Speaker 1: 0:23

veterans and spouses, and record me in progress right now, and then we'll kick it off. All right, okay?

Speaker 2: 0:32

Okay, I appreciate it All right. First, on up to bat, you can burn her awesome services and so spotlights all yours.

Speaker 3: 0:43

Hello, hello, happy Saturday everybody. It's nice to see you and some of you see you again. My husband got called into work. We're still active duty as well, if some of you are. So thanks, I have a little one here and she says hi.

Speaker 1: 1:02

Hi little Kimber.

Speaker 3: 1:06

She's getting to watch a show that she's really not supposed to, so that I can talk to you. My name is Kimber, active duty spouse. I've been building jobs and resources for military spouses specifically for the past seven years, but we also serve veterans and Jay is a close friend and we like to kind of think of or I like to think of our organizations as like brother and sister organizations. So at VertForce, which is where I would love for you all to go create an account this is where we have I'm trying to put this into the ah okay, meeting notes here You're welcome to create an account here. This is where we advertise openings that we are currently sourcing. We are a boutique sourcing firm, so we get new jobs every week, but they're very dialed in and they're very specific. We emphasize partnerships with employers that are looking for people who want to work remotely, so this could be for you, this could be for your spouse. We work with veteran spouses and active duty spouses. Right now, as in March, we have a lot of really good opportunities for people who are returning to the workforce, a lot of entry-level opportunities that will open you up to full, lengthy careers. We also have one position right now that's paying over six figures, I think, 110 plus in Tampa, florida. For the right person. You must have a special forces background and a top secret clearance to qualify for that. But if that sounds like you special forces, top secret clearance and you're interested in working in Tampa, let me know. I would love to screen you for the role.

Speaker 3: 2:55

I do want to get to know all of you because I am a recruiter, so a lot of what I do is building connections, building relationships, so I would love to invite you to come and introduce yourself to me on LinkedIn. This is a post much like the Act Now post. I hope that at some point we all talk about sharing who you are and your background. On the Act Now post, we're doing something similar in our sphere of influence. When you comment on this, everybody who is friends with me and I've 10,000 plus people who are there and a lot are looking for candidates will see you. So I want you to go give me your best elevator pitch in my social Saturday post, and then what I would love for you to do on top of that is send me a DM with your resume, tell me a little bit about what you're looking for. I will definitely respond and I will definitely review your resume. If I've got something for you or I know somebody who could use you, I will point you in their direction. Okay, so thank you all so much.

Speaker 3: 3:57

That's three, and then I'm going to talk about some jobs, but that's three active steps. Please go make an account with us so that you can see what we're currently recruiting for and you can keep an eye on things as they pop through week to week. Please go drop your best elevator pitch digital elevator pitch in my social Saturday and please send me a DM on LinkedIn with your resume. That will help me get to know you and help you get to know me. Now, what I do want to talk about are the opportunities that are actively open. So if this is for you, awesome. If it's not for you, but you know someone who it could be a fit for, share the love you know, tell them about us. We would love to meet them. You can introduce us. Here she comes. Hang on, you need help.

Speaker 3: 4:43

The first one that I have coming up is next week we're doing a recruiting event with CBS Health. So at CBS Health, we're currently looking for anyone with a clinical background. Honey, honey, go sit down. We're currently looking for anyone who has clinical experience you could have, you know, done med work in the service or you could be trying to transition into that or who has interest in working for CBS Health Aetna in a remote capacity to attend our event. So if you want to attend that event, it's next Thursday at 1 pm. It's going to be amazing. You're going to learn about the culture at CBS. You're going to learn about the open requisitions that they have. They currently are sourcing several remote RNs, but they're also opening up to non-clinical and, if you think about it, cbs is typically within a five mile radius of every military base, so it's a really strong fit for the military community. To find out how to attend that, just go to jobsvertforceus, which was the first link that I dropped, and after you sign in, click events and you'll see it on our event menu and you can RSVP from there. Last week we did kick off a similar circumstance which was helping military spouses, military spouse veterans and veterans get hired in remote positions at Intuit Intuit, just you know, a PSA for all of you.

Speaker 3: 6:16

A lot of people try to go get bookkeeping and accounting positions at Intuit, but they're not hiring in that area. Right now, the best opportunity is tax. So what we are doing is a 90-day tax boot camp. It's guided by my employees and last quarter we had 50 graduates and 20 were hired within the first 90 days post boot camp. This is fully remote, it is super entry level and it's seasonal. But the point of offering this to you now is if you see yourself in a career that's consistently remote, something where you never have to go to the office, this is a very good starting point because they promote from within and they give you the training that you need to scale up. So after this entry level position is an intermediate position and after the intermediate position is what we call the enrolled agent, they will actually pay for your course to become an enrolled agent. It's the equivalent of a certified public accountant, but it is like a federal level certification and license and with that role you're going to make between 75 to 110,000 a year, between $75,000 to $110,000 a year. So again, this is how I get you in the door is getting you boot camp, trained and you know in learning how to do taxes, and then we progress you from there to try to scale up to becoming a certified federal enrolled agent with the IRS. So, yeah, that's available to you.

Speaker 3: 7:45

If you want to, um, learn about that, you can message me on LinkedIn and I'll send you the replay, um, or you could go check out our YouTube channel. It's on the replay there too. But, um, I can certainly help you. It is not too late to RSVP. Not, I'm sorry. It's not too late to register for bootcamp. It is just kicking off. So we're just at the very beginning. Bootcamp requires 40 hours of your time 40 hours of your time. Then you graduate and you are eligible to apply with no prior experience. So I'm seeing some people dropping clinical stuff in the chat. I would really love to talk with you, so please reach out to me, dara.

