http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/01/10/veterans-jobs-high-unemployment_n_1197400.html

Young military veterans saw little to celebrate in last week’s much cheered unemployment report. Data released the same day by the Department of Labor revealed that one in three young veterans was out of a job in the last quarter of 2011 — an employment picture even worse than a year earlier, when one in five couldn’t find work.

This rate is more double that of their civilian peers; the unemployment rate for all Americans age 18-24 actually decreased over the same time period.

“I definitely think it’s getting worse out there,” said Daniel Hutchison, 29, who started a one-man transition assistance group, Ohio Combat Veterans, last May. “Part of that has to do with the economy across the board. The unemployment rate is still high, and with veterans, it’s even more complicated.”

Veterans don’t always know how to translate their skills in the battlefield for employers back home. And while they look for work, they’re often battling post-traumatic stress disorder, which can be compounded, Hutchison said, by not finding a job.

“Veterans will sell themselves short. On their résumés, they’ll just say, ‘I was field artillery in Iraq for 16 months.’” Hutchison continued. “So I’ll say, ‘But you have leadership skills. How much training did you do? How many people did you manage?’ These are all attributes that these veterans have, but they can’t really see it.”

After five years in the U.S. Army, Hutchison returned home in 2007 expecting to pick up his previous construction job or something like it in the industry. But when he came back from Iraq, the housing bubble had popped.

“In today’s economy you can’t give away a house, so I was taking pretty much any little thing I could get,” he recalled. He had worked as a medic in the Army and thought that offered employment skills, but he didn’t hold any civilian certifications.

Hutchison now runs Ohio Combat Veterans by himself, with some donations and his own Army benefits. Since last May, he’s helped about 100 veterans — and they’ve helped him, too. “Just running this program was real therapeutic for me,” he said.

While organizations like Hutchison’s can be critical for catching veterans who have slipped through the cracks, some who focus on unemployment issues and veterans think the problem goes beyond PTSD and the difficulty of translating military skills for civilian employers.

Ted Daywalt, who runs VetJobs.com in Georgia, observes that most young unemployed veterans are part of the National Guard or the Reserves, and employers hesitate to hire them not because of weak résumés, but because of the increase in Pentagon calls for Reserve and Guard members to return to service. A new policy on call-ups implemented in 2007, combined with a law that requires companies to restore reservists to their jobs after they come home, means that employers are more reluctant than ever to hire veterans.

“An employer cannot run their business if their most critical asset, human capital, is being taken away for 12 to 24 months,” Daywalt said.

Some 180,000 people visit VetJobs.com every month, and they receive dozens of calls a day, Daywalt said. The most common plea, he continued, comes from a veteran in the Reserves or Guard who has just been called up and then suddenly finds himself laid off, with his employer blaming the pressures of the weak economy. According to Daywalt, who is a Vietnam-era veteran and a reservist for 21 years, some 65 to 70 percent of employers won’t hire from the National Guard or the Reserves, even though this type of discrimination is illegal.

“Employers would prefer to hire someone out of the military, but they’re called up so frequently, no one wants to hire them,” he said. “As a reservist, I get real upset. But when I put on my CEO hat, I totally understand why they’re doing it.”

Daywalt has testified before Congress multiple times on the subject and is firm on this point: Veterans who are not part of the Reserves or the National Guard typically find work, he said. But unless there is a change in the call-up policy, he expects unemployment for young veterans to keep rising.

“In 2007 in a hearing at Congress, I said the unemployment rate is going to go up to 20 percent, and people scoffed,” Daywalt recalled. “This year you’re going to see it go up to 50 or more percent.”

Bus doors opened. Upon exiting, sounds of chaos filled the air. The meanest, yet most professionally appearing “Smokey the Bear” hat wearing Military Instructors foamed out of their mouths barking orders. Complete strangers would soon become lifelong brothers—this was the start of a long initiation into the military path of becoming a veteran.

Our young vets endured weeks on end learning the basics of military discipline. They marched for hours, perfected their “make a dime bounce” beds, shined boots only to see their reflections, and embraced one another knowing teamwork was critical to defeat this hellish encounter of boot camp.  Eventually, the majority would succeed while many would either be washed out or recycled only to endure more high stress agonizing psychological pain.

