Harvard Alumni Mentor Veterans
On November 5th, the Harvard Club of San Diego volunteered for an evening of mentoring veterans as they transition from serving our country to becoming integrated into the workforce.
On November 5th, a few days before Veterans Day, the Harvard Club of San Diego had alumni who volunteered their time for a single evening of mentoring veterans as they transition from serving our country to becoming integrated into the workforce.
With special thanks to The Travis Manion Foundation (TMF) for making this experience possible for us as a group, we interspersed around a conference table for an interactive group discussion between 10 veterans and 7 alumni mentors. After introductions, we started by covering some topics such as veterans in the workplace and the opportunity to dispel some rumors about hiring veterans since the two biggest issues are difficulty with understanding transferrable skills and fear of PTSD/post deployment issues. This lined up well with the previous TMF session that focused on transition- the ups and downs about being out of the military. We then changed direction to concentrate on job prospecting as well as general career information.
A good sign that the evening was mutually beneficial for all in attendance was the fact that everyone remained past the session end time to talk further with many alumni offering guidance from both a general and career aligned perspective. We’re planning another mentoring opportunity in the first half of 2014 with a different group of veterans- stay tuned!