Speaker 3: 8:25

Next thing is we have a lot of really great opportunities with Travelers, insurance that are in different organizations within their companies. So if you'd like for us to direct you or refer you there as a potential candidate, either for IT or for anything else, please let me know. And I am actively looking for a few internal hires, my internal hires. I'm looking for IT. I'm looking for entry-level IT, part-time, remote, dynamic personality. So this is around $19, $20 an hour. It's great if you're transitioning or looking for something to kind of break into this specific space at a slow pace. It's about probably 25 to 30 hours a week. I will tell you, it will quickly grow, you will quickly be at full time, you will quickly be getting pay increases.

Speaker 3: 9:21

This is a huge opportunity to be with a growing company, either long term or until you are ready to make your next step. And then we're also sourcing for an IT project coordinator. This is for someone who already has some IT experience, some work experience in IT. It pays up to $32 an hour right now and it is going to be a contract to hire. So that's coming in as a contractor, as a 1099 contractor, for about 30 or 60 days, um, and then moving to full-time I'm sorry, moving to a full-time team member. It is likely going to be close to 35 hours a week, as is All right.

Speaker 3: 10:03

Um, we're also doing a inter, like a, a I want to call it an internship program. We are taking on individuals who want to learn how to work remotely and how to um conduct growth marketing. We're doing a 12 week program. So if anyone's interested in that, that's very much just a couple of hours a week, going through some basic skills and exercise to help you develop those. We have some medical management roles at $21 to $23 an hour on our board right now, and I think that's about all I will cover with you. So to recap in a nutshell CVS is next week. We invite you to join us. You can RSVP by going to our job board, jobsvertforceus, clicking on events, and then you will see the CVS health event scheduled for March 27th. Same thing there with the TurboTax boot camp. If you want to do a career, pivot and explore that you are welcome to, and our Tampa position, which is a six figure executive role for someone with a special forces background, and that's it.

Speaker 2: 11:36

I'll talk to you guys on LinkedIn.

Speaker 2: 11:38

Thank you, Thank you, kimberly. So real quick, if you guys any of you guys get jobs, please hit us back. Let us know. We would love to know you know your guys' journey and status. Let us know. We would love to know you know your guys's journey and status. Like I said, it's we are a community of sharing and we want people to know that there's opportunities and hope out there. Um, one thing I got for you, kimber, and this reason I jumped on uh, so that program that you have 12 weeks. Um, I would like to talk to you about that because there might be a way to make it paid. And so, and for those who don't know, hoh has a program that they will pay you for 12 weeks. It just has to be related to you learning a skillset or a job opportunity, and so we have- Are you talking about Skillbridge?

Speaker 3: 12:24

No, no, no, no.

Speaker 2: 12:24

This is like a. It's a fellowship program, it's a paid program. The thing is they don't do the training, they only provide the funding. So if your program is approved for, you know, learning remote roles for 12 weeks, it could be paid for by HOH and they can now get a career for it. There we go, shout out to Lisa there you go.

Speaker 3: 12:46

Love that. Thank you.

Speaker 2: 12:47

Absolutely.

Speaker 3: 12:48

Thank you.

Speaker 2: 12:49

Yeah, that's what we do. We don't gatekeep. We share information. We try to help each other because you know it's going to help you guys at the end.

Speaker 3: 12:56

Awesome, thank you.

Speaker 2: 12:57

Absolutely All right. Thank you, kimber. Kimber's awesome. Make sure you keep her in the loop and make sure you tag or connect with her on linkedin so you can grow out your your network as well. There's a lot of opportunities out there and, like I said, we just want to help people win and we want to be part of that journey. Um, and just know, like I said, from our standpoint, this is not something that you know. Act now. Education makes money off of anything. We bring opportunities to you, um, with no strings attached. It's just. We just want to be able to help the community. So, the next person that we have on deck I'm really excited about this because I'm going to show you where to find 3 million jobs, and Kim is an awesome, awesome partner. She actually was part of with us to our first hiring fair that we did in Vegasgas and she came out to support kim. Are you on the line?

Speaker 2: 13:54

I am there you go, okay awesome I'm here let me get you up here, all right. So, kim, thank you for joining. This is a pleasure to have you. And, yeah, if you could talk a little bit about, you know, national Labor Exchange, a little bit about yourself and how we support people.

Speaker 4: 14:17

Thank you for having me, Jay. Am I going to be able to share my screen?

Speaker 2: 14:20

Yes, you can, absolutely, Anwar, you can grab that.

Speaker 1: 14:25

Go ahead.

Speaker 2: 14:26

You have it.

Speaker 4: 14:33

You can share your screen, okay. So, and y'all listen, don't laugh at me, because I'm I'm a team's girl, I don't do zoom like this, so where, where am I going to be able to do that?

Speaker 2: 14:40

so at the bottom of your screen there should be a button right next to the hand raised that says share. It's a green button arrow up up arrow okay, y'all see, just ask for help.

Speaker 4: 14:52

That's all we gotta do. That's what we're here for, right? Okay, can y'all see me? Can you see my screen?

Speaker 2: 15:00

um, yeah, so you have to click on. Yeah, it looks like you're showing your bank documents. Uh, for your, just just joking just joking.

Speaker 1: 15:11

You're showing the right thing you're showing the right thing.

Speaker 2: 15:15

We see uh the the website perfect, okay.

