RSSpublication date: Feb 18, 2008
author/source: Jonathan Copsey / STAFF
Chances are that when you think of career finding Web sites you can only think of a few, such as the big names Monster.com and Careerbuilder.com. However there is one, smaller, more local name that should also be on that list, and chances are that you have never heard of it. Unless you are a veteran, that is.
Vetjobs.com is a career Web site devoted exclusively to finding jobs for returning veterans and serving employers who are in need of the skills vets have. It has created such a shockwave in the career Web site industry that it has consistently been at the forefront of user polls within the Human Resources industry, winning numerous awards and accolades, not only for its business, but also its treatment of clients and for its ethical standards. When Vetjobs first launched, it was mentioned on USA Today’s front page and its staff is frequently called before Congress to testify on veteran’s issues.
Founder Ted Daywalt, of Marietta, explained the sorrowful reasons behind his decision to start up such a site.
“We began in September 1999 and [the Web site] went live at 11 a.m. November 11, 1999. Armistice Day,” said Daywalt. “I got the idea when a sergeant major down here retired from the army and got out and was basically ripped off by a career finding group. He paid them $5,000 to find him a job. At that time I had heard of several people who had been ripped off by these outfits which took advantage of people coming out of the military, never having been involved in civilian life and had no idea what was legit and what wasn’t.”
So Daywalt, an unassuming gentleman with a sharp sense of humor and a veteran himself, did what he could to solve this problem: he began his own site. “What I decided on was a site for all military veterans, all through the ranks, including spouses. Nobody was doing anything for the spouses.”
Almost immediately, Daywalt’s company got noticed. After only a few months of operation, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the largest veteran’s service organization in the country, not only endorsed Vetjobs but also bought 10 percent of it. The VFW was begun over 100 years ago, after the Spanish-American War, to give veterans healthcare and jobs. Daywalt found it fitting that, close to their centennial, the organization chose to endorse and take an active role in supporting a job agency specifically designed to cater to veterans. Vetjobs currently receives an average of 27,000 job postings a day, with about 100,000 visitors daily.
Despite the massive backing of the VFW, Daywalt still had an uphill battle to convince employers to hire veterans. The problem, he said, lay with the lack of any draft.
“After 36 years of an all-volunteer force, you have a situation where you have two generations of people who have no association with the military and no idea of what the military does. There are too many human resource managers and hiring officials who, when they see someone out of the military, they say ‘I need someone with real world experience.’ What it was, was a misperception these guys had. They start thinking in terms of a John Wayne movie. And the military is nothing like that today. The military today is high tech. To be an infantryman today you have to essentially be an electronics engineer. Think of the technology and the skill set you need to have to do that. That’s today’s military.”
Daywalt had strong words of support for a veteran’s skills and assets for today’s job force, arguing that much of today’s economic scandals could have been avoided if a military man had been at the helm of major companies.
“One of the things a military candidate brings that anybody else doesn’t is leadership. You can teach anybody how to be a manager. Just make sure all these things are lined up – that’s management. The military teaches people how to be real leaders. As I go ’round the country speaking on ethics issues, I like to point out that when you look at Enron, most of those people had MBA’s, the result of that type of training are people like Ken Lay in Enron. One of the first things you learn as an officer is that you take care of your troops. It would be unthinkable for a true leader to do what Ken Lay did. And yet Ken Lay was on the front pages of Forbes, [with them] saying what a wonderful guy he was. He bankrupted 18,000 families and stole however many hundreds of millions of dollars. That’s not leadership.”
Even worse than overpowering a popular perception is fighting the government for veteran’s causes. The hardest one is reconciling the needs of employers with the needs of the government. It is illegal to fire an active service member, yet, due to the needs of the current war, reservists may be called up for two year tours.
“Would I want to hire someone knowing that in two or three months they are going to get called up and I won’t see them for two years and still have to incur all the financial responsibility for them? Some of the people at the Department of Defense don’t think that is a problem, claiming that over 90 percent of those going back to Iraq are volunteers. I went and testified that they are volunteering because they can’t get a job elsewhere. A lot of employers right now will not hire people in the guard and reserve. It forces the soldier to choose between the military and civilian life. That’s why a lot of them are getting out.”
Daywalt and his employees spend much of their time running from conference to conference and from Capitol Hill to homes in the North Fulton area.
“We get called out to speak a lot,” he said. “Last year I gave 87 speeches. I just came back from a Human Resources conference in Bratislava with attendees from all over Europe. On March 5, I am one of the keynote speakers speaking on Internet security for Online Recruitment Magazine, which is the big magazine for online recruitment in Europe.”
The need to find employment for returning soldiers and their families is a continuing battle in a nation that is getting increasingly frustrated with warfare and its effects. The acknowledgement is finally being made that the military is an important part of the nation, and the need to help those who have sacrificed is finally becoming apparent. Daywalt has provided a mechanism for doing just that.
For more information on Vetjobs, visit vetjobs.com.