Veteran subreddits and Facebook groups are full of the exact people you are trying to hire. The problem is how most recruiters show up. They drop a job link, tag it with the company name, and wait. The post gets removed. The account gets flagged. And the group decides recruiters are spammers.

These communities work. But they run on different rules than a job board. You do not buy your way in. You earn your way in. Get the etiquette right and a single helpful answer can put your company in front of hundreds of veterans who trust the group more than any ad.

This guide covers how to use Reddit and Facebook veteran groups as a real sourcing channel. The well-known communities, the rules you have to respect, how to participate without getting banned, and how to keep your outreach clean under EEO law. The goal is a steady flow of veteran candidates who came to you, not a quick post that gets you blocked.

Why are veteran online communities worth a recruiter's time?

Veterans gather online in big numbers. They swap transition advice, compare job offers, vent about bad hiring processes, and ask each other where to work. That is a live talent pool talking openly about exactly what you care about.

The pool is large and doing well. In 2025 the unemployment rate for all veterans was 3.5 percent, lower than the 4.2 percent rate for nonveterans, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Low unemployment means most of the people you want are already working. You will not reach them with a job posting. You reach them where they already spend time.

There is a second reason. Trust travels inside these groups. A veteran asking "is this company a good place to work?" gets honest answers from strangers who served. If your name comes up the right way, that is worth more than any sponsored post. If it comes up the wrong way, the group remembers that too.

This channel is slow and human. It rewards patience and punishes shortcuts. That is the opposite of a job board, where you pay and post and move on. Treat it like a job board and it fails. Treat it like a room full of people you want to help, and it pays off for years.

What are the main veteran communities on Reddit and Facebook?

You do not need to be everywhere. You need to know where your candidates actually are. The communities split into a few clear types.

Reddit veteran communities

Reddit organizes around subreddits, each with its own rules and moderators. The big general ones include r/Veterans and r/VeteransBenefits, where members talk about life after service, benefits, and work. r/MilitaryFinance leans toward pay, savings, and career money decisions. There are branch-specific subs too, like r/army, r/navy, r/AirForce, and r/USMC, plus transition-focused threads inside them.

Reddit is anonymous and blunt. Members spot a sales pitch fast and downvote it into the ground. A bad post does not get ignored. It gets buried and your account gets noticed. But a genuinely useful comment can climb to the top and stay visible for a long time.

Facebook veteran groups

Facebook groups are less anonymous and more relationship-driven. The types worth knowing:

Pick two or three groups that match your roles. A logistics company should sit in supply-chain and transition groups, not a general meme page. Depth in a few right rooms beats a shallow presence in twenty. This works alongside service-branch alumni networks, which run on the same shared-tie trust.

How is this different from sourcing veterans on LinkedIn?

Recruiters already know LinkedIn. So it helps to be clear on how these channels differ, because the playbook is not the same.

LinkedIn is built for recruiting. You message a person directly. You expect a sales-style outreach. People accept that on LinkedIn because that is what the platform is for. Reddit and Facebook groups are the opposite. They are built for community, not commerce. The members did not come to be recruited.

Both channels are worth running. The smart move is to run them together. Use the LinkedIn approach for direct outreach to named people. Use Reddit and Facebook groups to build reputation and let candidates come to you. They feed each other. A veteran who saw your helpful answer in a group is far more likely to reply to your LinkedIn message later.

What are the group rules you have to respect?

Every community has rules. Some are posted. Some are just understood. Break them and you get removed, banned, or quietly ignored. Read them before you post a single word.

Reddit's main policy bans spam, which it defines partly by behavior. An account that mostly posts links to a business it benefits from gets treated as spam, even if each post looks fine. On top of that, each subreddit has its own rules. Many ban self-promotion outright. Some allow it only in a weekly thread. A few require moderator approval first.

Facebook groups work the same way. Admins set the rules, and they range from "no job posts ever" to "jobs allowed on Fridays only" to "message an admin before posting." The fastest way to look like a pro is to follow the rule you find, not the rule you wish existed.

