This report describes the laws and regulations for hiring veterans into the civil service. It explains that the laws and regulations regarding the preferences in hiring that can or must be given to veterans and certain family members are extremely complicated. It includes survey data of perceptions by employees regarding both violations of veterans' preference rights and inappropriate favoritism of veterans. Furthermore, it explains the history behind—and implementation of—a law that was designed to ensure that the hiring of recently retired service members as civilian employees of the Department of Defense is based on merit and not favoritism.