Transitioning to the civilian world in their life after service isn't always easy, but veterans are finding that the tech industry is eager to employ programmers and technicians with the kind of skill sets they perfected while in the military. According to CIO, a website for Chief Information Officers and other IT professionals, a few major organizations have seen great recent success in helping put IT employers in touch with veterans.
Hiring Our Heroes, an initiative that began in March 2011 with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, is a nationwide effort dedicated to helping veterans and military families find stable employment. In four and a half years, the program has held more than 900 jobs fairs nationwide and assisted more than 27,000 veterans and their spouses in securing jobs. One of HoH's many IT partners is Microsoft. The company conducted training events and workshops for thousands of veterans earlier this year to help them refine their networking chops and better present their field-related experience.
Kim Morten, Hiring Our Heroes' senior manager of communications, told CIO that "Many times the media will portray returning veterans as 'broken heroes,' but that's not entirely true. They don't want pity, nor do they want to be put on a pedestal. They want the chance to get a good job, doing good work and show what they're worth."
Another program that has seen great results is V.E.T.S (Vocation, Education and Training for Service members). V.E.T.S began in 2012 as a means for addressing the dearth of high-level talent in the IT field and veterans' high unemployment rate. A study conducted by the Department of Veterans Affairs found that, even now, about half of post-9/11 veterans can expect to face a period of unemployment as they transition to the civilian workforce. The V.E.T.S initiative hopes to change that. It has already trained and placed more than 100 veterans in IT jobs, and hopes to expand to 500 or 600 in the near future.