Accounting and audit firms have a hiring problem they do not talk about much. The pipeline of entry and mid-level talent is thin. Busy season burns people out. And the same firms keep fishing in the same pond of accounting grads. There is a pool sitting right next to you that most firms walk right past.

Veterans run money for the military every day. They track budgets in the millions. They reconcile property and inventory. They sit through real audits with real consequences. The discipline you want on an audit team is the discipline the military drills into people from day one.

This guide is for the midsize accounting or audit firm that wants to hire veterans but is not sure how the skills line up. If you also hire for treasury, FP&A, or banking-style roles, start with our broader guide to hiring veterans for finance and banking roles. This piece narrows in on public accounting, internal audit, and the firms that staff them.

What military jobs map to accounting and audit work?

The military does not call it accounting. It calls it comptroller, finance, disbursing, or resource management. The work underneath is the same. Here are the backgrounds that line up most cleanly with a firm's needs.

Financial management technicians. Every branch has them. They process pay, track obligations, and close out accounts. They live in ledgers and reconciliations. An Army 36B, an Air Force financial management and comptroller specialist (AFSC 6F0X1), or a Navy personnel specialist has done the daily blocking and tackling of accounting work for years.

Comptroller and budget analysts. These are the people who build and defend a budget for a unit or command. They forecast spend. They track execution against a plan. They brief leadership when the numbers move. That is FP&A work in a uniform.

Contracting and acquisition. Contracting officers and their support staff manage millions in obligations. They review cost proposals. They check invoices against contract terms. They know what a clean cost record looks like because they sign off on them.

Internal controls and audit experience. The military runs its own audits. Command financial inspections, property accountability reviews, and the push to make the services audit-ready under federal law all put service members on the other side of an audit. They know what auditors look for because they have prepared for the visit.

Does military experience make someone a CPA?

No. This is the part firms get wrong, so be clear on it up front. Running a military budget does not grant a CPA license. A veteran who managed millions in obligations still has to walk the same path to the license as any accounting grad.

That path is set by each state board. Most states have followed the traditional path of 150 semester hours of education, a pass on all four sections of the CPA exam, and a stretch of supervised experience. As of late 2025, NASBA and the AICPA added a second pathway: a bachelor's degree at 120 hours combined with two years of professional experience and passing the exam. State adoption varies, so confirm the path with the specific board where the candidate will be licensed. Military service can shorten some of it, but it does not replace it.

Here is where it gets useful for you. Many veterans use the Post-9/11 GI Bill to fund the degree path and the exam itself. The GI Bill pays tuition for an accounting degree. It also reimburses licensing and certification test fees, which can include the exam sections. So a veteran without a CPA today may be one your firm can grow into one on the government's dime, not yours.

Some state boards also give credit for military finance experience or offer expedited licensing for veterans. The rules vary by state, so confirm the path with the board where the candidate will be licensed. Do not promise a candidate a shortcut you have not checked.

Think about the math for your firm. A staff accountant who is not yet a CPA still does real work. They reconcile, they test controls, they pull support for the audit team. A veteran can do all of that on day one while they finish the exam on their own GI Bill funding. You get a productive hire now and a CPA in a year or two, without paying for the education yourself.

That changes who you can recruit. You do not have to wait for the small pool of veterans who already hold the license. You can hire the much larger pool with the experience and the discipline, then support them through the last steps. Firms that only chase ready-made CPAs leave that whole group on the table.

Why is GovCon and audit familiarity a plus?

Veterans who worked in or around government contracts bring something most accounting grads do not have. They know how federal money is tracked, spent, and audited. For a firm with government clients, that is a head start.

A veteran from a contracting or comptroller role has seen the rules in action. They know what a cost record needs to survive a review. They have dealt with the Defense Contract Audit Agency or prepared for an inspection. That context is hard to teach. It usually comes from being inside the system.

If your firm does single audits, government contract work, or compliance reviews for clients who take federal funds, this background pays off fast. The veteran already speaks the language of obligations, appropriations, and allowable costs. They are not learning it from a textbook. They lived it.

Even for firms with no government clients, the audit mindset travels. Someone who prepared their command for a financial inspection knows how to gather support, trace a number to its source, and defend it. That is the core of audit work in any sector.

There is a second reason this matters for a midsize firm. Government contract audit work is hard to staff. The clients are demanding and the rules are dense. A veteran who already knows the federal cost world can bill on that work sooner than a fresh accounting grad who has to learn it from scratch. Faster billable time on hard engagements is a real edge for a firm that takes on government clients.

How do you spot accounting fit on a military resume?

The resume is where firms lose good candidates. A veteran's resume often reads in military terms. Your job posting reads in accounting terms. The match is real, but the words do not line up on the page.

The fix is to read for the work, not the title. A "resource management NCO" is a budget analyst. A "disbursing supervisor" ran a payments operation. A "command financial specialist" did the books for a unit. The duties under the title are what you care about.

Watch how your applicant tracking system handles these resumes too. The system does not reject anyone. It racks and stacks them by keyword match. A strong veteran whose resume says "comptroller support" where your posting wants "general ledger" sinks lower in the stack. Not because they are weak. Because the words do not match. Search both languages when you pull candidates, the military term and the accounting term.

Ask one or two follow-up questions before you mark a candidate down. "Walk me through how you tracked your unit's budget" tells you more than any keyword scan. A thin-reading resume is often a compressed one, not an empty one. For a deeper walkthrough, see our guide on how to evaluate a veteran's resume.

Where do you find veteran accounting candidates?

You will not find these people by posting a job and waiting. The best veteran candidates are not refreshing job boards all day. You have to reach them where they already are.

Mix a fast channel with a slow one. The database and direct sourcing get you names now. Transition offices and VSOs build a pipeline for next quarter. For a wider menu of channels, see our guides on recruiting through base transition offices and recruiting veterans through community colleges.

How do you change your process to land them?

Finding the candidate is half the job. The other half is not losing them in your own process. A few changes make a real difference.

Brief the interviewer. Veterans tend to undersell. They say "we" when they led the work. They state results flat without dressing them up. An interviewer who is not briefed reads that as low confidence or no ownership. Tell your interviewers to ask "what was your role" and listen for the answer, not grade the modesty.

Write the posting in plain words. A veteran searching for accounting work will not type your internal job code. Use the words the job actually involves. "Reconciliation," "budget," "cost review," "audit support." Plain language pulls more of the right people.

Move fast. Good veteran candidates get multiple offers. Set a hard date for your decision and hold to it. A firm that takes three weeks to respond loses to the firm that takes three days.

How does the veteran talent pool fit your firm?

The pool of finance and accounting trained veterans is bigger than most firms realize. In 2025, veterans had a lower unemployment rate than nonveterans, so the strong ones get hired fast by employers who move. The firms that win are the ones who already know where to look.

That is the gap BMR fills. The Bureau of Labor Statistics counts millions of veterans in the workforce, and a large share carry the finance, budget, and audit backgrounds your firm needs. The hard part is reaching them before someone else does.

BMR runs a growing pool of veteran talent. Over 1,000 new veteran profiles are added every month, and more than 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. Each one is detailed and recent, so you can search for accounting, budget, comptroller, and audit backgrounds and reach the candidate directly. You skip the wait on a posting and the fee on an agency.

If your firm is staffing audit teams, cost reviews, or a staff accountant bench for busy season, the veteran pool is a channel most of your competitors have not worked yet. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and start sourcing the finance and accounting talent the military has already trained.