Help desk seats sit open for weeks. Your night shift NOC needs another set of hands. A field tech just gave notice. If you run a managed service provider, you already know the hardest part of the business is staffing the work after you win the contract. Winning it is the easy part.

Veterans are one of the best-fit talent pools an MSP can tap, and most MSPs walk right past them. The reason is simple. A military resume does not say "help desk" or "NOC." It says things like 25B, IT2, or 3D0X2. So the resume gets skipped, even when the person behind it ran a network operations floor at 22.

This guide is for the owner or the recruiter at a midsize MSP. Not a Fortune 500 with a veteran hiring program already in place. The kind of shop with 20 to 200 people and real seats to fill. We will cover which military backgrounds map to which MSP roles, how the certs line up, and how to find these people before your competitor does.

Why are veterans a strong fit for MSP work?

An MSP lives and dies on uptime, ticket discipline, and staying calm when a client is down. The military trains exactly that. A signal soldier or a Navy IT does not get to walk away when the network drops at 0200. They fix it.

Think about what an MSP actually needs day to day. Someone who shows up on time. Someone who follows a runbook but can also troubleshoot when the runbook runs out. Someone who can talk to a stressed client without making it worse. Military IT folks do all of that for years before they ever hit the civilian market.

They also come in already cleared to handle access. Many veterans held security clearances and worked inside strict change-control rules. For an MSP serving regulated clients, that habit is gold. They document. They follow process. They do not freelance on a production system.

One more thing. Tier 1 and Tier 2 turnover is the quiet killer in this industry. Veterans tend to stay longer when the work has structure and a path up. That stability alone can change your margins.

How do military jobs map to MSP roles?

This is where most MSPs lose the candidate. The military job code looks foreign, so the resume gets passed over. But the work behind the code is often a near match for your open seat. This is how the common ones line up.

Help desk and service desk (Tier 1 and Tier 2)

Look for Army 25B (Information Technology Specialist) and 25U (Signal Operations Support Specialist). On the Navy side, look for IT (Information Systems Technician). Air Force 3D0X2 (Cyber Systems Operations) and 3D1X1 fit here too. Marines have the 06xx field, like 0651 and 0671.

These folks already do user support, account setup, password resets, ticket triage, and basic network fixes. They worked a queue. They escalated when they had to. That is your service desk, day one.

Network Operations Center (NOC)

Network and transport jobs map straight to a NOC seat. Army 25H (Network Communications Systems Specialist) lines up well. (25N was consolidated into 25H in October 2022.) Navy IT and CTN backgrounds fit. Air Force 3D1X1 (Client Systems) and cyber transport roles map here. These people monitored circuits, watched for outages, and ran shift handoffs. That is NOC work under a different name.

Field technician and onsite support

A lot of military IT is hands-on. Pulling cable, racking gear, swapping hardware, standing up comms in the field. Army 25B and 25U, Navy IT, and Air Force 3D1X1 all do this. They are comfortable on a ladder, in a closet, or under a desk. Field work does not scare them.

System and network administration

More senior military IT folks ran servers, managed Active Directory, handled patching, and owned the change process. Look for senior 25B and 25H, senior Navy IT, and Air Force 3D0X2. Cyber roles like Army 17C (Cyber Operations Specialist) and Navy CTN bring security depth on top of admin skills.

What civilian IT certs do military IT veterans already hold?

This part surprises a lot of MSP owners. Many military IT veterans already hold the same certs you ask for in your job posts. The DoD requires them.

Anyone working DoD networks has to meet a baseline certification standard. In practice that means CompTIA Security+ is everywhere in the military IT world. CompTIA A+ and Network+ are common too. So are Microsoft and Cisco certs, depending on the role.

How did they get them for free? While serving, members can use the military Credentialing Opportunities On-Line program, known as COOL, which pays for civilian certification exams. After they separate, the GI Bill can reimburse the cost of a certification exam. So a veteran often shows up with A+, Network+, and Security+ already in hand, with zero cost to you.

These are vendor-neutral, civilian certs. A Security+ earned in uniform is the exact same Security+ a civilian earns. It transfers directly. There is no "military version" to worry about.

How should you read a veteran's IT resume?

The skills are there. The wording is the gap. A military resume is written for a promotion board, not for your ATS. Your job is to read past the format.

Start by ignoring the job code on its own. Read the bullets under it. "Maintained 99.9% network availability for 1,200 users across three sites" is a NOC and sysadmin story, even if the title says 25H. The number tells you more than the code does.

Watch for scale and responsibility, not civilian keywords. A junior enlisted person who "supervised a four-person help desk and resolved 50 tickets a day" is your Tier 2 lead. They just did not call it that.

And remember how your ATS works. It ranks and stacks resumes by keyword match. It does not flatly reject them. So a strong veteran can rank low only because the resume says "tactical network" instead of "enterprise network." That is a wording gap, not a skill gap. Read the resume yourself before you write anyone off.

Where do you find veteran IT talent for an MSP?

You do not need a big budget to reach this pool. You need to go where they already are. A few channels work well for a midsize MSP.

The first channel is the fastest. Instead of waiting on a military resume to surface in your ATS, you go to a pool that is already veteran-only and search by the skills you need. For a deeper play on the toughest seats, see our guide on how to source veterans for hard-to-fill technical roles.

How do you compete for this talent as a midsize MSP?

You will not outspend a defense prime or a big cloud shop. You do not have to. Midsize MSPs win this talent on different ground.

Veterans care about a few things you can offer right now. A real path from Tier 1 to Tier 3. Cert support so they can keep growing. A team that respects how they work. And a clear scope, not chaos. Most midsize shops can promise all of that and mean it.

Move fast, too. A transitioning service member has a hard separation date. If your process drags for six weeks, they take the offer that came in first. Tighten your loop. A veteran who clears your interview should hear from you in days, not weeks.

If you want the bigger picture on tech hiring, our guide to hiring veterans for software and tech roles covers the broader playbook. For pipeline work specific to security seats, see how to build a cybersecurity veteran hiring pipeline. And if your MSP runs cloud or hosting infrastructure, the data center and cloud operations guide maps closely to NOC work.

A note on compliance

A quick word before you build your veteran pipeline. You can and should source veterans on purpose, and the Department of Labor's employer resources are a good starting point. But how you screen and select still has to follow the same fair-hiring rules as any other hire. Veteran status is a reason to reach out, not a reason to skip your normal process.

Tax credits like the Work Opportunity Tax Credit can apply to qualified veteran hires. Note that the WOTC expired at the end of 2025 and is not available for 2026 hires unless Congress renews it. It has been renewed retroactively after past lapses, so check the current status before you count on it. This is general information, not legal advice. Confirm details with your own counsel.

Where to start hiring veteran IT talent

The talent is real and it is available. The only thing standing between your open seats and a trained veteran is a resume that speaks a different language. Once you learn to read past the job code, the pool opens up fast.

BMR gives MSPs a direct line to that pool. Our database grows by more than 1,000 new veteran profiles every month, backed by over 60,000 resumes built on the platform. You search by skill, not by guessing what a job code means. That cuts your decoding work to zero.

If you have help desk, NOC, field, or sysadmin seats to fill, the fastest move is to go straight to the source. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and start matching trained IT veterans to your open roles.