All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
This is Veterans Radio.
Welcome to Veterans Radio.
I am Jim Fossone.
I'm the officer of the deck today.
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We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Eric Eversall who is president of Hiring Our
Heroes, part of the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation.
Eric is also a Navy vet.
Eric, welcome to Veterans Radio.
Well, thank you.
I'm so glad to be on your show.
Well we're going to come back and talk a little bit about how a kid who started in the Indiana
Air National Guard ended up as a captain in the Navy's Judge Advocate General Corps when
he retired.
But we'll come back to that.
There's an interesting story there I suspect.
But let's start out with what is the US Chamber of Commerce?
What is the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation?
And that'll get us to the program Hiring Our Heroes.
Well, that's great Jim.
The US Chamber of Commerce is the world's largest business association.
Each and every day the US Chamber of Commerce fights for business interests both at the
national level as well as the state level.
And they're quite obviously fighting the hard fights when it comes to legal reform, when
it comes to legislation that helps propel businesses across the country.
And within the US Chamber of Commerce there is its foundation which does a lot of the
charitable work for businesses.
They're very active in doing things like relief after disasters.
So they're very active in North Carolina right now.
But they also have Hiring Our Heroes which is the veteran employment program.
And when did the foundation start hiring our heroes?
Well, it was created back in 2011 when there was a national crisis in veteran unemployment
at the time.
As you may recall, back after the Great Recession in the 2011 timeframe, we had a lot of young
men coming back from war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And they were facing a tough job market for veterans under the age of 25 back in 2011.
And this is really hard to believe, but 2011, just a little over 14 years ago, 13 years
ago, 30% unemployment for veterans under the age of 25.
And so the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation created Hiring Our Heroes as a national grassroots
organization to raise awareness of the challenges that our veterans were facing and to importantly
leverage all the state and local chambers to do hiring events in local communities where
unemployed veterans were trying to find employment and connect them with companies that would
give them a chance.
And so that's really how we were created.
It was back in 2011, March of 2011, and it was really in response to that crisis.
Well, part of this is transitioning for active duty members into back into civilian world
is difficult because in part they don't have that network.
If they've spent four years or eight or 12 out in the military service, during that same
period of time, their peers were developing employer employee networks moving around from
job to job.
And that just doesn't exist, making it very difficult for transitioning members to get
on their first try at the job they want and they often end up underemployed or underutilizing
their skills.
Yeah, you know, Jim, it's a great point and it's a complicated challenge that our service
members face.
And for us, once we tackled what was at the time veteran unemployment, we really made
a strategic shift to attack the source of the problem that veterans were facing.
And that was that transition.
How do we, to your point, build the networks that service members can connect with companies
while they're still on active duty?
Because what we saw was transitioning service members didn't necessarily have the right
networks, but they also didn't have the right skill sets, nor did they have the kind of
the broader job market landscape to understand what economic opportunity looked like.
So back in 2014, we really shifted our focus to the active duty military community, so
both transitioning service members and military spouses.
And we really focused on how do we help them understand the opportunities that exist for
them?
How do we connect them with companies?
How do we help give them the skill sets and the resources to be successful?
And then really not just have them go home, which is what was happening and what led to
the unemployment, but go home where there may not be any jobs, but actually think strategically
about what's next so that when they were making that what's next decision after transition,
they were going to location where there were the best job opportunities.
And I would tell everybody, think about military transition in a lot of ways like college,
campus recruiting.
We all know how many of us know how college campuses recruit places like U of M bring
in companies from all over the place because they know that their students, some of them
will stay in Ann Arbor, but many of them will go to locations across the country.
So you bring in those companies to help recruit your students and find economic opportunities.
Before hiring our heroes existed, that didn't really happen on military installations.
We really started to once we started working on bases and we started to bring in this national
footprint of employers, companies started to recruit on military installations in the
same way that they recruit college kids.
And it's really changed the paradigm significantly and created a lot of economic opportunities
that didn't exist in the past.
And I think that's the one thing that we've done that's really changed the game.
To your point, networks are important, but getting those service members before they
leave connected with employers that have opportunities across the country is really critical to their
long term success.
