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Veteran CareerStar Accelerator

Draft Introductory Briefing to Engage Key Stakeholders

Submitted by Dana E. Jarvis, MPA, MSW, U.S. Marine Corps Veteran, Community College of Allegheny County Veteran Career Coach

June 24, 2014

Executive Summary

The Veteran CareerStar Accelerator (VCSA) will revolutionize how veterans gain a meaningful career. The goal is to reduce veteran unemployment consistently to 3%. If veteran unemployment decreases to 3%, our country will add billions to the bottom line. The reality is that we would no longer talk about veterans simply having a job and a livable wage. Instead, we would engage in dialogue focused on veterans having a truly meaningful career with increased opportunities for home purchase, kids’ college saving and retirement. This will be a career where the veteran can deploy his/her passion, strengths and skills. The direct financial benefit to the veteran and his/her family would be increased income. Our country would benefit because billions of dollars would be earned via stronger tax contributions with veterans having better paying jobs. Currently, the Veteran CareerStar Accelerator is being utilized at the Community College of Allegheny County. As the part-time Veteran Career Coach, Dana Jarvis has interacted with 600+ veterans and has conducted a full VCSA Interview for 30+ veterans. Consistently, veterans experience the “Wow!” Factor upon hearing how they can build their personal professional brand, integrate social media to advance their brand and ignite a meaningful career. The VCSA is currently having a micro level impact on veterans. However, in order to make macro level changes, the VSCA needs to be in software form.

Interactive and real-time software would allow the VSCA to significantly progress towards the goal of 3% unemployment for all veterans. By partnering with the Federal Government to design, develop and deploy VSCA Software, three outcomes will occur. First, veterans attending the Transition Assistance Program (TAP) would have a system to launch their meaningful career. Second, veterans would have an ongoing comprehensive, integrated and robust VSCA system to consistently upgrade their career. Third, the fact that metrics associated with a career (e.g. type of job, annual salary, engagement level, turnover, etc…) could be measured to highlight progress/rational for continued funding. While funding for VSCA Software would likely come from Federal sources, it is possible that a public-private partnership could be established to fund the project. Eventually, the VSCA Project could be funded on its own as a self-revenue producing entity. There are many possibilities with the VSCA but the key is to begin a pilot project within a Transition Assistance Program (TAP) in Pennsylvania.

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Rationale for the Veteran CareerStar AcceleratorChart 1 illustrates that we have made progress on reducing veteran unemployment since 2010. This is the good news. The bad news is that veteran unemployment is not on par with civilian unemployment. From 2006 to 2013, veteran unemployment was always beneath civilian unemployment.

Chart 1: Unemployment rates of persons 18 years and over by veteran status, period of service, and sex, 2006-2013 annual averages

Source: http://www.bls.gov/opub/ted/2014/ted_20140325.htm

In Chart 2, we see that veterans earn more money than that of the average American. While on the surface this is good news, the reality is that it is clearly bad news. We do not have a viable system to ensure veterans continue to journey towards a job and are nowhere close towards a methodology for veterans to have meaningful careers. It is 100% critical to understand that a job and a meaningful career are vastly different. A job gives a paycheck that may or may not provide a livable wage. However, a meaningful career provides a way to at least earn $10,000 above the average American and also engages the veteran’s passion, skills, strengths and interests. The bottom line is that even if veterans are currently earning $10,000 above the average American, it

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does not mean that it will continue. Further, the data does not take into account the myriad of problems for those who are underemployed, unemployed or have given up.

Chart 2: Veterans’ annual income is about $10,000 higher than that of the average American.*

Source: http://www.census.gov/how/infographics/veterans.html

“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” is a saying that has zero place as it relates to veterans. One need not look any further than the current news to see headlines of the Veterans Administration in shambles (http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/23/us/phoenix-va-deaths-new-allegations/). The U.S. government, under President Obama, has begun looking at the challenges and dedicating resources but significant progress has not been made (http://www.businessinsider.com/by-the-numbers-the-us-government-is-failing-miserably-at-helping-veterans-2012-7). If progress was made, then we would see veterans actually attaining meaningful careers at a high rate but this is not the case. Lastly, consider an interesting article on the Transition Assistance Program (TAP), which suggests enhanced funding for transitioning service members but with continued poor results (http://orderstonowhere.com/2013/05/01/why-are-transition-assistance-programs-not-as-effective-as-they-should-be-the-answers-are-out-there-but-nobody-is-asking-the-questions/).

