With help from Deloitte’s strategy and operations expertise, members of the Los Angeles Veterans Collaborative fine-tuned veteran employment goals and strategies to help veterans transition into meaningful careers as part of Deloitte’s annual Impact Day earlier this month.
Veterans face unique challenges when seeking employment.
First, the LA workforce is changing. Industries such as health care, professional services and retail trade are growing at a rapid rate. For many veterans, being a competitive job candidate means retraining, a college education and even advanced degrees. Second, employers may be unaware of the various benefits of hiring veterans including tax incentives. Lastly, there are more than 300 organizations providing services for veterans in Los Angeles alone. Finding the right organization with the right job contacts can be time consuming and stressful.
To tackle these issues, the participants were split into veteran and employer groups and came up with many ideas to more effectively integrate veterans into the Los Angeles workforce, including online portal for employers, professional job shadowing, and dedicated veteran peer support network.
Both groups determined that a one-stop resource for jobs and services for military veterans is the most efficient way to link the veteran to the community and ensure a successful transition back to the civilian sector.
At the end of the day, the group came back together and agreed upon a series of tenets to drive their effort to make Los Angeles the most veteran-friendly community in the US, ready to support and assist America’s military veterans whenever we can.
- Integrate the right veteran with the right employer
- Long-term careers favored over short-term employment
- Employers and veterans move at different “speeds”
- Retention is vital for future returning veterans
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