Yeah, why wait till they're in a status that they're unemployed or underemployed?
Use the time before they get out if you can for them to understand what their skills are
and what a good next employer might look like.
One of this, and I think you've probably have seen this, Eric, is that the HR managers
at big corporations and small have a difficult time understanding what your military skills
and how that translates over to the civilian world.
Is that a challenge you've had to tackle?
It's a, you know, Mary Barr, I actually had a great quote, she called it the frozen middle,
which is you have a company and an executive at the top who recognizes that there's this
great talent pool and opportunity.
You have recruiters at the bottom who are identifying good candidates, and then you get,
you know, not only the recruiters, but the hiring managers who start to see these candidates
with backgrounds that are different than what they're used to recruiting.
And it's a real challenge in this country, not only for service members, but for lots
of populations that are underrepresented in our business community.
When their experiences look different than the person trying to hire them, that creates
a disconnect that is really problematic.
And when you think about the military population with less than one half of 1% of Americans
who serve on active duty, it is, you know, you're starting to find that it's harder and
harder to connect with someone in a company that understands the values and the skill
sets that military service brings.
And so it's been a process where we have worked really aggressively with companies for the
last 14 years to really understand military talent.
But I will tell you, there has been a very significant shift, especially in the last
couple of years, where companies understand that, you know, the military hiring, the veteran
recruiting effort isn't a nice thing to do.
It's not a charitable cause.
There's strategic assets that bring a lot of value to companies.
They really help them think differently about problems, how they solve them.
The resiliency was incredibly important.
I mean, after COVID, having people who would actually show up in the workplace and be resilient.
And look, with AI driven solutions, Jim, you know, as a company migrates with technical
solutions, having someone that's trainable is becoming increasingly important in the
world workforce.
And so military, you know, service members, veterans and military spouses really bring
that to the forefront.
And it's really, again, I don't have to convince too many companies anymore that they should
hire veterans.
The real work is really on the ground in the trenches where we have to make the connection
between the skill set that are often those professional skills like leadership and resiliency.
And how do you help companies see that in a population they're not as familiar with?
But it's really, we've really seen a lot of change over the last couple of years as companies,
again, they're hiring veterans.
It's just, you know, it's just connecting those, disconnect on skill sets.
One of the things that's really interesting about your shift around a decade ago was,
again, trying to say, hey, we're going to use a model that we've seen elsewhere in terms
of internships, and you have a corporate fellows program as part of this skill bridge
program for hiring our heroes, which I think is really interesting.
I don't know how you scale it, but talk to us a little bit about this whole idea of
interning at a host company.
Well, you're absolutely right, Jim.
And what's interesting about this, if we go back to the paradigm shift that occurred
back in 2014, when we started to do our work on bases, at the same time, there was, you
know, in the national, in the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, there were about
two lines in that act that said that if, if commanders wanted to let their active duty
service members take up to six months before they leave active duty to go work or do an
internship for a company, you can approve it.
And it was, you know, a very small provision in a very large bill, and it has really changed
the narrative on how companies connect and evaluate military talent.
And so it's called skill bridge for those of your listeners that are kind of following
military workforce development.
It allows service members to take up to six months.
We run ours for 12 weeks to go do on the job training with the company.
We run ours.
Ours is the nation's largest skill bridge program.
It's called the Fellows Program.
We recruit active duty service members to participate in the program.
We connect them with one of 700 companies that review candidates.
They bring them into their workplace for 12 weeks.
They're able to evaluate those hard to evaluate skill sets, ones that are hard to evaluate
on paper, like leadership and resiliency and problem solving.
And then at the end of 12 weeks, if they're a good fit for the company, they hire them.
But here's the deal, Jim.
If I can get a service member working for 12 weeks in a company, the hiring part of
it's pretty darn easy.
And last year, we put about 2,500 service members through that program.
85% of them had a job offer within three months.
The average salary was $115,000, which is remarkable.
If you think about that number in the context of what the average college student graduate
makes, it's significant.
I mean, it's almost twice as much as what someone with a bachelor's degree makes in
this country.
And none of the debt.
And so it is, I'll tell you, Jim, it is really changing the paradigm.
I'm a huge believer that as the workforce continues to transform, and I'm not talking
about just the military, but really across the country, as we work harder to understand
the skills-based hiring, internships, apprenticeships through the Department of Labor are critically
important because the skill sets of the 21st century American workforce needs, the resiliency,
the problem solving, the adaptability are all things that are really hard to evaluate
on paper.
But if you can get them into your workplace so you can evaluate it and see it firsthand,
then the chances for success skyrocket.
And let me clear this up because the number you just gave is like people are going, wow,
115 grand salary.
These aren't all guys with master's degrees and women with PhDs.
Your 2,500 service members that you help place in a year, give us the breadth of who those
folks are.
Well, 60% of them, Jim, are enlisted.
I mean, it is, it's really quite remarkable.
Now, the military has done a great job of helping its enlisted service members get degrees.
And so I think, you know, we've seen good improvement, but we have a lot of service
members that are, you know, they have technical skill sets.
They have leadership skill sets.
You know, we're seeing that a lot of these program participants are often people who've
spent 10 or more years in the military and they are good people managers, but it's really
hard to evaluate, you know, how someone's going to manage people if you don't see it
firsthand.
And so we're really proud.
I mean, here's the other thing, Jim, the other, about why this program is so good too and
why it's so important for any underrepresented population.
Not the participants also identify themselves as people of color.
And so you're not only talking about this really incredibly talented population, but
you're also talking about a population that's incredibly diverse, has a tremendous amount
of experience, and really making a big difference.
Now, I will tell you, you asked about scalability.
And I, you know, the real challenge here and how we're going to have to think and fix this
in the future is right now when a command decides to let their, you know, their soldier
or sailor or airman or Marine coastie go off for that 12 weeks, they don't get a replacement.
So they have to do the same amount of work with one few, you know, one less person.
And if they got two people, you know, it keeps building up and it's created some pressure
on who can participate and who can't.
And we're going to have to fix it.
We're going to have to think, you know, big picture.
How do we ensure that anybody who wants to participate in an internship can participate
as the military struggled with some of its recruiting and retention issues over the last
couple of years, it's put more pressure on commanders.
And I tell, when I talk to people at the Pentagon or up on the hill about the program, and they're
all very excited about it.
But when I talk to them, we shouldn't put military commanders in a position between
deciding whether they can meet the mission requirements or let somebody have a future
pathway to economic opportunity.
That's an unfair decision for military commanders to be put in.
And so I think we're going to see a fix to this in the near future that creates opportunities
for internships that allow people to be replaced when they're doing these internships.
But it is something that we're going to have to figure out because the program works.
Same way it works on a college campus.
And in the folks who leave these programs and take those internships and get that
great job, they leave with a better taste in their mouth about their military service
and what they recommend to folks, don't they?
No doubt about it, Jim.
And you know, it is, it's all about, and this is the hard part for military commanders.
And I tell them this.
You are losing someone for three months, but they're going to go back to their communities
better off economically and happier and going to be better recruiters for you.
Our data shows that internally.
We know that to be the fact.
And you know, I think what's going to happen here, and I think this is why this conversation
is important, we're starting to see a pretty significant shift that commanders, senior
leaders at the Pentagon understand that if we can help provide guaranteed pathways or
near guaranteed pathways, the economic opportunities, that's going to help the recruiting long game.
And I will, you know, from my seat, and I was today at the White House for a meeting,
it is very clear that for a lot of young Americans, military service provides some of the best
pathways to long term economic opportunity in this country, hands down, whether it's
ROTC, whether it's, you know, enlisting after high school and then getting your, you know,
using the GI bill later.
It is a significant pathway to some great opportunities.
And when the military makes a shift that it's not just about service, but it's also about,
you know, realizing your economic dreams, it's going to create a lot more pathways into
service and help prepare or help propel the next generation of all volunteers.
I want to point out that this is the US Chamber of Commerce, its foundation.
But we're talking about an entity that's got big broad shoulders.
