USA — Website Links Unemployed Vets, Spouses to Jobs

WASHINGTON — Unem­ployed vet­er­ans, wound­ed war­riors, reserve-com­po­nent ser­vice mem­bers and their spous­es search­ing for jobs can find one-stop shop­ping at a Web por­tal designed just for them.
Oper­at­ed by the Army Reserve, the mil­i­tary-friend­ly Employ­ee Part­ner­ship of the Armed Forces at http:www.EmployerPartnership.org lends assis­tance not only to those look­ing for a job, but also to pub­lic and pri­vate employ­ers who are ready to hire for­mer ser­vice mem­bers and help to sup­port the troops, said Maj. Gen. Kei­th L. Thur­good, deputy chief of the Army Reserve.

“It’s all about con­nect­ing sup­ply and demand,” Thur­good said. 

Employ­ers are attract­ed to vet­er­ans because they are high­ly skilled lead­ers from the fine­ly tuned mil­i­tary atmos­phere, the gen­er­al explained. 

“That’s the crux of the pro­gram,” Thur­good said. “It’s a mutu­al­ly ben­e­fi­cial pro­gram where the employ­er gets some­one who’s drug-free, under­stands col­lab­o­ra­tion, [and] can think strate­gi­cal­ly and act at a tac­ti­cal lev­el to get the job done.” 

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is a long­time advo­cate of hir­ing veterans. 

“Vet­er­ans bring a matu­ri­ty. They bring lead­er­ship. They bring a life expe­ri­ence,” he said last year. “They bring a ded­i­ca­tion they may not have had when they were 17, 18 or 19 years old, when they were com­ing out of high school or in the first cou­ple years of college.” 

Thur­good said the por­tal, launched on Vet­er­ans Day, still is in its infan­cy, but already has 7,500 reg­is­tered users. 

“We’ve got over 1,300 [employ­ers with job open­ings], includ­ing 95 For­tune 500 com­pa­nies,” he said. 

While many job web­sites exist on the Inter­net, Thur­good said, vet­er­ans should know EmployerPartnership.org offers a per­son­al touch, such as a resume-build­ing fea­ture that trans­lates mil­i­tary lan­guage into civil­ian terms. Deci­pher­ing “mil­i­tary speak” is a com­mon con­cern for human resources peo­ple in the cor­po­rate world, the gen­er­al added. 

“We take [a mil­i­tary spe­cial­ty] and trans­late it into some­thing an HR pro­fes­sion­al can under­stand,” he said. “That’s a very impor­tant piece of what we do.” 

And it’s not just about the mil­i­tary, Thur­good said. 

“It’s about a nation­al pro­gram we need to put in place to share this great resource that we call peo­ple, because if you look at the unem­ploy­ment rate, and the demo­graph­ic of 18-to-24-year-olds, and then break that down into vet­er­ans, it’s high­er than the nation­al average.” 

And some­times, he added, the rate of unem­ploy­ment among vet­er­ans is twice of the rate among civilians. 

“We have abil­i­ty to reach out to you per­son­al­ly to help you get your resume right, help you through the inter­view process, and make the right con­nec­tions with employ­ers,” the gen­er­al said. “The per­son­al touch is some­thing we pro­vide that nobody else does.” 

The por­tal also has advice for vet­er­ans who want to start a busi­ness, Thur­good not­ed, offer­ing train­ing that explains how to become a smarter busi­ness per­son and entrepreneur. 

“It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s a great way for us to con­nect the great skill sets that we bring to cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca,” he said. “In my opin­ion, our great mil­i­tary does two things well: it deliv­ers results and grows lead­ers. That’s exact­ly what Amer­i­ca needs.” 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →