Which Sectors Are Most Eager to Hire Defenders? An Analysis of Leading Job-Search Websites

Methodology of data collection and analysis

Platforms like work.ua, robota.ua, and Happy Monday provide filters that make it possible to sort vacancies where preference is given to defenders. In particular:

• On work.ua — this is the category «Veterans Preferred»,
• On robota.ua — «For Veterans»,
• On Happy Monday — the special project «Jobs for Heroes».

Using these filters, we identified the total number of relevant vacancies available at the time of the research. We also calculated the share of postings giving preference to veterans on each platform. This share was highest on Happy Monday (14.2%), compared to 6% on work.ua and 1.3% on robota.ua. However, Happy Monday is much smaller than the other two: it hosts about 100 job postings per day, compared with roughly 2,000 on robota.ua and around 10,000 on work.ua. Therefore, in absolute numbers, the largest pool of veteran-friendly vacancies is found on work.ua.

The categories of fields (industries) on each site differ, so we aligned them as shown in Table 1.

Data were collected from July 11 to July 15, 2025. For each indicator, the average value across these five days is reported.

In which industries is the share of veteran-friendly vacancies the highest?

Using the set of fields from the table above, we were able to align part of the categories across the three platforms. However, the lists for work.ua and robota.ua turned out to be more limited, since those sites have far more industry filters than Happy Monday (see Figure 1).

Figure 1 shows the clear dominance of the Sales & Procurement field on both work.ua and robota.ua. The second-largest category — Logistics — is also the same on these two platforms. By contrast, the situation on Happy Monday is markedly different: here, the largest share of vacancies is in Education, whereas on the other two platforms this field ranks among the lowest.

The lists of specialties with the highest share of veteran-preferred vacancies differ somewhat across platforms. The top three on work.ua are blue-collar professions, security, and transportation (see Figure 2). On robota.ua, blue-collar professions rank second, while first place goes to engineers and technologists. Happy Monday is notably different in this regard — with nongovernmental organizations leading by a wide margin, likely reflecting the platform’s target audience.

For comparison, on robota.ua the category Nonprofit and Civic Organizations accounts for only 0.5% of all veteran-preferred vacancies, while on work.ua a similar category is absent altogether. By contrast, the field of Education, which dominates on Happy Monday, is underrepresented on work.ua and robota.ua relative to other fields. It is also worth keeping in mind that Happy Monday is much smaller than the other two platforms.

Thus, we can conclude that giving preference to veterans is not yet mainstream — the share of such vacancies remains well below half across all industries with the largest number of postings. At the same time, employers may extend such a preference informally during CV reviews and interviews. The reverse situation is also possible, which is why a more detailed study of this issue would require surveys of both employers and veterans who have sought or are seeking work.