And the US Chamber of Commerce speaks, folks in Washington, D.C. listen, and part of that
is you've got a tremendous organization of partners and advocates, corporate folks, you
know, I'll start from Amazon, there must be a Z here somewhere.
You know, every letter of the alphabet is supporting this effort.
And that makes a big difference on how seriously it gets taken in the nation's capital.
Give us the website folks should go through if they want to participate either as a, you
know, service member on the way out transitioning or an employer, or maybe it's a spouse who's
going may, and this might be something he ought to look at or she ought to look at.
Tell us where they go to get more information.
You bet.
And Jim, just before I do that, the Z is zebra technology.
There you go.
San Diego.
I couldn't find it fast enough.
But they can go visit hiringourheroes.org.
Again, that's hiringourheroes.org to learn more about the program, to learn how we're
helping the military community.
And if you're an employer and you want to find out how you can participate in the fellowship
program and bring on interns, we'd love to have you.
We have hiring events.
So it's a program that's really grown significantly.
And we're serving about 80,000 veterans and military spouses every year now, which is a
pretty significant population.
And there is a job board that's just chock full of interesting posted jobs.
Four hours ago, US Bank and Dublin, Ireland put one up.
I mean, all over the country, all over the world, if you will.
So don't, you know, if you're out there and thinking, ah, geez, I don't know where to
go for resources.
Here's a resource.
Go to hiringourheroes.org and go up and look at their job board.
Yeah.
And Jim, I tell you, I mean, to your point, you know, that is probably one of the hardest
things about transition.
And I know we'll get to my story a little bit later, but, you know, oftentimes when
these young service members transition, many of them come from, you know, lower and middle
income families.
They don't know what's next.
They don't know, you know, other than, you know, I grew up in the Rust Belt down near
Fort Wayne.
You know, it's other than working in a factory, you don't know much about what jobs are out
there or how you can leverage those skill sets.
And so part of this transition that's so difficult is having someone to talk to you that can
help navigate the process.
And we have a great team of what we call career connectors that can give you advice.
They can make sure that you have a resume that's ready.
They can help find resources.
And, you know, we are, to your point, we have big, broad shoulders.
We're the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and its foundation.
And it's not just about programs we offer.
I am very happy to offer other programs and resources that are proven to help people get
jobs.
There's a great program run by Syracuse University called the Institute for Veterans and Military
Families.
Absolutely.
They do unbelievable upskilling work.
If you want to be an entrepreneur, their training programs or, or boots to business are fantastic.
So it's not just, you know, this is about a big tent.
This is about doing the right thing.
And you know, our job in this is, is kind of, you know, to provide some level of resources
to, but also be a scout and, and help that service member transition when we can.
We're talking to Eric Eversall.
He's vice president of U.S. Chamber of Commerce and he's the president of Hiring Our Heroes,
which is a program run by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, a 501C3.
Very interesting and go to hiringourheroes.org to get more information.
But if you have a minute, I'd like to go to your story if we can.
It's always interesting.
I like to start with like, how did a nice kid from Indiana end up in the Indiana and
international garden ultimately in the Navy?
Well, it's, it's a longer story than that, Jim, but let me just tell you, I grew up,
neither of my parents graduated from high school and I grew up in this small town in
Indiana.
And my dad said, look, Eric, you have one of two ways to get ahead in life.
You're going to either go to college or you're going to join the military.
Those are your two options.
Otherwise, you're here.
And, and so I went to college first.
And I went to this great school called Wabash College, great liberal arts school.
I graduated with honors and I couldn't find a job.
I couldn't find a job.
And I didn't realize it at the time, but I didn't really understand how to translate,
you know, my bachelor's and my experience into things that employers would understand.
And so I ended up back in a factory in Bluffton, making plastic pallets for $9 an hour, trying
to figure out what's next.
I applied to law school.
And, and at the same time, I joined the international garden went off for basic training.
And it was really an eye-opening experience for me.
And it was a camaraderie.
It was a leadership.
It was a training, even being a, you know, a young senior airman.
It was really a tremendous experience.
And I then went off to law school.
And I will tell you, Jim, I went to Indiana.