Those who graduate basic would eventually be sent off for some type of advanced training. Advanced training normally falls in one of two categories—combat specific or support and services. No matter the category, advanced training serves as the main schooling which prepares the troops for their primary military duty readying them for war.

For those who have endured military combat, the majority will agree that no training demonstrates the reality of such hell. Only one training event came close—the Night Infiltration Exercise, aka the Gauntlet. This was when troops were forced to low crawl, high crawl, breach walls, go under barbed wire, all under the blanket of darkness. Darkness soon turned to light when slap flares were launched and live tracer rounds fired from machine guns barraging overhead which lit up the midnight hour sky. Controversial training tactics indeed–this was an event that actually took the lives of some yet saved the lives of many.

Upon graduating advanced training, many veterans endured specialized schooling and advanced leadership training. This could comprise of Airborne, Air Assault, Ranger, SF, SERE, etc. Make no mistake, no matter the individual training endured; a tremendous amount of blood, sweat, and tears was shed just to make it to an assigned unit.

After several months of training, our veterans were shipped off to military bases. Bases were inside the United States and others were strategically positioned around the world. These combat ready troops often skipped the luxury to take a breadth and learn what garrison was like. During times of war, the most “green” troops were often directly assigned to war time deployed or deploying units.  

The stresses of living the life of a veteran start on day one of basic training. They never really end knowing that at any time, the United States could be engaged in a military mission. Whether offensive, defensive, stability, or support operations were conducted, make no mistake, the stress level was constantly peaked.

Brotherhoods were made, friends were killed, and boys became men. Our women veterans went through the same—sisterhoods were made, friends were killed, and girls became women. Sex was neutral on the battlefield. We all went through the same fiasco. Scenarios may have been different but the situation was not. We walked a path in life and became our nation’s best and brightest—Veterans.

Kerry Patton, a combat service disabled veteran, is a Senior Analyst for WIKISTRAT. He has worked in South America, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and Europe, focusing on intelligence and security interviewing current and former terrorists, including members of the Taliban. He is the author of “Sociocultural Intelligence: The New Discipline of Intelligence Studies” and the children’s book “American Patriotism.” You can follow him on Facebook.

This column is the third in a three-part series focusing on what recruiters want from job seekers. The first column explored how recruiters work and why, while the second discussed how to stand out with recruiters (for all the right reasons). If you missed either of them, they’re both available at www.weddles.com.

This column will address a topic that’s every bit as important as the first two. It will reveal how the world of work has changed in the last five years so you understand what’s causing recruiters to act differently in today’s job market and why you have to adjust, as well.

As I explain in my book, The Career Activist Republic, the Great Recession changed everything in the world of work. It put a punctuation mark on trends that had been developing for at least a decade and, in the process, it forged an entirely new kind of workplace in the United States of America.

This new norm in the world of work affects everyone in the workforce. Male and female. Young and old. Its effect is as great on those who have just graduated from college and are looking for their first job as it is on those who’ve got years of experience under their belt and are looking for a new or better job.

While there are a number of facets to this new environment, the single most important one for our discussion is this: the tenure of employment positions is now dramatically shorter than it has ever been before.

Most of us know that the days of working for the gold watch – of being employed for an entire career in a single organization – have been gone for quite some time. What many of us haven’t recognized, however, is that the jobs we do have are going to have such a short life span.

For example, according to Spencer Stuart, an executive search firm, the average tenure of a Fortune 500 CEO is now down to less than four years. In other words, when a CEO takes on his or her new job, they can expect to be in that position for four years or less. And, if that’s true at the top of the heap, you can be sure it’s the same at every other level in the organization.

What’s driving this significantly shorter job duration? In a word: uncertainty. It is the fact that employers can no longer count on what they thought they knew about the global marketplace. Technology is advancing so rapidly, competitive pressures are shifting so continuously, consumer tastes have grown so fickle and destabilizing events around the world – from wars and revolutions to earthquakes and reactor meltdowns – are occurring so frequently that no employer can predict what will happen six months from now, let alone a year or more down the road. To put it bluntly, the global economy that produces our jobs has become totally unpredictable.