Speaker 4: 15:19

So before I get into this, I heard I got some shipmates on this call somewhere. So if you are a navy veteran um, active duty navy show yourself. Please put something in the chat. I just want to be able to connect with you. I'm a 10 year Navy veteran, been out for so many years Y'all won't even share the number but I've been a civilian many more years than I was in the Navy and, like many of y'all, have transitioned, pivoted here and there. It's wild and crazy out here, but, unlike you all, you have much more resources than I had, with Jay and wonderful people like Kimber and organizations like mine that I'm going to share with you here in a few minutes so that you don't have to experience the same pitfalls that I experienced and Kimber shout out to you. I love seeing another chick named Kim, something or another in this space, but, jay, thank you for having me. So I'm going to show you a resource that I feel like you need to bookmark and you need to be checking frequently.

Speaker 4: 16:26

Okay, so the organization that I work for is called National, is called Direct Employers Association. We are an association of employers Started back in 2001. And our CEO, our first CEO, was Bill Warren the late Bill Warren and many of you know Monstercom Well. He was the former CEO of Monstercom. So at one point in time he switched over. He had a different vision for how things should happen in this space. He got together with 13 employers and started our organization, and now that's blown up to almost 1,100 employers in our association. So these are employers that by and large have a national footprint. They are Fortune 500, fortune 2000 companies. 95% of them are federal contractors.

Speaker 4: 17:21

But we help them in my team with a lot of different things because we're in the partnership side. So we try to identify organizations that are helping job seekers get prepared so we can help connect them with our employers. That's one of the reasons Jay and I are partnering, because we share some of the same effort. But another thing that we do is we partner with an organization called the National Association of State Workforce Agencies, or NASWA. Between our two organizations we created this platform that I'm going to show you. So, like I said, between the two of us, we have a 10 year partnership Between the two of us. We created and we maintain this platform. It's the only platform of its kind, it's the only labor exchange of its kind and, as Jay said, there's like 3 million jobs in here on any given day. Okay, and the jobs can be trusted. Jay, did you want to say something?

Speaker 2: 18:26

Yeah, I did, I did.

Speaker 2: 18:27

I want to say one thing For those who are not tracking with NASWA right, naswa is an awesome organization that they're partnered with. But for those who are looking for, you know, if you're transitioning or your military spouse looking for a job opportunity, they're the ones that provide the free hotel stay at Hilton. They have the Hilton program, which gives you 100,000 points which allows you to set up as for interviews is for you know a job. When you're going to do your interviews or you're going to to speak to a potential employer, they will set you up so that you can get a hundred thousand points so you can stay there at no cost. The only thing you have to worry about is your travel to and from, but they'll pay for the hotel. They'll cover the hotel costs. So just something to keep in mind. I could talk about later on offline, if you guys want, but yeah.

Speaker 4: 19:15

Yep, and that is called the Hilton Honors Program, and not every state has a partnership with NASWA to be able to do that. So you have to check with your state, check with your state. But what they bring to the relationship is that they have relationships with all the states all the states jobs for veteran state grant programs. So it doesn't matter what state y'all are in or territory Y'all can be in Puerto Rico, us Virgin Islands it applies to you. You have a local career center there where you can go and get assistance at no cost to you, and NASWA partners very close with them and provides advocacy, so on and so forth. So to our partnership they bring that relationship and my organization brings a tech side.

Speaker 4: 20:05

So any given day there's 3 million jobs in here and there's only three ways that jobs can get into this platform because we really want to maintain the integrity of it and make sure that they are legit jobs, no bogus jobs, no scam jobs, because y'all know you go to some of these sites and a job has been on there for six months open, right. You don't know if they're harvesting information. You don't know if months open, right, you don't know if they're harvesting information. You don't know the job is legit. You don't you know anything about that job, but because we know where these jobs are coming from, we have confidence in these jobs.

Speaker 4: 20:39

So the only way that jobs can get in here is by three different, three different ways. All of the different federal branches, their jobs are in here. Okay, so you can. You can find it. Of course it's going to forward you back to that, you know the usagov to complete an application, but you'll be able to look at those jobs through here. All of our 1100 employers, all of their jobs will be in here and all of the local jobs that every American job center holds locally in their job bank. Those jobs get fed back up to this platform for national exposure.

Speaker 2: 21:20

So I'm going to show you which you won't see on other platforms. You won't see this on other. That's the key thing. You won't see this on Indeed or LinkedIn. Some of these jobs are not on there.

Speaker 4: 21:29

Yep, and it's refreshed every day. There's a kill and fill every 24 hours, so you're not going to see stale jobs on here that have just been sitting here. But I want to show you how easy it is for you to use. You don't have to create a password, log on, give a little bit of blood, you ain't got to do all that stuff right, Super easy. So I'm going to show you. Before we do that, I want to show you the interactive map.

Speaker 4: 21:57

I know that many of you are casting your net wide. You may be looking for jobs in your home of record. You may be looking for jobs in a previous state that you were stationed. You may be looking at you know were stationed. You may be looking at you know the big three, you know veteran-friendly states. We always hear Texas, Florida. You can easily do that through this interactive map because you can click on it and you're going to get veteran resources. Okay, so you'll get stuff for the JVSU program, so on and so forth. Just by doing that. Hold on this bar, See how this one I don't like Zoom, Okay, Just by doing that.

Speaker 4: 22:42

But to search a job, I'm going to show you how easy it is. Let's say you want to be an administrative assistant, you put in administrative assistant, Then you put in your city and I'm here in Florida, and then you hit filter and just those clicks, without me creating account, logging on, doing anything crazy. I get a whole list of jobs right in Miami that fit that job description or job title rather. But also I can come over here and I can filter by MOS. I can filter by alternate titles, because maybe it's not called an administrative assistant, Maybe it's an AP specialist or something similar. I can filter by city and state.

