Hire Heroes USA (HHUSA) conducted its first transition assistance workshop for wounded or disabled soldiers at the Army’s largest Warrior Transition Battalion (WTB) from August 6-8 at Fort Gordon, Georgia. The workshop was the successful result of months of coordination and planning between HHUSA, CSRA Wounded Warrior Care Project, and Fort Gordon Warrior Transition Battalion leaders to provide comprehensive career transition training at no cost to service members.
During the workshop, HHUSA staff taught 20 wounded or disabled soldiers and one spouse how to identify personal goals, formulate career search strategies, create effective resumes, and excel in job interviews. Using a combination of classroom instruction and hands on application, HHUSA staff assisted soldiers to produce outstanding resumes that accurately reflected their military accomplishments in relevant business terminology– often the most difficult part of the transition process. Additionally, soldiers were able to meet with and select mentors from the local business and veteran community, immediately increasing their networking resources and corporate career knowledge base.

Feedback from the workshop participants was so uniformly enthusiastic that HHUSA and Fort Gordon WTB leaders intend to conduct similar transition assistance workshops at least on a quarterly basis and reach more than 100 wounded or disabled soldiers in the next calendar year.

Together with HHUSA’s regular visits to Marine Wounded Warrior Battalions, the Fort Gordon workshop signals a greater commitment from the US military to ensure its wounded and disabled service members receive the best transition assistance available, leading to reduced veteran unemployment rates and sustainable, family-wage jobs.