KARLA PORTER

How many of you Sol­diers are in school or are plan­ning to go?

That’s how I started both of the pre­sen­ta­tions I co-facilitated as an advi­sory board mem­ber and vol­un­teer for the NEPA Vet­er­ans Mul­ti­care Alliance (NEPA MVA) today on Chap­ter 33 The Post 9/11 GI Bill. I was pleas­antly sur­prised to see about 90% of hands go up.

Ma’am, I started col­lege before I was deployed to Iraq and con­tin­ued when I came back. Then I was deployed to Afghanistan and now I’m in the Guard and work­ing 2 jobs to stay ahead. I want to fin­ish but I don’t have a lot of free time, how can I take advan­tage of my benefits?

Sol­dier, you’ve been to Hell and back, you can do any­thing you want to.

I was in harm’s path but never in its way. Most of the time I was prepar­ing secret mes­sages on ancient equip­ment about what kind of socks the Rus­sians were wear­ing in their troop move­ments as pho­tographed by satel­lite imagery. Oh yeah, there were those Iran­ian hostages that had us on alert and walk­ing around all our wak­ing hours in char­coal chem­i­cal ware­fare suits, rub­ber gloves and masks for what seemed like an eter­nity and we were scared of WWIII till they were released.

The Baader-Meinhof Gang (Red Fac­tion Army) disco bomb­ings were bad and those rolls of film we had to con­fis­cate from Ger­mans tak­ing pho­tos of the F14’s tak­ing off out­side the perime­ter that got ana­lyzed then incin­er­ated were largely ama­teur. There was that that stint as an SP when I got bit by a Japan­ese woman who wanted to com­mit sui­cide and take her 2 babies with her as I lodged my hand in her mouth so she couldn’t swal­low the pills. Human bites are nasty by the way.

But none of that was even close to what today’s troops have been deal­ing with recently.

There is no doubt that today’s mil­i­tary is highly incen­tivized with the huge car­rot of up to a 100% paid col­lege edu­ca­tion to join and dou­bly so to “re-up”. That means that more col­lege bound youth join. Today’s mil­i­tary men and women are intel­li­gent, not afraid to take cal­cu­lated risks, per­form under pres­sure, are will­ing to go the extra mile, fiercely loyal, depend­able, trust­wor­thy, hard work­ing and well man­nered. They have lead­er­ship skills and they’re will­ing to do what­ever it takes to get the mis­sion accom­plished, even if it means putting them­selves in harm’s way to get ahead. Just look at the lengths they’re tak­ing to be able to get a col­lege education.

Doesn’t that sound like the pro­file of some­one you would like to talk to about a job req you have?

Today I’m ask­ing you to recruit a Vet­eran. Chances are you’ll be very happy you did. Here are some resources to help you in your search. Job post­ings and resume searches are FREE at these sites.

HireVets­First There are nearly 2,000 One-Stop Career Cen­ters nation­wide where employ­ers can go to receive assis­tance in con­nect­ing to and recruit­ing vet­er­ans. Or, call 1–877-US2-JOBS for direct assistance.

Hire­Heroe­sUSA HHUSA’s mis­sion is to pro­vide career place­ment assis­tance to all of our return­ing ser­vice men and women.  The HHUSA pro­gram focuses on the career place­ment of Oper­a­tion Iraqi Free­dom and Oper­a­tion Endur­ing Free­dom veterans, specializing in the place­ment of those injured or with any level of dis­abil­ity. Plus, you can down­load sev­eral nifty badges and ads to put on your job post­ings, web­site or blog.

HirePa­tri­ots Hire Patri­ots is to help vet­er­ans & com­mu­ni­ties con­nect for employ­ment for both 1 day jobs & full time careers in order to help put vet­er­ans back to work which will allow the com­mu­nity to be able to show their sup­port by hir­ing vet­er­ans in their local community.

Now what’s stop­ping you? Move it!