Speaker 4: 23:45

I can filter by Higher Vet Medallion Award recipients. So the Higher Vet Medallion Award is the only federal award of its kind that employers can receive if they meet certain criteria, which deems them to be veteran-friendly. So that's a really good way to know that you're going to an organization that's going to support veterans. So you can filter that way and you also can filter by company. So maybe you know out of this number here, maybe I've long wanted to work for Deloitte. Then I know I can just click on Deloitte and it narrows my search down to 54 opportunities. Now it gave me this list of options because of what I initially did, but you can come in here and click around differently and you'll get different options. You'll get let me see I'm missing the L in skill bridge.

Speaker 4: 25:15

Huh, what'd you say, jay?

Speaker 2: 25:19

You're missing the L in skill bridge.

Speaker 4: 25:21

Oh, that's why. Okay, thanks, okay. So if you put Skillbridge there, you'll find the different opportunities all across the US. So play around with it. You can't do any wrong. Like I said, you don't have to create an account or do anything crazy. It's very user friendly. Remember I talked a little bit about the HireVet Medallion Award Program. Remember I talked a little bit about the HireVet Medallion Award Program.

Speaker 4: 25:57

There's a link right here where you can click into this and you can download a list of all the employers that have received the award, so that maybe you can focus your employment search on just those employers. No surprise here Many of them are in the DC DMV area because a lot of them are federal contractors, so a lot of them are kind of focused here. But you can click into your state and find those employers that meet that criteria. But that's pretty much it. We also have a virtual platform, which is a microsite. It's very similar to the page you just saw, which was the Veterans NLX. You can see it looks very similar. The only difference here is you're not going to see some of the filter options that you did with the Veteran one, such as filtering by MOS, and all of the jobs here are remote or virtual, so that's specifically what you're looking for. This is the URL that you're going to want to search through, and that is it. Any questions?

Speaker 2: 27:07

Yeah, feel free to come off mute. If you guys have any questions, let us know Is this information helpful.

Speaker 3: 27:13

Was that virtual one at a different URL?

Speaker 4: 27:17

Yes, I'll drop it in the chat. Okay, yeah, let me see, I'll drop both of them in the chat.

Speaker 2: 27:28

Awesome, I do want to say one thing before we get into the Q&A, just so you guys have a better understanding of some of the resources here, right? So with Kim, right, and so, working with Kim to kind of make sure that we get the information out to you, we wanted to be able to provide you opportunities. That's why we have Kimber online, that's why we have Kim. Like any resource that we can put forward your way, we want to be able to share that, right, and so this is our career compass website. That's our platform, right, and then, like, you have your job tracker and stuff in here and you'll see a lot more details about what it is that we have in here. So, like, oh, let me skip this. It's actually going to go through the whole process of trying to get me to add something because I don't have anything in here, but skip, all, right, so you could put your your applied jobs interviewing, offering rejecting like this will help you keep you know to tabs on what you're doing. You build your resume. You build your resume specific to jobs, right, so you can find it on linkedin or indeed, or you know, kimber site. Put it in here and it'll write your resume with ai to that role and it'll help you understand what the differential between, the differentiator between what you have and the skill sets that you need for the job. You can also use this for your contacts right to be able to build out the contacts. Enough about that. There's a lot more stuff that I'll cover down on this, but if you come here into jobs right, once you guys look at this number, once it loads, it's taking some three million jobs. We took Kim's platform that platform and put all those jobs on here, and so now you can apply to any one of these jobs and have your resume written to any one of these jobs and have a better likelihood of finding opportunities right Now.

Speaker 2: 29:20

You can't tell us this is as much as we could do. You can't tell us there's not a reason for you to be successful in this aspect. Right, and that's also in the clue like, whatever you want to type in here, it's all searchable. We work with the team to make sure on the back end that when you search for a job, depending on location and what it is that you're looking for, it's there Three million jobs. Right, have at it, feel free. The other aspect that we have in here is all the resources that we share, and so not only do you have that now, you have a platform with a bunch of resources that you can utilize. So if you're trying to get certifications and things like that, you want to be able to knock out free opportunities, it's in here.

Speaker 2: 29:57

But let's say, for some reason this job board doesn't work for you, or the opportunities in here don't work for you. If you come down to where it says job boards, that information is in here, right, these are all the other job boards out there that do something similar. So to include three million, you have now this. And then if you're looking for virtual, obviously you have vert force and you have um neighbor labor exchange right, so you have national labor exchange. So you have two choices to choose from and like to be able to help you. So make sure that if you have the skills required, you have the background, you're trying to really make things happen for you. You touch base with these organizations because they are here to help you, specifically to change your career, to change your trajectory, to provide food for your family, and that's the reason why, like, we operate the way we do, because we want you to be able to take advantage of that.

Speaker 2: 30:49

Overseas jobs there's some from some for overseas. We gotta add more to there. But whatever it is that you're looking for, all these different resources, over a thousand different resources in here. But, like I said you this platform. When we tell people to get on this platform, make sure you take advantage of it, because everything is is curated so that you can be successful. And so if someone hit me up and say I need a job and they're not on this platform, guess what? I'm going to tell them Get on the platform so that you can do that. All right, please feel free to ask Kim a question. No questions Corey. No questions Anthony. No questions Dar questions. Anthony. No questions. Darrell. You look like you got a question. You got the thinking come on, darrell.

Speaker 8: 31:37

Hey Kim, how you doing? I'll jump in hi.

Speaker 8: 31:40

Jennifer. Okay, how you doing? Kim, sorry, whoever that was, I beat you to it. Yeah, so I'm just kind of navigating through the different states here and I noticed that you know you had used Texas as your like preliminary example here. But so I'm just kind of navigating through the different states here and I noticed that you know you had used Texas as your like preliminary example here. But so I'm in California and so I'm looking at California here and so, like each state kind of has a different protocol for how these jobs are listed. Is that, I'm assuming, because there's some kind of state requirement or statute in that regard?