Solution: The Veteran CareerStar Accelerator

My Veteran CareerStar Accelerator seeks to resolve the ongoing problem of veterans having higher unemployment rates than their civilian counterparts.  It also will provide a

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system where veterans will gain careers of meaning and value with paychecks commensurate with their experience and expertise. When military members transition out of the service, they attend the Transition Assistance Program (TAP).  During TAP, members learn about the basics for a career journey but do not achieve a higher level of learning as it relates to professional networking and LinkedIn.com.  Since most jobs are gained via a person’s network, the Veteran CareerStar Accelerator integrates social media with one’s personal professional brand.  The net result is that the veteran will leverage their opportunities to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.  The mantra for TAP should be, “First, gain a job.  Second, accelerate your career”.   The Veteran CareerStar Accelerator includes critical pieces for the veteran’s career journey including a passion/strengths/skills/interest assessment, strategic marketing tools, mentoring/coaching module, integrated social media guidance and predictive technology within an avatar hiring director (e.g. simulated interviews), among others.  At this point, I facilitate the Veteran CareerStar Accelerator via basic conversations with CCAC student veterans.  However, in order to take the Accelerator to TAP, it will require software development.  This will then allow the Accelerator to be utilized by millions of veterans in order to achieve the economies of scale necessary for the overall goal of 3% veteran unemployment rate.

Our goal would be to pilot the Veteran CareerStar Accelerator first, gain insights, adjust accordingly and eventually include the Accelerator as a cornerstone of TAP.  This goal has been shared with multiple members of Congress, along with leaders in business, community and education. In my view, if the Accelerator solves a major problem for veterans and through it, we can reduce veteran national unemployment to 3%, that would be huge.  On top of that potential win, it is highly likely that veterans would have a career of meaning and value via the Accelerator, which would be another major win.   Please find highlights of the Veteran CareerStar Accelerator Social Media below.  This social media is really only the beginning of what could be a transformative model for our veterans and our country.

  Veteran CareerStar Accelerator Social Media

Stat #1 Stat #2 Established

Pinterest Board 140 Pins 7 Followers June 2014

Blog 4279 Views 53 Posts July 2012

LinkedIn Group 42 Members NA November 2012

Slideshare Presentation 505 Views 2 Downloads December 2012

Facebook Page 95 Likes NA September 2011

* In order to access the Social Media above, some will require a password/username for established membership.

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Veteran CareerStar Accelerator Utilizing the Lean Startup Model

The Lean Startup by Eric Ries focuses on “creating rapid prototypes that test market assumptions, using customer feedback in an effort to evolve design faster than more traditional product development practices, and getting new ideas into the marketplace quickly” (http://www.govtech.com/pcio/Governments-Take-a-Lean-Startup-Approach.html). Chart 3 represents the basic Lean Startup model.

Chart 3. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

Source: http://theleanstartup.com/images/methodology_innovation.jpg

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“A core component of Lean Startup methodology is the build-measure-learn feedback loop. The first step is figuring out the problem that needs to be solved and then developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to begin the process of learning as quickly as possible. Once the MVP is established, a startup can work on tuning the engine. This will involve measurement and learning and must include actionable metrics that can demonstrate cause and effect question.

The startup will also utilize an investigative development method called the ‘Five Whys’-asking simple questions to study and solve problems along the way. When this process of measuring and learning is done correctly, it will be clear that a company is either moving the drivers of the business model or not. If not, it is a sign that it is time to pivot or make a structural course correction to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy and engine of growth” (http://theleanstartup.com/principles).

Goal: By 2017, reduce veteran unemployment to a 3% average.

How will the Veteran CareerStar Accelerator (VSCA) achieve its goal of

reducing veteran unemployment to 3%?

If private investors are not secured, then the only chance that the VCSA has to accomplish this aggressive goal is for government to think differently about funding a software initiative. Based on conversations with start-up leaders,

the Lean Start-Up and MVP are the best methodologies available to turn advance

towards the Goal.

Thank-You.

Dana E. Jarvis, MPA, MSW

Veteran Career Coach

Community College of Allegheny County

412-237-2560

djarvis@ccac.edu

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