The unemployment news among veterans isn’t all bad. But while jobless rates are improving, former soldiers still face a bigger struggle landing employment than non-veterans.
Case in point: a recent study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics found the unemployment rate to be 6.8 percent among younger veterans, compared to 5.7 percent for the nation as a whole. Fortunately, a lot of people are working to solve this problem.
The 2011 “Hire Our Heroes” act required government agencies to come up with classes to help military veterans transition to civilian careers. One program that grew out of this mandate is Boots to Business, a training program that guides veterans through the fundamentals of entrepreneurship. Many are already benefiting from these classes, such as the more than 60 veterans hired by the MGM Grand Detroit (which has a Boots to Business program with the American Red Cross).
Rozell Blanks Sr., vice president of human resources at MGM Grand Detroit told Matthew Gryczan of Crain’s Detroit Business that when a company hires a veteran, “What you get is an individual who has high integrity, a high sense of honor and who wants to do their very best…I can’t think of a more difficult job than one that requires you to put your life on the line, and it’s not for a whole lot of money. So you’re talking about highly skilled, highly technical, well-disciplined individuals who tend to excel quickly in an organization.”
The U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) and Syracuse University’s Institute for Veterans and Military Families want to extend the program’s reach even further by offering Boots to Business: Reboot. Through it, free, two-day seminars will be held at dozens of sites across the country during July and August for veterans interested in starting their own businesses. Recently, a Reboot was held in Washington, D.C. in a very special building: the White House.
If they choose, vets can supplement the two-day Reboot program with eight weeks of online classes. At the end of those lessons, soldiers should know how to come up with a good idea for a small business, write a business plan, identify people and organizations that can help them and be able to launch the business.
Ray Toenniessen, Managing Director of Development and External Relations of the Institute for Veterans and Military Families at Syracuse University said in a press release, “We know veterans make the best entrepreneurs and we know veterans hire veterans, that’s why IVMF and the SBA are so committed to training and educating veterans about entrepreneurship and small business ownership.”
According to the United States Census Bureau, veterans owned 2.4 million businesses in the U.S. in 2007 — that’s 9 percent of all the companies in the country. And those vet-owned businesses employed 5.8 million people, generating $1.2 trillion in receipts. With the downsizing of the military, now sounds like a great time to keep the veteran-owned small business trend rolling.
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Tag: Employing Veterans
This Innovative Car Company Makes Employing Veterans Part of Its Mission
Remember how Tesla recently made headlines when its founder Elon Musk announced his plan to share the design for Superchargers, the quick recharging stations for its electric cars, with other auto makers? Well, Tesla is back in the news with another forward-thinking plan: To hire more veterans as they expand their product lines and workforce.
Arnnon Geshuri, Tesla’s vice president of human resources, told Dana Hull of San Jose Mercury News, “We want to be known throughout the veteran community as a great place to work. Veterans are a great source of talent for Tesla, and we’re going after it.”
Tesla already does an exceptional job of hiring vets: Of its 6,000 current employees, 300 are veterans. Ted Daywalt, president and CEO of the job board VetJobs told Hull, “[Tesla has] a good reputation. They hire veterans who can talk to other veterans. There is a language in the military, and having someone who can speak the lingo is important.”
While some employers have difficulty understanding that military skills can translate into a civilian jobs, Tesla seeks veterans for their technical and mechanical expertise and their ability to work as a part of a team. Veterans employed in Tesla’s human resources department know just what jobs soldiers would be a natural fit for.
Monthly, the company hosts meetings for its veteran employees to talk and suggest ways to improve operations, and it’s more than understanding when employees who are on active military duty need to deploy. Jason Deming, a vehicle test technician for Tesla who is also a member of the Air National Guard said, “HR was phenomenal with my deployment. I can serve my country and save lives but also work on the forefront of technology.”
Greg Reichow, Tesla’s vice president of production, told Hull that the vet-friendly approach aligns perfectly with the company’s goals. “At Tesla we’re not just building cars. We’re trying to transform transportation,” he said. “[Veterans] also know how to lead teams, focus teams and function on teams, and they have incredible integrity and discipline.”
If only other companies would follow Tesla’s lead, the jobless rate amongst veterans could certainly reach the same (lower) level as non-veteran unemployment.
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A Philadelphia Shop That’s Run By Vets For Vets
Imagine a store that comprehensively helps veterans.
Think it’s good to be true? The Camouflage Rhino Thrift Shop in Philadelphia thinks otherwise, and since it was established, the store has helped veterans in a number of ways, from employing them to supplying them with free furniture, household goods and job interview outfits. Plus, proceeds from sales go directly to running a local nonprofit called the Veterans Multi-Service Center.
