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home > February 2008 issue > article
Serving those who served
By Sean Gallagher
Hire a Hero uses social networking to help veterans
A nonprofit Web site is using net-centric techniques to help
those leaving active military service with a different kind of fight —
landing a good job.
The Armed Forces Support Foundation’s Hire a Hero program
(http://www.hireahero.org ) is trying to help members of the military returning
to civilian life use the power of social networking to find jobs
in addition to connecting them directly with employers who want
to hire veterans, said Rob Barr, program director at Hire a Hero.
Barr previously worked with Dan Caufield, former executive
director at the foundation, to launch Helmets to Hard Hats, a program
to help veterans find jobs in the construction industry, that is
now federally funded. Caufield approached him last year about
launching the Hire a Hero effort to expand the outreach to returning
veterans.
“Someone coming out of the military sometimes has lost all their
connections to the [civilian] world,” said Barr. “They don’t have
the connections that someone not coming out of their situation
might have. So we decided we needed to do some sort of networking.”
Barr said his goal is a site that combines features of sites such
as MySpace — which provide a way for people to network — and
employment sites such as Craig’s List, “so when [veterans] get
back, they can quickly build a network.”
The site relies on the fraternal nature of the military, using service
connections to link a candidate to people with similar backgrounds
who already have jobs in the private sector and employers
explicitly seeking veterans for open positions.
The first version of the site is active and has had some success.
Barr said the project doesn’t have complete numbers, but Hire a
Hero has conducted some surveys that show one in three veterans
using the site has found a job through it — as compared to a rate of
about one in 10 for other job search sites.
Barr is driving development of a more sophisticated version this
year, helping teach former service members how to build networks,
even force-feeding them connections, he said. “For example, if I was in the Air Force and I was in engineering, the site
would show people who were in the Air Force who have an engineering
job for them to connect with, as well as other Air Force veterans
seeking engineering jobs and the employers who are actively
seeking engineers.”
The site would then let the user expand the scope to look for
people from other service branches working in the area of interest.
Part of the development will focus on follow-up with veterans to
help determine what difficulties they’ve had in finding a job.
“With the new site, we’re going to be getting detailed data, using
e-mail campaigns, for example, to ask, ‘We’ve noticed you haven’t
connected with anyone? Why?’” he said. “And hopefully by next
year, we can use that information and go to the government and
show them what needs to be done for veterans coming out” to help
them get jobs.
Caufield, a Gulf War veteran and founder of High Quality
Group, a consulting company, provided $500,000 to fund the site
last year, turning the project over to Barr and taking a seat on the
board of directors for the foundation. Salesforce.com has provided
the program with free access to its content management system.
Major League Baseball collected donations for the program at last
year’s All Star Game and is planning to provide further promotional
assistance this year.
But that hasn’t been enough to fund everything Barr wants to do
with the site. “We didn’t do much of anything in fund-raising last
year, which is horrible,” he said.
“We tried and tried and tried, but not a lot of people wanted to
donate to our cause. So what we’re doing is charging a one-time
$100 fee to employers to post job listings to our site, and that’s how
we’re staying alive right now.”
The goal is to get a federal grant. The Hire A Hero Act, currently
working its way through Congress, would provide a grant program
for organizations doing the type of work Barr’s project is
doing. The bill most likely won’t come up for a vote before this
summer, Barr said, “and if it passes, we’ll see money sometime
next year.”
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