RecruitMilitary to Present Opportunity Expo for Veterans in Tampa on February 18
Tampa, FL – (PR Log) – Jan 15, 2010 — The military-to-civilian recruiting firm RecruitMilitary will present a free employment, entrepreneurship, and education event for job seekers who have military backgrounds in Tampa on Thursday, February 18. This event, the RecruitMilitary Opportunity Expo, will take place from 11 a.m. until 3 p.m. at David A. Straz, Jr. Center for the Performing Arts. The event will be open to veterans who already have civilian work experience, men and women who are transitioning from active duty to civilian life, members of the National Guard and reserves, military spouses, and other military family members.
The Opportunity Expo will be the seventh of 73 such events scheduled for 2010. A large array of veteran-friendly organizations will interview the job seekers—organizations that will include corporate employers, law-enforcement agencies and other government employers, franchisors, educational institutions, veterans service agencies, and veterans associations.
Already scheduled to attend the Tampa Expo are Aegis LLC, Apptis, Inc., Argosy University, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Corinthian Colleges, Inc., the Defense Intelligence Agency, FastTrain, FranNet, Grand Canyon University, Lear Siegler Services, Inc., Military Sealift Command, New York Life, Northrop Grumman, Northwood University, Springfield College, Strayer University, Troops to Teachers, and Walgreens.
RecruitMilitary (www.recruitmilitary.com) will produce the Opportunity Expo in cooperation with The American Legion; Purple Heart Services; HireVetsFirst, a unit of the United States Department of Labor; and the Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (MSCCN).
RecruitMilitary has produced Opportunity Expos since 2006. Over 1,675 organizations attended 215 such events from 2007 through 2009. Those Expos generated television coverage by ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, and FOX affiliates as well as local independent channels; articles in major metropolitan and local newspapers; and radio coverage that included remote live broadcasts from events.
The company also offers subscriptions to its database of more than 420,000 registered candidates who have military backgrounds at http://www2.recruitmilitary.com, retained hiring services, and advertising space in online and print media. RecruitMilitary distributes more than 36,000 copies of each issue of Search & Employ, a bimonthly print magazine, to over 220 military bases throughout the world, National Guard and reserve units, and job seekers who attend RecruitMilitary Opportunity Expos. RecruitMilitary is based in Loveland, Ohio (Greater Cincinnati).
The American Legion (http://www.legion.org) is an association of veterans who served during times of war. The Legion has 2.7 million members in nearly 15,000 posts throughout the world. Congress chartered The American Legion in 1919. HireVetsFirst was created by Congress in 2002 to develop awareness among employers of the outstanding attributes of men and women who are transitioning from active duty to civilian life.
Purple Heart Services (http://www.purpleheartservices.com) provides programs and services to meet the needs of the combat-wounded and their families—including Purple Heart Radio, an online school called Veterans Vocational Technical Institute (VetTech), Purple Heart Call Center, and Purple Heart Tech Support. Purple Heart Services is a division of the Military Order of the Purple Heart Service Foundation. The Military Order of the Purple Heart is a veteran service agency founded in 1932 for the protection and mutual interest of all who have received the Purple Heart decoration.
The Military Spouse Corporate Career Network (http://www.msccn.org) was founded in 2004 to provide career opportunities and job portability for military spouses. The organization is made up of military spouses, caregivers to war wounded, and retired military personnel.
WHY EMPLOYERS ATTEND VETERAN EXPOS
Employers are eager to hire veterans for their skill sets and for their personal characteristics such as leadership, initiative, self-discipline, and an excellent work ethic. In addition, veterans are diverse in gender and ethnicity. Employers attend Expos because they can meet hundreds of qualified job seekers in the course of a few hours.
Veterans offer civilian employers a wide variety of skill sets that they acquired while in the service. Most active-duty personnel work in military employment categories that have easily recognizable civilian counterparts, ranging from “Engineering, Science, and Technical” and “Machine Operator and Precision Work” to “Transportation and Material Handling” and “Executive, Administrative, and Managerial.”
In many cases, the skills are immediately applicable to in the workplace. In other cases, the employers need to provide job-specific training—but the veterans’ skill levels are already so high that they absorb that additional training quickly.
Law-enforcement agencies are eager to hire veterans who had a “Combat Specialty”—often referred to as “Combat Arms.” And employers in a wide variety of other industries value combat arms veterans for their leadership and decision-making skills.
WHY FRANCHISORS ATTEND VETERAN EXPOS
Franchisors are eager to help set veterans up in business because the franchisors value the veterans’ job skills, initiative, resourcefulness, and responsibility. In addition, veterans—especially those who served for several years—are likely to have the financial resources to handle a franchise investment. Franchisors attend veteran Expos to meet well-qualified individuals without having to sort them out from large numbers of unsuitable candidates.
WHY EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS ATTEND VETERAN EXPOS
(1) Veterans make good students because of the same personal traits that made them good military personnel, including initiative, self-discipline, and a great work ethic.
(2) Veterans who left active duty recently are eligible for educational benefits under the GI Bill. The period of eligibility is 15 years under the Post-9/11 GI Bill, which took effect in August 2009.
(3) Almost all veterans who served in the enlisted ranks have at least a high school education, but relatively few have college degrees. Thus, present and former enlisted personnel are prime candidates for degree-granting institutions. For example, of the more than 250,000 present and former enlisted personnel who have registered as job seekers in RecruitMilitary’s database at www2.recruitmilitary.com, only about one-third have associate’s, bachelor’s, or graduate degrees.
(4) Of the lower-ranked present and former commissioned officers in the database—lieutenants and captains in the Army, Air Force and Marine Corps; ensigns and lieutenants in the Navy and Coast Guard—slightly more than 25% have advanced degrees. So the remaining 75% or so are prime candidates for graduate school.
(5) Recruiters for educational institutions also attend veteran Expos to hire teachers and other staff. Many veterans have highly specialized technical skills, along with experience in teaching those skills to others in the military.
EXPOS SCHEDULED FOR 2010
RecruitMilitary has scheduled 73 Veteran Opportunity Expos for 2010. Other locations will include Atlanta, Austin, Baltimore, Birmingham, Boston, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Long Beach, Los Angeles, Miami, Nashville, New Orleans, New York, Norfolk, Oakland, Oklahoma City, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Raleigh, St. Louis, San Diego, San Francisco, San Jose, Tacoma, and Washington.
About RecruitMilitary: This Cincinnati-based company connects employers, franchisors, and educational institutions with job seekers who have military backgrounds. All of the company’s owners, account executives, and search consultants are either veterans or active or former reservists. The founder and president of RecruitMilitary is Drew Myers, formerly a Captain in the United States Marine Corps. Myers founded the company in 1998. RecruitMilitary has produced Opportunity Expos since 2006. The company also offers subscriptions to its database of more than 400,000 registered candidates who have military backgrounds at http://www.recruitmilitary.com, retained hiring services, and advertising space in online and print media. RecruitMilitary distributes more than 36,000 copies of each issue of Search & Employ, a bimonthly print magazine, to over 220 military bases throughout the world, National Guard and reserve units, and job seekers who attend RecruitMilitary Opportunity Expos.