Rose Brandau McGee is a remarkable woman behind all these efforts. Her father served in the Korean War, and she’s been working at the Veterans Multi-Service Center (VMC) for years. The nonprofit provides comprehensive help for veterans, including job training, housing assistance, rehabilitation from injuries, computer skills classes and more.
“It’s hard to transition back to civilian life,” McGee told Max Pulcini and G. Sandy Bukowski of the Spirit of the River Wards. “The Army breaks you down and builds you up so that you can be a great solider. But they don’t break you down from being a great soldier to a great civilian. So this is a place where that can be done.”
McGee launched the thrift store when the VMC was becoming overwhelmed with donations. Many veterans needed clothes for job interviews but the donations often weren’t quite the right size. “So we came up with the idea for the thrift store—we get the donations for the veterans, process them, everything gets checked out,” she said. “And one-third of everything that comes in to the store goes out to veterans for free.”
Last year, the store employed 22 veterans, training them in retail and jobs skills, and 11 of them moved on to better or full-time employment elsewhere. Parrin Terry, an Army veteran who served in Iraq, was finally able to transition back to the civilian world with help from the VMC and the Camouflage Rhino, where he works. “Places like this are important because they give us a sense of direction,” he said. “They work with you and they focus on you and your needs. That right there is a big part of what veterans need.”
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Helping Veterans Is As Easy As Drinking This Beer. Seriously.
In the summertime, the most exertion many of us are willing to commit involves turning over some hamburgers on the barbecue. But a new brewery with a special mission is making helping veterans as easy as cracking open a bottle of beer.
Navy veteran Paul Jenkins and Marine Corps veteran Mike Danzer founded the Veteran Beer Company in 2012 with the goal of easing the veteran employment crunch by creating a company that would employ veterans and generate profits that could be donated to charities that help veterans. They began selling their two varieties—Blonde Bomber and The Veteran—on Veteran’s Day in 2013, and the company has been expanding ever since.
“We only anticipated to sell about 2,000 cases our first year,” Josh Ray, regional director of Veteran Brewing Company told Nicole Johnson of Valley News Live. “After four months, we did over 30,000 cases, and we’re pretty close to approaching 60,000 cases right now.”
Beer drinkers can now find Veteran Beer Company’s brews for sale in Indiana, Illinois, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota and Wisconsin. Ten percent of the profits go to veterans’ charities, and the rest is channeled back into the company. Veteran Beer Company, which brews its beer in Cold Spring, Minnesota, employs only veterans, and plans to hire more vets as it continues to expand.
“Some of the things that veterans are promised aren’t really always followed through on,” Ray said. “With this, it’s really our opportunity to give back.” And anyone planning to buy a six pack to celebrate a lazy summer afternoon can give back too.
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Can a Reverse Boot Camp Help Veterans Find Jobs?
When veterans return from serving their country, it can be hard for them to figure out how to switch gears and transition into a new career.
Genesis10, a St. Paul-based technology and business consulting firm, is doing its part to help veterans go “from deployed to employed,” according to a motto on its website. Part of the process involves what they call a “reverse boot camp,” which helps former service members understand how a business mindset differs from the military one. One specific part of the training? Teaching soldiers “corporate speak,” which is different than how they talked in the military.
Katie Garske, a Genesis10 communications and social media manager told Elizabeth Millard of the Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal — which named the firm one of its Eureka! Award winners for innovative businesses in the Twin Cities — that lots of programs try to help vets find jobs, but “while well-intentioned, many of these efforts fail to make a significant impact on veteran unemployment, because each approach only partially addresses the issues that contribute to the overall problem.”
After finding there was a persistent demand for IT employees, Genesis10 hired Marine Corps veteran and reserve member Nick Swaggert in 2013 to run its veterans program. The company begins by evaluating prospective veteran employees to find out what their aptitudes and interests are. When it determines a vet would be a good fit for the IT or business sectors, Genesis10 welcomes him or her into its reverse boot camp, so they learn what the firm’s clients are looking for in an employee.
On Genesis10’s website, one veteran writes about his five-month frustrating search for a job that ended when he met a recruiter from Genesis10 looking for veterans with experience in GIS (aka Geographical Information Systems), a military specialization.
“Much of the messaging surrounding veteran unemployment has been ‘do it because it’s patriotic,'” Garske told Millard. “But veterans are not pity hires. Our clients are hiring them because it is a smart business decision.”
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A New Program Transitions Soldiers into Successful Tradesmen
You always want the very best for your friends. That’s especially true if your pal has sacrificed by serving as a member of the United States military.
