Most employers hear "VOW to Hire Heroes Act" and think one word: tax credit. That is fair. The credit got the headlines back in 2011. But the law did more than write a check for hiring a veteran. It changed how service members leave the military. And those changes still shape the talent that lands on your desk today.

The Veterans Opportunity to Work (VOW) to Hire Heroes Act was signed into law on November 21, 2011. That is the 2011 law, Public Law 112-56, not a 2012 bill. It passed with strong support from both parties. Veteran unemployment was high after the recession, and the goal was simple. Get more veterans working faster.

This guide skips the credit math. We have full breakdowns of the dollar amounts elsewhere. Here we cover the parts of the law that employers rarely read about. The parts that made the Transition Assistance Program mandatory. The retraining program that came and went. And the path the law opened for nonprofits to claim a credit too. By the end, you will understand why the veteran in front of you arrives more prepared than veterans did a decade ago.

What did the VOW to Hire Heroes Act actually do?

The law had four big moving parts. Two of them were about money. Two of them were about preparation. Employers know the money side. The preparation side is the part that quietly improved your candidate pool.

On the money side, the Act expanded the Work Opportunity Tax Credit for hiring certain veterans. It also opened that credit to tax-exempt organizations for the first time. We will get to the nonprofit path below.

On the preparation side, the Act made the Transition Assistance Program mandatory. Before this law, a service member could skip it. It also created the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program, a short-lived effort to retrain unemployed veterans for in-demand jobs.

Why does mandatory TAP matter to employers?

This is the provision that should matter most to you. And almost no employer talks about it.

The Transition Assistance Program started in 1991. For 20 years it was voluntary. A service member could walk right past it on the way out the door. Many did. They left with no resume, no civilian job search plan, and no idea how their skills mapped to your open roles.

The VOW Act ended that. It made participation in the Department of Labor employment workshop mandatory for nearly all separating service members. The statute that anchors this is 10 U.S. Code 1144. Preseparation counseling falls under 10 U.S. Code 1142. There are narrow exceptions, but the default flipped from "optional" to "required."

So what does a separating veteran do now before they reach you? They build a resume. They learn how civilian hiring works. They get an individual assessment of how their military experience maps to civilian jobs. They cover financial planning and benefits. Retiring members start as early as 24 months out. Others start at least 365 days before they leave.

What mandatory TAP does not fix

Do not read too much into it. Mandatory does not mean polished. TAP gives a service member a foundation and a first draft. It is a starting point, not a finished product.

The instructors try hard. Many are veterans themselves. But the program teaches one general resume to a whole room. It does not teach a person to tailor that resume to your specific job posting. So the candidate may show up with military jargon still buried in the bullets. That is a translation gap, not a skill gap.

This is where you can win. When you reach into the transition pipeline early, you meet candidates who have done the prep but have not yet locked into another offer. We cover that timing play in our guide on hiring transitioning service members before separation.

How do employers reach veterans coming out of TAP?

Mandatory TAP created a steady, predictable flow of prepared candidates. Every base runs sessions on a schedule. That is a sourcing channel sitting in plain sight.

You do not need a Fortune 500 program to use it. A midsize employer can build a relationship with the transition office at a nearby installation. You can present at employer panels. You can post roles where transition staff will see them. The pipeline refreshes constantly because separations never stop.

We wrote a full playbook on this. See our guide on how to recruit veterans through base TAP offices. It walks through who to contact and how to show up without wasting anyone's time.

What was the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program?

The VOW Act also created the Veterans Retraining Assistance Program, or VRAP. This one is history now, but it is worth knowing because employers still see its effects in the workforce.

VRAP targeted a specific group. Unemployed veterans aged 35 to 60 who did not qualify for other GI Bill benefits. It paid up to 12 months of benefits at the full Montgomery GI Bill rate. The catch was that the training had to lead to a high-demand job, as defined by the Department of Labor.

The program ran for a short window. VA's authority to make VRAP payments ended on March 31, 2014. By then it had supported more than 76,000 unemployed veterans. The VA tracked this through its Veterans Opportunity to Work resources.

