How HireRecon Works
A plain-language explanation of how we translate a job title into matched military occupational codes — and what our results actually mean.
What Is a Military Occupational Code (MOC)?
A Military Occupational Code (MOC) is the official designation the U.S. military uses to classify every career field and specialty. Each code represents a specific job — defining the training, duties, certifications, equipment, and leadership responsibilities associated with that role.
MOC is the umbrella term HireRecon uses across all six service branches. Each branch uses its own naming convention for the same concept:
- Army & Marine Corps: MOS (Military Occupational Specialty)
- Navy: Rating (enlisted) or Designator (officer)
- Air Force & Space Force: AFSC (Air Force Specialty Code)
- Coast Guard: Rating
When HireRecon returns a MOC result, it is not just a label. It is a key into a structured database of what that veteran actually did, what they earned, what skills they built, and how their experience translates to your open role. Every MOC in our database is cross-referenced against O*NET occupational data, BLS wage records, and DoD authoritative duty descriptions.
The Core Problem We Solve
Military occupational codes (MOCs) — Army MOSs, Navy ratings, Air Force AFSCs, and equivalents across all six branches — are not intuitive to civilian hiring managers. A "25B Information Technology Specialist" maps directly to a Network Administrator, but nothing in the title makes that obvious.
HireRecon bridges that gap by querying over 77,000 federal crosswalk records that map military codes to civilian O*NET occupation codes — and then using AI to rank, filter, and explain those matches in the context of your specific job opening.
The Matching Pipeline
Five stages from job title to ranked military codes
AI Intent Extraction
When an employer enters a job title and optional skills/keywords, Claude analyzes the input to identify the core occupational domain, required competencies, and false-positive signals to exclude. For example, a search for "Network Administrator" will identify the IT domain, extract concepts like routing, switching, and systems administration, and flag terms like "sales" or "marketing" that may appear in unrelated military codes.
Database Query (77,989+ Records)
The system runs parallel queries against the unified crosswalk view using extracted SOC codes, O*NET occupation titles, and keyword trigram matching. This surfaces all military occupational codes that the federal government has formally mapped to the target civilian occupation domain. Results are pulled from all three source datasets simultaneously.
Deduplication & Source Ranking
Candidate results are deduplicated by MOC code + service branch composite key. When the same military code appears in multiple crosswalk sources, the record is consolidated and labeled with the highest-quality source (DMDC preferred, then O*NET, then CITM). This prevents inflated result counts while preserving source attribution.
AI Ranking & Explanation
The deduplicated candidate pool is sent back to Claude with the original job title, employer-specified keywords, security clearance requirement, and source metadata. Claude ranks candidates into Strong / Moderate / Weak relevance tiers and writes a 2–3 sentence explanation for each result that is specific to the employer's position — not a generic description of the military code.
Results Delivery
The final ranked results are returned to the employer with source badges (DoD Direct Match, O*NET Match, CITM Match), relevance tier indicators, and plain-language explanations. Results are cached for 24 hours by search parameter combination to reduce API calls and improve response time on repeated searches.
Source Quality Badges
Each result card shows which crosswalk source produced the match
DMDC authoritative crosswalk — highest confidence. The federal government's official mapping.
U.S. Department of Labor independent mapping — high confidence. Validated against civilian occupation taxonomy.
Supplemental crosswalk — moderate confidence. Covers technical and emerging roles not fully represented in DMDC/O*NET.
Relevance Tiers
AI-assigned rating indicating how closely a military code aligns with your position
High skill and task overlap with the target position. Veterans from this code are likely to meet core technical requirements with minimal retraining.
Partial overlap. Veterans from this code have transferable skills but may require onboarding in specific technical areas.
Limited direct overlap. Included because of adjacent domain experience or clearance-relevant background. Evaluate case by case.
Veteran Hiring Opportunity Score (VHOS)
A single 0–100 score that answers the question every hiring manager asks before sourcing: how strong is this veteran hiring opportunity, really?
What VHOS measures
Most hiring tools tell you whether a candidate exists. VHOS tells you whether hiring from a specific military background is a strong move for your organization right now — factoring in how well the skills translate, how many veterans with that background are actually in your labor market, whether your compensation is competitive, and how much runway you'll need for onboarding.
The score is calculated fresh for each MOC-to-role combination using live data from the Phoenix database — the same federal workforce data that powers all HireRecon intelligence. It is not a static rating or a vendor-assigned label.