When seeing two of his Marine friends (“both extraordinary people with a lot of talent”) struggle after returning from war, Keith Mercurio of Little Canada, Minnesota had an idea. “When they came back from service, I was able to watch how they reintegrated into society—one of my friends didn’t have much to do, he was just home. These guys are having to come home where there are no jobs for them. He was having a tough time…While I am seeing this happen to my friends, I am also listening to how our businesses are having trouble finding good people. And both of these situations just didn’t make any sense to me,” Mercurio told Candace Roulo of Contractor Magazine.
Mercurio realized what his veteran friends were missing: Professional training that would qualify them for in-demand fix-it jobs.
So he met with Jack Tester, the CEO of Nexstar (a national company that organizes a network of contractors), who just happens to be his employer. (Mercurio is a sales trainer for Nexstar.) From there, the program Troops to Trades was born.
Nexstar usually only trains people who work for its own companies, but Mercurio asked his boss to open up their training to all veterans — regardless of their business affiliation. Tester agreed.
One of the beneficiaries of the program is Army veteran Bryan Daleiden, who was working in the office of Uptown Heating and Cooling in Minneapolis. Daleiden wanted to be fixing heating and cooling systems instead of completing paperwork, but he lacked the training. He applied for a scholarship from the Troops to Trades program, and they paid his expenses for a two-week training course.
“Anytime there is an opportunity to achieve higher learning in something I’m passionate about, I seize it,” Daleiden said.
Troops to Trades is run by The Nexstar Legacy Foundation, which is partnering with the American Legion to get the word out about the scholarships, training, and job placement that they offer in plumbing, heating, cooling, and electrical services. The company has set up a business network whose members agree to talk to veterans about their work and offer them jobs.
Mercurio said he knew his idea would work, because people like his Marine Corps veteran friends “…did get all the skills from training in the military that anyone would ever hope for in a human being — they are reliable, respectful, disciplined, hardworking, noble and honest.”
Only now, they can fix your clogged kitchen sink, too.
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The New Target for These Soldiers? Child Predators
Undoubtedly, dedication and intelligence are two important attributes to bring to a job — and they’re certainly something that our service members possess.
A new program aims to make good use of these characteristics as it employs 14 wounded veterans as federal agents in the Human Exploitation Rescue Operative Child Rescue Corps (H.E.R.O. Child Rescue Corps), which is a part of the office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. These vets will work to prevent and solve child trafficking cases.
Just last week, the program’s first graduating class participated in a child rescue retreat in Memphis, Tennessee, where they used their smarts to study techniques to catch child pornography producers and traffickers.
The H.E.R.O. Child Rescue Corps came about when the National Association to Protect Children asked Immigration and Customs officials if they could retrain wounded veterans to work as analysts tracking child predators. Private donors funded the $10 million program, which trained the former soldiers before dispatching them to field offices throughout the United States, where special agents will supervise them in investigations.
“In 2013, when we presented the idea to top officials at Homeland Security, they said ‘Yes.'” Grier Weeks, executive director of the National Association to Protect Children told Jonathan A. Capriel of The Commercial Appeal. “It was the fastest any of us have ever seen the federal government move.”
Justin Gaertner, who lost both his legs to an IED (improved explosive device) during his third deployment to Afghanistan in 2010, is newly enlisted in the H.E.R.O. Child Rescue Corps. During the training period, he said, “I spent three months in New York assisting in 30 operations which led to 80 arrests of child pornographers. We rescued about eight children from the hands of sexual predators.”
Homeland Security special agent Kevin Power, who mentored the H.E.R.O. interns, told Capriel, “Their military discipline makes them really good for this work. Computer forensics is meticulous and methodical. These guys don’t cut corners, and they don’t question the ordered process you have to go through every time.”
As for Gaertner, not only does the new job allow him use his skills, but also, he has a new career in which his disability doesn’t matter. “The opportunity to put people behind bars who hurt children, is a big reason why I choose to do this,” Gaertner said. “I have an eight-year-old sister who I want to protect.”
We’re sure that Gaertner’s young sibling is just one of the many things motivating him each and every day.
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Here’s a New Website Bringing Unemployed Veterans and Understaffed Tech Companies Together
Technology firms are always seeking employees, with tech jobs frequently topping lists of the best employment prospects. Meanwhile, military downsizing has lead to ever more vets on the hunt for a job. David Lucien decided to come up with a solution that is working to solve both of these problems.
Lucien is the CEO of DCL Associates, a consulting firm that advises technology companies. Inspired by his World War II-vet father, Lucien decided to use his business knowledge to work with others and start US Tech Vets, a website that helps veterans find jobs in technology. The site launched this past January.
