You want to hire more veterans. Good call. The return on a veteran hire is real. But "more" is not a target. It is a feeling. And feelings do not survive a budget review.

The trap is picking a number that sounds good in a press release. A vanity number. Something round and bold that nobody can actually hit. Then six months pass. The team misses it. People shrug. The whole effort quietly dies.

This guide is for any team that wants to hire veterans on purpose. No federal mandate. No regulator forcing your hand. Just a leader who decided this matters and now needs a number that is real. We will walk through how to baseline what you have, how to set a goal you can reach, how to measure it without fooling yourself, and how to keep the whole thing honest.

One thing up front. A target is only good if it leads to real hires who can do the work. Hiring for optics is worse than not setting a goal at all. We will cover how to avoid that too.

Are you a federal contractor with a legal benchmark?

First, sort out which lane you are in. It changes everything.

Some companies have a legal duty here. If you hold a federal contract above a certain size, the law sets a veteran hiring benchmark for you. You do not get to pick it. You track it, document it, and act on shortfalls. That rule comes from VEVRAA and is enforced by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs.

The national benchmark is the veteran share of the US civilian labor force. It updates every year. The current figure and effective date live on the OFCCP VEVRAA Hiring Benchmark page. Check it there. Never hardcode a number from memory, because it moves most years.

If that is you, this article is the wrong starting point. Read our guide on what regulated contractors must track instead: the OFCCP veteran hiring benchmark and what contractors track. Then come back for the voluntary goal-setting parts.

The rest of this guide is for the other group. You have no mandate. You chose to do this. That is actually a stronger spot. A goal you picked is one you will defend. A goal forced on you is one you will resent.

How do you baseline your current veteran headcount?

You cannot set a target until you know your starting point. Most teams skip this. Then they guess. Do not guess.

Step one is counting how many veterans you already employ. This is harder than it sounds. Many veterans never tell their employer they served. They were not asked. Or they were asked once on a form they forgot about. So your real number is almost always higher than your records show.

Run a clean self-ID effort. Make it voluntary and private. Tell people why you are asking. People share more when they trust the reason. Do not tie it to performance or pay. Just count.

Step two is finding your hiring rate. Of every 100 people you hired last year, how many were veterans? That percent is your baseline hire rate. It is the number you are trying to move.

Step three is checking where veterans already sit. Are they clustered in one team? Stuck at one level? Missing from leadership? A headcount number hides these gaps. Break it down by department and seniority.

What is a realistic veteran hiring target?

Now you have a baseline. Time to set the goal.

Start with a reference point, not a wish. Veterans make up about 7 percent of the US civilian population age 18 and over, per the BLS Employment Situation of Veterans report. That report also puts the 2025 veteran unemployment rate at 3.5 percent. So the talent is out there and most of it is working. You are competing for skilled people, not rescuing anyone.

That 7 percent is a fair anchor for a mature program. But it is not your year-one target. If your current hire rate is 2 percent, jumping to 7 percent in twelve months is a vanity number. You will miss it and lose the room.

Set a target you can reach this year. A good rule is to grow your veteran hire rate by a few points off your real baseline. Move from 2 percent to 4 percent. Then 4 to 6. Build a ramp, not a cliff.

Tie the target to your actual hiring volume too. A team hiring 20 people a year and a team hiring 500 cannot use the same percent the same way. With 20 hires, one veteran is 5 percent. With 500 hires, you need 25 to hit the same mark. Small teams should think in whole people, not just percents.

Pick a target by team size, not headlines

A Fortune 500 firm can run a ten-person veteran program. A midsize company cannot. So copy the math, not the brochure.

If you hire 50 people a year and 1 is a veteran, your baseline is 2 percent. A reachable first goal is 4 to 6 percent. That is 2 to 3 veteran hires. Real. Trackable. Defensible in a budget meeting. That is the whole point.

How do you measure it honestly?

A target with no measurement is just a slogan. But the wrong measurement is worse. It lets you claim a win you did not earn.

