Social network aims to help veterans get the jump on jobs
“We speak that common language,” says Major Jake Johnston who teaches at West Point. “When I say OH-58D, every aviation officer you’ve ever met knows exactly what I’m talking about.”
As a new subscriber to the website called RallyPoint, he likes being able to use Army lingo.
“People in the military moved around so much. And they meet new people professionally everywhere they go, and then they move again,” says Aaron Kletzing who built RallyPoint with Yinon Weiss, after the two Army veterans met at Harvard Business School and realized they’d both served together north of Baghdad.
To sign up for the for-profit website, you have to have a military e-mail address. You list your rank and deployments. Weiss says instead of business units, the hierarchy goes by command structure.
“There’s a misconception in the military that people cannot influence their careers. That they just get orders every couple of years, and they just go to where they’re told,” Weiss adds.
And that attitude doesn’t work in today’s tough job market. Weiss says service members need to network for the right civilian job long before they leave the military.
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