The website offers veterans information about how to start their job search, craft a resume, and describe their military skills in a way that civilian employers can understand. Vets upload their resumes to US Tech Vets, and members of national and regional technology associations can search the resumes for employees and post jobs. US Tech Vets has partnered with 147 companies committed to hiring veterans to provide jobs and resources.
Currently, there are about 13,000 jobs posted on the website, and 800,000 veteran resumes are in the database, which Lucien believes is the largest collection of military veterans’ resumes in the world. “We want to make it a priority of every technology company to hire, train, and retain military veterans and to make sure every veteran and veteran family member has the opportunity to be employed,” Lucien told David Karas of the Christian Science Monitor.
“I have always had a soft spot for our veteran and active-duty military,” Lucien told Karas. “We cannot do enough for these brave individuals and owe them our lives, just as they have risked their lives for our freedom.”
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This Supportive Startup Hires Veterans to Help Organizations Go Digital
To say that the government of Englewood, New Jersey had a paper problem was an understatement. Stacks of forms were backed up in the city’s construction office — creating a headache for people trying to obtain building permits. And that wasn’t the only problem that the department had. Since the office was only open during regular business hours, it was difficult for permit-seekers with full-time jobs to come in to fill out forms and check on how the permit process was progressing.
City workers weren’t in denial about the inefficiency of their office, either. Englewood city manager Tim Dacey told Miles Ma of NewJersey.com that obtaining a construction permit was “a very time-consuming, paper-oriented process.”
So they contacted Bright Star, a startup that specializes in helping businesses transition from paper-based transactions to digital ones. But Bright Star isn’t just any startup. It’s a nonprofit that hires veterans to do the digitization work. Dorothy Nicholson founded Bright Star in 2008 after seeing her veteran family members and friends struggle with transitioning to civilian life. Nicholson told Ma, “There really was no leeway to enable them to slowly get back to the practice of working with other people.”
She wants Bright Star to provide that support and understanding for veterans through such programs as job sharing. That way, if a veteran can’t hold a full-time job, he or she can work a part-time one. Nicholson also allows employees to miss work for the physical therapy, counseling, or medical appointments — all things that many returning veterans need to attend. Additionally, Bright Star has a job sampling program through which employees can give different jobs a try until they find the right fit.
Bright Star has updated Englewood’s construction office, and now each building inspector in the city has an iPad to use to efficiently complete forms. Beginning on May 13, digital permitting will be available for all Englewood residents. And as for the veterans that Bright Star employs, “Yeah, there’s a bottom line that you’ve got to be aware of,” Nicholson told Ma, “but at the same time the humanity of helping soldiers needs to be a priority.”
It sounds like Nicholson is a woman with her priorities straight.
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These Rocking Bands Are Offering Veterans a Dream Job
Who knew that behind the makeup, leather, wigs, and prominently displayed tongues, the members of KISS have a soft spot for America’s veterans?
Last year, KISS invited veterans to apply to become a roadie for their tour with Motley Crüe. Almost 2,000 vets submitted their names, with the lucky winner being Paul Jordan, who served for 27 years in the Army — including three tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan. Possibly putting him ahead of the other applicants? Not only has he been a fan of KISS since he was four years old, but also he sports a tattoo on his chest of Gene Simmons sticking out his seven-inch tongue.
“Since I retired, I’ve had a really hard time trying to find a find a job,” he told the Today Show last year. Now with a year of roadie service under his belt, he said, “I know now that life exists after military service. You just have to find something you’re passionate about and go get it. There is a world of opportunity out there.”
Last year’s program was such a success that KISS is accepting applications for a roadie for this summer’s tour with Def Leppard, as part of an effort to give a couple of veterans the job of a lifetime and raise awareness for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Hiring 500,000 Heroes campaign (a program that works to help military men and women find jobs).
The issue of helping veterans is one that’s close to the heart of Def Leppard drummer Rick Allen. After having his left arm amputated after a 1984 car accident, Allen thought his career was over and he suffered from PTSD, according to BlabberMouth.Net. He learned how to drum again, however, and wanted to reach out to others who’ve undergone amputations. At the USO’s request, he began visiting wounded veterans at the Walter Reed Medical Center and became involved with the Wounded Warrior Project.
“It is our privilege to draw attention to the obligation we all have to the brave men and women who volunteer to risk their own lives to protect the liberties and freedom that we all take for granted,” Paul Stanley of KISS told the Today Show. “We should all jump at any opportunity to provide any assistance needed by our warriors. Heroes deserve jobs!”
KISS and Def Leppard are accepting roadie applications from vets online through May 9. Although only two vets will win a roadie job for this year’s tour, hopefully the example set by these hairspray-loving rockers will inspire others to offer vets a job.
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