A boot in the door

A boot in the door

For a decade after graduating from college, Sgt. Brandy Lam-Hamer paid her bills with a sales job while trying to land a position as a purchasing manager – without success. “My bachelor’s degree didn’t mean a thing,” says Lam-Hamer, a medic in the Texas Army National Guard. “All that experience didn’t do me any good. When it came down to it, I wasn’t credentialed.”

She left the corporate world with plans to become a teacher when the National Guard offered her a full-time job at Camp Mabry, Texas, and an all-expenses-paid opportunity to earn the type of professional credentials she’d needed to get her dream job in the civilian world. She immediately signed up for the personal fitness training course. 

“It’s more education I can get for free,” says Lam-Hamer, one of the first to enroll in the Army’s new credentialing assistance program. “This program pays for everything on the front end. The Army mails the textbooks to your front door.”  

Lam-Hamer is on track to become a master fitness trainer in the Texas National Guard. “I would not have the confidence to help these soldiers without this certification,” Lam-Hamer says. “Many have injuries. Many have high blood pressure. Thanks to this program, I have the training to help people safely.” 

Credentialing assistance is a good alternative for soldiers who aren’t well-suited for a traditional college education or are dissuaded by the price tag. And it allows servicemembers to save their tuition assistance benefits for their children to use. 

“I think the Army nailed it with this program,” Lam-Hamer says. “Credentials make you so much more valuable in the job market. Here’s a great way to get it at no cost, and you aren’t obligated to your employer.”

‘A REALLY GOOD PRODUCT’ The American Legion has championed credentialing assistance for more than 20 years. This includes conducting national summits on the issue and advocating for civilian employers, government agencies and licensing authorities to credit soldiers for extensive training they receive in areas such as emergency medicine, hazardous materials handling and technology. In addition, the Legion has pushed for changes to the GI Bill that allow servicemembers and veterans to use their education benefits for a broader range of technical and vocational training.

Credentialing assistance was a personal mission for Dan Dailey during his tenure as sergeant major of the Army from January 2015 to August 2019. The Army has long provided tuition assistance, he says. However, less than 20 percent of soldiers take the college track. “So the question becomes, what is the Army doing for the soldiers – the more than 80 percent – who aren’t going to college?” 

The answer, based on careful analysis of labor market data, became credentialing assistance. “Only about 30 percent of the jobs in America require a traditional college education,” Dailey says. “The majority are skilled and unskilled labor.” The civilian sector responded with professional licensing and credentialing. The Army needed to catch up. 

Credentialing helps soldiers advance in their military careers while preparing them for future civilian careers. “The fact is, 100 percent of us are going to leave the Army someday,” Dailey says. Soldiers in highly skilled specialties – electricians, plumbers and welders – have an easier time making the transition to good-paying civilian jobs. That’s a tiny fraction of the fighting force. “The majority of the Army – about 61 percent – is combat arms,” Dailey adds. There’s no civilian equivalent for that set of military occupational specialties (MOS). So the Army worked with Congress, the Department of Labor and others to build the credentialing assistance program. 

“The Army wants soldiers to stay in the Army,” says Mike Engen, the educational services officer who launched the credentialing assistance program at Fort Hood, Texas. “At the same time, if a soldier decides to leave the Army, we want them to leave happy. There is no better ambassador for the Army.” 

That matches Dailey’s vision. “We want our soldiers to be employed,” he says. “We want them to be prominent citizens back in the hometowns of America. The best way to recruit is to show them a really good product on the way out the door.” 

PILOT TEST The Army launched a limited user test in October 2018 that offered 28 credentialing options to soldiers stationed at Fort Hood – an ideal location because there’s a large number of soldiers with a diverse MOS cross-section – as well as Guardsmen and reservists throughout the state. The program expanded to include Fort Campbell and Kentucky National Guard members and reservists last June, and an additional 13 states came online between October and December. The credentialing assistance rollout to the remaining states and territories began Jan. 1.

The Army pays for the training costs associated with a servicemember’s participation in the credentialing assistance program, including textbooks, reference guides, test preparation, certification exams and recertification. 

“If they want a new career in plumbing or as an electrician, they can go from start to finish,” says Mary Lantz, education services specialist for the Texas National Guard. 

