Tech Industry Opportunities for Veterans

Tech Qualled and Venture Technologies are creating opportunities in the tech industry for US Veterans

Building on to Venture Tech’s investment in the US, we recruit from Tech Qualled to find the best and brightest –America’s own military veterans who are bringing the leadership and problem solving skills they learned in the service, into the tech industry.

“We understand returning veterans have a drive to continue serving our country and they bring the dedication, focus and drive that aligns with their military background,” said Venture Technologies Business Applications Group President Paul Demes. “They’re able to thrive in high pressure environments, build solid customer relationships and motivate those around them.”

The US tech industry is extremely challenging for service members to break into if they don’t have deep experience; however, the lingering shortage of high quality, high tech B2B salespeople has created a talent gap.

Co-Founder and CEO of Tech Qualled, Jim Sherriff, started the company in 2015 as a way to give veterans the skills they needed to assimilate back into the workforce in an industry that many didn’t have access to due to lack of experience or training. Sherriff spent more than 30 years in executive leadership roles at both HP and Cisco.

While Jim and his wife Karen were participating in the Fellowship Program at Harvard’s Advanced Leadership Initiative, they met Nick Breedlove and Justin Ossola, both graduates of the United States Naval Academy and Harvard Kennedy School of Government. Together they partnered to develop the innovative, mission-driven company.

Tech Qualled’s mission is to enhance the lives of military veterans by training and placing them into rewarding customer-facing careers in high technology.

“We made a commitment to create this program for veterans, providing them with a customized learning environment and access to new, previously barricaded career paths in high technology,” said Tech Qualled Co-Founder Justin Ossola. “Venture Technologies has hired more candidates than any of our other partners. Their enthusiasm and involvement with our Launchpad Academy is a testimony to their dedication and commitment in getting our returning service members hired in fulfilling, lucrative roles.”

The Tech industry’s approach to hiring and training Veterans

Venture Tech is following the lead of several partners and tech giants like Cisco, Oracle, and Microsoft in the commitment to hire and train veterans.

Cisco is a founding member of the 100,000 Jobs Mission, a coalition of companies committed to hiring 300,000 veterans by 2020. In addition, Cisco’s Veterans Enablement and Troop Support (VETS) employee organization provides mentoring and support to active and retired military personnel and their families.

Cisco Networking Academy courses at military bases have helped more than 66,000 military personnel develop information and communications technology (ICT) skills since 1997. In addition, 330,000+ veterans have been hired through the Veterans Job Mission, of which Cisco is a founding member.

Oracle also supports a broad range of efforts that provide veterans and injured veterans with opportunities to build professional networks and find civilian jobs that build onto their skills. The Oracle University Workforce Development Program (WDP) is a global program with over 140 partner schools in North America. Partner schools range from large universities to small and mid-sized private training companies.

How Venture Tech supports the Reshoring Initiative

Hiring and training military service members aren’t the only ways we aim to make an impact. Venture Technologies has its own US-based data centers managed by US help desk support. We will continue to keep hires in the US and partner with companies doing the same.

The mission of the Reshoring Initiative is to bring good, well-paying manufacturing jobs back to the United States by assisting companies to more accurately assess their total cost of offshoring.

Whether or not recent economic policies have an effect, the fact is many companies are hiring more US workers — and quickly. Companies are increasingly recognizing that costs, risks and strategic impacts previously ignored are large enough to overcome the shrinking emerging market wage advantages.

Tech companies known for their large-scale repatriation of US manufacturing include Oracle, Google, Intel and IBM.

The Reshoring Initiative aims to balance the $500 billion/year trade deficit, thus bringing back four million manufacturing jobs to the U.S.

Reshoring Objectives 

  • 4 Million manufacturing jobs
  • Cut US budget deficit by 50%
  • Reduce unemployment about 4% points
  • Strengthen the middle class
  • 30% increase in manufacturing
  • 25% extra annual capital equipment investment (If spread over 20 years)
  • Allow productivity and growth in manufacturing employment

Original post can be found here.