Remember those TV commercials featuring United States military servicemen and women receiving spontaneous ovations in airports as they returned to the country they defended? In 2011, nearly one-third of them couldn’t find a job.
That was the year more than eight percent of all military veterans in the United States were unemployed. The number tripled for post-Iraqi and Afghanistan War vets.
Yet by 2015 those percentages had been cut in half.
An improving economy helped bring about the change. But another catalyst was Hiring Our Heroes, a program led for the past three years by Eric Eversole ’94.
Launched in March 2011 to help veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses find meaningful work, the initiative has staged nearly 1,000 job fairs across the country resulting in the hiring of nearly 30,000 veterans. More than 2,000 companies have committed to hire 707,000 veterans and military spouses as part of the “Hiring 500,000 Heroes” campaign.
Eversole is just the man to lead the effort. A liberal arts graduate and U.S. Navy Reserve officer who served in the JAG Corps, he knows the challenges of convincing potential employers that his experience and skills meet their needs.
“I got a great education at Wabash and a confidence you don’t get at most institutions— and military basic training is just another way of thinking and analyzing a problem and working with a team to execute the mission. But the people I wanted to hire me couldn’t always see those connections,” says Eversole, sitting at the worktable in his office in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Building a block away from the White House. His shelves are decorated with mementos from events and photos taken with sports heroes and former Presidents Bush and Clinton.
Ironically, it was his JAG experience that led him to the insight he shares with veterans today.
“The JAG TV show was popular then, and potential employers began asking me about it, Was the real JAG like what they saw on TV?” Eversole smiles. “I realized then that the best interviews were when you talked about nothing much more than the weather. They weren’t about answering questions, but getting to know each other. So much of the employment process is about making a relationship with somebody and that person feeling comfortable with you.
“For me the question became, ‘How do we begin to make that connection easier for these people who are really talented and employers who really need what these people can bring?’”
Finding an answer to that question bears economic ramifications for the U.S. military.
“We’re really looking at a national security issue when the military is paying nearly $1 billion in unemployment costs. That impacts the ability to buy equipment that protects and saves lives.”
It has even farther-reaching consequences for recruiting:
“About 70 percent of our service members come from low- to moderate-income families making less than $70,000 a year, and they’re looking for a better life. They’ll do what it takes to get that better life. But if you don’t deliver that better life when they’re done, the next generation of all volunteers is going to be very difficult to recruit.”
So today throughout the armed services you will find programs to help prepare service members for the transition to civilian life—the military’s version of a career services center. Eversole and Hiring Our Heroes are ahead of the curve.
“Everyone in the military transitions eventually, even if it’s to retirement. So from Day One we need to get our service members thinking about what real economic opportunity looks like.”
He recalls working with a sergeant major at an event on an American installation north of Munich.
“This man had seen everything, had commanded thousands of people, was getting ready to retire the next year. And he started to well up a little bit when he thought about his transition—he’d spent 28 years in the army and this was the only life he knew. And now he’s got to start over again, take care of his family on a path he knows nothing about. It was daunting for him. He was going back to the U.S., and he wondered, How am I going to find a job, to take care of my family?
“We started working with him. We asked him where he wanted to live, what he wanted to do, how much money did he need to make.
“The next spring he called me—he was looking at the southeast and wanted to be in manufacturing. He attended one of our events in Greenville, SC, and I suggested he talk to three companies. Within two weeks he had job offers from all three.
“Those are the kinds of stories that keep you motivated. I fly more than 125,000 miles a year to all these events, but we’re starting to see how it’s changing peoples’ lives, and that’s all the motivation you really need.”