Converting a date

I can't seem to figure out how to reformat a date to get it in *USA format.

The error I'm getting is:
*RNF7606 20 2000004 The Data-Format entry is A or N but field DTEOFHIRE is
not of type character or indicator.

D DTEOFHIRE 10D INZ DatFmt(*USA)

O DTEOFHIRE

DDS:
A DTEOFHIRE L TEXT('Employment Date')
A COLHDG('Employment' +
A 'Date' )

I'm running this on V5R3.

It could easily be I haven't loaded DTEOFHIRE correctly.
I read in Emplydate. EmpMonth is a 3 char Month Jan, Feb

D DS
D Emplydate
D EmpDay 2 0 Overlay(Emplydate:1)
D EmpMonth 3 Overlay(Emplydate:4)
D EmpYear 2 0 Overlay(Emplydate:8)
D DS
D Empdate2 10A
D EmpCentury 2 0 INZ(20)
D EmpYear2 2 0 Overlay(Empdate2:3)
D EmpMonth2 2 Overlay(Empdate2:6)
D EmpDay2 2 0 Overlay(Empdate2:9)

I do a lookup on a table to get the month
C Z-ADD 1 X 2 0
C EmpMonth LookUp Months(X) 31
C Move Empdate2 DTEOFHIRE

I have tried many different approaches including adding slashes to Empdate2 and
changing Empdate2 from *Char. I don't know what I must be doing wrong even though
there must be 20 different ways this can be done.

Thanks,

Gary