If you run a midsize company in the South Puget Sound, you sit next to one of the largest pools of transitioning military talent on the West Coast. Joint Base Lewis-McChord moves thousands of service members out of uniform every year. Most of them want to stay in the area. That is a hiring advantage most employers are leaving on the table.

Joint Base Lewis-McChord, or JBLM, sits in Pierce County between Tacoma and Olympia. It is a joint Army and Air Force base. The Army side runs I Corps, the 7th Infantry Division, the 1st Special Forces Group, and the 2nd Battalion of the 75th Ranger Regiment. The Air Force side runs the 62nd Airlift Wing. It is the only Army power-projection platform west of the Rockies, according to the base garrison.

That mix matters for you. It means JBLM puts out a steady flow of leaders, logisticians, mechanics, medics, and tech operators. This guide shows you where to find them, how to read what they did, and when to start. The goal is simple. You leave here knowing how to recruit veterans near JBLM without a big program or a recruiting agency.

Why is JBLM such a strong place to recruit veterans?

Three reasons. First, the volume. JBLM is one of the biggest installations in the country. A large base means a large number of people separating every month, all year long.

Second, they want to stay. Many service members fall in love with the Pacific Northwest while stationed here. They buy homes in Lakewood, Puyallup, Tacoma, and Spanaway. When they get out, they look for work close to home first. That gives a local employer a real edge.

Third, the talent is broad. JBLM is not one job. It is infantry leaders, supply sergeants, truck drivers, aircraft mechanics, signal and cyber operators, and combat medics. You can find people for the warehouse floor and people for the project management office in the same week.

The bigger picture backs this up. Gulf War-era II veterans, the ones who served from September 2001 to now, are the largest group of veterans at 5.6 million people, or 33 percent of all veterans. Their unemployment rate was 3.6 percent in 2025, according to the BLS Employment Situation of Veterans annual report. Most of the people leaving JBLM fall into this group. They are young, trained, and ready to work.

What skills do service members bring when they leave JBLM?

The Army and Air Force train hard skills you can use. The base is Army-heavy, so the mix here looks different from a Navy port town. These are the skill sets that show up most often near JBLM.

One note on clearances. JBLM has a lot of intelligence and special operations units. Many people who leave here hold active security clearances. If you are a defense contractor or a firm that needs cleared talent, this is a rich pool. A current clearance is the single most expensive item to wait on, so hiring someone who already has one saves you real time and money.

Where do you find separating service members near JBLM?

You do not need a booth at every job fair. Start with the channels that bring you warm, local candidates.

That last channel is the one most employers miss. Job fairs and transition offices give you people leaving right now. A candidate database gives you the people who left last month and last year too. Both matter. If you want a deeper look at the channel options, see our ranked field guide to veteran hiring channels.

Do you have to be a local employer to hire JBLM talent?

No, and this is where a lot of companies get it wrong. For hands-on roles, being close to base is a real edge. A diesel mechanic or a medic needs to show up in person. Being in Tacoma or Lakewood helps you land them.

But for desk and tech roles, remote work changes the math. Offer a remote job and you can hire a JBLM signal sergeant even if your office is in Denver or Dallas. Many people leaving the base want to stay in the Pacific Northwest. A remote role lets them keep their home and work for you.

So decide what kind of role you are filling first. If it needs hands on equipment, lean into your local edge. If it does not, open it up to remote and pull from the whole JBLM pool.

How do you read an Army rank or job code on a resume?

This is where most hiring managers freeze. A resume comes in with a string of codes and acronyms. They do not know what it means, so the resume goes to the bottom of the pile. That is a mistake, and it is fixable.

Read the work, not the code. Look at scope and outcomes. How many people did they lead? How much equipment did they own? What were they on the hook for? An Army staff sergeant often leads a team of eight to sixteen people and is responsible for millions of dollars in gear. That is real management experience.

Rank gives you a quick read on scope, not pay grade. A sergeant ran a squad. A sergeant first class ran a platoon. A captain ran a company. The higher the rank, the wider the span of control. Use it to size the role, then dig into what they actually did.

The same goes for awards and evaluations. An Army evaluation that calls someone the top performer in their unit means something. So does a coin or a commendation tied to a specific result. Ask about those in the interview. They tell you who delivered under real pressure, which is the trait you are buying.

One note on applicant tracking systems. They rank resumes, they do not reject them. A veteran resume that does not match your keywords will sink to the bottom of the list, not get thrown out. So when you write the job post, use plain words and list the real skills. That helps the right candidates rise to the top. For more on this, read how to read deployment history on a veteran resume.

Should you use SkillBridge to source JBLM talent?

Yes, and JBLM is a good place for it. SkillBridge lets a service member work at your company during their last few months of service. They stay on military pay. You get a working tryout at no payroll cost. If it works out, you make an offer.

Be clear on one point. Hosting a SkillBridge intern is not the same as a hire. The service member is still on active duty. They have to be accepted into the program with command approval first. You are not their employer during the internship. You are the host. The hire comes after, if both sides want it.

To host interns, you sign up as a SkillBridge provider through the official DoD SkillBridge program. Being near JBLM helps because the service member can commute from base. But remote SkillBridge tryouts work too for the right role. You can read more in our guide to sourcing veterans through the SkillBridge directory.

When should you start reaching out to separating service members?

Early. This is the part employers get wrong most often. The job search starts long before the separation date.

A soldier at JBLM often begins looking six months to a year out. They take transition classes. They apply for SkillBridge. They start interviewing. By the time their last day comes, the strong ones have offers in hand. If you only post a job and wait, you are fishing after the best fish are gone.

So build a steady rhythm, not a one-time push. The base separates people every single month. Set up a way to see new candidates as they enter the market, then move fast when a good one shows up. Speed wins here more than anything else.

How does BMR help you recruit veterans near JBLM?

BMR is a veteran candidate database built by veterans. Every month, more than 1,000 new veteran profiles get added. Across the platform, veterans have built more than 60,000 resumes. That is a fresh, growing pool of talent you can search.

You can filter by location, so you can pull candidates near JBLM, across Washington, or remote. You can read their background in plain language, because their resumes already translate the military terms into civilian skills. That solves the rank-and-code problem from earlier. You spend your time on fit, not on decoding acronyms.

I am Brad Tachi, a Navy veteran and the founder of BMR. I built this because I lived the messy transition myself. The veterans in this pool are looking for work right now. If you have roles to fill near JBLM, you can reach out to access the talent pool.

What is the next step?

You sit next to one of the best talent pools on the West Coast. The people leaving JBLM are trained, drug-free, used to hard standards, and ready to work. Most want to stay close to home, which means a local employer has the inside track.

Pick your channel. If you need hands-on workers, lean on your local edge and the base transition office. If you need tech, ops, or management talent, open the role to remote and search a wider pool. Either way, start before the separation date, not after.

When you are ready to see who is available near JBLM, reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool. You can search by location and skill and find the JBLM candidates who fit your open roles.