HIRE HEROES USA

Successful employment is our focus because it provides transitioning military members, veterans, and military spouses with a sense of self-worth and purpose, financial health, and community involvement during their – or their spouse’s - time in service and subsequent transition into civilian life.

A growing body of literature points to the correlation between mental health concerns and unemployment (Paul & Moser, 2009) . Unemployment and underemployment can cause a host of issues from financial stressors to doubts about self-worth for transitioning military members. Conversely, as Nelson et al (2016) explains, “Employment and the associated benefits that come with it are likely important buffers for the transitional or readjustment stresses faced by military personnel post- deployment or post-discharge” (p. 242). The Hire Heroes program eases the readjustment some military members and veterans face transitioning into civilian life by supporting them in their employment search.

Military spouses face unique issues as they support their spouses’ military careers. Frequent moves, licensing and certification requirements, and the assumption that “they are only passing through” result in employment gaps and lost wages amongst military spouses who are educated at a rate greater than their civilian peers according to a 2016 Blue Star Families report. Further, the misperceptions that spouses “knew what they signed up for,” “don’t need to work,” and should “settle for what’s available” leave spouses underemployed and often questioning their professional value. Hire Heroes assists these spouses in highlighting their skills and finding career opportunities to grow their professional identities and support their families.

Hiring veterans, transitioning service members, and military spouses makes good business sense for companies looking for skilled and dedicated professionals. In March 2018, the Department of Labor reported that there were 6.6 million unfilled jobs in the United States. At a time when employers are waiving educational and experience requirements to recruit employees, the veteran and military spouse community offers a skilled and educated workforce to fill those positions. Our program connects companies that need and want to hire from this pool of candidates to the qualified job seekers we serve.

Highly-trained Transition Specialists are the core of Hire Heroes--they expertly provide services that empower even the most challenging clients to achieve civilian employment. The typical process begins when a client registers for service through our website; she or he is assigned to an individual Transition Specialist, who schedules an intake assessment by telephone within twenty-four hours.

During the assessment, the client shares his or her professional experience, education, new career desires and goals, and concerns or perceived barriers. The Transition Specialist then determines the client’s need for services (providing referrals to other trusted organizations for non-employment related needs as required--i.e. financial counseling, VA benefits, mental wellness), gathers key information for a draft resume, and sets client expectations for the program. One particularly important expectation to manage is to ensure clients understand Hire Heroes USA is not a job placement agency; instead, we provide the necessary training to arm clients with professional resumes, job-search skills, value proposition creation, and industry-specific networking and interview practice so that they are confident job seekers postured for long-term success.

Each client’s Transition Specialist tailors their assistance to fit that client’s individual needs, and often augments their service delivery with relevant resources from one of our outstanding ancillary programs. If the client is a military spouse, he or she likely needs a functional resume and will benefit from our Serving Spouses program resources. A client looking for government work will likely receive a federal resume review from our Federal Sector team of credentialed professionals. Nearly any client will benefit from a mock interview or industry-specific networking from one of our seven hundred and fifty volunteers. These services, of course, are free to the client; but the cost to manage them contributes to Hire Heroes’ overall cost per hire. Clearly, what we do is more than just writing resumes.

Once the client has been thoroughly trained to begin a targeted job search, we take our assistance one step further by teaching the client how to tailor his new resume to specifically fit position descriptions for attractive jobs. We will continue working with each client, contacting them at least once every fourteen days and bringing more resources to bear as needed, until they find the right job. This multi-layered approach, on average lasting two to three months in duration, is not practiced at scale by any other veteran service organization in the country. The results speak for themselves: more than seventy percent of clients who worked with their Transition Specialist to craft a new resume credit their new jobs to the assistance received from Hire Heroes. Starting salaries for our hired clients average $57,000 per year; for underemployed clients, the average salary increase exceeds $20,000.

Hire Heroes USA is uniquely qualified to serve veterans and military spouses because of our capacity to understand and define the veteran and military spouse value proposition and because of our personalized training approach. For more than a decade, Hire Heroes USA has helped veterans and military spouses succeed in civilian employment – more than 30,000 to date.

The preponderance of our team works directly with clients every day, while the rest of the team supports their efforts. More than fifty full time Transition Specialists—augmented by an Employment Partnerships and Opportunities team, Federal Sector Team, Volunteer Coordinators and more than 750 industry experts—coach, mentor, job source and conduct practice interviews with more than three hundred new clients every week.

Hire Heroes USA’s transparency and proven success have led to best-in-class recognition by the Call of Duty Endowment and the George W. Bush Institute, as well as recognition in The Philanthropy Roundtable’s guidebooks on veteran philanthropy: Serving Those Who Served and Uniform Champions. Hire Heroes USA’s fourth consecutive, 4-Star rating for sound fiscal management and commitment to accountability and transparency from Charity Navigator in 2018 made us the highest rated veteran employment nonprofit in the country.

Major partnerships include Onward to Opportunity (O2O) and Mission 43.

In 2018, Hire Heroes USA reached a major milestone when we confirmed our 30,000th hire since our founding in 2007. The average starting salary for clients in 2018 was $57,000; underemployed clients realized an average salary increase of $20,000 after completing our program. We formalized our services to military spouses under a new program titled "Serving Spouses", and grew that program to help nearly 600 military spouses in 2018. Our Federal Sector program also expanded, with more than 1,200 clients benefitting from federal resume reviews. We also saw tremendous growth in our Job Board (with job postings increasing by 70% year over year) and the addition of employer training tools focused on improving veteran recruitment with top companies.

2019 will see growth in every Hire Heroes program, with particular emphasis on improved online offerings, and an ultimate goal of helping 10,000 clients find jobs by year end.