Transforming Employment Matching: How NextOp Vets and Client Cloudcare Built a More Scalable Path to Civilian Careers
Organization: NextOp Veterans
Technology Partner: Client Cloudcare
Solution: Employment Matching in Salesforce
Focus: Veteran employment, career matching, operational scalability
The Opportunity
NextOp Veterans helps transitioning enlisted service members connect their military experience and career goals to find meaningful civilian employment. As NextOp grew, its highly personalized approach to matching veterans with opportunities became increasingly difficult to manage manually.
NextOp partnered with Client Cloudcare to transform that process. With NextOp’s knowledge of what veterans need and Client Cloudcare’s technical expertise, the result was an Employment Matching solution that combines standardized scoring, military experience, automation, and human oversight to make career recommendations more consistent, transparent, and scalable.
The result is a system that handles more of the repetitive work behind employment matching while allowing NextOp’s team to keep its focus where it matters most: helping veterans navigate their transition and find the right next opportunity.
The Mission Behind the Match
Founded in 2015, NextOp connects transitioning enlisted service members and veterans to meaningful civilian careers through personalized mentorship, career coaching, and employer partnerships.
Its approach is intentionally different from a traditional job board.
A veteran isn’t simply presented with a list of open positions and left to figure out what comes next. NextOp’s team works alongside each veteran to understand their military experience, skills, credentials, goals, and circumstances. NextOp then helps identify opportunities that could be a strong fit.
Because of this personal approach, NextOp was faced with an important question when wanting to scale: How do you make employment matching more scalable without making it less personal?
That question became the starting point for the partnership between NextOp and Client Cloudcare. Client Cloudcare is a Woman-Owned Salesforce consultancy powered by military spouses and veterans. They partner with impact-driven organizations from nonprofits, veteran service organizations, and the public sector. As a technology partner that is also heavily invested in the health of military families, Client Cloudcare was the perfect fit to help NextOp scale operations while maintaining their high-touch model.
The Challenge: Scaling a High-Touch Model
Before the Employment Matching project, much of the work of identifying potential opportunities happened manually.
NextOp staff reviewed veteran information alongside available positions and used an evolving set of criteria to determine which opportunities might be a good fit. The process allowed for thoughtful, individualized recommendations. However, it required significant staff time and became increasingly difficult to scale.
There were several challenges to solve:
Making matching more consistent: NextOp had developed weighted criteria over time to evaluate potential matches. However, those criteria were stored independently across records, creating opportunities for inconsistency.
Recognizing military experience: Military Occupational Specialty (MOS) codes and military credentials can be highly relevant to a veteran’s civilian career potential. The team needed a way to better translate the experience veterans already had into employment recommendations.
Making recommendations understandable: A match score alone doesn’t tell a veteran, or an Employment Coordinator, why a position is a good fit. NextOp wanted greater visibility into the factors behind each recommendation so staff could understand the results, identify missing information, and help veterans strengthen their candidacy.
Keeping matches current: A veteran’s circumstances can change quickly. New certifications, updated locations, changes in employment status, and new job opportunities can all affect whether a position remains a good match. Keeping recommendations current required manual intervention, taking valuable time away from mentorship and career coaching.
A Collaborative Approach to Building the Solution
NextOp and Client Cloudcare approached the project as a partnership.
Rather than starting with a predetermined technology solution, the teams began by understanding how employment matching worked in practice; this included the decisions staff were already making, the data behind those decisions, and where the existing process created friction.
Starting with the data
Client Cloudcare analyzed years of historical matching data to understand and validate NextOp’s existing scoring methodology.
This provided an important foundation for the project: instead of replacing NextOp’s institutional knowledge with a new process, Client Cloudcare used what NextOp had already learned through years of working directly with veterans and employers to inform the new solution.
Together, the teams formalized those insights into a standardized weighted framework that could be applied consistently across candidates and opportunities. This standardized scoring provides a common framework for evaluating matches, reducing variation and creating greater consistency across veterans and opportunities.