VRAP is gone, but the idea behind it lives on in other programs. So if you meet an older veteran who retrained into a technical field around 2012 to 2014, this may be the benefit that got them there.

Can nonprofits claim a veteran hiring credit?

Here is a provision that almost no one outside the tax world knows about. The VOW Act opened the veteran tax credit to tax-exempt organizations. Before this, only for-profit companies could claim it. Nonprofits paid no income tax, so the credit did them no good.

The Act fixed that, in Section 261 of the law. A qualified tax-exempt organization under IRC Section 501(c) can claim the credit against its share of Social Security payroll tax instead of income tax. The mechanism is IRS Form 5884-C, a separate form built just for this purpose. The IRS processes it on its own track and refunds the proper amount to the organization.

If you run a nonprofit and hire veterans, this path matters. The dollar amounts and the named credit tiers are covered in detail in our breakdown of the Returning Heroes and Wounded Warrior tax credits. The full claim process for any employer sits in our Work Opportunity Tax Credit employer guide.

Is the WOTC still available in 2026?

This is the part you need to read before you plan around any credit. As of 2026, the Work Opportunity Tax Credit has lapsed.

The authority to claim the WOTC expired on December 31, 2025. Congress has not reauthorized it as of this writing. Bills to extend it have been introduced, but none has passed. The IRS retired the old certification form for new hires while the lapse continues.

So the honest framing is this. The VOW Act built the veteran credit structure that ran for years, including the nonprofit path. Those credits applied to qualifying hires through the end of 2025. Whether they return depends on what Congress does next. Do not bake a credit you cannot yet claim into your 2026 hiring budget.

The good news is that the strongest reason to hire veterans never depended on the credit. The credit was a bonus. The candidate was the point. And the non-credit parts of the VOW Act, the mandatory prep and the steady pipeline, did not lapse. They are still working for you.

How did the VOW Act change the candidate who reaches you?

Picture two veterans separating ten years apart. One left in 2005, before the law. One left last month, under it. The gap between them is the whole point of this article.

The 2005 veteran could skip transition prep entirely. Many did, because deployments and end-of-tour chaos got in the way. That veteran often hit the job market cold. No resume. No sense of how civilian hiring worked. They were sharp and capable, but the paperwork did not show it. A lot of good people got screened out for that reason alone.

The veteran who left last month walked a different path. The law required preseparation counseling and the Department of Labor workshop. So they sat through resume building. They learned how interviews and applications work on the outside. They got a structured look at how their job maps to civilian roles. They are not a finished hire, but they are a warm one.

For you, that shrinks the cost of taking a chance on military experience. A decade ago, hiring a veteran often meant heavy coaching before they could even compete on paper. Now the floor is higher. The prep work is done. Your job is to spot the fit and close the offer.

The other quiet change was timing. Because prep starts early, you can meet strong candidates before they separate. The earlier you engage, the less competition you face. That early window is the single best reason to build a relationship with a transition office now rather than waiting for resumes to trickle in.

How should a midsize employer use all of this?

Pull the threads together. The VOW Act handed you two things that still help, even with the credit on hold.

First, a more prepared candidate. Mandatory TAP means the veteran you interview has built a resume and studied civilian hiring. You still help with translation, but you are not starting from zero.

Second, a reliable channel. The transition pipeline never empties. Bases run sessions year-round. A midsize firm with a real relationship at one or two installations can source steadily without a giant program budget.

If you want to act on incentives beyond the lapsed credit, we cover the full menu in our guide on veteran hiring incentives beyond WOTC. There is more on the table than one tax credit.

One more practical note on screening. Applicant tracking systems do not reject veteran resumes outright. They rack and stack them. A resume that uses plain civilian language for the same skills simply ranks higher in that stack. So when you read a veteran's resume, look past the acronyms to the work underneath. That is where the fit usually lives.

Where BMR fits

BMR is where veteran talent gets ready and stays visible. Our pool grows by more than 1,000 new profiles every month, and we have helped build more than 60,000 resumes. That is a fresh, steady supply of veterans translating their experience into the civilian language your roles are written in.

If you want to hire from that pool, reach out to access BMR's veteran talent. The VOW Act made sure these candidates show up prepared. We make sure you can find them.