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A Hiring Our Heroes Kaiserslautern Military Community Transition Summit was held March 10 and 11 on Vogelweh. The purpose of the summit was to inform transitioning service members and their spouses of programs and companies to assist through and after the process of leaving the military.
Hiring Our Heroes is a nationwide U.S. Chamber of Commerce foundation to help transitioning military members and their spouses find jobs and opportunities after their service commitments.
“We hold about 20 of these transitioning summits annually on military installations, primarily around the U.S., but also a few international ones, like this one in Germany,” said Sarah Worley, Hiring Our Heroes senior manager. “We try to go where we’re needed, and our goal is to help service members and their families create a more seamless transition into the civilian workforce.”
Worley said the veteran unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been in seven years at just under 4 percent. Programs like Hiring Our Heroes could be a key factor in educating and progressively decreasing this statistic.
“A lot of veteran service organizations, like (Hiring Our Heroes), know they’re doing the work they need to be doing, but what some people don’t realize is more than half of the transitioning service members population is unemployed in the first 15 months of getting out of the military,” Worley said. “The summits are designed to get those service members thinking ahead of time about opportunities because a lot of times they don’t know where to start.”
During the summit, attendees listened to leaders empowering them to make informed decisions. Key speakers talked about actively seeking to hire veterans for their companies and were given the opportunity to attend workshops to improve networking connections, as well as given information on how to start their own businesses.
Staff Sgt. Joe Filipowski, 86th Medical Support Squadron contingency operations NCO, said the event was beneficial and educated him on opportunities.
“The summit has helped me gain confidence for when I do separate,” Filipowski said. “It’s good to start planning to transition as early as possible. Some military members may have less time to plan, so I think this experience would be beneficial to them, especially because they provide immediate contacts for careers and organizations for assistance.”
Worley said the number of companies actively seeking veteran employees is increasing, and events like this help other organizations understand the unique talents and abilities military members have to offer, making them very desirable.
“Because of the generous support of our sponsors, we’re able to do this event,” Worley said. “Companies who want to hire veterans and their spouses are really setting a gold standard and are reaching out to other companies as well, and that is so invaluable to not only what we do but mostly to the service members and spouses because they’re wanted by these companies, who can see how much of an asset they can be.”
The Hiring Our Heroes event gave transitioning service members the opportunity to become more informed about their options for their futures. By assisting during transitions, veterans can remain just as successful in the civilian sector as they were in the military.