Building around the mission
Importantly, the solution was designed around the realities of military-to-civilian transition.
With NextOp’sknowledge on MOS codes and military credentials, Client Cloudcare was able to incorporate that military experience directly into the matching methodology. This means that a veteran’s military experience contributes meaningfully to how potential opportunities are evaluated. By incorporating MOS codes and military credentials, the solution gives greater weight to qualifications that are vital to understanding a veteran’s experience and potential.
Making the “why” visible
NextOp also wanted to prioritize transparency. So, instead of showing only a final match score, Client Cloudcare built a solution that provides a breakdown of the factors contributing to that score. Staff can see what is driving a recommendation and identify areas where additional or corrected information could improve the result.
That visibility serves two purposes: it builds confidence in the recommendations and turns the matching process into another way to identify and improve data quality.
Automating the work around the work
NextOps also wanted to maintain a high-touch model between Employment Coordinators and veterans. To make time for this, Client Cloudcare needed to build in automation that gives time back to staff.
So, once a veteran enters the Employment Searching stage, matching begins automatically.
Furthermore, when important information changes, such as certifications, location, or employment status, the system can recalculate matches without requiring staff to manually restart the process. Scheduled processes help keep active matches current as new opportunities become available, while staff can also trigger a recalculation when they need to.
Reducing repetitive administrative work gives NextOp’s team more time to do what technology cannot: coach, encourage, problem-solve, and build relationships with veterans during a major life transition.
Putting Opportunities Directly in Veterans’ Hands
The solution also extends beyond internal staff workflows. Client Cloudcare integrated Employment Matching into NextOp’s Experience Cloud portal, giving veterans direct access to their personalized employment opportunities.
Instead of relying on staff to communicate every potential match, veterans can log into their portal and see relevant opportunities for themselves. This creates a more connected experience: the system can surface potential opportunities while NextOp’s Employment Coordinators provide the context, coaching, and personal support that help veterans act on them.
With employment opportunities available directly through the NextOp portal, veterans have greater visibility into potential matches and can participate more actively in their own job search.
Building for Growth Without Losing the Human Connection
For NextOp , the goal was to help more veterans successfully navigate the transition from military service to civilian employment—and to do that without losing the personalized support at the heart of the organization’s model.
Client Cloudcare was proud to partner with NextOp and do what they do best: design right-size solutions that meet the needs of organizations, protect what’s important to them, and provide technology solutions that drive impact further.
The Employment Matching solution does just that; it gives NextOp a more scalable operational foundation while preserving the role of mentors and career coaches in every veteran’s journey.
The partnership demonstrates what can happen when technology is designed around the people and mission it is meant to serve.
NextOp brings the mission, the relationships, and years of experience helping veterans navigate career transitions. Client Cloudcare brings the technology expertise, client-focused service, and commitment to quality to turn that knowledge into a scalable solution. Together, they built something neither organization could have created alone.
What’s Next
Employment matching is one piece of NextOp’s broader effort to create meaningful career pathways for transitioning service members. As the organization continues to grow its veteran and employer networks, the Employment Matching solution provides a foundation that can evolve alongside that growth.
Client Cloudcare is proud to remain NextOp’s technology partner, supporting their system with maintenance and updates, continually looking for ways to optimize, and serving as a thought partner as NextOp continues to grow.
About NextOp Vets
NextOp assists enlisted veterans in their transition from military service to civilian careers. Through a unique workforce development program and wide-ranging resources, the 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization provides enlisted veterans with the necessary tools, training and support to thrive. Headquartered in Houston and with operations in New Orleans, Dallas-Fort Worth, Memphis and Huntsville, AL, NextOp tailors services to meet the specific needs and foster the professional growth of each individual candidate. For more information, visit https://nextopvets.org/.
About Client Cloudcare
Client Cloudcare is a technology consulting partner focused on helping impact-driven organizations use technology to create meaningful, measurable progress. Through implementation, optimization, and ongoing support, Client Cloudcare meets organizations at the intersection of technological implementation and business processes. To schedule an initial discovery session, reach out today!