You have open roles that stay open too long. A control room seat. A field tech slot. A power generation tech. A few apprentice lineman spots. The civilian applicant pool is thin. The people who do apply often need months of training before they touch live gear.

Veterans solve part of this problem fast. The military runs on power plants, electrical systems, and rotating machinery that cannot fail. Sailors stand watch on shipboard reactors. Soldiers keep generators running in the field. Airmen run power production on the flight line. These people already work safely around high voltage and hot equipment.

This guide is for midsize energy and utility employers. Power generation. Transmission and distribution. Water and wastewater. Plant operations. You do not need a giant veteran hiring program to start. You need to know which military roles map to your jobs, where to find these candidates, and how to read a military background the right way.

Why Do Veterans Fit Energy and Utility Roles So Well?

Think about what your plant or field crew needs. Someone who shows up. Someone who follows a procedure to the letter. Someone who stays calm when an alarm goes off. Someone who treats safety as the job, not a poster on the wall.

That is daily life in the military. A sailor in an engine room does not get to skip a step. A soldier on a generator does not get to wing it. The cost of a mistake is real. So the habits get burned in early.

Energy work runs on those same habits. Lockout and tagout. Permit-required confined space. Switching orders. Round sheets. Veterans already live inside this kind of structure. They do not see procedures as red tape. They see them as the reason everyone goes home.

There is one more fit that energy employers undervalue. Many veterans hold or held a security clearance. Power and water are critical infrastructure. A candidate who already passed a federal background check is a candidate who clears your own screening with no surprises.

Which Military Jobs Map to Energy and Utility Work?

This is the part most hiring teams get wrong. They see a military code like EM or 91D and skip past it. That code is a direct line to your open roles. Below is a starting map. Treat it as a guide, not a fixed rule. Two people with the same code can have very different depth.

Power Generation and Plant Operations

• Navy Machinist's Mate: runs steam plants, pumps, valves, and rotating machinery. Some hold nuclear training. See the Navy Machinist's Mate career guide for the full skill set.
• Navy Gas Turbine Systems Technician: operates and maintains gas turbine engines and the controls around them. The Gas Turbine Systems Technician guide maps the mechanical side.
• Air Force Electrical Power Production: installs and runs generators and power plants on base. See the Electrical Power Production career guide.
• Army Power Generation Equipment Repairer: maintains and repairs field generators and power systems. The 91D career guide has the detail.

Electrical, Transmission, and Distribution

• Navy Electrician's Mate: runs and repairs shipboard electrical distribution, switchgear, and motors. The Electrician's Mate career guide covers it.
• Air Force Electrical Systems: installs and maintains facility power distribution and high-voltage systems. See the Electrical Systems career guide.
• Marine Corps Electrician: installs and repairs interior and exterior electrical systems. The 1141 Electrician guide has more.

Water, Wastewater, and Field Utilities

• Army Utilities Equipment Repairer: services water treatment, heating, and air conditioning gear. See the 91C career guide.

Nuclear utilities have a special pool to think about. The Navy nuclear pipeline trains machinist's mates, electrician's mates, and electronics technicians to operate and maintain reactor plants. You can read more about that pipeline on the Navy science and nuclear careers page. These sailors run real reactors at sea before age 25. For a commercial nuclear plant, that background is gold.

How Do You Read a Military Resume for Energy Fit?

Read the duties, not the code. A military code tells you the field. The duty bullets tell you the depth. That is where the real signal lives.

Look for the verbs that match your work. Operated. Maintained. Troubleshot. Aligned. Tagged out. Stood watch. Supervised. Those words show hands-on time on real equipment. A candidate who "stood watch on a steam plant" ran live operations under pressure. That is a plant operator in training.

Watch for voltage levels and equipment names. Terms like 4160V, switchgear, motor control centers, and bus tie breakers tell you this person worked medium voltage. Terms like turbine, condenser, feed pump, and boiler tell you steam plant time. These are the same systems your plant runs.

One habit to plan for. Veterans tend to undersell. They will write "assisted with" when they actually led. They give credit to the team out of reflex. In the interview, dig past the humble phrasing. Ask who made the call when the alarm went off. The honest answer is often "I did."

Where Do You Find Veteran Energy Candidates?

You do not have to wait for them to find your job board. The best veteran candidates can be sourced before they even separate. Here is where to look.

DoD SkillBridge. SkillBridge lets a service member work at your company for their last few months in uniform. The military keeps paying them. You get a months-long working interview at no payroll cost. For a plant or field role, that ramp time is exactly what you want. Learn more at the official DoD SkillBridge site, and read our guide on how to become a SkillBridge host company.