So, What Are Employers Doing?

How are employers dealing with this totally new and unsettled environment?

Well, obviously, some have stuck their heads in the sand and are pretending it isn’t happening. Most, however, are developing their own version of a common strategy. They are engaging in what might best be described as “rapid adaptation.” They know they can no longer survive let alone prosper by standing still – by doing what they’ve always done – so they are adjusting as rapidly as they can to the changes going on around them. And, those adaptations are changing the nature of the work they need done and thus the jobs and kinds of employees they require to implement their plans. In essence, they are doing away with the organizational chart and now operating with an organizational compass. And every time they shift direction, they change their staffing requirements.

What does that mean for those of us in the world of work? Permanent employment will now be much less permanent.

A person once wrote that what most Americans want is “an honest to goodness, full time permanent job,” and that’s probably still true. What has changed is that the definition of an honest to goodness full time permanent job now looks uncomfortably like an honest to goodness full time here-today-gone tomorrow job. We used to tell people that they would likely go through seven or eight job changes during a thirty year career. Well, that’s now old news. In today’s world of work – in the 21st Century – people are likely to go through fifteen or twenty job changes during a fifty year career. To put it another way, they are now likely to be changing jobs every three years or so.

Some of those changes will be to new roles within their current employer and some will be to entirely new employers, but in every case they will be dealing with a recruiter. You see job openings are actually filled from two populations: those employees who are already working for an organization and those job seekers who want to. In fact, according to one survey, just over half of all new openings in large employers are now filled by internal mobility, by a current employee moving from one assignment to another within the organization. Even though the process involved in making that happen is dramatically less complicated than the traditional recruiting process, it is still under the control of the recruiter. They still determine who gets through the door into the realm of consideration for all of the openings that will be filled internally.

The rest of the openings will be filled by external or new hires and there, of course, the recruiter is in charge, as well. They may not control who gets hired, but they definitely determine who gets considered. In most recruiting processes, it is the recruiter who conducts the initial pre-screening of all applicants and thus who is invited in for an interview with the hiring manager. In addition, it is the recruiter who oversees any background and reference checking that is conducted and can, therefore, influence how the findings of that research are presented. Think of it this way: A recruiter may not be able to select you for the job you want, but they can definitely ensure that you don’t get selected.

So, the reason for learning what recruiters want is very simple. From now on, you are going to be interacting with them far more often than you ever have before in your career. In many if not all cases, the quality of those interactions will determine the quality of the jobs for which you are considered and ultimately hired. Recruiters don’t have to become your new best friend, but you must understand how they work and why and how you can be a stand our candidate with them. That’s the single best way to ensure success in your career.

Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including WEDDLE’s 2011/12 Guide to Employment Sites on the Internet, The Career Activist Republic, Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System and Recognizing Richard Rabbit. Get them at Amazon.com and www.Weddles.com today.

© Copyright 2011 WEDDLE’s LLC. All Rights Reserved.

ICANN Rules Employ Media and SHRM in Breach of Dot Jobs Charter

The Dot Jobs Opposition Coalition, of which VetJobs is a partner, scored a HUGE victory in its efforts to ensure that the .jobs domain continues to be available to employers who want to use domains such as toyota.jobs to promote their own employment opportunities and not to allow Employ Media, Direct Employers Association, or any other entity from expanding the use to create tens and likely hundreds of thousands of job boards such as vet.jobs, diversity.jobs, dallas.jobs, and engineering.jobs. In a letter sent yesterday, Employ Media was given 30 days to fix its violations or risk having the Dot Jobs domain completely shut down.

Hundreds of newspapers, associations, employers, job boards, and other members and supports of the Coalition have opposed the expansion of the Dot Jobs domain and we’ve been actively working with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) since last summer to help ensure that it would not allow the expansion of the charter without Employ Media, Direct Employers Association, Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), or any other entity to go through the proper public, transparent process. ICANN has publicly agreed with the Dot Jobs Opposition Coalition position.