Speaker 4: 32:11

requirement or statute in that regard. States do have different laws on how jobs need to be presented if they need to disclose salary and so on and so forth. But other than that, the way the jobs are presented should be very similar. Okay, because I'm looking.

Speaker 8: 32:21

If I go to the under California, nothing's actually listed under your organization, the National Labor, but it's actually under CalJobs. So I just want to make sure that there's not some additional category that would include the jobs listed under y'all.

Speaker 4: 32:38

Gotcha.

Speaker 8: 32:39

All of your CalJobs.

Speaker 4: 32:40

Good question, actually. So you went through the interactive map, correct? Okay? So you remember I said NASWA partners with all the different JVSG programs in all of the states. Caljobs that would be one of those programs. So those are centers that you can go to and you can get assistance from other veterans.

Speaker 4: 33:02

My background is in that. Matter of fact, that's where I worked before I came over here, where I worked before I came over here. So at every American Job Center and this is for all y'all on here, we call them American Job Centers or you could Google Career Center they have a program there where they hire veterans to provide services to other veterans at no cost employment services. So you can go there. You can get resume writing, resume workshops, mock interviewing, all that jazz. But they also have somebody there called a local veteran employment representative. Their whole job is to provide advocacy and job development for veterans. So as long as you qualify as a veteran, you know you have the right discharge and you've had 180 days served. Unless that's changed, you're a veteran in their eyes. They will advocate for you, shop your resume around and do job developing and, like I said, just go to your nearest one.

Speaker 4: 34:07

So that's where CalJobs comes in. All of them have their own job bank, right, so you can register for their job bank and search for jobs. But you have to create an account, you have to register. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I'll tell you all of their jobs, because of the partnership with us, those jobs predominantly come from the National Labor Exchange. Those jobs predominantly come from the national labor exchange. That's where they come from. But they also can bring in local jobs. You know they have local relationships with employers and they'll put in their own jobs, but predominantly the jobs at any of your american job centers in their job bank are coming from the national labor exchange. They filter down into each state's job bank.

Speaker 4: 34:51

So it just depends on how you. If you want to go at solo, if you want to search for jobs in the NLX, you can do that. If you want more relationship and assistance from other veterans to help with those other things, I would say go to your local American Job Center and get that and you can do all things. You can look through the NLX, you can go to your American Job Center. You have a lot of options.

Speaker 8: 35:19

Awesome. Thank you, Kim.

Speaker 2: 35:21

And then one other thing with that right. So the sites that Kim showed us is the one that's related to the veterans. They have an overall website um, like shares, real fast, uh, at the nlx, right. And so if you come in here you type in cali, uh, let's do san francisco, right. Wherever you are, it doesn't matter, but you know the jobs will be listed here and those jobs are direct apply, right. And so they have three different sites the virtual one, the one for veterans and but, like, hold on, actually let me go back so you can see where what this looks like on the main site. So, on the main site, if you come down here, veterans, virtual, right in state, and so this is all the information. They have events on here as well, so that you can track on that. So everything is available there.

Speaker 2: 36:09

But, like I said, if you were looking for something specific and you just type in Cali here, based off of what you're looking for, it's going to come up, and so it'll like sort of cyber engineering analysts. If I'm interested in that, apply now. That's going to take me directly to Deloitte and then I'm in there like swimwear, right. So that's it cool, all right. Any other questions for kim. I mean daryl, I know, daryl, daryl was trying to find the unmute button, but uh, go ahead. Daryl, what questions you had someone else speaking.

Speaker 2: 36:41

My connection is not so good I'm sorry, I didn't hear any of that.

Speaker 6: 36:48

Hello, can you hear me?

Speaker 2: 36:49

Yeah, I can hear you.

Speaker 6: 36:50

This is Brooke. I have a question.

Speaker 2: 36:52

Yeah, brooke, can you give me a second? Yeah, darryl got beat to the punch twice. Look, we don't want him to have a third time, so we're going to let him jump on and then we're going to hit you up, brooke.

Speaker 5: 37:03

Thank you for that, but look, let her, let her go ahead. My question was more about the links, the actual links. I need all of those links that Kim has put out Okay.

Speaker 2: 37:15

Okay.

Speaker 8: 37:15

Okay, yeah, what's your other link? Hey, Darrell, it's in the chat.

Speaker 4: 37:18

All right, you have to scroll up a little bit, but both of them, the virtual one and the veteran one, is in the chat.

Speaker 5: 37:24

Okay, I got those. The one Jay was talking about when you said the three million jobs or whatever like that. What was that link?

Speaker 2: 37:30

oh, that, that is we're gonna cover down on that in a little while yeah, we're gonna cover down on that.

Speaker 2: 37:34

So all you guys are going to get an account to that, and so that's just another tool, right? And then the reason why that is is because I don't want you to be submitting your resume just off the off the cuff, right. I want you to have some, some ability to kind of really tailor your resume to the job, and that's what's going to allow you to do so. Cool, all right, brooke, all yours. Center stage spotlight Action, action. I set you up perfectly, brooke, and you just left me hanging. Look, see, here we go. Is your mute on or off? All right, we'll come back to Brooke when she gets her stuff put together. Anyone else have a question? Richard, you look like you got a question. Richard's like I'm not sure if you're talking. You're talking to me, yeah.

Speaker 7: 38:33

Well, I dropped a question in the chat asking about experience in lieu of a bachelor's degree. I know it's a lot of resumes put a requirement of a bachelor's degree, but some of us have leveraged experience over our careers or half careers that we've gone through and like to know more about how to leverage that and be able to say, hey, I've got experience.

