What are the first things you look at in a job description? How can I better attract our military community to fulfilling careers?

Job title and descriptions are important but having the salary (or salary range) would be best. I have applied for jobs, gone through interviews, and put a lot of time into the process only to find out that pay was too low. The job title and description were good, I was definitely interested. But I wasted my time and theirs since they weren't paying more. This has happened to other people I know as well. This isn't just bad for military members, but everyone.

I would pull back from an examination of what should be in a job description, and look at whom hiring managers are trying to reach.

If there is a problem attracting veterans and transitioning service members, that problem I think starts with the perception of the "community" hiring managers are reaching out to. It's a bit of a shotgun approach to target "veterans" or "military members".

One may think that veterans and military members are a homogeneous collection of commonly skilled, motivated worker bees, but there are significant differences among vets and current service members in terms of age, education levels, and training in the wildly different jobs to be found among the various branches of the military.

To say "I want to hire veterans" is as useful as saying "I want to hire college graduates". What does that even mean? What is the job? Who are the candidates supposed to be? What is their education, training and knowledge base? Let's narrow this down a bit and target the search to fill the open position.

As with any effort to recruit qualified people, hiring managers need to have a more narrow focus on who they are looking for. Whether looking for machinists, X-ray technicians, general laborers, firefighters, salespeople, etc., target recruiting efforts where there's a higher likelihood of successfully finding a qualified candidate. Sure, a shotgun approach on RallyPoint for example might garner some interest--and is worth a try--but the greater effort is probably better spent reaching out to specific groups within the military/veteran communities.

If looking to fill "X", post job descriptions that tag X; look for any social media groups that are specific to X; perhaps there are veteran service organizations that may have insight into the X industry and reach out to them. Don't give up on the shotgun approach, but if possible to do so, focus search efforts where one is likely to find the best qualified candidate for the specific position.

Once a hiring manager or headhunter knows what they need and the type of candidate they want to fill it, then decide what goes in the help wanted ad.

Since publishing a pay scale seems to be against the HR Ten Commandments, "Commandment four, Thou shall not publish a pay scale. Qualified applicants shall not know their worth before negotiating, so sayeth the Lord." I glance at the description then go over the qualifications. If I meet those then I go back to the description.