Fort Benning sits right next to Columbus, Georgia. It went by Fort Moore from 2023 to 2025. In March 2025 the Army restored the Fort Benning name. Today it honors Cpl. Fred G. Benning, a World War I Soldier. Most people in town still say both names. Your search ads and job posts should too.

This post is the home of the Maneuver Center of Excellence. That means the Infantry School, the Armor School, and the Airborne and Ranger Training Brigade. The 75th Ranger Regiment is here. So is the Army Marksmanship Unit. It is one of the largest posts in the country. A lot of disciplined, trained people walk off it every year.

If you run a midsize company in or near Columbus, this is a hiring edge. You do not need a national veteran program to use it. You need to know what these candidates can do and how to reach them before they sign somewhere else. That is what this guide covers.

Why does Fort Benning matter for local hiring?

Fort Benning is one of the biggest installations in the country. It sits right on the Georgia and Alabama line, next to Columbus. The base supports more than 120,000 people each day. That includes Soldiers, families, retirees, and civilian workers.

Columbus is one of the largest cities in Georgia. The base is the anchor of the whole region. When Soldiers leave the Army here, many of them stay. They bought a house. Their spouse has a job in town. Their kids are in local schools. They want to keep their roots.

That is your opening. You have a steady stream of trained people who want to work close to home. The latest national numbers back this up. In 2025, the jobless rate for all veterans was 3.5 percent, lower than the 4.2 percent rate for nonveterans. Veterans want to work. Near a base this size, they are right in your backyard.

You do not have to compete with big defense primes for all of them. Plenty of these folks do not want a clearance job or a contractor role. They want a good employer with a clear path. A midsize company can win that fight.

What kind of talent comes off this post?

The Maneuver Center of Excellence trains the Army's ground combat force. So a lot of the talent here started in Infantry, Armor, or Ranger roles. That scares some hiring managers. It should not.

Combat-arms training builds skills you pay good money for. Leading people under stress. Planning a mission down to the minute. Maintaining costly equipment. Training new people and holding a standard. A 23-year-old who led a squad has run a team that civilians twice his age have not.

The base is not only trigger-pullers, though. A post this big runs like a small city. It needs every support job you can name.

The lesson is simple. Read the work on the resume, not the unit name. An Infantry sergeant may have spent two years running a supply room or a training cycle. Our guide on reading combat arms experience on a resume breaks down how to find the skills under the job title.

How do you read a Fort Benning resume?

A military resume can look foreign at first. The codes and acronyms hide the work. Your job is to translate, not to guess. Look for what the person owned, led, and was held accountable for.

Here is a real-world example. A candidate lists "11B Infantry Squad Leader, 1-19th Infantry, Fort Benning." That means very little to most hiring teams. Now read what is under it. Same person, plain language.

That is a team lead with a clean record on people and property. The Army taught him to plan, brief, and check the work. You would pay to train that in a new hire. He shows up with it.

If you want more on this, our piece on what a veteran's service record tells you walks through the signals worth weighing. And when you read past the polish on a military evaluation, our guide on reading military performance evaluations helps a lot.

Will an ATS hide these candidates from you?

This is a real risk and worth a minute. Your applicant tracking system does not throw a veteran's resume away. It ranks resumes by keyword match. A military resume full of raw codes can rank low. It sinks to the bottom and never surfaces to your screen.

So a great candidate can apply and look invisible. The fix is to search both languages. The military term and the civilian term.

Train your recruiters to read for the work, not the keyword. Better yet, source these people before they ever hit your ATS. More on that below.

How do you reach them before they sign elsewhere?

Timing is everything near a base. The best people get scooped up early. A Soldier starts looking 6 to 12 months before they get out. If you wait for them to apply, you are late.

Here is a simple plan that works for a midsize team in the Columbus area.

A quick word on SkillBridge, because people get it wrong. SkillBridge is a Department of Defense program. The Soldier works at your company full-time while the military keeps paying their salary. It is a tryout, not a hire. You make the job offer after they separate, not during the program. It is a low-risk way to test a candidate and lock them in early.

For more on the early-pipeline play, read our guide on sourcing veterans before their separation date.

Why can a midsize company win here?

You might think the big defense firms take all the talent. They do not. Many separating Soldiers want out of that world. They want normal work, a real boss, and a clear path up.

A midsize company has things a giant does not. You move fast. You can make an offer in a week, not two months. You give people real ownership early. A veteran who ran a team at 24 does not want to be a number in a 50,000-person org.

One more thing to weigh. Ranks do not map cleanly to civilian titles. An E-7 is not the same as an O-3, and neither is the same as a manager at your shop. Read the scope of the work instead. Our guide on comparing officer and enlisted experience helps you put two strong candidates side by side.

How do you keep a Fort Benning hire?

Getting the offer signed is half the job. Keeping the person is the other half. Veterans leave a job fast when the work is fuzzy or the promises were fake. They are used to a clear mission.

The first 90 days set the tone. Give them a real plan, a real manager, and a real win to chase. Do not park them. They will smell it.

A simple onboarding plan goes a long way. Our guide on using a 30-60-90 plan to onboard a veteran manager lays out a clean start. And our piece on keeping a veteran new hire past the one-year mark covers what makes them stay.

What if the candidate is "just combat arms"?

This is the biggest worry near a Maneuver post. A hiring manager sees Infantry or Armor and assumes the person only knows how to fight. That assumption costs you good people.

Combat-arms Soldiers run complex operations every day. They plan, brief, and rehearse a mission. They manage gear, ammo, and a budget of equipment. They lead people who are tired, scared, and far from home. They write reports and brief senior leaders. That is project work under pressure.

Think about what a squad leader actually does in a week. He gets a task with a deadline. He breaks it into steps. He assigns people, checks the gear, and runs a rehearsal. He reports up and adjusts when the plan breaks. Swap the words and that is an operations role at your company.

So do not screen these candidates out on the job title alone. Ask better questions in the interview. "Tell me about a time you ran a team through a hard task." "How did you train a new person to a standard?" The answers will surprise you.

What mistakes do local employers make?

Most hiring misses near a base come from a few habits. Fix these and your offer rate climbs. None of them cost money. They cost a little attention.

Where does this fit with other base regions?

Fort Benning is one of several Army hubs worth a local hiring plan. If your company has sites in more than one of these regions, the playbook is the same. Read the work, move fast, build a pipeline.

If you hire in other Army towns, these guides use the same approach. See our guide on recruiting near Fort Campbell, on hiring in El Paso near Fort Bliss, and on recruiting near Fort Hood. Same talent type, same strategy, different town.

How do you start hiring Fort Benning veterans?

You do not need a national program to do this. You need a steady source of candidates and a fast process. The talent is already near you. The job is to find it and treat it right.

Best Military Resume gives you a pool of veterans and military spouses who are ready to work. There are over 1,000 new profiles added every month, and more than 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. These are people who have already translated their service into civilian terms. You skip the hard part of reading the code.

If you want to hire near Columbus, this is the fast lane. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and start building your pipeline today.

Brad Tachi, Founder of Best Military Resume