Speaker 2: 38:51

Take a look at me. So I mean some organizations, like I said, between, but some organizations, depending on the role, the reason why the degree requirement is there is because when they're working with their partners, let's say for a defensive contractor, for a sense, they're trying to get picked up for a contract, right, and so they're going to say we have, you know, five people with our PhD, 25 people with masters and this type of individuals and this much experience. Right, experience is definitely a big part to that and the degree is a big part to that. But depending on what the organization, who their clients are, that's always going to vary. I'm not going to say, like, can you land a job without degree? Absolutely, a thousand percent. You just got to understand what you're getting into in those arenas, right, being able to talk to your experience and being able to articulate the value you bring is perfectly fine.

Speaker 2: 39:41

A degree is an added benefit, right, but depending on what company you're applying for. So when you're identifying, you know the culture fit of a company, the mission, the values and then what you're trying to bring to the table. If you can articulate your skill sets in a way that helps them understand that you're helping them solve their problems, because that's what jobs are, right Jobs are. We need a person to do this thing to solve a problem for our clients right. And so if you can articulate that, you know I know people who will lean on experience more than anything.

Speaker 2: 40:13

Right, and sometimes experience is not. I mean, sometimes degrees are not anything like, they don't even really get you in the door. You need a certification, right. So certification sometimes and certain industries are looked at more favorably than just the degree aspect.

Speaker 2: 40:26

And so just understanding what industry you're interested in and how to navigate that can help you, and then identifying what company and culture fit that's out there and then being able to, you know, jump on those opportunities, but don't feel like not having a degree puts you at the bottom of the barrel for looks right. That's not necessarily true in all sense of the term, but just understanding what you're getting into and what you're getting into and what you're applying for and things that. Now, if you're like trying to become like a mechanical engineer, the first thing they're going to look at is like your degree right, that's an aspect right. But if you're becoming like a cybersecurity expert or you know a cloud computing, you know degrees are not even up to date when it comes to some of this newer technology and innovation. So hopefully that answers your question.

Speaker 7: 41:12

That's exactly what I was asking. I had learned a lot of development and IT stuff early in the IT development world as it was still developing itself and there was no degrees to be had at that time, so I was working in the industry trying to get more information about it, find myself in a pivot where I'm trying to pivot my career, and so I've led myself up to this point with just learning as I've been going.

Speaker 2: 41:34

Okay, so I would say your cert game for sure it would need to be up. If you're in the IT field, like that is by far, they will look at certs more than degrees. If you have your CSSP, they don't care what degree you got. You got your CSSP right and so just understand, like that, that line of effort and then also, like I said, when we do the second portion, I'll show you all the search that you can get that you don't have to pay any money for um. That can open these doors for you.

Speaker 7: 41:59

So that's why I'm here. That's. That's the kind of the path that I was going down as I saw the search that we're offering.

Speaker 1: 42:03

Of course, yeah, yeah, richard, also I just, all of us have different experiences and everybody has, you know, different knowledge. Right, but understand also a lot of people here nowadays, unfortunately or fortunately everybody wants to work for the things. All right For Microsoft and AWS and Amazons of the world, all right. Smaller companies or, you know, might be more eminent I mean Kimber and everybody else might have more information or experience, but this is just for me, okay. For example, just to your case, for example, you know, I was at AWS for a while and I had a Marine vet that I was friends with and that guy a marine vet that I was friends with, and that guy, he was one of those little child nerds you know about programming and things like that.

Speaker 1: 42:59

I saw him do code on discord, you know would have, would hold sessions from time to time, all right, and I tried to refer him for a job at AWS. He got denied because the guy didn't have a bachelor's degree. He could run circles around them and just fulfill that job and he did like two or three more times and they're like no, sorry, you don't have a bachelor's degree, that's a requirement. So he went to a smaller company, you know, and he's now programming video games with them and they're working for electronic arts as subcontractors, for example, okay Depends, okay Miles might vary, and all of that stuff, absolutely. There's just one example that comes to mind.

Speaker 7: 43:44

No, and I've experienced that also. I know that working for smaller companies has more opportunity.

Speaker 2: 43:48

Absolutely All right. Did anyone have any other questions? We can kick right into the other.

Speaker 6: 43:59

I said go ahead. Okay, go ahead, I'm traveling. So that's why I had some problems with my connection earlier. I cannot tell you how much I have to thank the other veterans that recommended that I jump on this Saturday call. So I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm headed to my part-time job, I'm gonna jump on anyway. So I have two, well, three. I already messaged on her LinkedIn while I was listening. But what I'm very interested and very excited about is your certification. But the specific question do you pronounce your name J or J?

Speaker 2: 44:38

I get that a lot.

Speaker 6: 44:39

J, is it J?

Speaker 2: 44:40

It's J.

Speaker 6: 44:41

J. Okay, I wanna make sure, right, I don't wanna mispronounce your name, j. The question I have is about the certification. If you're not, because right now I'm currently I want to get my AI certification. But the big question once I listen to where we can go to, once you finish talking at 2 o'clock today what type of are there? Is a role to internship viable for us who have already been in the business and want to get into the ai field? Or should we get our certification and just immediately interviewing and bypass for um to bypass the internship phase? Because it looks like a lot of times when I'm looking at internships they are looking for people in college or associated with a college and not somebody who's purely getting certification. So that's part one of my question. I have another question for you as a follow-up.

Speaker 2: 45:43

Okay, yeah. So I would say there's a couple of different aspects. Right, internships, apprenticeships right, and it's like obviously you're networking and connecting into opportunities. Those are all crucial aspects. For me. It's whatever gets you into the door. Right, you can work on all three of those opportunities. Right, they're all job applications, essentially right.

