This week Off The Cuff returns to celebrate our veterans with an interview with Steve Chang, Founder of the Veteran Transition Accelerator Headlamp. Steve is a retired Special Forces Officer and graduate of The Wharton School of Business where he received his MBA. In this episode, Christina and Steve unpack the huge variety of skills and qualifications that veterans bring to the job market. Steve explains how Headlamp intersects with the Department of Defense’s Skillbridge program and what makes them unique within the accelerator space. 

Headlamp believes that humans are more important than hardware and that optimizing human potential is the most pressing issue to solve for our nation. They abhor the wasting of talent and do this by being fanatical about eliminating any friction that gets in the way of optimizing talent. Their current focus is on finding transitioning veterans the right job building a veteran transition accelerator consisting of a community of communities, access to opportunity, and last-mile training. Their product is Skillbridge-as-a-Service, to connect veterans and employers in Headlamp Fellowships and they invite all veterans to join the platform.

Veterans, especially junior enlisted, are undervalued by the workforce for many reasons. And while veterans have good access to resources and to effective expert advice to call attention to their value, Headlamp thinks that the problem is structural and that these solutions can only “treat the symptoms”. Headlamp believes that addressing the structural elements of Information Asymmetry and Friction will magnify the impact of existing resources.

If you or your company are interested in how Headlamp can provide top-level candidates for your business please feel free to reach out to Steve at steve@myheadlamp.com. Thanks for taking the time to listen to the pod and in doing so supporting both our retired and active service veterans who are serving all over the world to keep us safe!

Topics Include:

• Steve’s Experience In the Armed Forces
• The Current Job Market For Veterans
• Unpacking and Understanding the Skillbridge Program
• Why Veterans Make Such Incredible Job Candidates
• How Headlamp Is Equipping Veterans For Their Future

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Produced by: Social Chameleon