Reach them before separation. A sailor leaving the nuclear program starts looking six to twelve months out. If you wait until they hit the open market, you compete with every utility in the country. Build the pipeline early. Our guide on how to hire transitioning service members before separation walks through the timing.

Base transition offices and American Job Centers. Every installation runs a transition program. Many will post your roles or host an employer day. This is free reach into a stream of people leaving exactly the jobs you want to fill.

The BMR talent pool. Best Military Resume adds over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month. Many come straight from power, electrical, and machinery fields. These are candidates who already wrote out their military experience in plain civilian language. You can reach this pool through our partner program.

What About Certifications, Licenses, and Clearances?

Energy work has gates. Some roles need a state license. Some need a certification. A veteran does not always walk in holding the civilian version of what they did in uniform. Plan for that gap the same way you plan a normal req.

A Navy nuclear electrician's mate ran reactor plant electrical systems. But that does not auto-grant a civilian journeyman electrician license or an NRC reactor operator license. The knowledge is there. The civilian paperwork is not. Do not assume the license transfers.

You have three smart ways to handle the gap.

Hire into roles that need no civilian license first. Plant operator trainee. Maintenance tech. Field tech. Auxiliary operator. These let a veteran start day one and grow into the licensed seat. They are billing and producing while they study.

Use the credit they earned. Military training often counts toward civilian requirements. Many electrical apprenticeship programs grant hours for military electrical work. Some states give veterans a faster path to operator and license exams. Ask the candidate. Many already looked into it.

Sponsor the cert as part of the offer. A few weeks of exam prep and a test fee costs far less than a req that sits open for months. Offer to cover the water or wastewater operator certification, the journeyman exam, or the NERC system operator certification. It is one of the strongest ways to win and keep a strong candidate.

And do not overlook the clearance. If a veteran held a clearance, your background check is a known quantity. For a job at a power plant or a control center, that saves time and removes risk.

How Should You Interview a Veteran for an Energy Role?

A standard interview can misread a strong veteran. They speak in acronyms. They give credit to the unit. They will not brag about the night they saved the plant. Adjust your questions so the real experience comes out.

Ask hands-on questions. "Walk me through how you aligned a pump." "What did your morning rounds look like?" "Tell me about a time a system tripped on your watch." These pull out real depth fast. A poser cannot fake the answer. A real operator lights up.

Then ask the follow-up that breaks the humble habit. "And who decided what to do next?" Veterans default to team credit. The follow-up lets them tell you they were the one making the call. For a deeper script, see our guide on how to interview a veteran candidate the right way.

Do not screen out a strong candidate for lacking a four-year degree. Many of these roles never needed one. The military training pipeline is long, hard, and selective. Judge the capability, not the diploma. Our guide on how to evaluate a veteran candidate with no civilian degree shows how.

What Is the Payoff for Your Plant?

The numbers tell the story. The energy workforce is aging out. Many skilled roles are losing people faster than the schools replace them.

Power plant operators, distributors, and dispatchers earn a median of $103,600 a year, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. About 3,800 of those seats open every year, mostly from retirements. Stationary engineers and boiler operators run a median of $75,190. Nuclear technicians sit at a median of $104,240. These are good, hard-to-fill jobs.

Line work is growing on top of the retirements. Electrical power-line installers and repairers earn a median of $92,560 and the field is projected to grow 7 percent through 2034, much faster than average, per BLS data. About 10,700 of those openings show up each year. The pool of trained applicants is not keeping pace.

Veterans help close that gap. They show up trained on the habits that matter. They ramp faster on the gear. They tend to stay. For the full business case, read the ROI of hiring veterans and the leadership skills veterans bring.

How Do You Lower the Cost of the Hire?

The federal government will help pay for it. The Work Opportunity Tax Credit gives employers a credit for hiring from certain veteran groups. The credit can be worth thousands per qualified hire. For a plant filling several roles a year, that adds up fast.

You can read the official program details from the Department of Labor Veterans' Employment and Training Service. We also break down the steps in our WOTC employer guide. The forms are simple. The savings are real.

Want the wider playbook? See a full veteran recruiting strategy. And if you hire across more than one function, our guide on hiring veterans for finance and banking roles covers a very different vertical with the same approach.

Where Should You Start?

You do not need a big program to make this work. Start with one open role. Map it to one or two military fields. Then find the people.

Best Military Resume has helped build over 60,000 resumes and adds more than 1,000 new veteran profiles every month. Many of those candidates come from the exact power, electrical, and machinery fields your plant needs. They have already translated their military work into plain civilian language, so you can read it fast.

Ready to reach veteran candidates for your energy and utility roles? Partner with us to access the BMR talent pool. Start with one role. Fill it with someone who already knows how to keep the power on.