Here is the letter sent by ICANN:

TRANSMITTED VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL, FACSIMILE & COURIER SERVICE

27 February 2011

Mr. Brian Johnson, General Counsel
Mr. Ray Fassett, EVP, Operations & Policy Employ Media LLC
3029 Prospect Avenue
Cleveland, Ohio 44115

RE: NOTICE OF BREACH OF .JOBS REGISTRY AGREEMENT

Dear Messrs. Johnson and Fassett:

Be advised that as of and before 28 February 2011, Employ Media is in breach of its Registry Agreement between the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (“ICANN”) and Employ Media LLC (“Employ Media”). As explained below, this breach results from Employ Media and its sponsoring organization, the Society of Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) failure to establish policies, in conformity with the defined purpose and intent of the .JOBS registry; and further may be inconsistent with the .JOBS Charter for the naming conventions within the sponsored TLD and for requirements of registration as required by Section 3.1(d)(i)(A) of the .JOBS Registry Agreement. Should Employ Media fail to cure this breach within 30 calendar days, ICANN may commence the termination process as set forth in Section 6.1 of the .JOBS Registry Agreement. To cure this breach, Employ Media must establish meaningful registration policies, in conformity with the .JOBS Charter, for the naming conventions within the sponsored TLD and for requirements of registration.

In addition to Employ Media’s breach of its Registry Agreement, Employ Media’s failure to operate and manage the .JOBS TLD in a manner consistent with the spirit and intention of the .JOBS registry and .JOBS Charter has substantially frustrated the primary purpose of the .JOBS Registry Agreement. We are calling on Employ Media to take immediate actions to implement restricted registration policies that support the purpose for which the .JOBS top-level domain was established, and to cancel registrations and/or disavow themselves of the benefits of any registrations that are owned by related parties, if any.

Failure to Establish Policies in Conformity with the Intent and Purpose of the .JOBS Registry and the .JOBS Charter
Pursuant to Section 3.1(d)(i)(A) of the .JOBS Registry Agreement, Employ Media is required to establish policies, in conformity with the Charter, for the naming conventions within the sponsored TLD and for requirements of registration, consistent with Section 3.1(g). In Section 3.1(g) of the .JOBS Registry Agreement, ICANN acknowledges that Employ Media engaged SHRM, as the sponsoring organization for the TLD, to carry out the responsibilities associated with the development of policies for the .JOBS TLD. Pursuant to Part II of Appendix S of the .JOBS Registry Agreement, SHRM is responsible for developing policies concerning the restrictions on what types of people or entities may register second-level domain names within the TLD.

Employ Media and SHRM failed to establish any meaningful restrictions on what types of people or entities may register second-level domain names within the .JOBS TLD. By not establishing any meaningful restrictions on who may register second level registrations in the .JOBS TLD, Employ Media put in operation a TLD where anyone can register names, thus defeating the purpose for which the sponsored TLD came into existence. The lack of meaningful restriction on registrations is clearly set forth in the .JOBS Charter, which reads,
The following persons may request registration of a second-level domain within the .JOBS TLD:

?Members of SHRM; or
?Persons engaged in human resource management practices that meet any of the following criteria: (1) possess salaried-level human resource management experience; (ii) are certified by the Human Resource Certification Institute; (iii) are supportive of the SHRM Code of Ethics and Professional Standards in Human Resources Management…”
While seemingly restrictive to human resource management professionals, the above Charter language is specious. Anyone willing to pay the $40.00 membership fee to SHRM may become an associate member of SHRM, as there are no restrictions to membership, other than payment of annual membership fees. Accordingly, anyone can register a second-level domain name within the .JOBS sTLD, as long as they pay a $40.00 membership fee to SHRM to become an associate member.

There is not sufficient information to confirm that Employ Media or SHRM conducted a meaningful process for changing the registration criteria. The registration policy shift clearly represents a basic and fundamental change to the qualifications for registration which differ from the original intent and purpose of the .JOBS Registry Agreement and the Charter.

It is unclear from responses gathered from SHRM or Employ Media, whether a change to these registration policies was appropriately communicated within the community impacted by this change. It appears that the adjustments to registration policies was exploiting broad wording within the Charter to justify a fundamental change which inures benefit to SHRM and Employ Media, at the detriment of some participants of the human resources community, that did not have any way of understanding the broad nature of this category of registrations at the time of the application for the registry.