So forgive me for that.
Pretty good football though.
It is a sure.
But I went off to, I went off to Indiana law school and I was in the top 5% of my class
and I couldn't get a job.
And I remember this one interview with the big law firm.
And the person looked at me and then looked at my resume and looked back up at me and
looked at my resume.
And she looked at me.
She goes, were you a carnival worker last year?
And I said, you bet I was.
Oh yeah, I was a carnival worker.
You know, look, when you grow up in a small town in Indiana, you do what pays the best.
And that's, you know, I was making elephant ears and funnel cakes for, you know, a lot
more money than making plastic pallets.
And it was like the music, you know, the interview just stopped.
She had nothing in common with me.
And in the next question out of her mouth was, she said, well, okay, well, we interview
a lot of people with good grades.
Why should we hire you?
And I didn't have a good response for that.
And ultimately, that's when I joined the Jagd Corps and the Navy and, and, you know, had
a wonderful career as a Navy lawyer.
Really enjoyed it.
But, you know, that experience for me really has helped guided me through the leadership
at hiring our heroes in large part because it's not that these young service members
don't want opportunity.
I mean, that's why they join.
They want something better.
They want, you know, they want the American dream, but they don't necessarily have the
background or experience or the family members that can help them navigate it.
My parents, quite honestly, loved them to death.
They were wonderful people, but their ability to help me get a job ended when I went off
the college.
Well, probably ended when you were a carnival worker.
And that's kind of my point that whole networking, there's no family networking.
There's no high school buddy, college buddy, networking fraternity or sorority person who's
connecting your job.
When you leave the military, you feel like you left all of that behind.
And that's why a program such as hiringourheroes.org from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation
is so important.
But it's one thing to say, well, I'm kind of going into the Jagd Corps, but you must
have liked it, you stayed, I mean, you returned, you're retired 24 years later as a Navy captain.
What was it that was like, yeah, this is what I want to do?
You know, it was a camaraderie.
You know, it's the people that you serve with and it's the mission and it's, you know, and
it's making a difference.
And I think that's the hardest thing, you know, when you do leave that environment that
those deep personal friendships where you know and trust somebody in it, look, as you
know, from your service as well, you know, when you're in that environment where you're
putting absolute trust and faith, it's really hard to replicate that in corporate America.
And that camaraderie and that trust and that belief in your brother and sister beside you
and that faith is really something that's hard to replace.
If it can be replaced at all.
And so I, you know, I loved it.
And I think that it gave me some great experience.
It allowed me to make some wonderful friends.
It allowed me to serve for a long period of time.
And I will tell you that, you know, that's the one thing I love the most about hiring
our heroes is that, you know, we have a team of mostly military spouses, by the way, 80%
who are committed to the mission who want to make a difference.
And we know that by working together and really creating those pathways that it's going to
make the, you know, it's not only going to help service members, but it's going to help
recruit the next generation and keep our country safe.
Well, it's important work and, you know, transitioning to good jobs means they're going to speak
well of their time in the service.
It'll help with recruiting.
It'll help, quite frankly, recruiting helps with national security.
So it's a much bigger issue.
You've got a much bigger challenge that you're working on.
And again, the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation and its parent, the US Chamber of Commerce
have broad shoulders to be able to pull this off.
And it sounds like your personal experiences, Eric, have really helped you understand the
importance of the work that hiring our heroes is doing.
Yes.
That's right.
Well, I appreciate the time that you've given us today.
We ran a little longer than I promised, but I wanted to get your story in as well.
And again, keep up the good work.
And if people want to know more, then go to hiringourheroes.org to get involved, individually,
corporate membership, fellowships, all those sorts of things.
Eric, thanks for your time today.
Yeah, it was my pleasure.
Thank you.
And I want to thank everybody for listening to Veterans Radio today.
I am Jim Fawcone.
It's been a pleasure to be your host.
I'm a Veterans Disability Lawyer at Legal Help for Veterans.
And you can reach us at 800-693-4800 or legalhelpforveterans.com on the web.
You can follow Veterans Radio on Facebook and listen to its podcasts and internet radio
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