About Us
Education & Skills Training for Veterans & Their Families
Meet The Team
Advisory Council
Photo Credit: Jacob Warren
Our Story
Skills After Service is a divison of Distance Learning Media, LLC. After decades in education technology and media production, we found ourselves involved in a small and very personal project, an effort to help a family member returning from Afghanistan who was making the transition from military service back to civilian life.
While learning about the transition process in general, we realized that transition to civilian life presents an almost universal struggle for most veterans. In fact, transition stress is actually the #1 challenge reported by more than 80% of veterans. Each experience is unique but many former soldiers share similar issues and face the same kinds of challenges. Most civilians think of PTSD as the primary concern for veterans – and it is certainly important – but the biggest, most common problem is not widely discussed – it is transition stress.
As our small project grew, so did our work to develop skills training, unfolding organically as we learned more and more about the size and scope of the problem. We decided to put the full force of our experience in education, business coaching, marketing and media production into helping to solve it and started sourcing tools, relationships and resources, first with our own family member in mind and later with the idea that others might benefit from what we were putting together. Today, we’re hosting events, providing online training and support, we are building workforce training and skills development programs.
We are focused on helping veterans and their families make the transition, leverage their experience and their time in service to build a fulfilling career, a close network of friends and colleagues – and to help develop this often overlooked segment of the labor force. We are also advocate for other veteran-focused organizations and services. When veterans re-enter the workforce, they bring skills, leadership and focus. When they build a business or take a job and their work is fulfilling, we all benefit. We’re all in this together.
What We Do
We create and facilitate job skills and entrepreneurial training for veterans and their families. We work with corporations, nonprofit organizations, government groups, cities and states – anyone helping people who are making the transition from military to civilian life. We also host business skills events and provide support for veterans in transition who want to start a business.
In addition, we work with hiring managers and HR leaders to bring awareness and management training to improve recruiting and hiring practices for veterans re-entering the civilian workforce. We strongly believe that employers can play an important and very positive role in the transition process – both small businesses and large corporations alike.
Entrepreneurial Training
We create and facilitate classes for live, in-person training and for virtual learning that help veterans and their spouses to start and grow a small business. We work with municipalities, nonprofit organizations and other groups to provide key topics across four areas: marketing, money management, human resources and daily operations. Every class includes a toolkit full of low-cost resources, tools and templates to make sure participants can hit the ground running after class.
Training for HR Leaders
The path to easing transition stress for veterans requires more than training them. Hiring managers and HR leaders can embrace new ways to engage with this largely untapped workforce in terms of the skills, experience and leadership qualities they bring. We are committed to the task of raising awareness and to best-of-breed training for hiring managers and HR leaders across the country about the best ways to recruit, hire and manage veterans. We are working with corporations and management training companies to build this training program. Stay tuned.
Job Readiness Programs
We build job readiness training to help veterans find, get and keep a job – not just any job that comes along. Those are rarely a good fit. We work to make sure they are able to leverage their own skills and experience while in uniform, making good use of that time in service, to build a career that has meaning and allowing them to support themselves and their families. It’s less about resume writing and more about translating military work into today’s complicated civilian workforce.
Soft Skills at Work
We’re developing a certification course for veterans to re-learn the language and process of work in a civilian world, including communications, workplace behavior, and expectations, including interpersonal skills like managing personal boundaries at work or understanding the difference between aggression and anger.