The Suit Shouldn’t Be the Hardest Part
Why professional attire is the overlooked final step in helping veterans land the job
By Sarah Serrano and Dr. John Childs, MyCareerCloset
When I left active duty in the Marines, I expected the transition to be hard. I expected the paperwork, the bureaucracy, the strange feeling of trying to explain what I had done and who I had become to people who had no frame of reference for it. I expected to rebuild a routine, a network, and a sense of direction from scratch.
What I did not expect was how much of that transition would come down to something as simple as getting dressed.
I wore a donated dress suit that luckily fit my size. I was grateful for it. I needed it, and it helped me show up. But it did not feel like me. It fit my body without fitting my persona. It did not carry the same confidence, the same clarity I had always felt in uniform. The uniform told people something about you before you opened your mouth. Without it, I was not sure what I was communicating anymore. And in those early days of transition, I was not entirely sure who I was becoming.
That is a small thing until it’s not.
I’m writing this with my co-author, Dr. John Childs. We came to MyCareerCloset from opposite ends of a military career, I left the Marines young, he retired from the Air Force after twenty years, but we kept arriving at the same overlooked problem. This is the story of that problem, and what we’re doing about it.
It was never just my story
For a long time I thought this was particular to me, a young Marine fresh off active duty figuring out who she was without the uniform. It isn’t.
It’s the 45-year-old reservist stepping into a corporate role after a second career he built around his service.
It’s the woman re-entering the workforce after twelve years in, who needs interview-appropriate attire and someone who understands the industry she’s walking into.
It’s the National Guard member already holding down a civilian job who has never once needed a blazer until the promotion interview lands on the calendar.
Different branches, different ages, different chapters, the same quiet moment in front of the mirror the night before everything is supposed to come together.
Between us, we’ve seen this from both sides, which is part of why we started working on it together.
I left the Marines and lived the moment in front of the mirror myself. Dr. John Childs came at it from the other end of a career: an Air Force Academy graduate who served twenty years and retired as a lieutenant colonel, he sat in those Transition Assistance Program rooms knowing the curriculum cold.
One of us felt the gap. The other watched the system miss it. The gap we’re describing isn’t rare. It’s nearly universal, and it’s nearly invisible.
The last mile of career readiness
The challenge for most transitioning veterans isn’t finding a job at all, it’s landing the right one. Veteran unemployment is low, but underemployment is not. In one U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation study, 61 percent of veterans reported being underemployed, working below their skills, education, or experience, largely because the civilian world struggles to read what military service built in them.
That’s the real gap. Not capability, but translation.
We tend to talk about veteran transition as a translation problem, and it is. How do you convert military experience into civilian language? How do you write a resume for a hiring manager who has never considered what it means to lead people under pressure, manage complex logistics, or make high-stakes decisions at twenty-two years old? Those questions are real, and the work of answering them matters.
But veteran transition is also a confidence problem. A presence problem. A dignity problem that does not always get named.
The uniform does a significant amount of work for you. It signals belonging, training, trust, and standards.
When you take it off, you do not lose any of those qualities, but the civilian world often does not know how to read them. And in the early days of transition, sometimes you struggle to read them in yourself.
That is the last mile of career readiness, and it’s precisely where most support systems fall short.
A veteran can have the leadership, the discipline, and the opportunity within reach. But if they do not feel ready to walk into the room, if they cannot find clothing that helps them recognize themselves again, the opportunity can still feel out of reach.
“61 percent of veterans reported being underemployed, working below their skills, education, or experience, ”
The gap that’s easy to miss
Transition Assistance Programs and veteran career centers do a lot of things well. The counselors are dedicated. The intent, preparing service members to compete in the civilian workforce, is exactly right. Resume writing, benefits navigation, interview coaching, networking. The foundations are there.
But there is one practical question that rarely gets the attention it deserves. When the conversation turns to professional appearance, the focus is usually on what to wear. What almost never gets asked is something more immediate. Does this veteran actually own it?
For many civilians, a professional wardrobe accumulates quietly over the years. A blazer from an old job, dress shoes from a wedding, a shirt picked up for some occasion long past. By the time they enter the workforce, they simply have it.
