Newsletter · April 19, 2018
HA News41: How 1 Veteran Helped 1,000/ How to Craft Your Pitch
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I needed a succinct, snappy answer once I started interviewing for civilian positions. I needed an elevator pitch/ How Chuck Sevola reinvented WOS
April 19, 2018 Click here to read this newsletter in your web browser.
After finishing my time as a communications officer in the U.S. Army I joined Prudential. Back in 2010, we were just formalizing our veteran hiring strategy, and we knew we needed something that would help us onboard and prepare vets for the new roles that they would assume in our company. We turned to a non-profit partner of ours called Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) that our Global CIO Barbara Koster had forged a partnership with five years before to help source talent for our IT organization.
The WOS Program is based on the premise that there is plenty of talent in the US that is ready to be trained to assume entry level jobs that many times are filled overseas; this talent simply needs an opportunity and mentoring. Originally targeting high school graduates from underserved communities, we believed this program would be an excellent starting point for our efforts to recruit, train and employ post-9/11 enlisted veterans of our armed forces. This was our opportunity to develop great talent and, in turn, help combat the rampant unemployment this cohort experienced as they returned from conflict to a country in the grips of a serious economic downturn.We adapted the original program (appropriately rebranded VETalent) so that it could help train the veteran candidates for the myriad of new roles we knew we could fill with vets, and also be a vehicle to ease the transition from the military to the civilian sector.
We’re now working with WOS to scale the program to export it to other likeminded companies. To date, WOS has partnered with more than 70 other firms that use variations of our model for their own veteran hiring activities. The flexibility in the model has allowed for adaptions to extend training for roles beyond IT, including Project Management, Cyber Security, Customer Service, and even manufacturing and service mechanics. Nearly 1,000 people have gained employment through the program’s many variations. In 2014, Prudential opened a new facility in El Paso Texas and VETalent is a significant part of our staffing strategy there. We’ve recently started using the program to train registered representatives that require various licenses to work with variable financial products. While that program is still in its infancy, we expect this will become a new growth area in our VETalent program.
VETalent has been very successfully for us. We’ve learned a lot over the past eight years as the program has matured, and we’re anxious to share those learnings with others. If any of this sounds interesting to you and you’re wondering if a version of the model may work in your company, then please feel free to contact me. We can share more detail on VETalent and connect you with WOS for deeper discussions.
-Chuck Sevolacharles.sevola@prudential.com& The Prudential Veterans Initiatives Team
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How Chuck Sevola Helped Create VETalent
Good morning,After finishing my time as a communications officer in the U.S. Army I joined Prudential. Back in 2010, we were just formalizing our veteran hiring strategy, and we knew we needed something that would help us onboard and prepare vets for the new roles that they would assume in our company. We turned to a non-profit partner of ours called Workforce Opportunity Services (WOS) that our Global CIO Barbara Koster had forged a partnership with five years before to help source talent for our IT organization.
The WOS Program is based on the premise that there is plenty of talent in the US that is ready to be trained to assume entry level jobs that many times are filled overseas; this talent simply needs an opportunity and mentoring. Originally targeting high school graduates from underserved communities, we believed this program would be an excellent starting point for our efforts to recruit, train and employ post-9/11 enlisted veterans of our armed forces. This was our opportunity to develop great talent and, in turn, help combat the rampant unemployment this cohort experienced as they returned from conflict to a country in the grips of a serious economic downturn.We adapted the original program (appropriately rebranded VETalent) so that it could help train the veteran candidates for the myriad of new roles we knew we could fill with vets, and also be a vehicle to ease the transition from the military to the civilian sector.
We’re now working with WOS to scale the program to export it to other likeminded companies. To date, WOS has partnered with more than 70 other firms that use variations of our model for their own veteran hiring activities. The flexibility in the model has allowed for adaptions to extend training for roles beyond IT, including Project Management, Cyber Security, Customer Service, and even manufacturing and service mechanics. Nearly 1,000 people have gained employment through the program’s many variations. In 2014, Prudential opened a new facility in El Paso Texas and VETalent is a significant part of our staffing strategy there. We’ve recently started using the program to train registered representatives that require various licenses to work with variable financial products. While that program is still in its infancy, we expect this will become a new growth area in our VETalent program.
VETalent has been very successfully for us. We’ve learned a lot over the past eight years as the program has matured, and we’re anxious to share those learnings with others. If any of this sounds interesting to you and you’re wondering if a version of the model may work in your company, then please feel free to contact me. We can share more detail on VETalent and connect you with WOS for deeper discussions.
-Chuck Sevolacharles.sevola@prudential.com& The Prudential Veterans Initiatives Team
This Week's News Roundup:
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Good managers need six particular skills. hbr.org3 Military Behaviors That Don't Work In The Civilian Workplace
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This issue was originally sent on April 19, 2018. View the original email.