San Diego sits on top of one of the deepest pools of separating service members in the country. Naval Base San Diego is the largest surface-ship homeport on the West Coast. Add NAS North Island, MCRD San Diego, MCAS Miramar, and Camp Pendleton just up the road. Thousands of sailors and Marines walk out of those gates every year and look for their next job.

If you run hiring for a midsize company in Southern California, that is your local talent pool. Most employers never tap it. They post a role on a job board and wait. The people leaving these bases are not searching the same way civilians do. You have to go where they are.

This guide breaks down how to recruit veterans near San Diego's Navy and Marine bases. Which bases to focus on. Which channels actually reach people before they sign somewhere else. And how to set up your hiring so a sailor or Marine picks you over the next offer. The tactics here are built for a hiring manager or talent lead at a company without a dedicated military-recruiting team.

Why is San Diego such a strong veteran hiring market?

San Diego is a Navy and Marine town first. That shapes who you will meet. The talent leans heavy toward surface Navy ratings, Marine ground and aviation maintenance, and Fleet Marine Force corpsmen. You will see fewer Army and Air Force backgrounds here than you would near a joint base.

That concentration is an advantage. If your roles touch ship systems, heavy equipment, electronics, logistics, aviation maintenance, security, or emergency medical work, the local supply runs deep. You are not fishing in a mixed pond. You are next to a steady stream of people trained in those exact fields.

The other thing that makes this market strong is timing. Service members near these bases start their transition months before they separate. They are allowed to job-hunt while still in uniform. A company that shows up during that window gets first look. The company that waits until the person is fully separated is already late.

The takeaway is simple. This is a low-unemployment, fast-moving group. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, that 3.4% rate barely moved over the year. Good people get picked up quickly. Speed matters more here than almost anywhere.

Which San Diego bases should you focus on?

You do not need to cover every gate. Pick the bases that match your roles. Each one feeds a different kind of talent. Here is how the main installations break down.

Camp Pendleton sits about an hour north, near Oceanside. Do not skip it because of the drive. Many Marines leaving Pendleton want to stay in the region. A remote or north-county role can pull from that base even if your office is downtown.

Match the base to the work. A diesel fleet, a manufacturing line, or a facilities team should look hard at Pendleton and the surface fleet. An aviation MRO shop should focus on North Island and Miramar. Pick two bases to start. Going deep on two beats going shallow on five.

What channels reach San Diego veterans before they separate?

The job board is the worst place to find these people. By the time someone is scrolling boards, they have often already been talking to other companies. You want to reach them earlier. Four channels do that well in San Diego.

Base transition offices

Every base runs a transition program for departing members. The Navy and Marine Corps versions help people build resumes and find work. These offices welcome local employers who want to share real openings. They are a direct line to people in their final months of service.

Reach out to the Transition Assistance Program staff at the base that matches your roles. Ask how local employers post jobs or join hiring events. We cover this channel in depth in our guide on how to recruit veterans through base TAP offices. The San Diego bases run some of the busiest transition programs in the country.

SkillBridge host programs

SkillBridge lets service members work at a civilian company during their last months in uniform. The military keeps paying them. You get a working tryout at no payroll cost, and they get real civilian experience. It is one of the strongest ways to meet San Diego talent before they hit the open market.

You apply to become a host on the official DoD SkillBridge site. With so many separating members in the region, San Diego is a prime market for hosting. A SkillBridge intern is not yet your hire. The offer comes later, once they separate. But you get months to see the person work before you decide.

Military spouse networks

San Diego has a huge military spouse population. Spouses are part of your reach for two reasons. Many are strong candidates themselves. And a spouse often points you to a separating service member in the household. It is a warm-referral channel that most employers ignore.

Local spouse clubs, base family readiness groups, and online groups are where this happens. We break down the full play in our guide on how to recruit veterans through spouse networks.

State and county employment offices

California runs veteran employment services through its workforce system. These offices know the local labor market and connect employers to veteran job seekers for free. They are a low-cost way to add reach in San Diego County. Our guide on using state veteran employment offices walks through how to plug in.

How do you translate Navy and Marine skills to your roles?

The biggest reason employers miss good San Diego candidates is the resume. A sailor or Marine describes their work in military terms. A civilian manager skims it and sees nothing they recognize. The skills are there. The words are not.

Take a surface Navy gas turbine technician. On paper they look like a job title nobody outside the fleet knows. In practice they ran complex propulsion machinery, troubleshot under pressure, and led a team through tight maintenance schedules. That is a maintenance lead, a facilities tech, or a field service engineer. You just have to read past the rating name.

Train your hiring team to read for the work, not the job code. Better yet, ask candidates to translate it for you. When you post a role, say plainly that you welcome veteran applicants and that they should describe their experience in civilian terms. A small note like that pulls in people who would otherwise screen themselves out.

Most applicant tracking systems rack and stack resumes by keyword match. A military resume full of acronyms ranks low and sinks to the bottom of the list. It does not get rejected. It just never surfaces to the top. The fix is a resume written in civilian language with the right keywords. That is exactly the problem BMR solves on the candidate side.

How do you set up your hiring to win these candidates?

Reaching San Diego veterans is half the job. The other half is making it easy for them to say yes. A few changes to how you hire will move your close rate.

One more point on the legal side. You can welcome and target veteran applicants. You cannot screen people out based on protected status. The line is reach more, exclude no one. If you tie veteran hiring to tax credits or set formal goals, loop in your HR or legal team. This is general guidance, not legal advice. The federal employer resources at the Department of Labor VETS office are a good starting point.

Which roles fit San Diego's Navy and Marine talent?

The fastest hires come from matching your open roles to what these bases actually train. You do not need a perfect overlap. You need a candidate whose military work maps cleanly onto the job. Here is where the San Diego pool runs deepest.

A Marine sergeant who led a platoon ran people, gear, and missions on a tight clock. That is a shift supervisor or an operations lead. A Navy logistics specialist tracked parts and supply across a ship. That is inventory and supply chain work. Look for the function, not the title.

One word of caution on the medical side. A Navy corpsman has real emergency care experience. But a civilian clinical job often needs a state license or certification the military does not hand out directly. The skill is there. The paperwork may not be yet. Plan to support the credential step rather than rule the person out.

How does BMR help you reach San Diego veterans?

Showing up at the bases takes time. Relationships with transition offices, SkillBridge cohorts, and spouse groups pay off, but they build over months. While you grow those, you can reach veteran candidates right now through BMR's talent pool.

BMR adds over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month. These are service members and veterans actively building resumes and looking for civilian work. Many are in or near transition hubs like San Diego. The platform has produced more than 60,000 resumes, which means candidates show up already translated into civilian language and ready to read.

The same approach works in other Navy towns. If you also hire on the East Coast, our guide on how to recruit veterans near Norfolk's naval station covers that market. And if your budget is tight, the free and low-cost moves in our guide on how to hire veterans with no recruiting budget apply just as well in San Diego.

I am a Navy veteran. I built BMR after my own messy transition out of the fleet. The hardest part for most of the people I work with is not a lack of skill. It is getting a civilian employer to see the skill through the military words. San Diego is full of that talent. The employers who learn to read it win.

Ready to reach veteran candidates near San Diego's bases? Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and start building your San Diego pipeline today.