bullets. Read what they actually did. People grow past their first job, same as in any career.

How Do You Build the Search From Those Skills?

You now have two lists. The civilian skills the role needs. The military jobs that build them. Put them together and you have your search terms. A strong search uses both languages at once.

This matters more than it sounds. Veterans write their resumes in mixed terms. One person lists "platoon sergeant." Another lists "team lead." A third lists both. If you search only one phrasing, you miss the other people. So you search wide and use OR to catch every version.

Here is the rule that catches the most veterans. Search the military term AND the civilian term in the same query. A weak match on one wording still surfaces if it hits the other. You are casting a net, not a single hook.

Layer your terms in order of importance. Lead with the one or two must-have skills that can never be trained on the job. Add the supporting skills next. Add location and clearance last, only if the role truly needs them.

Keep the early searches loose. A tight search returns five people. A loose search returns 50, and you cut from there. It is faster to trim a long list than to widen a short one. We cover the full method in our guide to the veteran candidate search process.

If you are searching across the open web or a resume database, the same logic drives your filters. Our walkthrough on how to search a veteran resume database effectively shows you how to turn these terms into real queries.

Should You Weigh Near-Matches or Only Exact Matches?

Here is where most JD-first searches go wrong. The recruiter wants a perfect match on every skill. They throw out anyone who misses one. With veterans, that is a costly mistake.

A veteran rarely has the exact civilian title you posted. They have the skill under a different name. They may have done harder work in a tougher setting. The match is real. The words just do not line up one to one.

So you weigh the candidate, not the keyword. Split your must-have skills into two kinds. The ones that cannot be taught fast. And the ones a sharp person picks up in weeks. Score hard on the first kind. Stay open on the second.

Picture a veteran who ran supply for a 40-person unit. They tracked millions in gear with near-zero loss. Your posting asks for a named warehouse software they never touched. That is a near-match worth a call. The hard skill is there. The tool is a week of training.

Now picture the reverse. A candidate knows the exact software but never led a soul. For a role that needs floor leadership, that near-match is weaker. The software was easy. The leadership is the part you cannot teach.

This is why veterans get screened out by systems that only rank exact keywords. An applicant tracking system racks and stacks resumes by keyword fit. A strong veteran who used military wording can sink to the bottom of the list. They were never a weak fit. The words just did not match. A human read fixes what the keyword sort missed.

To go deeper on weighing a real resume, see our guide on how to evaluate a veteran's resume. It walks through what to value and what to look past.

How Do You Build the Shortlist?

You have a wide pool now. Time to narrow it to a shortlist worth interviewing. Work in passes. Each pass cuts the list and saves you time on the next.

Aim for a shortlist of five to eight people for one role. Fewer than five and you do not have real choice. More than eight and you slow yourself down. Five to eight gives you a strong field without drowning in resumes.

When you read the work history, the military job title is your guide, not your verdict. A code tells you the trade. The bullets tell you the level. Our guide on how to read a military job title on a resume shows you how to decode the line in under a minute.

Before you send the first message, run a quick screen so you do not waste anyone's time. Our recruiter checklist for screening veteran applicants gives you a fast, repeatable pass.

What Is the Difference Between This and Mapping a Career Field?

There are two ways to connect veterans to your open roles. They run in opposite directions. Knowing which one you are doing keeps your search clean.

This guide runs job-first. You start with one open job description. You break it down. Then you find the people who match it. Use this when you have a specific seat to fill right now.

The other way runs field-first. You start with a whole military career field. Then you map it to every open req it could fill. That is broader and better for planning. Our guide on how to map a military career field to your open reqs covers that direction in full.

Use both over time. Job-first for the urgent seat. Field-first when you are building a pipeline ahead of need. They feed each other.

Where Do Matching Veterans Actually Live?

You can run all of this on the open web. It works, but it is slow. You spend hours writing search strings and chasing dead profiles. There is a faster path when you start from a job description.

BMR's talent pool exists for exactly this search. Veterans build their resumes here in plain, civilian-ready language. The military-to-civilian translation is already done. So when you search by skill, the matches surface in words you recognize.

The pool also stays fresh. Over 1,000 new veteran profiles get added every month. More than 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. That means the people you find are active job-seekers, not stale profiles from three years back.

The whole point of the job-first method is speed and accuracy. You know the skills you need. The pool is full of people who built them. The translation work is done for you. You move from a job description to a shortlist in a single sitting.

When you are ready to search a pool built for this, reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. Bring the job description you started with. The matching veterans are already there, ready to find.

For more on the resources the federal government offers companies hiring veterans, see the Department of Labor's VETS employer page. It lays out the support available on the public side.