Hero2Hired Mobile Job Store provides opportunities to service members, families

Photo By Sgt. Salvatore Ottaviano | Service members and their families learn about the Hero2Hired mobile app inside the H2H van during a Yellow Ribbon event at the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center in National Harbor, Md., Jan. 12. The mission of the H2H van is to provide the capability for unemployed or under-employed military and family members to use its search engine to locate jobs.  

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD, UNITED STATES

01.12.2013

Story by Sgt. Salvatore Ottaviano 

99th Readiness Division

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. – The military’s Hero2Hired van rolled into the Gaylord National Hotel and Convention Center here, Jan. 12, to assist service members and their families during a Yellow Ribbon event.

The mission of the H2H van is to provide the capability for unemployed or under-employed military and family members to use its search engine to locate jobs, according to Sgt. Maj. Wayne Bowser Sr., senior enlisted adviser, Office of the Secretary of Defense/Reserve Affairs.

“The best part about it overall is that it’s good for Guard and Reserve, active component, any branch of service, all retired individuals from the military, all vets as well as all of their spouses,” said Bowser. “It’s a free service – it takes no longer than 90 seconds or less to sign up to get into the system.”

The H2H van offers tools and resources such as a job-search database, a calendar listing live and virtual hiring events, resume and interview guidance, civilian career information and social networking applications.

Once a desired job is located after reading the job description and information, the user can go into the system and apply directly to the company or organization for the particular job.

“Once they do all that, they’ll get some type of response back from the employer referencing, ‘Hey, we like your resume, we like your profile, oh, by the way, why don’t you come on in so we can actually have you set up for an interview?’” Bowser explained.

The H2H van was part of a Yellow Ribbon event hosted by the Army Reserve’s 99th Regional Support Command. More than 500 service members from several branches of the military attended the two-day event with their families in order to learn about the many opportunities and resources available to them.

“[The H2H van] has all of their job openings into this database system,” explained April Millington, chief of the Yellow Ribbon Program, 99th RSC. “This is the mobile van that goes around to our events where soldiers and their family members can go in there and say, ‘hey, I live in California, what jobs are open in California for me that either myself or my spouse can actually apply for.”

“With [the H2H van] along with the other community partners that we have come out, there’s a lot that is given to the soldiers and family members as far as employment,” she added.

The Yellow Ribbon Program is a Department of Defense-wide effort to promote the well-being of National Guard and Reserve members, their families and communities, by connecting them with resources throughout the deployment cycle.

Through Yellow Ribbon events, service members and loved ones connect with local resources before, during, and after deployments. Reintegration during post-deployment is a critical time for members of the Guard and Reserve, as they often live far from military installations and members of their units.

Since Jan. 28, 2008, more than 1.1 million National Guard and Reserve service members and their families have benefited from the deployment cycle information, resources, programs, services, and referrals offered by the Yellow Ribbon Program.

For more information on the Hero2Hired program, log onto https://h2h.jobs/

• Date Taken: 01.12.2013
• Date Posted: 01.13.2013 16:33
• Story ID: 100315
• Location: NATIONAL HARBOR, MD, US