Skill Match Strength
How closely the military occupational duties and O*NET skill ratings align with the civilian role you're hiring for. This is the heaviest factor — a strong skill match means less time explaining military experience and faster time-to-productivity.
Source: O*NET skill ratings + DoD occupational crosswalk
Regional Veteran Supply
The share of veterans with relevant backgrounds actively employed in your state's labor market. A high score here means your sourcing radius has real depth — you're not competing for a thin candidate pool.
Source: BLS Veteran Employment Statistics by state
Salary Alignment
How closely your posted compensation compares to what separating veterans with this background typically expect. A gap here doesn't disqualify the hire — it flags a conversation you should have before the offer stage, not after.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS)
Industry Hiring History
How frequently veterans from this background have been successfully placed in your industry. Industries with strong veteran hiring track records have established onboarding patterns and cultural familiarity that reduce early attrition.
Source: Historical veteran placement patterns by industry classification
Training Gap Difficulty
The number and complexity of skill gaps between the veteran's military background and your target civilian role. Fewer gaps mean faster onboarding. This factor rewards MOC-to-role combinations where the transition requires minimal upskilling.
Source: O*NET skills gap analysis, COOL credential data
Reading the score
Excellent
Strong skill match, healthy talent pool, competitive comp
Strong
Good fit with manageable gaps — likely a solid hire
Moderate
Workable, but review specific gaps before sourcing
Limited
Significant translation effort required — plan accordingly
Full methodology available
The complete VHOS technical specification — including normalization logic, fallback behavior, data refresh cadence, and validation approach — is available as a PDF for enterprise buyers and compliance reviewers.
Request Methodology PDFData Sources
All crosswalk data originates from federal government or federally-funded sources
| Source | Records |
|---|---|
| DoD DMDC Crosswalk | 40,077 |
| O*NET MOC Crosswalk | 78,124 |
| CITM Crosswalk | 39,324 |
| vw_unified_crosswalks View | 123,000+ |
| BLS OEWS Wage Data | 189,181 |
| AI Career Recommendations | 136,467 |
DoD DMDC Crosswalk — details
The Defense Manpower Data Center (DMDC) publishes the authoritative military-to-civilian occupation crosswalk used by the federal government. Each record maps a military occupational code to one or more O*NET SOC codes based on duty descriptions, training requirements, and task overlap.
O*NET MOC Crosswalk — details
The Occupational Information Network (O*NET), maintained by the U.S. Department of Labor, publishes its own independent military-to-civilian mapping. These records supplement the DMDC data and often capture occupational overlaps DMDC does not include.
CITM Crosswalk — details
The Center for Innovative Technology and Manpower (CITM) crosswalk provides an additional layer of occupation matching, particularly for technical and emerging roles not fully captured in older federal datasets.
vw_unified_crosswalks View — details
All three source datasets are merged into a single deduplicated view. When the same MOC-to-SOC mapping appears in multiple sources, the highest-quality source (DMDC → O*NET → CITM) is retained and labeled accordingly.
AI Transparency
- • AI calls are executed in real time at the moment of your request — results are not pre-generated. MOC searches typically complete in 5–15 seconds; deep-generation features (Interview Pack, Onboarding Brief, AAP Builder) may take 15–45 seconds depending on network conditions.
- • Intent extraction and result ranking are performed by Claude (Anthropic claude-sonnet-4-20250514).
- • AI is used only for interpretation and ranking — the underlying crosswalk data is from federal government sources, not AI-generated.
- • When the AI ranking step fails (e.g., API timeout), the system falls back to source-quality ordering (DMDC → O*NET → CITM) without explanation text.
- • Result explanations are generated fresh for each unique job title + keyword combination and are specific to your search — not templated descriptions.
- • Results are cached for 24 hours by search parameters to improve performance. Changing the job title, keywords, or clearance filter will trigger a fresh AI call.
Limitations & Appropriate Use
- • This is a sourcing intelligence tool, not a hiring decision system. Results indicate which military backgrounds are likely to produce qualified candidates — not that every holder of a given code will meet your requirements.
- • Crosswalk data reflects formal duty and training alignment. Individual veteran qualifications, years of service, and specializations vary significantly within a single MOC code.
- • Clearance status is probabilistic. We flag codes that commonly hold clearances; we cannot verify the current clearance status of any individual.
- • Some highly specialized roles (e.g., senior leadership, Joint commands) may not have strong crosswalk mappings regardless of actual skill alignment.
- • Coverage for Coast Guard and Space Force is smaller than for Army, Navy, and Air Force due to their relative size.