Abstract
The US military may be the largest training organization in the world, yet few civilians are ever exposed to the processes used to develop service members’ expertise in their jobs. Service members are continuously introduced to new training as part of the military’s on-going and intentional development of its human resources. For generations, military veterans have comprised a critical demographic of the US workforce—in both proportion and contribution to society. Veterans are credited by non-military employers as having desirable skills that can be leveraged in the traditional workplace. This chapter considers the development and impact of military expertise on civilian society using Grenier and Kehrhan’s (Human Resource Development Review, 7(2), 198–217, 2008) Model of Expertise Development beginning with an examination of expertise development in the US military and a subsequent discussion of transitioning services offered by the military to service members, highlighting existing practices related to translating military expertise into civilian terms. From there, the authors address reasons for employers to leverage military training and address expertise gaps. The remainder of the chapter addresses prospective challenges in leveraging military expertise in the workplace and offers suggestions for future research.
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Minnis, S.E., Kirchner, M. (2021). Veteran Experts: Transitioning Military Expertise into Civilian Work. In: Germain, ML., Grenier, R.S. (eds) Expertise at Work. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-64371-3_5
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