Speaker 2: 46:06

Internships is just an opportunity to get connected with the people at a company that you want to get connected with. But do know that you are competing against a lot of people depending on what it is right. They also have oh man, one second, they also have apprenticeships, right, which guarantees you a salary and then gets you trained up. And then the way that apprenticeships works is you'll have someone mentor you through your apprenticeship. So let's say the apprenticeship is six months. I'm doing it in AI development. I have a mentor that's in a company that he's watching or she's watching over me, kind of giving me the left and right limits.

Speaker 2: 46:41

As soon as I graduate the program successfully, you have to graduate the program successfully. You're getting paid the whole time. You may get paid like $18 an hour, $15 an hour, something, minimum raise, right. But as soon as I graduate the program successfully, I now get the same amount as supposed to get the same amount as the person that was looking over me in that management role like not management role, but the person that's supposed to be like my mentor in the organization and so you get a pay bump as soon as you graduate that program and now you're working full time with a clear understanding of whether or not you like this opportunity, what's out there for you and then how that aligns so that those are great opportunities, and when we do the talk at two, I will show you exactly where to find them, because they're not only just for, like industry folks, right, it's just like, yeah, there's a big appeal to get students into that, but they understand veterans and military spouse put in work.

Speaker 2: 47:38

Right, I will have no shot at the veterans but I will hire 20 military spouses in a heartbeat to get something done because they just know how to do it. It's just like you could throw a lot at them and I have. They get something done because they just know how to do it. Like, it's just like there's, there's not. You could throw a lot at them, Like, and I have, like they get it done, Understanding the type of background and the things that we bring to the table and that added value, right. Sometimes it's just a difficult part of being able to talk about ourselves because we don't do that well, Communicating how effective we can be because we don't do that well, and showing how we can add value to that organization and also understand what value we get from that organization, because it's a two-way road. But to go to answer your first question did you get that or it looks like I lost it? I don't know. Brooke, can you hear me or no?

Speaker 6: 48:28

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I got that. That's good. So I'll be listening at tool talk and my other question for you is this Hilton honors, I cannot tell you. I'm so shocked because so many times I have needed to have a resource like that and never ever had heard about it ever before before today. So is that more so you can, if you have a job interview set up? What is that process and how long does it take? Because usually, if somebody wants you to like when I used to fly and go to job interviews and things like that you really have a short turnaround period to get everything set up. Do you know what that process is? Is that something that you need to set up ahead of time, or is it a quick turnaround?

Speaker 2: 49:19

Yeah, we actually did this. For what was it like 200, 300 people? We did a hiring fair.

Speaker 6: 49:27

I see my camera froze. No, we're tracking. We did a hiring fair. Yeah, we did a hiring fair in Vegas. I see my camera froze.

Speaker 2: 49:29

No, we're tracking, we still got you. But we actually did a hiring fair in Vegas and we had people fly out and then get their hotel paid for because we had opportunities for jobs there for nationwide, and so that was our first hiring fair that we did. Now, yes, the question is, it does depend on the state. Each state does it differently. To give you an example if you are in Georgia, unfortunately Georgia doesn't have a program and so they don't have a coordinator, but that doesn't mean you're not eligible. You would have to actually go through the headquarters, which is oh my God, what's her name and what you know name oh my God, what's her name and what you know name Lori Adams, lori Adams. Yeah, yeah, you have to go through Lori Adams and she could do one offs Right. So if Georgia is not the state but here's the thing If you are a Georgia residence but you're trying to move to another state, that state may do it Right, but if you're trying to move from that state to Georgia, that state may also do that aspect right, and so you just have to see, and Lori Adams will be able to give a good point of contact to tell you.

Speaker 2: 50:31

But each state is different. There's a list of states that support the program. Some states have really strict requirements, some states don't. To give you an example, maryland has some pretty stringent requirements on what you can do and then, depending on if you're a military spouse, there's like even more stringent requirements on it. So you just have to be able to figure out for your state who was the point of contact, because the names are listed there and their contact number is listed there and then getting that process set, but the fastest I've ever seen. The turnaround time for that has been two weeks, and so, from you putting in the opportunity to sending the information, filling out this form that they asked you to fill out, you send that back. Once it gets approved two weeks you're good to go.

Speaker 4: 51:15

Jay, a little bit about that, because you know I meet with Lori every week.

Speaker 2: 51:18

Oh yeah, go ahead, Kim, For a meeting. I know what I'm doing. Go ahead, Kim. No, no, you're good, You're good.

Speaker 4: 51:24

I just wanted to make sure that they knew that the eligibility had changed a little bit. So no longer can you go to a conference and get the hotel paid for. You have to have an interview. You have to have an established interview. So in order to be eligible, just make sure you know what the criteria is. But shoot all your shots. You know, let somebody tell you. You know. Sometimes you slip on through. So I say, try what you can try.

Speaker 2: 51:52

And truth be told.

Speaker 3: 51:55

Some of those conferences will get you interviews.

Speaker 4: 51:57

Yeah, and that's exactly right, especially at MIG. I mean, it was a wonderful, my son got hired through MIG, my son came with me and got hired at.

Speaker 3: 52:06

MIG. A lot of people do I mean you could probably check jay goes to all of them. You could interview with jay while you're there, hey I got my sweatshirt too, jay absolutely, but black ops yeah, just remember.

Speaker 1: 52:19

Just remember, you know the, the hilton honors for everybody. It's just eight. It takes like a hundred thousand points, which gives you about three or four days, but it's lifetime award. It's not like anytime you want to go to a conference, hey, let's. Let's call naswa and get my hundred thousand dollar points for hilton.

