Most veteran hiring efforts start by accident. Someone hires one great veteran. Word spreads. A manager asks for "more like that." Then it stalls. There is no plan. No metrics. No repeatable way to find the next one.

That is normal. It is also where most teams stay for years. They never move past the accident.

This guide gives you a way to grade your own program. Five stages, six dimensions. You read each row, find where your team actually sits, and pick the next move. No theory. Just an honest mirror.

This is a self-assessment, not a playbook. If you want the step-by-step tactics for building the program, read the veteran recruiting strategy playbook. This page tells you where you are first. The playbook tells you how to climb.

What Is a Veteran Sourcing Maturity Model?

A maturity model is a ladder. Each rung is a stage. You score yourself against clear markers and find your rung. Then you know what the next rung looks like.

Software teams have used these for years. So have safety and finance teams. The idea works just as well for hiring. It turns a vague feeling ("we should hire more veterans") into a clear status ("we are at Stage 2, and Stage 3 needs a named owner").

The veteran sourcing maturity model scores your program across six things. How you find candidates. How you screen them. How you train managers. How you keep people. What you measure. And whether leadership actually backs it.

Each dimension moves at its own pace. You might be strong on sourcing but weak on retention. That is the point. The model shows you the gap, not just an average.

What Are the Five Stages of Veteran Hiring Maturity?

Here are the five stages. Read them top to bottom. Most teams land somewhere between Stage 1 and Stage 3.

Two notes before you score. First, you do not skip stages. A team at Stage 1 cannot jump to Stage 4. The work compounds. Second, most midsize companies sit at Stage 1 or 2 and think they are at Stage 3. Be honest. The honest score is the useful one.

Stage 1: Ad-hoc

You hire a veteran when one happens to apply. Nobody owns the effort. There is no veteran-specific sourcing. When a great hire works out, you cannot explain why or repeat it. This is the default for most teams.

Stage 2: Repeatable

You noticed a pattern. Maybe a referral channel works. Maybe one job board sends good people. So you keep doing it. But it lives in one person's head. If they leave, it dies.

Stage 3: Defined

Now there is a real program. Someone owns it. You have named channels. Screeners know how to read a military background. Hiring managers got a short brief. The process survives one person leaving.

Stage 4: Measured

You track the numbers. How many veterans applied. How many got hired. How long they stay. What it costs per hire. You spot what works and cut what does not. Decisions follow data, not gut feel.

Stage 5: Strategic

Veteran hiring is now part of workforce planning. Leaders bring it up in budget talks. It connects to retention goals and skills gaps. It is not a side project. It is how the company finds talent.

How Do You Score Your Program Across Six Dimensions?

The stage labels are the summary. The real work is scoring each of the six dimensions on its own. Walk through them one at a time. Mark where you sit. The lowest scores show your next move.

Dimension 1: Sourcing Channels

Where do your veteran candidates come from? At Stage 1, they come from your general applicant pool by chance. At Stage 3, you have named veteran channels. Think candidate databases, base transition offices, and hosting a DoD SkillBridge intern.

The federal Department of Labor VETS office lists employer sourcing channels and hiring resources. At Stage 4 and 5, you know which channels send people who stay, and you double down on those.

One fast win here is a candidate pool you can search. BMR adds over 1,000 new veteran profiles every month. That is a steady supply you can pull from instead of waiting for the right person to find your job post. Building this channel is covered in building a veteran talent pipeline before reqs open.

Dimension 2: Screening Capability

Can your screeners read a military resume? At Stage 1, a recruiter sees "platoon sergeant" and moves on. They miss a strong operations lead. At Stage 3, screeners know how military roles map to civilian jobs.

This is where good candidates get lost. A resume gets racked and stacked against the job. When the screener does not understand the background, a strong match sinks instead of rising to the top. Training one or two screeners to read these resumes pays off fast.

Dimension 3: Manager Training

Do your hiring managers know how to interview and onboard a veteran? At Stage 1, no. They run the same interview they always run. At Stage 3, managers get a short brief on what military experience means and how to set new hires up to stay.

This dimension drives retention more than any other. A great hire who reports to an untrained manager often leaves inside a year. The fix is small. A one-page brief and a quick conversation. More on this in training managers to retain veteran hires.