The No. 1 reason people join the Guard is education. And the breadth of the credentialing assistance benefit sets it apart from other programs. “Tuition assistance covers this kind of training at community college, but it doesn’t cover (certification) test preparation or the credentialing exam,” Lantz says.

The credentialing assistance is program-voluntary. Soldiers take the classes in their off-duty time. While many credentialing courses are offered online or in the classroom, the training in more trade-oriented fields – such as auto mechanics – is hands-on. Certification tests are administered by the professional credentialing organization for each expertise, whether it’s plumbing or project management.

Some of the most popular credentialing choices among soldiers during the limited user test were project management professional, personal fitness trainer, and a process improvement and problem-solving course called Lean Six Sigma, Engen says. For Guard members and reservists, the top picks were personal fitness trainer, electrician, plumber and project management professional, Lantz says. But she also helped one Guardsman enroll in the solar specialist credentialing course and take the master electrician’s licensing exam. (If soldiers have the required number of hours working in a trade, they can take the licensing exam without taking the credentialing classes.) 

Now soldiers, Guard members and reservists can choose from almost 1,700 credentialing options, from welding to IT specialist. The credential must relate to an Army MOS, but it doesn’t have to match the soldier’s MOS or current duties. “This is yet another way the Army is promoting the personal and professional development of its soldiers, and helping get our folks involved in education,” Engen says. “If you can demonstrate your skills through certification, that can be as valuable as earning a degree.” Soldiers can earn certifications without using their GI Bill benefits, giving them the option to use those funds to earn a college degree in the future.  

Some of the other services provide credentialing programs as well, says Ken Hardy, chief of the Educational Services Branch for the Army National Guard. Of them, the Army program is the most generous. “The Navy doesn’t pay for the training, only the (credentialing) test. And the Air Force has a $4,500 lifetime cap,” Hardy says. “The Army is providing up to $4,000 every year, so members (Guardsmen) can also use the program to get recertified.” 

The biggest challenge is getting the word out about credentialing assistance, Hardy says. 

EARLY SUCCESS Approximately two-thirds of participants in the credentialing assistance pilot at Fort Hood were enlisted, and the other third were officers, from privates to colonels, Engen says. 

“Even though I’m hoping to do 20 years in the military, when I get out I’m Mr. Williams with nothing but military experience,” says Capt. Tusaine R. Williams, a military police commander at Fort Hood who joined the Army in 2005. “We are all trained cops on post. But most places outside the military won’t accept our training. We have to take POST (Police Officer Standards and Training) certification. With credentialing, we’re getting the civilian equivalent certification for the things we already trained to do.”

Williams is looking beyond law enforcement as well. He took the project-management professional credentialing course last spring. Not only will it help him progress to a new civilian career, “it highlighted a lot of things we do in the military.”

Credentialing assistance is even attracting officers with multiple degrees. Maj. Demetriat Mack, who has served 25 years in the Army, also enrolled in the project-management program because he discovered having an MBA with an emphasis in project management isn’t enough. “The actual certification in project management is what gives you the letters behind your name, that the industry recognizes and civilian employers require,” Mack says. 

He’s now considering taking other credentialing courses such as Microsoft Office Solutions and Lean Six Sigma. “I think those are applicable to my career path,” he says.

Chief Warrant Officer 4 Frank Cox is putting the project-management training he received through credentialing assistance to work in his day job as an Apache attack helicopter instructor pilot for the Army Aviation Support Facility at Ellington Field in Houston. But it also helps in his duties in the Texas National Guard, where he oversees training and evaluation for the 1-149th Attack Reconnaissance Battalion. He was planning to take project-management training on his own when the Army unveiled the credentialing pilot in Texas, because part of his job is estimating resources for and coordinating training. “It’s directly applicable to what I do every day,” Cox says. 

He also sees applications for project management in the civilian workplace. “It doesn’t matter what industry you are in,” he says. “The tools and techniques are the same.” 

Lam-Hamer is using credentialing to help her make the switch from medic to master fitness trainer in the National Guard. But at the heart of it, she wants to use her training to help children. “I took it because I just love fitness, and because I wanted to go pro bono and help people,” she says. “A perfect world for me would be to work with lower-income families and find healthier ways for them to get out with their kids, to be a role model, to lead by action.” 

That sounds exactly like the model citizen Dailey has in mind.  

Ken Olsen is a frequent contributor to The American Legion Magazine.