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Program aims to help vets get good jobs

Sgt. 1st Class Chad Sowash never stops working for soldiers.

The Indiana Reserve senior drill sergeant is in his second mobilization at Fort Benning, Ga., in four years.

When Sowash isn’t shaping civilians into soldiers, he spends his time finding job opportunities for veterans in the nation’s top-rated firms.

About 18 months ago, Sowash launched VetCentral, an Internet-based program designed to help veterans find success in the civilian workforce.

“It focuses on connecting Fortune 500 companies with veterans,” said Sowash, vice president for business development for Direct Employers Association, a nonprofit group that works with major corporations to help them recruit more effectively. “The jobs have always been there, but there has never been a pipeline in place to funnel those jobs to the veterans.”

This is particularly important now given that the country is in one of the worst economic crises in history, resulting in hundreds of thousands of layoffs across America.

At the same time, the Army is less willing to pay out large bonuses to keep soldiers in the service.

Army funding for re-enlistment bonuses will decline sharply in 2009 as service retention programs enjoy unprecedented success at a time of economic uncertainty in the civilian sector.

As of Jan. 1, Selective Re-enlistment and Bonus Extension and Retraining programs will target fewer specialties for bonuses, while payment rates will be reduced across all qualifying categories.

Career-researching services on VetCentral are available to active, National Guard and Reserve soldiers. It is part of the larger JobCentral National Labor Exchange Web site, which is also operated by Direct Employers Association.

Soldiers and veterans can access it by visiting www.jobcentral.com/vetcentral, where they can find 1 million job opportunities available across 450 companies, Sowash said.

But it’s more than just a Web page, Sowash says, describing how his office coordinates with employment offices across the country to ensure that counselors know about these opportunities available to veterans.

“We push all new jobs down to over 3,600 local and state offices,” Sowash said. “They actually have someone there to assess your skills, face to face … that is what veterans need. When they get out, their biggest problem is trying to find out what their particular skill set is — if you are a mechanic, you know, but if you’re an infantryman, what do you do?”

Companies from every field fund the effort. There are defense companies such as BAE Systems, General Dynamics and Raytheon. But many of the firms, such as Marriott, United Airlines and Google, have no military connection.

“There are also a lot of employers out there who need to be educated on what veterans can bring to the civilian world,” Sowash said.

“They might have a four-year career in the Army, but in that four-year time frame, they will receive an education that they will not get in the outside world. And that, for most employers, is an asset they need.”

One of the next steps for the program, Sowash said, is to develop a tracking system to tell how many veterans have landed jobs as a direct result of the effort.

“To me, being a veteran, I want to know how this is positively impacting the problem at hand,” said Sowash, who is approaching his 20th year in service. “I have many projects I oversee, but this is the one that is the closest to my heart.”