First Air Guard Flight Nurse to Earn the Distinguished Flying Cross

Maj. Katie Lunning, a Hastings native in the Minnesota Air National Guard, was set to become the Air Guard's first flight nurse to earn the Distinguished Flying Cross, America's highest award for achievement in flight. In August 2021, after 50 hours without sleep, she and her team treated 22 people critically wounded in the Kabul airport suicide bombing, and all 22 reached Germany alive after an eight-hour flight. She also manages an intensive care unit at the Central Iowa VA.

The piece gives employers three ways to compete for workers in 2023's tight job market. First, remove needless hurdles, such as requiring a degree in job postings, and search for candidates in new places. Second, move faster: recruiters call slow hiring with long silences a common mistake, and texting candidates, holding every interview on one day and cutting bureaucracy all help. Third, plan pay for the long run, keeping top performers while quit rates and inflation stay high but taking care with big raises in case the economy slows.

The piece argues that the qualities behind a successful military career are the ones civilian employers want, and that veterans tend to show them younger than most workers. More than 220,000 service members leave or retire each year, it says, nearly all seeking civilian jobs after 3 to over 20 years of service. It adds that the fiscal 2021 active-duty force of just over 1.4 million was diverse, and that some 81% of the military's 7,000-plus job codes match or resemble civilian work.