Speaker 2: 52:40

Okay, it's a lifetime and then tell them, tell them the real deal. It depends right? So if you're going to a job, it depends on a hotel too alabama you know you may get, you know, 1500 points. 15 000 points may be good, but if you're in like la and it's like 70, 75 or however much like, understand like they, it doesn't change the range. You only get 100 000 points.

Speaker 1: 53:05

So you need to choose a hotel that has less points a hundred thousand points might get you five minutes in a hotel in la and get you two months in alabama. Okay, depends on where you want to go, and it might get you, like, just walk in the door in hawaii right now okay, if you're trying to enjoy jay's lavish navy lifestyle. It might get you just to walk in the door and look at the beach if you go into conference in hawaii yeah, uh, and then for for everyone else.

Speaker 2: 53:37

Like that policy change was because of act now. So, unfortunately, yeah, we, we were the the cause behind that because, like, we flooded them with 300, 400 candidates and it was like, look, you guys can't just be doing conferences. It wasn't a conference, but nonetheless, uh, we, we move, we move together when it comes to things like that. So we look out for you as best as possible. We want to make sure that we, we, we don't like leave you holding a bill and then you have opportunities, but with.

Speaker 2: 54:06

With that being said, I want to transition into the second part of this, which is just focus on the resources and giving you the information that you guys need so we can get you on your way. But I'm going to cover down on giving you the Coursera information. So, understand, coursera is a partnership with VTS. We are bringing our Coursera program back online, but we're doing it a little bit differently. So we're just going to take some time to do that and understand, like we got like a thousand things in the fire and so we work with our partners a lot to kind of leverage it.

Speaker 2: 54:38

So the first thing I'm going to share with you is the Coursera link so that everyone can apply to that, and I'll talk a little bit about what that looks like. So if you're not familiar with Coursera, here's the thing Don't sign up if you're not ready. Just put that out there. But what it is is it's an opportunity for you to do some upward scaling with no cost, right, and so it doesn't cost you any money. It's a one-year account and it gives you the ability to knock out some certifications related to different fields and, like I said, at no cost to you. If you guys look up Coursera online, you'll see that it costs I don't know $400 a year or something like that, and then I can't copy and paste it in here, all right, so I just shared the link there.

Speaker 2: 55:25

Anibal is going to follow up and make it look pretty and reshare that. But if you sign up for there, it takes about a week to two weeks to get your account but you get access to 12,000 courses, 27 certificates, and all at no cost. So Google IT support, google project management, google cybersecurity, ibm cybersecurity, data center data not data center data analytics they have some Salesforce on there as well. They have meta for UX, ui and then for, like the healthcare folks, there are healthcare courses that are provided by colleges. That's on there as well that you can take advantage of. And all this stuff is good to add to your resume. Right, you may not be enrolled in school, but it looks good to show that you're doing something. Now you don't want to list 2,000 courses on your resume because ain't nobody got time for that, but what you do want to list is things that are pertinent to the role that you're applying for. So if you're applying for a project manager role, take the PMP I mean take the project manager Google course and add that to your your, your credentials listing. But understand that you know the PMP is very different from the Google project management, and so being able to talk about that is really important as well, because they may ask you a question related to that.

Speaker 2: 56:51

Pmp is a gold standard, just so you know. Um, and then we're currently offering, of course, right now we have, I think, like 45 people who we're helping them get their pmp through um. Act now education, um. So that's one thing. Um, so you have that link. All right, let me go over what else. We got, like covers. Let me cover down with some stuff. Do some house cleaning here. Sorry, one second. I definitely need like the little three screen thing. Uh, I don't like going from like my computer to just one little tiny laptop. All right, here we go, I'm gonna breeze through these so you can uh get all the goodness. All right, understand, we're a community organization. We focus on resources out there. You know there's over 40,000 different resources out there. We try to vet them and we bring you the ones that are trusted Right, so we won't ever put you in a situation to where it is a little shaky. If it is, we will definitely send a follow up message and say, hey, acna has no involvement with this.

Speaker 2: 57:46

Now, I know a lot of people have been putting in links. Hey, you know, tag me or you know, here's my information. I haven't seen that work for anybody in the years of me doing this. One person may click on your profile, but in terms of networking, that's not as helpful, because then what are they going to connect you with about? Right, they connect with you. You're not going to use that, so this is what we did.

Speaker 2: 58:10

Instead, here's a link that we want you to use. It's going to be on LinkedIn and essentially, just put your information. Tell us a little about yourself. You can say your military status, your goals, your areas of interest, and then find some other people who have similar interests and connect with them. Everyone on this link is willing to connect with each other. If we connect, we should be connecting on the platform we're trying to connect with.

Speaker 2: 58:30

The reason we tell you to do this is because this allows you to, especially if someone finds a job and opportunity or someone's looking at stuff. It expands your network. I'm connected to a lot of people, so definitely like add me to your network, because when I post stuff or when I come across jobs, I'm always coming across jobs. I'm always coming across opportunities, stuff, or when I come across jobs. I'm always coming across jobs. I'm always coming across opportunities. You just never know. Like last week, we gave away 150 data center certifications from CompTIA. Comptia was like hey, jay, we got these certifications, we just need people to take the test. Do you got anybody that can do beta testing?

Speaker 8: 59:03

I was like absolutely.

Speaker 2: 59:04

I post that out right, but that's not on a Saturday, that was on like a Monday, and so just know that there's great things to connect with people. Use LinkedIn for what it's intended for connecting with people, so make sure you guys get that information OK good. One other thing If you are interested in going to school and not paying for your tuition and having some other organization pay for it, for your tuition and having some other organization pay for it, scholarship for America is offering to pay for it, as long as it's related to education, counseling, social work or school psychology, and the way that this works is Hold on One second, where's the button up here