You have a crane seat open. The req has been up for two months. The resumes are thin, and the operators you want already work for someone else.

There is a pool of people who spent years moving heavy loads with booms, hooks, and rigging gear. They ran those lifts under rules tighter than most jobsites. Many of them just left the military. Their qualification card did not come with them.

This guide covers how to hire veterans for crane and rigging operations. Who to look for. What they already know. What they will not have on day one. And how to write the req so you stop screening out the person you were trying to find.

A quick note on lane. This post is about mobile, crawler, tower, and boom truck work, plus the rigging and signaling around it. Container terminals are a different animal. If you run ship-to-shore gantry cranes, our ports and intermodal hiring guide is the better fit. The maritime operations guide covers the waterfront side. If most of your lifting happens inside a fab shop, read hiring veterans for welding and fabrication. This post sits under our broader guide to hiring veterans for construction roles. Start there if you staff a whole jobsite.

Why are crane and rigging seats so hard to fill?

Very little of this comes from growth. The seats open because people leave.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics calls them crane and tower operators. That is a distinct occupation inside the BLS material moving machine operators profile. The median annual wage for crane and tower operators was $66,370 in May 2024. BLS counted 42,300 of them in the entire country that year. It projects about 3 percent growth by 2034. That works out to roughly 1,300 net new jobs across ten years. Nearly every seat you fill is a backfill for someone who retired or moved on.

So you are backfilling a crew that is aging out. That is a hard spot to hire from. The people with the seat time are being chased by every shop in your market.

The seat is also safety-sensitive, which slows you down twice. You cannot rush the hire. And you cannot put a warm body in the cab to buy time.

Veterans help because that supply is fresh every month instead of picked over. Service members separate on a rolling schedule all year. A slice of them spent their whole enlistment around heavy lifts.

Which military jobs actually run cranes and rig loads?

Not every veteran is a fit here. The ones you want came out of a handful of specific jobs.

The Army 88H Cargo Specialist is the closest single match to a rigging seat. They work loads all day. The Navy Equipment Operator and the Marine 1345 Engineer Equipment Operator are your crane cab candidates. A Navy Boatswain's Mate brings deep rigging hardware knowledge, though usually not truck crane hours.

Job codes tell you the lane. They do not tell you the hours. Two people with the same code can have very different seat time. Ask.

What does a veteran already bring to a lift?

The seat time is the obvious part. The habits around the seat are worth more.

Load math. Many of these veterans have read charts for years. Weight, radius, boom length, counterweight, configuration. They know a chart is a limit, not a target.

Signals. Standard hand and radio signals are drilled hard in the military. They have worked both ends of the signal, on the ground and in the cab.

The pre-lift brief. Military crews brief before the evolution. Who does what. What could go wrong. What the abort looks like. That habit walks onto your jobsite with them.

Stop-work authority. Junior people are trained to call a stop when something looks off. They will do it on your site too. That is a feature.

Comfort in hazard-dense space. Wind, deck movement, live power, night work, other crews in the swing radius. None of that is new to them.

A documented training culture. They expect to be signed off before they touch the controls. They will not be offended by your evaluation. They will be confused if you skip it.

What will a veteran not have on day one?

Be honest about this part. It is where most hires go sideways.

OSHA 29 CFR 1926.1427 puts the duty on you. Each operator must be trained, then certified or licensed, then evaluated before running covered equipment. Four routes meet the certification part. A state or local license. An accredited testing organization. An audited employer program. Or a U.S. military qualification.

That fourth one is the trap. A military crane qualification is not portable. OSHA treats it as valid only while the person works for the military entity that issued it. So the Seabee who ran a 50-ton rough terrain crane for six years shows up with nothing. Nothing you can put in a file.

NCCCO is the accredited body most employers recognize. The letters stand for National Commission for the Certification of Crane Operators. CCO certifications run five years. Mobile crane candidates take written exams plus a practical exam. The specialty exams track the crane type.

The card is not the end of it. Some states and cities license crane operators on their own schedule. A national card may not be the whole answer where you work. And no card covers your specific makes, your load charts, or your ground conditions.

This part surprises people. Certification alone is never enough anyway. OSHA is direct about it: holding a certificate does not by itself make someone qualified. You owe an evaluation on every operator you put in a cab, veteran or not. That duty does not expire.

