Find your career at VA through the Military Spouse Employment Partnership - VAntage Point

Dear Mr. Chris Meek:

Please forgive me as I am going to take a moment to share some stories, I have gathered over the years regarding veterans attempting to gain employment with the VA.

So, let me share four quick stories about how three willing mental health specialists and a veteran couple were treated by the Veterans Administration seeking employment. As you read these stories, please think about the reported 17 – 22+ combined veterans/active forces members dying per day.

Story 1: About 10-years ago I met a former US Navy Psych-Tech. Her husband was a teacher and they had two children. To take better care of her children she left the Navy after 12-years of honorable service and two tours in Iraq. My grandson and her son attended the same grade school and played chess in the same after school club I had volunteered to run. Once, I asked her how things were going in her post Navy life. I could tell she was distressed. She said, “You know I have the skills and experience as a military trained psych-tech and I have a degree in social work and have tried to get on with the VA so I can help vets, but it is impossible.” At the time she was working in a nursing home as a “nursing aid” despite applying for every potential social work / counselor position she could locate on USAJOBS with the VA. She had been trying for about 7 years and finally gave up and obtained employment below her skill and experience level just to help make ends meet.

Story 2: A couple of years ago I was chatting with a friend. The gentleman is a social worker / mental health counselor at a Veterans Affairs Community Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC). He is also prior service US Army. Thinking about what I learned in Story 1, I asked a simple question: “So, how long did it take you to get on with the VA?” To my shock he said, “It took me four-years from the time I applied to the time I was hired and onboarded.” I said, “Four Years – Really!?!?!” So, that begs the question: How can any company, especially the VA, take four years to publish a need on USAJOBS and then finally hire someone, in this case a mental health professional, four years later and still make people believe they are filling needs on an immediate basis to help veterans in need?
 
Story 3: Then there is the story of two US Navy Hospital Corpsman who wanted to give back to their fellow veterans by working for the VA. In the mid-90’s when they retired from the US Navy the couple was in their mid-40’s and 50’s respectively. The female veteran was even an LPN. They both tried for almost 15-years to get on with the VA. At one point the retired Navy couple lived in Greenville, NC. As an LPN this female veteran wanted to work at the new veteran’s clinic that was opening soon there. She asked about applying for a position at the new clinic. The obviously non-veteran female she spoke to told her “Well, we are contractors, and we don’t hire veterans anyway”, in a dismissive and arrogant tone. When she returned home to her husband and fellow Navy retiree, she was steamed. Her father was career Navy and a Chief like her husband. Her father had served in both WWII in the Pacific on submarines and again in Korea, when he was recalled to active duty to push new recruits a bootcamp. Her husband’s father was a Holocaust survivor who later immigrated to the USA and served in Korea in the new US Air Force during the Korean War. Her husband’s father became 100% Service-Connected Disabled (SCD). Like him she applied for positions with the VA only to never be called, despite the VA saying they were looking for nurses. She had also served nearly 3-years at the Navy’s largest Drug and Alcohol Rehabilitation Center in Norfolk, Virginia as a medical intake specialist. “Civilians...” they said "...typically have no idea the number of lives that veterans with our combined skills have quietly saved during the course of our respective military careers as Navy Corpsman...". Fortunately, the female veteran as also a civilian LPN with more than 30-yrs of healthcare experience including 10-years in physical rehabilitation. Unfortunately, she began to understand that both the commercial healthcare industry and the VA had failed to understand what this seasoned healthcare operations specialist (i.e., her husband) could bring to the table in his post military career, in addition to her disappointment that the VA obviously had no desire to hire people with her kind of combined healthcare experience. She also watched her honorably retired husband go through emotions of feeling that he had failed. Then faith and fate intervened, that linked him to a purpose bigger than himself that helped him begin to serve his fellow veterans in a much different way!

Story 4: In my current role I was speaking to and continued to work with a lady who had her PhD in Social Work and Counseling who was married to a US Army (Active Duty) member. They happened to live near a VA hospital. It took the VA a year to contact her to offer her a job. By that time, her husband was getting ready to rotate to a new post. Just think, a woman with a PhD in social work had to wait a year to be hired and then was unable accept a role she could been in for nearly a year helping hurting veterans. What a waste of talent. She is now working for a major university working hard to support other veteran care outreach initiatives! But she really wanted to help vets at the VA face-to-face. BTW, had she gotten the job in a timely manner he could have remained at his then current command, which his command would have preferred. Humm.................................

Just think, had these five people, fours veterans and a veteran spouse (e.g. 3 females, 2 males; 3 Caucasians, 1 Hispanic, 1 African-American), given their backgrounds been hired in a more a timely manner, say < 90 days of applying for positions they wants and in some cases were willing to "accept" with the VA in the late 1990s and early 2000’s do you think, with additional training, they could have successfully lead peer support groups and at least made an impact to help save fellow veteran lives all within the structure of the VA? I have no doubt they would have done so! If they had been able to redirect (a.k.a. save) one life per day the savings would have been enormous. The number is huge at approximately 14,000 lives simply by being there to at least listen during the collective period the VA took their sweet time to not hire them. The economic loss conservatively calculated, was nearly $627.93 million. Economic loss means that had these otherwise broken lives - not been lost, then more than half a billion dollars could have been pumped into the US economy as a result of their life's contributions to the nation's - general welfare.

So, when the VA says it "...values their experience..." many red flags still go off. I have known about these stories and others since before 2010 and they still tweak me when I pull them up to reread my notes. Chris, I appreciate you sharing how the VA wants to hire vets and vet spouses, but I am left with a very bitter taste from these stories, and others. The failure of the VA that lost over 100 years of collective healthcare and overall leadership experience because the HR processes were so archaic, unresponsive, and just a little over politized is unconscionable to me.

All this said, I have heard that things have gotten a bit better. Also, while these stories of wasted opportunity anger me, I have received great care at the VA over the 25+ years since I have retired. I just needed to close on a positive note.

Just commenting................................

Were you the one who posted about the VA competition to combat suicides and help people with PTSD?