Pursuant to the .JOBS Charter, the TLD was “…established to serve the needs of the international human resource management community…” However, the specious restrictions established by Employ Media and SHRM regarding what types of people or entities may register second-level domain names within the .JOBS TLD do not serve the international human resource management community. Human resource management experience, skills nor education are required to become an associate member of SHRM nor is it required to register a second-level domain name within the .JOBS TLD. Conversely, the loose restrictions established by Employ Media and SHRM appear to exclusively serve the financial interests of Employ Media and SHRM.

Employ Media and SHRM’s failure to establish policies in conformity with the .JOBS Charter for the naming conventions within the sponsored TLD and for requirements of registration, consistent with Section 3.1(g) is a breach of the .JOBS Registry Agreement.

To cure this breach, Employ Media, through its sponsoring organization, SHRM, must develop and implement meaningful restrictive policies in conformance with the .JOBS Charter regarding what types of people or entities may register second-level domain names within the .JOBS TLD. These registrations policies must serve the needs of the international human resource management community.

ICANN is concerned that Employ Media and SHRM are not operating and managing the .JOBS TLD in a manner consistent with the spirit and intent of the .JOBS Charter. The .JOBS Charter clearly states that the TLD will be established to serve the needs of the international human resource management community.

The recently launched universe.jobs appears to be a job board that advertises job openings for multiple employers. It is our understanding that one registrant, who is a member of SHRM, registered forty thousand second-level domain names in the .JOBS TLD for use on this job board. It appears that Employ Media and SHRM, through the Direct Employers Association, intend to use the .JOBS TLD primarily to compete with other internet job boards. Such use is inconsistent with the purpose stated in the .JOBS Charter and represented to the ICANN community. As opposed to numerous, international, human resource management professionals registering second-level .JOBS domain names, it appears one US-based registrant is registering thousands of second-level .JOBS domain names. These registrations appear to serve the interests of the registrant or company causing the registrations, as well as Employ Media and SHRM rather than the interests of the human resource management professionals.

Conclusion

Employ Media and SHRM’s failure to establish policies, in conformity with the defined purpose and intent of the .JOBS registry is inconsistent with the .JOBS Charter for the naming conventions within the sponsored TLD and for requirements of registration as required by Section 3.1(d)(i)(A) of the .JOBS Registry Agreement, and such other relevant sections of the agreement.

As previously stated, ICANN may, pursuant to Section 6.1 of the .JOBS Registry Agreement, terminate the Registry Agreement before its expiration if the stated breach is not cured within 30 calendar days after ICANN gives notice of breach.

We are calling on Employ Media to take immediate actions to implement restricted registration policies that support the purpose for which the .JOBS top-level domain was established, and to cancel registrations and/or disavow themselves of the benefits of any registrations that are owned by related parties, if any. ICANN specifically reserves the right to pursue any and all remedies relating to the above or other breaches in addition to the breach enumerated above, and nothing herein shall be deemed a waiver of that right.

If you have any questions regarding the above, please feel free to contact me directly, or contact Stacy Burnette, Director of Contractual Compliance at Stacy.Burnette (at) ICANN.org.

Sincerely,

John O. Jeffrey
General Counsel & Secretary
CC: Stacy Burnette, ICANN Amy Stathos, ICANN

This article originally appeared in the December 2010 issue of Onrec Magazine and is reprinted with permission.

http://www.onrec.com/store/pages/15551/Decmag.pdf

People & Practices:
MISSION EMPLOYMENT
US PERSPECTIVE
By Paula Santonocito, US Features Editor

Even as companies become aware of the advantages of recruiting former members of the military, matching veterans to civilian job opportunities remains a challenge. Military recruiting programs require dedicated resources and outreach efforts that focus on transferable skills with attention to long-term career potential.

Strategic Approach

One company that has implemented a successful military recruiting program and reaped its benefits is Fort Worth, Texas-based BNSF Railway Company, a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway that operates one of the largest North American rail networks.

