How to Recruit Veterans Near Fort Leonard Wood, MO

You run hiring for a company in mid-Missouri. You need skilled trades, safety people, or security staff. And you keep coming up short.

The pool feels thin out here. Waynesville, St. Robert, Rolla, Lebanon. These are not big metro markets. But you have one talent source that most employers in your shoes ignore.

That source is Fort Leonard Wood. The Army calls it the Maneuver Support Center of Excellence. Soldiers call it Fort Lost in the Woods. Either way, it trains and houses thousands of people who do exactly the work you struggle to staff.

This guide shows you how to reach them. Where they live, what skills they bring, and how to get to them before they scatter across the country after they separate.

Why is Fort Leonard Wood a skilled-trades pipeline?

Fort Leonard Wood is not a generic Army post. It has a focus. That focus matches what civilian employers in the region need.

The base runs three large training schools. Each one feeds a different kind of skilled worker into your labor market.

The U.S. Army CBRN School trains chemical, biological, and nuclear defense soldiers. The Engineer School trains combat and construction engineers. The Military Police School trains MPs. There is a fourth pillar too: protection.

Stack those up and you get a clear pattern. The talent leaving this base skews toward trades, safety, security, and heavy equipment work. Not desk jobs.

This is a real edge for a midsize employer. You are not fishing in a general pool. You are fishing where the trades talent concentrates.

Where do these veterans live near Fort Leonard Wood?

The base sits in Pulaski County in south-central Missouri. The talent does not stay locked inside the gate.

Many soldiers and their families settle in the towns right around the post. Waynesville and St. Robert are the closest. Both grew up around the base.

Then the circle widens. Rolla sits about 30 miles east and has its own engineering pull. Lebanon is to the southwest. The Lake of the Ozarks corridor draws people who want lake life after service.

Reach a bit further and you hit bigger markets. Springfield is about 90 minutes away. St. Louis is roughly two hours northeast. Some separating soldiers aim for those metros for more job options.

A lot of this talent also leaves the region after they separate. They follow family, a spouse's job, or a cheaper cost of living. That matters for how you reach them, which we get to below.

If your market stretches into Kansas or the wider region, two nearby bases feed the same kind of talent. See our guides on how to recruit veterans near Fort Riley, Kansas and how to hire veterans near Fort Leavenworth.

What civilian roles do Fort Leonard Wood veterans fill?

The skills map cleanly to jobs that local employers fight to fill. Let me show the matches.

Engineers move into construction, heavy equipment operation, project supervision, and skilled trades. A combat engineer has run bulldozers, built routes, and managed demolition under real pressure. That is a construction superintendent in the making.

Military police move into security, loss prevention, corrections, and safety roles. They are trained to make calls fast, follow procedure, and stay calm when things go wrong.

CBRN soldiers move into hazmat, industrial safety, environmental compliance, and EHS work. They handle dangerous material by the book every single day. That is gold for a plant or a manufacturer.

Drill sergeants and senior NCOs move into training, operations, and frontline supervision. They have led young teams, taught skills, and held a standard. Most companies struggle to find people who can do that.

If you hire for trades or security, two of our role guides go deeper. Read how to hire veterans for construction roles and how to hire military police veterans for security roles.

How do you read a Fort Leonard Wood resume?

Here is where most employers trip. The skills are there. The words on the resume hide them.

A soldier may list an MOS code and a string of acronyms. Your applicant tracking system reads that and racks the resume low. It does not reject it. It just sinks it down the stack where no human sees it.

So you do two things. You search for both the military words and the civilian words. And you read the actual work, not the job title.

The fix is simple. When you search a resume database, use both languages. Search "12B" and "heavy equipment." Search "31B" and "security." Search "CBRN" and "hazmat" and "safety."

Then look at the scope behind the title. A squad leader ran a team and was on the hook for their work and their safety. A platoon sergeant ran 30 or more people and millions in gear. Those are management jobs in plain clothes.

One more habit helps. Do not screen out a resume just because it lacks a civilian degree or a certification you list. Many of these skills came from months of hard training and years of real work. A combat engineer learned heavy equipment by running it, not by reading about it.

For a full method, read our guide on how to search a veteran resume database the right way.

When should you time your outreach?

Timing is the quiet lever most employers miss. A separating soldier is not job hunting on your schedule. They are on theirs.

Two windows matter. The first is the months before a soldier's separation date. The second is a PCS move, when a soldier transfers and a working spouse needs a new job.

If you wait until someone is fully separated and posted on a job board, you are late. The good ones often get scooped up first. The smarter play is to reach them while they still have a date on the calendar.

The base also runs a transition office that helps soldiers prepare for civilian work. Building a relationship there can put you in front of talent early. For the full case on early outreach, see why you should source veterans before their separation date.

Why does posting a job near the base not work?

Here is the trap. You post an opening on a job board and wait. Then you wonder why no veterans apply.

Posting is passive. It only catches people who are already looking, already on that board, and already searching your exact title. Most separating soldiers are not.

Worse, they often do not search with the words you used. You wrote "EHS Technician." They typed "safety." You wrote "Field Supervisor." They typed "operations." The two never meet.

The better move is to go to the talent. Search a database of veteran profiles. Filter by skill and location. Reach out first. We make that case in full in why posting a job is not a sourcing strategy.

How do you reach Fort Leonard Wood veterans at a distance?

This is the part that makes mid-Missouri tricky. A chunk of this talent moves away after they separate. They go where family is.

That does not mean you lose them. It means you cannot rely on a local job fair alone. You need a way to reach trained people wherever they land.

That is what a veteran resume database does. You search by skill, branch, and old duty station. You can find people who trained at Fort Leonard Wood even after they move to Springfield, St. Louis, or out of state.

The all-veteran unemployment rate was 3.5% in 2025, below the 4.2% rate for nonveterans, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics. These are not people who cannot find work. They are people who match fast when an employer reaches them with the right role.

BMR helps here. Our database keeps growing, with more than 1,000 new veteran profiles added every month and over 60,000 resumes built on the platform. You can search it by skill and location and reach the exact talent Fort Leonard Wood produces. To build a steady source instead of a one-off search, read how to build a veteran talent pipeline before reqs open.

What about SkillBridge and hiring incentives?

Two more tools can help, but read the fine print on each.

The first is SkillBridge. It lets a service member work at your company during their last months of service while the military still pays them. You get a trial run. They get civilian experience.

You can host SkillBridge interns by becoming an approved partner through the DoD SkillBridge program. Fort Leonard Wood has soldiers cycling through transition every month, so it is a steady feeder.

The second tool is the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, or WOTC. It has rewarded employers for hiring certain veterans in the past. But the rules just changed.

The credit 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 2025 hires may still qualify. Check the current status on the Department of Labor employer page before you count on it. And never hire someone just for a tax break. Hire them because they can do the job.

How a midsize employer should play this

Step back and the plan is simple. You have a base nearby that trains the exact talent you need. Most local employers ignore it. You will not.

Search for both military and civilian terms. Read the work, not the title. Reach people before they separate. And use a database to find them even after they move.

You do not need a Fortune 500 veteran program to do this. You need a focused effort and the right place to look.

Want to reach this talent now? BMR gives you access to a growing pool of veteran candidates you can search by skill and location. See how BMR helps you hire veterans, or partner with us to build a steady pipeline of mid-Missouri talent.