SEATTLE – Ardine Williams, one of the lead recruiters for Amazon.com's fast-growing cloud computing unit, knows well the technical skills and can-do attitude veterans bring to the table.
But she also knows, first hand, how hard it is to make those first steps in the civilian world. As a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the 1980s, she had done specialized telecommunications work and data analysis.
But in her first real foray into the private sector she found herself selling clothes at Gymboree, which as a young mother returning from Kuwait she joined "because they had a great discount in kids clothes."
"I really felt like I was lost," said Williams, 55.
Now, after three decades and a successful career in pharmaceuticals and technology, she leads efforts to staff up Amazon Web Services, an Amazon division that has more than 6,000 jobs open worldwide, in the midst of a veritable war for talent among technology titans.
She wants to open the door to as many veterans as she can who are a "great fit," she says, for the company.
In a speech last month at Joint Base Lewis-McChord outside Seattle, Williams, who is Amazon's vice president for global talent acquisition, told attendants that "you and those you lead have built skills in the military that companies like mine are after."
Amazon said it has hired more than 10,000 veterans in the past five years, and vows to hire more than 25,000 veterans and military spouses in the next five. If Amazon keeps growing at the pace that it's led in the past few years, there will be plenty of space to absorb them, not only in cloud computing, but also in logistics and warehouse operations.
There is what a company spokeswoman calls a "very active" affinity group of veterans dubbed Amazon Warriors; and there are even a sizable number of recruiters with military backgrounds who make incorporating former service members a priority.
The company's pledges come against a backdrop in which many large U.S. businesses have made incorporating veterans a top priority, a policy that has resulted in relatively low unemployment levels for former military.
Examples abound, from software giants Microsoft and Uber to Starbucks. The coffee behemoth's outgoing CEO, Howard Schultz, even co-authored a book about veterans.
But a divide remains between those emerging from the armed forces and their new civilian employers and co-workers, given the small percentage of the U.S. workforce that has any experience in the military.
A survey by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation found that human-resources staffers "often lack sufficient knowledge about military service or the skills acquired during that time," and that 44 percent of veterans left their first civilian job within the first year, which they often took hurriedly to make ends meet.
Williams managed to overcome the difficulty of the transition to military life because, as she puts it, her father goaded her into leaving her retail gig for "a real job." His advice: Take a job that you know how to perform and take it from there, even if you feel you're overqualified for it.
She found a spot as a technical writer at a pharmaceutical company. That soon opened other doors.
In 2014, a few months after retiring from the chipmaker, she was lured by Amazon to help lead its gargantuan recruiting operations.
"It's incredibly difficult," she said of that first step into a civilian life. "There are jobs in the military that very easily match civilian jobs. There are others that have no translation at all. How do you navigate the first transition is key."