Measure the funnel, not just the finish line. Track four things at minimum:

• Veteran applicants: how many veterans applied, by self-ID.
• Veteran interviews: how many made it to a real conversation.
• Veteran hires: how many got an offer and took it.
• Veteran retention: how many are still here at 6 and 12 months.

The funnel tells you where you leak. If veterans apply but never get interviews, your screening is broken. Maybe a recruiter cannot read a military resume. Maybe a degree filter is knocking out strong people. Our guide on how to evaluate a veteran candidate with no civilian degree walks through that fix.

Set a review rhythm. Look at the numbers every quarter. Not once a year at the holiday party. Quarterly review catches a leak while you can still fix it.

Be honest about the denominator. If your total hiring dropped, your veteran percent can rise while you hired fewer veterans in raw count. Always show both the percent and the whole number. One without the other lies.

How do you avoid tokenism?

This is the part that sinks programs. Tokenism is hiring a veteran for the photo, not the work. Everyone can smell it. The veteran can smell it first.

The fix is simple to say and hard to do. Hire for capability, not for the count. The target exists to make you look harder for strong veterans. It does not exist to lower your bar.

Watch for these warning signs:

• Roles that go nowhere: you hire veterans into dead-end jobs with no path up.
• One and done: you hit the number, then stop trying.
• No support: the veteran arrives and nobody helps them land.
• Stereotype hiring: you only want veterans for security or "discipline," not for their real skills.

Veterans bring skills most candidates cannot match. They have run teams under pressure. They have owned expensive gear and missions with no room to fail. Our breakdown of leadership skills veterans bring that few candidates can shows what you are actually buying. Hire for that. The count takes care of itself.

Why should the target include retention, not just hires?

A hire is not a win until it sticks. If you hire 5 veterans and 3 leave in a year, you did not gain ground. You spent money and created churn.

So bake retention into the target from day one. Set a goal for both. Hire X veterans this year. Keep Y percent of them past 12 months. The second number protects the first.

Retention is where most programs fail quietly. A veteran joins. The place was not built for someone with their background. They feel out of place. They leave at month seven. Your headcount drops and you blame the hire. The real problem was the landing.

Two moves fix most of this. First, build a real onboarding for veteran hires. A buddy. A check-in at 30, 60, and 90 days. A clear path up. A simple way to do this is a veteran employee resource group. Our guide on how to start a veteran employee resource group covers the setup.

Second, hire earlier in the pipeline. You can meet service members before they separate through programs like SkillBridge. They train with you for free, you see the fit before you commit, and retention climbs because both sides chose with eyes open. Our guide on how to hire transitioning service members before separation shows the path.

How do you defend the target to leadership?

A target you cannot explain in a budget meeting is a target that dies. So build it to survive scrutiny.

Lead with sourcing, not charity. This is not a feel-good line item. It is a way to fill roles with proven people in a tight labor market. Frame it as a hiring strategy. Our guide on how to make the internal business case for veteran hiring gives you the full pitch.

Bring numbers leadership already tracks. Time-to-fill. Cost-per-hire. Turnover. Show how a veteran pipeline moves those. A veteran who needs less ramp time and stays longer beats a cheaper hire who churns.

Add the tax angle where it fits. Hiring certain veterans can earn a federal tax credit. The amount and the program status change, so check the detail in our Work Opportunity Tax Credit guide for hiring veterans before you put a dollar figure in a deck.

Where do you find the candidates to hit the target?

A target needs a pipeline. You cannot hire veterans you never meet. So solve the cold-start problem before you commit to a number.

Veterans are not hard to find when you know where to look. Many are already job-ready with civilian-translated resumes. They just need an employer who is paying attention.

This is where BMR fits. We give you a steady, growing pool of veteran candidates so your target is reachable, not a wish. Over 1,000 new veteran profiles get added every month. More than 60,000 resumes have been built on the platform. That is a fresh supply you can hire against quarter after quarter.

So set a real baseline. Set a target you can reach. Measure hires and retention both. Hire for skill, never for the photo. Then point your pipeline at a pool deep enough to deliver.