Effective Job Placement and Employment Strategies for Returning Veterans

Dr. Richard Pimentel* will tell the story of the early job placement efforts developed by Vietnam Veterans to help returning veterans successfully find employment when they came home. Their motto was “you don’t get disabled veterans well to put them back to work. You put them back to work to get them well.” By developing veteran and employer training in job development, hiring and supervision we can fulfill the promise that we made to them just as they fulfilled the promise that they made to all of us. He will describe how employers learned to supervise, communicate and support returning veterans in their companies more effectively.

Dr. Pimentel’s two messages to employers from returning veterans:

• - I did not do the things I did despite being a disabled veteran. I did them because I was a disabled veteran. Hire a disabled vet. You trusted us with your freedom. You trusted us with your lives. I think you can trust us with your company.
• - When an employer looks at a disabled veteran and cannot imagine how he or she could do a job. The problem might not be so much in the limits of the veteran as the limits of our own imagination. If they we good enough to fight for us they are good enough to work for us.

SPEAKER

Dr. Richard Pimentel*, Senior Partner, Milt Wright & Associates

*Indicates individual is a Veteran, NG/Reservist, currently serving, or a military spouse.