My Next Mission

Veterans Day has always meant a lot to me. It’s a chance to reflect on all the servicemembers who’ve served our country — my friends in the military, those who showed us the ropes, and all those who continue to serve today.

It’s hard to articulate the complex feelings of gratitude and gravity that come with that. Visiting San Diego, I still have trouble looking at the Coronado Bridge without memories of a very different past flooding in and consuming my emotions. Every single veteran deserves our love and attention today.

But this Veterans Day means more to me than all the others.

Because after years of hard work and the input of thousands of veterans, today is the day I finally get to introduce my next mission: a career change program built just for veterans.

The country’s most untapped talent pool

More than 4.5 million veterans have served their country since 9/11, and that number is growing every single year. But many of them are underemployed despite the fact that these veterans possess the singular skill that modern companies need most: the ability to learn.

So why aren’t more veterans getting the careers they deserve? Two main reasons:

1. Hiring managers don’t know how to translate veterans’ experience.

It’s hard for someone who’s hiring at a tech company to understand how a bomb disposal officer is going to fit the job description for their current openings. But the truth is that most of the skills and experience that you learn in the military are precisely what today’s companies need most — discipline, focus, leadership under pressure, and an infectious professionalism that can transform the culture of any organization.

At Shift, we’ve been using artificial intelligence models and industry insight to help translate military experience at a deeper level, so that employers can better understand where and how veterans can fit into their organization.

But that’s only half the equation. For some veterans, skill translation alone is not enough.

2. Veterans need access to education that upgrades their skills.

The pace of technological change is blistering, and many of the skills that employers are desperate to hire for — coding, data science, user experience, and cybersecurity — require veterans to spend more time learning. The good news is that veterans are natural code-switchers when it comes to learning, since they change roles every 18-24 months in the military. But the bad news is that learning these new skills can be a burden of time and money that many veterans can’t spare, especially when constrained by a broken, inefficient education system.

So while Shift has been hard at work translating military experience to make it more relevant for jobs in the civilian workforce, we haven’t been able to offer anything to veterans who want to learn in-demand tech skills.

Until today.

Today, we’re introducing Shift Pathways

Shift Pathways is an all-new program that reduces the cost of tech education for veterans. We’ve launched a fund that offers veterans zero-interest tuition assistance on the country’s best technology skills education programs, in partnership with Lambda School.

For veterans, it’s pretty simple.

• You pick the pathway for the next phase of your career — web development, user experience, data science, or (soon) cybersecurity.
• We pay your tuition upfront so that you can get started learning these skills, 100% online, from anywhere in the world.
• You don’t pay a dime until you’ve landed a job that pays you at least $50k in your new career, and then you pay a small portion of your new income back into the fund, completely interest-free.
• Best of all, your repayment goes back into the fund to pay for the next veteran’s education.

We believe this program will drastically reduce the barriers that veterans face when it comes to modernizing their skills for today’s workforce.

Picking up where the GI Bill leaves off

Let’s be clear. The GI Bill is a truly invaluable program, and if veterans can find the career they want with it, they absolutely should. It’s an entitlement that we’ve earned.

But there are circumstances where the GI Bill doesn’t meet the needs of today’s veterans. It doesn't cover many "learn-from-anywhere" 100% online schools, which make up the country's best tech skills academies, like Lambda School. Or cases where a veteran gave their GI Bill to their spouse or their family, or when going back to college for years doesn't make any sense.

Further, education is changing before our eyes and will look very different in the near future. The most successful people will find ways to continuously up-skill and re-skill as the labor market needs evolve rapidly. Many of today's top jobs didn't even exist 20 years ago, and our theory is that change will only accelerate. We need a new mechanism to quickly learn skills without taking on additional student loan debt, and this is the first step towards that future vision.

Shift Pathways picks up where the GI Bill leaves off, removing the financial pressure of learning tech skills so that you can land the job you deserve.

Our goal at Shift is to help veterans find the career of their dreams. Period. And in a world where tech skills get people hired, we believe that initiatives like Shift Pathways will unlock a new wave of veterans joining the country’s fastest-growing companies.

#MyNextMission

Modern organizations often talk about being mission-driven, and building teams who can work together to achieve that mission.

Well, believe me when I say this: No one in the country knows more about missions than America’s veterans. These are people who know what it means to sacrifice themselves for a greater cause. So to launch this program, we wanted to make a video that honored that truth. Have a look:

I learned so much in my last mission. This is #MyNextMission.

To any veteran who’s reading this: Tell us where you've been in the military, where you are now (or maybe where you want to go), and why that pathway is important to you. Hashtag it with #MyNextMission. Tell your story, and let the world hear where you want to go in your career. This of course includes spouses.

We see you for all that you are, and we are here to help you build the skills for all that you’ll become.

Be amongst the first to sign up for Shift Pathways at shift.org/veterans

—Mike