A career fair from the comfort of home

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Chris

Career fairs are a good way to connect with representatives from companies who are hiring, or at the very least to get an idea of what kinds of jobs are out there. A service called Milicruit will allow you to learn and network right from your living room.

Milicruit is a ‘virtual career fair,’ bringing together the resources offered by a traditional career fair and bringing them all online. Using Milicruit, job seekers can:

participate in group chats in a ‘networking lounge’
have one-on-one chats with employers
visit virtual ‘booths’ for up t 75 employers
and download content from employers into a ‘virtual briefcase’

Starting April 29, Milicruit and Hire Heroes USA will hold a virtual career fair, which will host employers like Verizon, Amazon.com, Target, CDW, and GE. To register, click here.

This seems like a unique idea that has the potential to improve the ability of employers and job seekers to connect. Obviously employers want to find good candidates and job seekers want to find good employers, so in many ways they’re both looking for the same thing–each other. But, the sheer volume of both employers and candidates in the job market makes connecting the right people difficult–something that technology can help. What do you think–can virtual career fairs work to successfully connect the veteran community with employers?

NPPD Veterans Job Fair: Feb 26

Posted on February 9, 2010 by Chris

The National Protection and Programs Directorate (NPPD) is hosting a job fair for veterans on Friday Feb. 26 on Ft. Belvoir, VA (30 minutes outside of Washington, DC). Here are the details:

Date: February 26, 2010
Time: 09:00 am – 2:00 pm
Location: Fort Belvoir Community Center, Building 1200, Taylor Road, Fort Belvoir, VA 22060-5937 (map)
What you should bring: DD-214 and resume

Check it out–this should be a great opportunity to connect with employers who are specifically interested in hiring candidates with a military background.

We’ve launched!

Posted on February 1, 2010 by Chris

If you haven’t been to WarriorGateway.org in awhile, now is a good time! We just launched a new look for the site and, more importantly, launched the beta release of our Directory and Careers sections. The beta is invite-only for now, meaning you have to register for an invitation to gain access to the Directory and Careers sections. Feel free to register here, and we’ll send you an invite soon. We’d love to have you sign up, test it out, and give us feedback.

We’re constantly working to improve and add to the Directory and Careers sections–for instance the listings for service providers in the Directory are concentrated around a few states (like Texas and Georgia) right now, but we’re working hard to add service providers throughout the country.

Curious about how the Warrior Gateway works?

Posted on January 20, 2010 by Chris

In case you haven’t heard, the Warrior Gateway is launching its private beta for the Directory and Careers sections on January 31. The beta is the first launch of the site and is accessible by invite only. To sign up to receive an invite, you can register here.

There is a limited number of invites, so not everyone will get to use the site right away. For those who don’t receive an invite (or for those who just can’t wait until the 31st!) we prepared some videos that show exactly how the site works. There are two demo videos – one each for the Directory and the Careers section.

Here is the Directory demo:

And here is the Careers demo:

Video games and veterans’ employment

Posted on November 10, 2009 by Chris

The Washington Post reported yesterday on the latest efforts of Activision Blizzard, popular video game corporation, to help out in the realm of veterans employment. Activision will be donating $1 million to set up the Call of Duty Endowment (CODE), named after the popular Activision combat video game, which will act as a foundation to help veterans find jobs.

This comes at a time when employment represents a major need within the veterans community. The unemployment rate among OEF/OIF veterans has reached 11.6%, and a newly-released study by the VA found that

Of those veterans who had found work, 25 percent earned less than $21,840 per year, the VA study said. Fifty-eight percent of recent veterans worked in the private sector and 36 percent had government jobs, according to the study.

[...]

Finding employment may be easier in the public sector, the VA study suggested, noting that military officers and service members with college degrees were more likely to work in the public sector, indicating that the private sector is not readily employing them.

[...]

The study encouraged more business training for veterans, and employers suggested the development of a national portfolio that could help them identify veterans qualified for various jobs.

This last point is a very important one, and the two services mentioned (connecting veterans with business training, and connecting employers with qualified job candidates in the military community) are the very backbone of what the Warrior Gateway Careers service will provide.

Paul Rieckhoff, executive director of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, welcomed any effort to help recent veterans, saying his group also plans to devote more attention to the issue next year.

“There’s no place for me to send vets if they need a job,” Rieckhoff added. “There’s no one-stop shop where the guy who owns a 7-Eleven can put up a job for a vet living in the same town.”

We absolutely agree with Paul, and strive to become that one-stop shop for veterans’ employment.