You already know veterans make strong hires. The problem is not you. The problem is the meeting where you have to convince a CFO, a VP of operations, or an owner who only cares about cost and risk. They do not want a values speech. They want to know what it costs, what it returns, and what could go wrong.

This guide gives you the pitch. Not the feel-good version. The version that wins budget and a green light.

It is built for a talent-acquisition lead or HR manager at a midsize company. You do not have a Fortune 500 veteran program or a dedicated sourcing team. You have a hiring need, a tight budget, and skeptical leadership. Here is how to build the case, bring the right data, beat the objections, and run a pilot that proves it.

Why Should Leadership See Veteran Hiring as a Business Move?

The first mistake people make is pitching it as the right thing to do. That framing loses. It sounds like a cost with no return. Leadership nods, says nice idea, and funds nothing.

Reframe it. Veteran hiring is a sourcing strategy for a talent pool most of your competitors ignore. That is the whole pitch. You are not asking for charity budget. You are pointing at qualified candidates who are easier to reach and tend to stay longer.

The labor market backs this up. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported the veteran unemployment rate at 3.5 percent for 2025. That is a tight, employed, in-demand group. These are not people who cannot find work. They are people deciding who to work for. Your job is to make your company the answer.

So lead with the business frame. You are solving a hiring problem. Veterans are the supply. Everything else in your pitch supports that one idea.

What Numbers Do You Bring to the Meeting?

Vague claims get killed in budget meetings. Bring numbers leadership already tracks. Tie veteran hiring to three costs they feel every quarter.

Turnover and Retention

Turnover is expensive. Every team you serve knows the pain of a backfill. Recruiting cost, ramp time, lost output. Veterans tend to stay. They are used to working through a commitment, not bailing at the first rough patch.

Pull your own retention data first. What is your 12-month turnover by department? What does one bad exit cost in your business? Use your real numbers, not borrowed stats. A pitch built on your own data is hard to argue with.

Time to Fill

Open roles cost money every day they stay open. If veteran sourcing fills a role two weeks faster, that is real savings. Track your average time to fill now. Use it as the baseline your pilot has to beat.

Make it concrete for leadership. Say a role drives 1,000 dollars in output per day and sits open 45 days. That is a 45,000 dollar hole. Cut the fill time to 30 days and you save 15,000 dollars on one hire. Use your real output and fill numbers, but show the math this way. A dollar figure lands harder than a percentage.

Leadership and Readiness

Many veterans ran teams in their twenties. They managed people, equipment, and risk under pressure. That maturity shows up fast in a supervisor or team-lead role. The Department of Labor makes this case directly in its Hire a Veteran resources for employers, which point to tested leadership, problem-solving, and teamwork as core reasons companies recruit veterans.

For a deeper breakdown of the specific traits to look for, send leadership our piece on the leadership skills veterans bring that few candidates can. It turns soft traits into hard hiring criteria.

How Does the Tax and Cost Math Work?

This is the part that wins CFOs. There is a federal tax credit for hiring from certain groups, and several veteran groups qualify. It is called the Work Opportunity Tax Credit, or WOTC.

The credit can reach up to 9,600 dollars for a single qualified veteran hire. The exact amount depends on the veteran group and hours worked in the first year. That is real money against a cost leadership already planned to spend.

There is a timing trap you must flag. The paperwork has a hard deadline tied to the start date, not the offer. Miss it and the credit is gone. Our Work Opportunity Tax Credit guide for employers breaks down the groups, the dollar caps, the forms, and the deadline. Read it before you put a dollar figure in your proposal.

One honesty point for your pitch: WOTC expired on December 31, 2025. It is in a gap right now while Congress decides whether to renew it. States still take applications but cannot finish them until Congress acts. In the past, Congress has brought the credit back and made it count for hires made during the gap. So file the paperwork on time anyway. Check the current status with the IRS or your state workforce agency before you promise a dollar figure to a CFO.

How Do You Beat the Objections Leadership Will Raise?

You will hear the same three pushbacks in every room. Have the answers ready before they ask. A prepared answer kills an objection. A pause feeds it.

