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Google Cloud is working with ETS to built a new job matching service for military veterans transitioning to civilian life
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ETS has already made the transition from on prem infrastructure to Google Cloud for data storage and analytics
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Cybersecurity has emerged as a key field of interest for veterans, which see it growing in importance
Unless you’re in a very specific subset of the population, you’ve likely never heard of the ETS Sponsorship Program. But the company, run by Army veteran Mike Eastman, is working with Google Cloud on a better way to help military personnel transition to civilian life.
While it’s still early days, an interesting trend is emerging: veterans don’t necessarily want to keep doing what they were doing in the military. And one of the top things they do want to be doing? Cybersecurity work.
Indeed, cybersecurity is a growing field. A report from the World Economic Forum showed that there is a global shortage of 3 million cybersecurity professionals. The same report found just over half of the 803 organizations surveyed for the study pointed to skills in networks and cybersecurity as increasing in importance.
Eastman told Silverlinings that there are plenty of programs out there already that try to match military skills to civilian job listings on a like-for-like basis. But ETS is trying to come up with a more nuanced approach based on a slew of data that can account for “intangibles” in the equation.
That includes analyzing information about a person’s military history, their favorite thing about the military, whether they actually want to keep doing what they were doing, where they’re living, how much travel they want to do, what kinds of vets have been hired for what jobs in the past and more to uncover jobs a candidate may not have considered but is qualified for.
According to Eastman, that’s where Google Cloud comes in. ETS has partnered with the company to securely store what can oftentimes include sensitive data. Google Cloud also helped it build a model to crunch all the aforementioned data and supplied its Looker business intelligence platform for analytics.
Eastman said ETS is coming to the end of its first year of partnership with Google Cloud. While it took a while to build its new software, he said ETS has completed the move of its infrastructure from on prem to Google Cloud and has also integrated Google Cloud and related services into its new software. Now, it’s working to scale its new service and tackle new use cases that can leverage Google Workspace.
“Google’s working really closely with us and some of their AI experts to go after these use cases,” Eastman said.
Cybersecurity in focus
The average ETS enrollee is 27 and has served five to seven years in the military, Eastman said. They have an Associate degree and half are married.
So, where are they ending up?
“The careers they’ve been selecting have been remarkably stable: Cybersecurity, project management, some of the trades, construction, HVAC and then it gets a little more fine grained as you go down,” Eastman said.
According to Eastman, there are two pools of candidates pursuing cybersecurity roles. One group consists of folks who area already trained in this area due to their military experience. But “the majority here are folks that are upskilling or retraining because they view cyber and IT as a growth industry. So they are literally coming in with an Associates degree in English Lit and going and getting – either through Google certificates or through [the Department of Defense’s] SkillBridge [program] – upskilling themselves to enter into this sector.”
Eastman said it’s too early to share numbers around how many employees are going into each category, given success is often a 12-month journey. But he noted that around 6,000 people are enrolled in ETS’ platform right now and it expects to enroll over 24,000 over the next 12 months.
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