One more rule that is rarely written but always enforced: do not pretend to be something you are not. Do not run a fake personal account. Do not hide that you work for the company. Veterans are sharp, and they will find out. The moment they catch you, your company is the bad guy in a thread hundreds of people read.

How do you participate without getting banned?

The winning move is simple to say and hard to be patient about. Help first. Sell almost never. The common ratio recruiters use is roughly nine helpful, non-promotional contributions for every one that mentions your company or a role.

Start by listening. Spend two to four weeks reading and answering questions before you ever mention that you hire. Answer the resume questions. Explain how your industry actually screens candidates. Point people to free resources, even ones that are not yours. Build a track record of being useful.

When you do post a role, make it easy to act on. Name the job in plain words, not an internal title. Give a pay range. Give the location, including whether it is remote. Veterans value straight talk, so a vague post with no pay reads like a trap. A clear post reads like respect.

Watch how you read the resumes that come back. Military experience often looks thin on paper because veterans are trained to be brief and to credit the team. A strong candidate may describe a major job in one flat line. If the resume reads light, ask one or two follow-up questions before you pass. Your applicant tracking system ranks resumes by keyword match, so a translated military resume can sink to the bottom even when the person is the best fit. The system does not reject them. It just buries them, and you have to dig.

This patience is the whole game. A recruiter who treats a group like a free billboard gets one post and a ban. A recruiter who treats it like a relationship gets a channel that sends candidates for years. The difference is whether you are willing to give before you ask.

How do you keep online outreach EEO-safe?

Sourcing veterans is legal and encouraged. You are allowed to recruit in veteran communities, attend veteran events, and run outreach aimed at finding veteran talent. The line is between reaching more people and excluding people.

Targeting a veteran group to grow your applicant pool is fine. Refusing to consider a candidate because of their status, age, gender, disability, or other protected traits is not. The rule is simple in spirit. Use these channels to reach more veterans. Never use them to screen anyone out.

The same care applies to what you post and ask. Do not write a role that only a veteran could fill unless the law allows that specific preference. Do not ask in a public thread about someone's discharge status, disability rating, or medical history. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission publishes employer guidance on recruiting and hiring veterans, and federal contractors carry added duties under VEVRAA tracked by the Department of Labor VETS office.

One more clean habit. Keep your outreach the same for everyone in the group. If you offer to review resumes, offer it to all who ask. If you point people to a job, point everyone to the same job on the same terms. Even treatment in a public space is both fair and the easiest record to defend later. For the full picture, see how to source veterans without violating EEO rules.

How does this channel fit your wider sourcing plan?

Online communities are one channel, not the whole plan. They are slow to warm up and they do not fill an urgent req this week. Their strength is steady, trust-rich pipeline over months. So pair them with faster sources.

The simple model is to run two speeds at once. The slow, warm channel is your presence in Reddit and Facebook groups, building reputation. The fast channel is a ready pool of veteran candidates you can search the day a req opens. One builds trust over time. The other gives you people now.

That fast channel is where Best Military Resume fits. Veterans build and update their profiles on the platform constantly, with over 1,000 new profiles added every month and more than 60,000 resumes built to date. So while your group presence grows over weeks, you can search a fresh, growing pool of veteran candidates the moment a role opens. Posting in a group is not a sourcing strategy on its own, as covered in why posting a job is not a sourcing strategy.

If you want to compare this channel against your other options, the ranked field guide to veteran hiring channels lays out the trade-offs. And once a candidate raises their hand in a group, treat them well. Read how to contact a veteran candidate directly so the first message lands.

Start with one room and a candidate pool

You do not need a big campaign. Pick one or two veteran groups that match your roles. Join with a real account that shows where you work. Read the rules. Then spend a few weeks just being useful before you mention a single job. That is the whole on-ramp.

While that reputation builds, do not leave your open reqs waiting. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and search candidates who are ready now. The slow channel earns you trust. The pool fills the seat. Run both and your veteran hiring stops depending on luck.