With approximately 32,000 route miles in 28 states and two Canadian provinces, BNSF is among the world’s top transporters of intermodal traffic. The company serves more than 40
ports, moves more grain than any other American railroad, carries the components of many of the products used by consumers on a daily basis, and hauls enough low-sulfur coal to generate electricity to power one out of every 10 homes in the country.

BNSF, which currently has approximately 38,000 employees, offers a wide range of career opportunities—jobs in the trades, openings in field operations, positions in IT, and more. In order to attract military candidates to these jobs, the company focuses on first connecting with them. To facilitate the process, BNSF employs a recruiter dedicated exclusively to military hiring. BNSF also has specific resources dedicated to targeting veterans for its high-profile field-based operations management program known as the Experienced First Line Supervisor program (EFLS). Meanwhile, the company’s 23 field-based HR professionals augment management recruiting by focusing on hiring veterans for non-management positions in 28 states.

The company realizes that such an effort requires financial support and, accordingly, appropriates $600,000 for military recruitment. Approximately $200,000 of the total is spent on recruitment advertising aimed at military candidates, which equates to about 33 percent of the total staffing advertising budget.

In addition to outreach efforts through VetJobs, G.I. Jobs magazine, Military.com, CareerBuilder.com, Recruit Military, and Corporate Gray, BNSF spends thousands of dollars to reach service members without Internet access in deployed regions around the world. Long-running ads in Military Times and hometown newspapers, and on television and radio networks, share information about civilian career opportunities. Representatives from BNSF also share information live, attending between 50 and 80 job fairs each year.

On-Target Messaging

But establishing a reputation as a veteran friendly employer takes more than a presence at live events, in print, on TV and radio, and online. Messaging must resonate with the job-seeker audience.

With this in mind, BNSF taps into what each communication vehicle has to offer. For example, G.I. Jobs magazine features employee profiles and testimonials, along with print ads.

The company furthers its presence in the military community in other ways as well. On a weekly basis, BNSF communicates with more than 315 military contacts at Transition Assistance Program (TAP) centers, select Department of Labor (DOL) workforce centers, and National
Guard and Reserve Bureaus nationwide and abroad, providing details on available job opportunities and assistance with the application process for transitioning service members. In addition, BNSF has partnered with Guard and Reserve recruiters in each state in order to link veterans with opportunities.

The company also donates time and financial resources to support the USO Dallas/Fort Worth. Several times a year, volunteers participate in “Welcome Home” activities for service members on leave whose flights transit through Dallas Fort Worth International Airport.

Applicants and Employees

Support for veterans continues through the application process, and beyond. BNSF uses a veteran candidate designation code in the applicant tracking system (ATS). When candidates self identify with military experience, an icon (green heart) appears alongside their name, alerting HR professionals and hiring managers as to their veteran status.

BNSF currently employs approximately 7,000 military veterans and has hired more than 3,100 veterans since 2005.

Military veterans who become BNSF employees find a workplace community that recognizes their abilities. “Those who wear our nation’s uniforms are mission-focused, highly skilled, motivated, and possess unique experiences and technical knowledge,” says Matt Rose, chairman, president, and chief executive officer of BNSF Railway Company.

“Military candidates embody the core competencies of BNSF: leadership, teamwork, and the ability to perform safely in a fast-paced, dynamic environment.” BNSF is proud of its work and dedication in actively recruiting transitioning service members, and the company takes pride in employees who have part-time commitments as reservists.

The company offers enhanced and extended benefits for employees called to active duty, including make-whole pay and continued health care. In addition, BNSF goes above and beyond, offering 15 days of make-whole pay for annual training and drill duty. More than 100 BNSF employees currently serve on active duty in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Noble Eagle or Enduring Freedom. More than 1,700 BNSF employees have been activated since Sept. 11, 2001, with more than 1,240 in support of recent campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
BNSF’s commitment to recruiting, hiring, and supporting military veterans earned the company the 2010 Onrec-RecruitingBlogs award for Best Military Recruiting Program.