How do you write the req so you do not screen out a good hire?

Look at the day-one filter first. "Must hold a current NCCCO card" is an expensive line in a crane req. It removes the candidate with 2,000 hours of real seat time and no civilian card. It keeps the candidate with a card and 300 hours.

Two of the three seats on a lift crew do not need a third-party card at all.

Riggers. OSHA requires a qualified rigger for certain work. That includes when people are in the fall zone hooking or guiding a load. But per OSHA's qualified rigger fact sheet, riggers do not need an accredited-body certification. No third-party assessment either. You may use one. You do not have to.

Signal persons. Under 1926.1428, you have two options. A third party qualified evaluator, or your own qualified evaluator. Your in-house documentation is valid on your site. It just does not travel to the next employer.

So there is a practical path. Hire the veteran onto a rigging or signal seat. Their existing skill is legal to use right now. Run them through certification for the cab on your schedule. The audited employer program is one of the four routes OSHA already accepts.

While you are in the posting, add these. Name your crane types and capacities, because operators screen you the same way you screen them. Say which certifications you pay for. Say that military hours count. And list the rigging and signal seats separately, so people know there is a way in.

Our guide on writing a job description that attracts veterans goes deeper on the wording. Credentials may gate most of your roles. In that case finding veterans with specific certifications covers how to search on the credential itself.

Where do you find crane and rigging veterans?

You will not find many of these people on a general job board. They get picked up before they post.

Worth reading next. How to become a SkillBridge host company walks the setup. Setting up a registered apprenticeship covers the paperwork side, and apprenticeship pathways for the trades covers the funding.

Now the budget. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit used to offset part of the cost of a veteran hire. It expired at the end of 2025 and is not available for 2026 hires unless Congress renews it. Hires made in 2025 may still qualify. Our WOTC hiatus guide has the current picture. Confirm status with the IRS before you plan around it.

How do you screen a veteran for a lift crew?

Skip the culture-fit chat. Put them near the iron.

A yard test tells you more in 30 minutes than an hour of questions. Hand them a load chart and a real scenario from last month. Ask for the pick plan. If your insurance allows it, put them in the seat with your lead watching.

Watch for the humble "we." Military people describe crew work in the plural by habit. When someone says "we set the tower," ask what they personally did. You will often find they were the lift supervisor.

Two guides go deeper here. Screening a veteran for a safety-sensitive role covers the extra care these seats need. Our structured interview scorecard keeps the panel consistent across candidates.

How do you onboard and keep them?

The first month decides whether this hire sticks.

Give them standards on day one. Who signs off on a lift. Where the charts live. What your stop-work rule actually is in practice, not just on the poster. Veterans read a vague first week as a sign that nobody is in charge.

Pair them with a lead operator or oiler for 30 days. Document the evaluation under 1926.1427 and keep it current. That is a compliance requirement and also the fastest way to build their confidence in your gear.

Then show them the ladder. Rigger. Signal person. Oiler. Operator. Lift director or crane supervisor. People who came out of a structured promotion system want to see the next rung. If you cannot draw it, they will find a shop that can.

An NCO who ran a rigging crew is a lift supervisor in waiting. Treat them that way and they stay for years. Our 90-day onboarding plan for veteran employees lays out the schedule. Safety leadership may be part of your growth path. If so, hiring veterans for EHS and safety roles is worth a read too.

One last hiring note. The person who maintains the crane matters as much as the person who runs it. Our guide on hiring veterans for heavy equipment and diesel roles covers the mechanic side. Hiring veteran CDL drivers covers the haul crew.

What should you do first?

Start with one hire. You do not need a veteran hiring initiative or a dedicated recruiter to make this work.

Pull your open crane req. Cut the day-one certification filter and replace it with "military crane and rigging hours count, certification sponsored." Add a rigger or signal person opening under it. That gives a door to the person who is not cab-ready yet. Then decide who inside your shop will run the OSHA evaluation, because you owe one regardless.

After that it is a sourcing problem. Best Military Resume adds over 1,000 new profiles every month. The platform has built 65,000+ resumes for the military community. Equipment operators, cargo specialists, and Seabees are in there every month. Plenty of them are hunting for exactly the seat you are trying to fill.

Reach out about access to BMR's veteran talent pool and tell us what your lift crew is missing. We will point you at the backgrounds that match.