Matt Dye, 36, a former U.S. Marine and avionics technician deployed to Afghanistan shortly after 9/11, didn’t plan to become a financial advisor. After leaving the military, he worked in the private sector as a technician and field trainer. But when he sat down with an Edward Jones advisor to discuss his 401(k) money after suffering a serious non-work-related injury, he discovered a new career option.

“She said, ‘You can do this or that, or you can come work here,’” he recalls.

Dye, who had begun working toward a bachelor’s degree in finance through the GI Bill, learned that Edward Jones would soon be starting a program to train and develop veterans to become advisors. He joined the second graduating class of the “Forces” program, which launched in May 2012. It did not require prior financial services experience.

Last November, after working for a year with Edward Jones, he assumed the office of an advisor who left the firm. Dye, based in Asheboro, N.C., serves close to 400 clients.

More than 530 individuals have entered Forces, which is geared to veterans that have separated from the military within the past five years and to military personnel still active in the National Guard or Reserve. Also eligible are non-military individuals with advanced degrees and less than three years of professional work experience.

The program includes 26 weeks of intensive training plus five and a half months of fieldwork. “Attrition is very low,” says Chris Penrod, director of military financial advisor talent acquisition for Edward Jones, a dually registered broker-dealer and investment advisor.

The firm, founded by a World War I veteran, has always been committed to hiring former military personnel, Penrod says. Of its 12,500 advisors, 11% have military backgrounds. That’s a higher proportion than the number of veterans working in finance overall. Among the 70% of veterans employed by the private sector, just 4.6% work in financial activities, according to data from Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families and the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Being an advisor is “an exceptional fit for skills that’ll translate from the military,” says Penrod, who himself spent 10 years as a military personnel officer for the U.S. Air Force. “[Military] culture and integrity are foundational building blocks to build relationships and service clients.”

Penrod and others say that the military qualities of self-discipline, leadership and perseverance also serve a person well in the financial realm.

The veteran pool is deep. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment in 2013 was 9% among the approximately 2.8 million veterans who served during the era after 9/11. With the end of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, more than 1 million service members are projected to leave the military between 2011 and 2016.

Basic Training
Ameriprise Financial and First Command Financial Services also have programs to attract, train and support veterans as advisors. Ameriprise is a member of the 100,000 Jobs Mission, a coalition of U.S. companies committed to hiring veterans. First Command has partnered with the Hiring Our Heroes initiative.

“It’s an important way to grow our business, and it’s important because we’re grateful for their service,” says Jay Johnson, vice president of talent acquisition and diversity at Ameriprise. He declined to disclose program participation figures.

Not only are veterans used to managing change in a fast-paced environment, he says, but “being goal-driven resonates with veterans and brings structure to the goals of clients.”

First Command, founded over 50 years ago by a retired Air Force officer, has $21 billion in managed accounts and mutual funds for more than 274,000 client families—77% of whom are active duty or retired/separated military. Approximately 70% of its 400 financial advisors are veterans and military spouses. The firm is about one year into its five-year goal of recruiting 2,100 advisors from the military population.

“This is a critically important subject in 2014,” says Scott Spiker, CEO of First Command Financial Services, “as many service members and their spouses are experiencing great anxiety over the need to find employment outside the military due to reductions in force, base realignments and closings and deferred promotions.”

The First Command, Ameriprise and Edward Jones programs cover the cost of training materials and licensing exams, provide paid study time and offer a base salary during a participant’s first year. For example, Edward Jones pegs the estimated total first-year compensation at $65,240 for Forces participants, who thereafter transition to the firm’s traditional advisor compensation structure. At Ameriprise, benefits kick in on Day 1.

Dye, of Edward Jones, says the military has prepared him to be accountable and set goals—be it meeting people, making presentations or closing sales. He feels his military background has made clients more apt to trust him.

He is active in the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Marine Corps League, and he manages the account for his local chapter of the latter, he says. He doesn’t actively solicit members of either organization, but they approach him. “It’s kind of a captive audience,” he says.

Rob Smith, 41, who graduated from the first Forces class after retiring from the U.S. Marine Corps as a senior counterintelligence agent, also finds his new career to be a good fit. “It’s the first time I’ve been working on my own, running a business,” says Smith, who heads the Edwards Jones office in Covington, La.

In general, developing business is challenging for new advisors. “We hear ‘no’ more often than we hear ‘yes,’” he says. But his persistence has helped him bring in 50 to 60 new clients in the past 17 months. He also recognizes it’s important, he says, to be very strategic and, at times, tactical.

 His six years as a master sergeant have prepared him to take a long-term view and “be humbly honest with people and show them the big picture,” he says. This helped him win the business of a Marine retiring from the Corps after nearly 40 years and shopping for an advisor.

Mission Accomplished
Some advisors who got their feet wet in financial planning during their military careers have gone on to found their own firms. Among them is Bob Gerstemeier, 42, president of Gerstemeier Financial Group LLC in Chicago and Cincinnati and chair-elect of the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (Napfa).

The former naval flight officer, who served in the U.S. Navy from 1993 to 2001, was also a squadron legal officer. As such, he taught sailors how to get out of debt, establish savings programs and invest for retirement. He also developed and led pre-deployment seminars to educate sailors and their families about financial planning issues. He started taking CFP classes while on active duty.

 Upon return to civilian life, Gerstemeier developed retirement plans and investment portfolios for clients at another firm before launching his own firm in 2003. Then, in 2009, he was recalled to 15 months of active duty in Afghanistan.

“Looking at it in the rearview mirror, it worked out well,” he says. “But on the front end, it was one of the most stressful times of my life.” His wife, a CPA and former CFO, took the Series 65 exam to help him run his firm during his deployment in what he describes as a “tag team effort.” He kept in touch with clients by Internet.

“It’s crazy doing retirement and long-term planning for someone when you’re in a war zone,” he says. But he welcomed the opportunity to concentrate on something different when he had free time—and he retained his clients.

Mike Kalas, a former career naval officer and president of Potomac Financial Private Client Group LLC in McLean, Va., earned his CFP while on active duty. He founded his firm, part of the Commonwealth Financial Network, in 2005.

Although he focused on finance and logistics during a 23-year Navy career that spanned the Vietnam and Persian Gulf wars, what prepared him to be an advisor is “not the financial part as much as the people part,” he says. “You’ve got to team with your clients.”

His biggest transition when departing the military for Merrill Lynch, he says, was being a 45-year-old retired senior captain among 23-year-olds who were doing the same thing he was. “You have to kind of put your ego aside,” he says. “But don’t worry where you start—it’s where you’re going to finish.”

Looking to hire a few good men and women?  John S. Medley, a retired sergeant major and Vietnam War veteran who served in the U.S. Army Finance Corps before working in financial management and other fields, suggests registering for the employer section of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Employment Center Web site (www.ebenefits.va.gov/ebenefits/jobs). Members can search key words in resumes posted by veterans.

Medley, author of the new book Journey of Perseverance and Accomplishments, also suggests reaching out to local Veterans Affairs offices, the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the U.S. American Legion.

Hiring veterans can be a good long-term investment. “If I can be a Marine for 20 years,” says Rob Smith, “I think I can be an Edward Jones advisor for at least 20 years.”