Dimension 4: Retention

Do your veteran hires stay? At Stage 1, you do not even know. At Stage 4, you track it and act on it. Retention is the dimension teams ignore the longest. They focus on getting people in the door and forget to keep them.

A veteran who leaves in eight months costs you the full hire again. Retention is cheaper than sourcing. If your sourcing is strong but your retention is weak, you are filling a bucket with a hole in it.

Dimension 5: Metrics

What do you measure? At Stage 1, nothing. At Stage 4, you track applications, hires, time to fill, retention, and cost per hire. You cannot manage what you do not measure. Pick a few numbers and watch them.

Do not boil the ocean. Start with two. Veteran hires per quarter and one-year retention. Those two tell you most of the story. The full set is in veteran hiring program metrics that matter.

Dimension 6: Executive Buy-In

Does leadership back this? At Stage 1, leaders have never heard about it. At Stage 5, it shows up in workforce planning and budget. Without buy-in, the program dies the first time budgets get tight. With it, the program gets protected.

If you need to win that buy-in, lead with the business case, not the feel-good story. The argument that works is in making the internal business case for veteran hiring.

What Does Each Stage Look Like in Practice?

Scores are abstract until you see them in real life. Here is how each stage plays out for a midsize company that hires a few dozen people a year.

The Stage 1 Company

A 300-person firm hires one veteran for a warehouse role. He turns out great. The plant manager wants more. But nobody owns sourcing. The next veteran they hire is also luck. There is no link between the two hires. They cannot scale what they cannot explain.

The Stage 2 Company

That same firm notices referrals from their veteran employee work well. So the recruiter starts asking him for names. It works. But it all lives in one recruiter's notes. When she moves teams, the channel goes quiet. The effort was real but fragile.

The Stage 3 Company

Now HR names an owner. They open a veteran candidate channel. They train two screeners to read military resumes. Managers get a one-page brief. The program runs even when people change roles. This is the jump that matters most for midsize teams.

The Stage 4 and 5 Company

At Stage 4, the firm tracks every number. They learn one channel sends people who stay twice as long. They shift budget toward it. At Stage 5, the VP of operations names veteran hiring as a way to close a known skills gap. It is in the workforce plan. It gets funded every year.

How Do You Move Up One Stage?

You do not move up by doing more. You move up by fixing your weakest dimension. Find your lowest score. That is your next project. One thing at a time.

The most common mistake is trying to jump two stages at once. A Stage 1 team builds a full metrics dashboard and skips the basics. The dashboard sits empty because there is no program to measure. Build the program first. Measure it second.

Setting that first target trips people up too. They aim too high, miss, and the program looks like a failure. Pick a number you can actually hit. The way to size it right is in setting realistic veteran hiring targets.

When Should You Scale Up a Stage?

Move up when your current stage is solid, not before. A Stage 3 program with a named owner and trained screeners is ready for Stage 4 metrics. A Stage 1 effort built on luck is not.

Watch for the signs you have outgrown your stage. At Stage 2, the sign is fragility. Your whole effort depends on one person. That is the cue to formalize it into Stage 3. At Stage 3, the sign is questions you cannot answer. A leader asks your retention rate and you guess. That is the cue to add metrics.

Volume is its own trigger. If you are hiring veterans in real numbers and the process feels held together with tape, you need structure. The mechanics of running it at scale are in running a volume veteran hiring program.

One thing that speeds every stage is a deeper candidate pool. BMR has 60,000 resumes built by veterans and military spouses. A real supply of candidates makes sourcing less of a grind, which frees you to fix the other dimensions. That is the practical edge a candidate database gives a midsize team.

Where Do You Go From Here?

Score yourself today. Six dimensions, five stages each. Be honest about it. The honest number tells you exactly what to fix next. That is the whole value of the model.

Most midsize teams find they are at Stage 1 or 2 with one or two dimensions lagging. That is good news. It means one focused project moves the needle. You do not need a giant program. You need the next right move.

If your weakest dimension is sourcing, a searchable candidate pool is the fastest fix. BMR gives midsize employers access to a growing pool of veterans and military spouses, with over 1,000 new profiles every month. You search for the skills you need instead of waiting for the right person to find your job post. Reach out to access BMR's veteran talent pool and put a real channel under your program.