Transitioning service members often arrive at that moment from a different starting point. After years in uniform, many veterans don’t have civilian professional attire in their closet. They’re navigating relocation, family logistics, housing costs, and financial uncertainty all at once. Purchasing a complete interview-ready wardrobe at precisely the moment resources are tightest is a real challenge.
This isn’t anyone’s oversight. It’s a gap that’s hard to see from inside a curriculum built around knowledge and skills, and easy to miss until a veteran is standing in front of a mirror the night before an interview.
Veterans already have the hard part covered
Military service builds discipline, accountability, resilience, and the ability to lead under pressure. Veterans have spent years managing people and resources, adapting on the fly, and delivering results when the stakes are high. Those qualities translate across nearly every industry.
A suit doesn’t create any of that. Employers hire for qualifications and character, not clothing. But first impressions are formed in seconds and are difficult to undo, and surveys of hiring managers consistently find that a candidate’s professional presentation influences whether they advance. What professional attire does is remove one unnecessary obstacle, so a veteran’s full attention in that interview room lands where it should, on their leadership record, their ability to perform under pressure, their adaptability, instead of quietly wondering whether they look like they belong.
What MyCareerCloset actually does
MyCareerCloset closes exactly this gap, and it does it at no out-of-pocket cost to the veteran. The service is funded through the partnering program, the same model we already use with university career centers and athletic departments. For a transition or veteran resource program, that means offering your people something tangible and practical without asking them to absorb another cost during an already demanding stretch.
We’re not a donation bin of mismatched hand-me-downs. We’re a technology-enabled service that assesses what each candidate actually needs, then pairs them with a real stylist. Based on geography, industry, and the specific role they’re interviewing for, MyCareerCloset outfits them in the right register, business casual, business professional, and everything in between, and ships it directly to them.
A veteran interviewing at a manufacturing plant in the Midwest and one interviewing at a downtown law firm shouldn’t walk in dressed the same way, and they won’t. Our stylists make sure each person is dressed for their context, their geography, and the job in front of them, not a generic idea of “a suit.”
The conversation around veterans too often swings between gratitude and crisis. We thank them for their service, or we talk about the systems that failed them. Both conversations are necessary. But there is another group, capable and motivated and in motion, who are neither in crisis nor fully supported. They are building the next chapter of their lives. They don’t need pity. They need infrastructure.
A natural extension of the work you already do
If you run or support a veteran resource center, a career center serving veterans, or any veteran workforce development program, this isn’t a new mission. It’s a complement to the one you’ve already built. Your people are already writing resumes, practicing interviews, and preparing for the civilian hiring process. Professional attire is one of the last practical steps between all that preparation and the moment it pays off.
As veterans, we understand preparation. We trained relentlessly, maintained our gear, and made sure we had what the mission required before we stepped off. The transition to civilian employment deserves the same standard. When a veteran has career counseling, interview coaching, resume help, and the attire to back it up, they walk in genuinely ready to compete.
The goal should not be to help veterans sound less military. The goal should be to help them carry forward everything their service built in them, into rooms that may feel unfamiliar, wearing clothing that reflects who they are becoming, with the same sharpness and self-possession they once felt in uniform.
The suit should not be the hardest part of leaving the uniform. Neither should the translation. When a veteran walks into the room prepared, confident, and seen clearly, they are not starting over. They are carrying everything forward.
Let’s talk about your program
Know someone who owns this? The fastest way to help the next veteran walk into an interview ready is to forward this to the person at your organization who leads transition or veteran services and let them say yes.
Ready to talk? If you coordinate or influence a veteran workforce program, we’d welcome a short conversation about how MyCareerCloset can plug into what you already offer. There’s no budget line to defend and no new staff burden, we handle the assessment, the styling, and the logistics. Book an intro call with our team, or email us at info@mycareercloset.org.
Sarah Serrano is a US Marine veteran and part of the MyCareerCloset team.
Dr. John Childs is a US Air Force Academy graduate who served twenty years in the Air Force, retiring as a lieutenant colonel, and a healthcare entrepreneur who co-founded and scaled organizations now spanning hundreds of locations nationwide.
MyCareerCloset helps organizations build equitable, sustainable professional-attire programs for the veterans and students they serve.
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