Objection: What About Guard and Reserve Deployments?

Some leaders worry a Guard or Reserve hire will be gone for months. Two things calm this. First, deployments are far less common than people assume, and you get notice. Second, the law that protects these employees is clear and workable.

It is called USERRA, and it sets out exactly what you owe a returning service member. It is a known process, not a mystery cost. We cover it plainly in our guide to USERRA employer obligations for Guard and Reserve. Bring it so the worry has an answer.

Objection: They Have No Civilian Experience

This one comes from not knowing how to read a military resume. A veteran ran logistics, managed a maintenance shop, or led a security team. That is direct experience. It just uses different words.

The fix is training your interviewers to translate, not lowering your bar. Many veterans now write civilian-ready resumes before they ever apply, so the experience is already mapped to your roles. That worry is real only if your team has never practiced reading these resumes. Our guide on how to evaluate a veteran candidate with no civilian degree shows your team how.

Objection: Will They Fit Our Culture?

Culture-fit worry usually hides a stereotype. The honest answer is that veterans are a wide group, just like any other. Some are quiet, some are loud, some are technical, some are people-first. You hire the person, not the stereotype.

What most veterans share is comfort with structure, feedback, and a clear mission. If your culture has any of that, the fit question answers itself.

Objection: Will They Cost More to Train?

A CFO may worry a career-changer needs heavy ramp-up. In practice, the opposite often holds. Veterans are trained to learn fast and follow a process. The military runs on standard procedures, so picking up your systems is familiar ground.

Where a gap exists, it is usually a specific tool or certification, not a work-ethic problem. Budget a small amount for role-specific training and move on. That is a known, bounded cost, and it is often lower than what you spend re-recruiting after a quick quit.

What Goes in the One-Page Proposal?

Keep it to one page. Leadership reads the first line and the last line. Make both count. A long deck signals you are unsure. A tight page signals you have a plan.

Use this structure. Each section is two or three sentences, no more.

End the page with the ask, not the why. Leadership wants to know what you need and what they get back. Make it easy to say yes.

How Do You Run a Pilot That Proves It?

Do not ask for a program. Ask for a pilot. A pilot is small, cheap, and easy to approve. It also gives you the data to win the bigger budget later.

Pick one team with a real opening. Two or three hires is plenty. Set a 90-day window and one clear metric leadership cares about. Time to fill works well, so does first-90-day retention.

Start with roles where the military background maps clean. Project and program management, IT and cyber, logistics, security, and operations are strong matches. We cover field-heavy roles in our guide to recruiting veterans for skilled trades and field operations and technical roles in how to hire veterans for software and tech roles.

One more low-cost option to put in the pilot: host a SkillBridge intern. It lets a transitioning service member work at your company before separation, at no salary cost to you. Think of it as a working interview. Our guide on how to become a SkillBridge host company walks through it. You can also reach candidates before they separate, when they are easiest to engage.

Where Do You Find the Candidates for the Pilot?

A pilot needs candidates fast, or it stalls before it starts. The supply already exists. The Department of Labor connects employers to veteran talent through its employer hiring resources and American Job Centers. That is one channel.

The faster path is a pool built for exactly this. At Best Military Resume, more than 1,000 new veteran profiles get added every month. We have built over 60,000 veteran resumes, so the candidates arrive with civilian-ready experience already mapped to real roles. Your team spends less time translating and more time interviewing.

That solves the cold-start problem your pilot faces. You do not have to wait months for a pipeline. The pipeline is already here.

Make the Case, Then Prove It

The internal business case for veteran hiring is not a speech. It is a short plan with real numbers and a small ask. Frame it as a sourcing strategy. Bring your own retention and time-to-fill data. One proven way to lift that retention number is a veteran employee resource group. Put the tax math on the table. Answer the deployment, experience, and culture questions before they come up.

Then ask for a 90-day pilot, not a program. Prove it small, report the result, and let the data make your case for the bigger budget. That is how veteran hiring goes from a nice idea to a line item leadership defends.

When you are ready to fill the pilot with qualified candidates, partner with Best Military Resume to access our veteran talent pool.