About Veterans

Mention military recruitment and one individual immediately comes to mind: Ted Daywalt. Founder and president of VetJobs, a leading job board for military veterans established in 1999, Daywalt is a tireless advocate for transitioning members of the military. His efforts haven’t gone unnoticed by the military community, the federal government, the recruiting industry or the media. VetJobs has received awards and recognition from Workforce, WEDDLE’s, AIRS, CareerXroads, Reader’s Digest, and BusinessWeek.

In September, Daywalt received the 2010 Onrec-Recruiting Blogs Vet Advocate of the Year award.

Because VetJobs is an established resource for veterans, it would be easy for Daywalt to rest on the site’s reputation.

Nevertheless, because he is dedicated to providing the best possible information for those who have served their country, VetJobs continues to evolve.

After receiving many complaints from military veterans, military family members, and candidates about scam job sites, VetJobs conducted a massive study of all United States-based job boards in order to provide a resource that could be used with confidence. VetJobs’ findings, which have been divided among four lists, Niche Job Board Sites, Comprehensive Job Board Sites, State Job Board Sites, and Aggregator Job Board Sites, are available in the Employment Assistance section of the site. The lists are updated weekly.

The move is more than a little unorthodox; job boards generally do not want candidates going to other sites to look for a job. Yet, although VetJobs has been highly successful in helping transitioning military, veterans, and their family members find jobs, Daywalt recognizes that not everyone will find a job exclusively through VetJobs. Therefore, VetJobs made the decision to provide lists of job sites as a public service, with the objective of offering candidates additional assistance.

This kind of service is indicative of Daywalt’s commitment to military veterans.

Incidentally, the risky campaign has proved highly successful. Hundreds of Department of Labor representatives, career counselors, and representatives from military transition programs have called VetJobs, asking for permission to use the lists. But perhaps the most noteworthy indicator of success is traffic to the Employment Assistance section of VetJobs: It has increased by more than 4,000 percent.

Paula Santonocito
is a business journalist specializing in employment issues, including online recruitment, which she has covered since the early days of Web-based employment advertising and candidate sourcing. Paula is U.S. features editor of Online Recruitment Magazine; AIRS News editor; contributing editor to TalentManagement-Tech.com (TMT); career editor of Single-MindedWomen.com; and author of nearly 1,000 articles that are featured in many global and domestic publications and information outlets. She can be reached via her website:
www.paulasantonocito.com.

Everyone in America is in debt. If you’ve been prudent and kept your finances in order, your government hasn’t. That reality means all of us are in hock. But, it’s not the only deficit we’re dealing with. Many of us are now also debtors in our careers. Our occupational knowledge is bankrupt.

Historically, working Americans have relied on two kinds of knowledge in the workplace: occupational and experiential. We went to school and attended training programs to keep ourselves up-to-date in our field of work, and we learned the practical lessons of how things actually got done and done well through our day-to-day interactions on-the-job.

While both of those kinds of knowledge were deemed important, they were not given equal weight, either in our own minds or, in truth, in those of our employers. Book learning was obviously an important foundation, but the superstructure of experience was the gold standard of an employee’s value. Indeed, until recently, if there was a choice between two candidates, one with the latest knowledge and no experience and one with slightly (or even significantly) dated expertise and a lot of experience, most organizations would have opted for the person with the longer track record.

Moreover, if you’ve been in the workforce for more than five years, you probably came to rely on that approach to worker valuation. Sure, you tended to your occupational knowledge, but you did so episodically and at a relatively leisurely pace. It was an effective strategy for managing your career because occupational knowledge expanded and was refined at a similarly slow rate. As a result, your mastery in your field had a long half-life.

Today, it doesn’t.

The Shorter Half-Life of Occupational Knowledge

The half-life of occupational knowledge has shrunk dramatically in the last decade. The pace of new knowledge creation and old knowledge refinement has now accelerated in every career field. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a salesperson who must stay abreast of a constantly changing array of new products or a systems analyst who must be conversant in a continuously expanding universe of new software, half of your expertise is now obsolete every eighteen months.

What does that mean for you and your career? To put it bluntly, you are going to have to acknowledge one change and make another.

