One of the questions I get all the time, whether it be through emails or over the phone is related to explaining how the .JOBS Veterans Crosswalk Microsite works. Before I explain how ours works I must first highlight the different types of military crosswalks that I have seen currently out in the HR community. In my experience veterans crosswalks can be broken up into three categories. They are either keyword mapping crosswalks, skills mapping crosswalks, or occupation mapping crosswalks.
Keyword Mapping Crosswalks
Keyword mapping crosswalks take a military code or skill (MOS/MOC) and apply a keyword(s) to it. This means when a transitioning military member searches by their MOC/MOS the mapper takes that code and applies a keyword search to it. For example if a transitioning Army Veteran searches 11B the keyword mapping at the back might apply the word “intern” and search all job/job titles for the word “intern”. Keyword mapping crosswalks make for an all inclusive mapping experience, but they are not all that accurate. Searching for jobs by keywords is always hit or miss and with most military codes its hard to narrow down the military occupation to one keyword phrase.
Skill Mapping Crosswalks
Skill mapping crosswalks apply skills to all the different job titles a company has and matches those skills to skills that have been mapped to every different military code. This means when a transitioning military member searches by their MOC/MOS the mapper takes that code and applies a set of skills that it thinks you should have. It then takes these skills and crosswalks them with the skills mapping that was set up for all of your companies different job titles/categories. For example if a transitioning Air Force Veteran searches 3C072 the skill mapping at the back might apply the skill “computer programming” and then match that skill up to all the jobs in your company where the skill “computer programming” might relate. Skill mapping crosswalks if set up properly can be very useful. The issue is that you as a company have to go into all of your jobs and apply relevant skills to them and then trust that the skills you picked will match up properly to the skills attached to MOC’s. Skill mapping crosswalks usually take a lot of time to implement and it is a painstaking process to apply skills to all of your jobs.
Occupation Mapping Crosswalks
I left this one for last, because this is how the .JOBS Veterans Crosswalk Microsite is set-up to work. Our crosswalk takes all of your jobs and applies a government standard civilian occupation to it. This is done through a program called O*NET. We have a license to the O*NET program which allows us to apply these standardized occupations to every one of your jobs. Once we have done this we take these occupations and map them to military codes. So, basically jobs get put into occupation buckets, then occupation buckets are mapped to relevant military codes. So, as long as jobs are getting put into the appropriate occupation bucket then it will map correctly to the military codes. We understand that are mapping process is not an exact science so we offer a couple options in order to allow for a more inclusive job mapping experience. First we can work directly with your company to determine if the occupation buckets your jobs are getting put in are the proper buckets, and if they are not we can offer consult on how to get them mapped to the appropriate occupation. We also allow for companies to manually add occupation to military code mappings. This means that if your company believes a certain occupation show map to a specific MOC/MOS then we can add that to your individual crosswalk. Rather than walk you through an example of how our crosswalk works, I’d rather let the platform speak for itself. Below are links to three veterans crosswalks that I would encourage you to take for a spin.
Veteran Crosswalk Examples
- Mobile vs. Tablet, Which is More Popular for Job Searching? - October 8, 2014
- My.jobs Microsite Branding of the Week (P66onCampus.jobs) - August 13, 2014
- My.jobs Microsite Design Guidelines – Get them to the Jobs - June 18, 2014
