U.S. soldiers assigned to the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, patrol a seasonal river in Kunduz province, Afghanistan, on July 15, 2013. U.S. Army photo by 2nd Lt. Sven Jenson
From War To Work
A multiagency effort is helping veterans make the transition to civilian life. By Charlie Clark.
In 2011, Lauren Augustine was an Army specialist operating RQ-7B Shadow unmanned aerial vehicles from Camp Taji in Iraq. She knew that at the end of her deployment, the skills she’d learned wouldn’t translate directly to civilian employment.
Enter the revamped Transition Assistance Program, designed to ease service members’ transition from structured uniformed duty to life as working civilians. It included a course on resume writing that Augustine, a Virginia Tech graduate raised in Woodbridge, Virginia, says “instilled some confidence in how to look for jobs and the need to tailor my resume for the jobs I was applying for.”
She realized that during her military service, “I did manage soldiers and oversee the mission on a daily basis. So there were some secondary or tertiary skills I was able to capitalize on.” She ended up as a legislative associate at Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, which represents those who have served in America’s recent wars.