First, you must now accept that the relative importance of expertise and experience has shifted. Employers now view your expertise as more critical to their success than your experience. They believe they need state-of-the-art knowledge in order to compete in the global marketplace. Experience is still obviously helpful and remains an important foundation for high performance. But, it is the superstructure of your knowledge in the latest concepts, techniques, technologies and products and services that will enable you to make a meaningful contribution on-the-job.

Second, you can no longer afford to coast in your occupational development. There is no recess when it comes to staying current in your field. You must now be in school all of the time, when you’re employed and even when you’re not. In fact, if you’re in transition today, the strongest resume is the one that indicates that you’re continuing your knowledge acquisition even as you look for a job. That entry indicates to an employer both that you recognize the importance of keeping your expertise current and that you take personal responsibility for doing so.

These two shifts have introduced a simple but powerful new key to success in the modern American workplace. Whether you’re in transition and looking for a new job or currently employed and seeking to keep that job, there’s only one way to achieve your goal. You have to make sure that the knowledge you bring to work each day is rich with the latest thinking and the newest ideas in your field.

Thanks for reading,
Peter
Visit me at Weddles.com

Peter Weddle is the author of over two dozen employment-related books, including the recently released blockbuster The Career Activist Republic and Work Strong, Your Personal Career Fitness System, one of the most innovative career success books in print. Both are available at Amazon.com.

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In the first year of the Post 9/11 GI Bill, more than 550,500 students applied to eventually receive their benefits and 267,500 veterans were attending school. In the coming years over a million veterans will be attending educational institutions to further their post military education and earn degrees.

About 180,000 veterans leave active duty each year. While some leave to go to work, are disabled or totally retire, many want to go back to school to obtain a bachelors or graduate degree to be better prepared for the work place. As a result, many schools now compete to attract veterans.

Attracting veterans to a university or college is very advantageous for several reasons.

-With the Montgomery and the Post 9/11 GI Bills, veterans will have access to financial resources to pay for their education. The result is veterans are not a major financial drain on the educational institution.

-Veterans have developed strong study skills due to the training received while on active duty. The military is known for providing constant training and education for every one of the over 200 skills sets used in the military. The result is veterans generally outperform their non-veteran colleagues at school and frequently have much higher grade point averages than non-veterans.

-The jobs that military veteran graduates obtain are generally of a higher caliber than those obtained by non-veterans with no work experience. Companies value the experience veterans received while on active duty. Understanding this, many schools want veterans as the presence of veteran graduates brings a better caliber employer and higher wages. This has a positive effect for all the students in an educational institution.

-Very importantly, veterans bring ethnic, gender and physical diversity to a campus. Here are figures from the 2010 census for the diversity of the veteran population:

Total number of veterans: 21.9 million

Ethnic diversity:
17.7 million – non-Hispanic white
2.3 million – black
1.1 million – Hispanic
258,000 – Asian
153,000 – American Indian or Alaskan Native
30,000 – Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander

Gender diversity
Female: 1.5 million
Male: 20.4 million

Physical diversity:
5.5 million Veterans have a disability rating
3.3 million Veterans have service-connected disabilities
Of the 3.3 million service-connected disabled Veterans, 652,000 are rated at 70% disabled or higher.

Another way to look at veteran diversity is to understand that their real world experiences are extremely different from the traditional student who comes straight from high school. The student veteran has had substantial life experiences from which to draw. A veteran has generally travelled extensively around the world. Combat veterans have been in life and death situations. As a result, the student veteran is much more mature than the non-veteran student. These experiences bring value to the educational institution.

The diversity that veterans bring to a campus enhances the educational experience for all the students and makes the educational institution stronger. For all these reasons, having veterans on a campus enhances the diversity of the school.

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About the author:
Ted Daywalt is the president of VetJobs (www.vetjobs.com), the leading military job board on the Internet. Ted spent 28 years in the military (7 active, 21 Navy Reserve) and retired as a Navy Captain. Ted has held senior positions in the utility, import, chemical and recruiting industries. Ted earned a BS from Florida State University, an MA from the University of Southern California and an MBA from the Goizueta Business School, Emory University.

This article was written for HigherEd.com to be published in December 2010.