Journey to Creating a Military Program

Since I mentioned at the end of the previous article that we are in a bit of a waiting period with the SkillBridge program as new HoH candidates won't be released until next month, I thought I would write a little about the military community and how much I appreciate them.

I really had no idea how big this community was, but more importantly, how willing they are to help. I've written a few posts asking for help, suggestions, quotes.....and people are so eager to help. There are definitely some who have companies who offer consulting services and that's great and super useful to many companies looking to start or improve their military hiring. I definitely appreciate that, but right now we aren't there so I tried to limit those meetings to a selected few. The best and most useful part of this has been the people who want to help me for no reason other than helping service members and the veteran community.

I have mentioned in previous articles a few of the people who have been gracious with their time. It keeps going though. I have met with great people like Rey Domingo who I knew previously from being part of the The KEY Community . For anyone that doesn't know, The Key does so much for transitioning military and veterans. I've been lucky enough to be a Key mentor for about a year or so and I wish I could do even more. I wear my shirt all the time though!!! Always happy to represent and I LOVE SWAG!!!! Give me a shirt or something and I will wear it! I've been involved with 50strong and next week will be part of their Employer Connect networking event for jobseekers. Thank you to Kandi Tillman for including me in these great events!!

I also recently met with Tim Kane M Ed who was a person I hadn't spoken to before and so willing to help me and connect me with people like Janine S. who I will speak with tomorrow in depth. People like Rey, Kandi, Tim and Janine are just a few who have reached out to me to offer help, suggestions, offers to introduce me to someone else who might be able to give me advice, it's been amazing. It's also very cool when I meet with someone and they say they have been following my posts and articles! I never know if people are paying attention or care so it's awesome when they tell me they are watching.

I really love reaching out to other military recruiters to see what they are doing, how they are using LinkedIn and where I hope to be some day. I am closing in on 1,000 connections and have even more people following me. I know compared to some who have 10, 20, 30 thousand followers, that doesn't seem like much, but it felt great when I hit those milestones. We all gotta start somewhere right??? Just like the goals I have to get our military hiring program going, I hope to someday be one of those people who can offer my help to others starting programs. I do what I can now, I offer my suggestions to transitioning service members who post their resumes looking for help. I get asked to contribute to articles on LinkedIn. It's all very cool and when I think back to just a couple years ago, I barely even used LinkedIn. I thought it was a place to go if you needed a job, which it definitely still is, but it's so much more. It's show me more of the community side than most other social media options and I think many of us can appreciate that.

Gonna keep this one short and sweet, but to anyone that reads this and to those who don't, thank you for welcoming me into this amazing community!!!