American Legion/Avue Launch Jobs Web Site for Vets

What’s the deal? Just tryin’ to help my fellow Veterans. — LD

Site Promotes "More Jobs, Better Jobs"

WASHINGTON -- The American Legion and Avue Technologies launched a joint Web site, http://www.vetjobs.us, to substantially increase employment opportunities in the federal government for America's returning veterans. The American Legion is the nation's largest veterans service organization, and Avue is the leading private-sector provider of human capital management services for federal agencies.

The new site will be free to all users and will not contain advertising of any kind. In announcing the site, the Legion and Avue emphasized that the traditional focus of federal agencies on placement numbers, without regard to the long-term quality of the job opportunity, has resulted in inferior job placement and career tracks for many veterans.

For example, while veterans have represented between 30 to 37 percent of new federal government hires during the past five years, only 14 percent and 26 percent of them, respectively, are placed in the two highest-paid labor categories.

The fact that veterans disproportionately take entry-level jobs for low wages, despite high qualifications, often means they will spend their entire career economically disadvantaged.

"We view quality civilian job opportunities and career growth to be perhaps the most critical issue that faces the more than 250,000 veterans exiting the military each year, and we are very enthusiastic to offer a solution that we believe will result in not only more jobs, but better jobs for veterans," said Marty Conatser, national commander of The American Legion.

"Avue is the perfect partner for this project because Avue is not only the leading technology platform for information and outreach on federal jobs, it is also committed to supporting veterans, and its system is the only one that automatically ensures veterans preference is correctly applied in every hiring action," Conatser explained.

"We are pleased to be able to join with The American Legion to ensure that veterans receive the very best in information and advice to maximize long-term career growth, identify local opportunities, improve compensation, and help ease the transition from military to federal civil government employment," said Linda Brooks Rix, Co-CEO of Avue.

The new joint American Legion/Avue program can be visited on the Web at http://www.vetjobs.us. The Web site is expected to be one of many future partnering efforts on behalf of veterans between Avue and The American Legion.

The American Legion was founded in 1919 on the four pillars of a strong national security, veterans affairs, Americanism, and patriotic youth programs. The Legion's 2.7 million wartime veterans work for the betterment of their communities through more than 14,000 posts across the nation.

Learn more about The American Legion by visiting http://www.legion.org on the Web.

Founded in 1983, Avue Technologies is the recognized market leader and technology innovator in public sector management platforms (PS/MP). The company provides the public sector with integrated technology and service solutions that dramatically increase enterprise-wide visibility and management effectiveness, workforce productivity, and manager and worker satisfaction. Avue is a privately held company headquartered in Tacoma, Wash., with offices in Washington, D.C., and Victoria, B.C. Learn more about Avue Technologies at http://www.avuetech.com.

SOURCE: The American Legion