Please enjoy this testimonial from one of the hundreds of Veterans that INvets has helped to a positive outcome. Finding the correct position post a military career is not easy and not necessarily as fast as we would all choose. INvets works with you to ensure that we can find the best fit. One of our core values is to meet Transitioning Military and veterans where they are. INvets does not operate under “one size fits all”. You are individuals with individual needs and wants. Please communicate with us throughout your transition and career search. We are here to help and guide, but you own your future.
A Really Bad Year!
To say that 2022 was a difficult year would be the understatement of the century. On April 9th, we held the funeral for my dad’s last of thirteen siblings. A generation of our family was now gone.
Before uncle Albert’s death, I acted as his Power of Attorney and made life-altering decisions for him. In the span of five months, he went from an assisted living facility, a nursing home, a memory care unit and then the grave. Dementia stinks! I felt responsible for putting him where he was when he died. Down deep, I knew it was not my fault; however, as a somewhat normal human, I could not help but blame myself.
Six days after my uncle’s funeral, while in deep mourning, I was terminated from a teaching position because of an auto-corrected talk-to-text email message. In almost 41 years of working, I had never been fired. I started delivering newspapers at the age of nine and have worked ever since –fast food, the military, various jobs (while in school), to teaching while simultaneously doing missionary work.
Things got worse!
Finding a new position was a challenge. I was not offered interviews for positions for which I was eminently qualified. Human Resource Managers may have looked at my resume (if their computer program did not kick me out) but they were not seeing how the many skills I had learned as an educator could translate for their success. Or they thought, “A recent firing; do we really want this risk?” At any rate, I was not getting interviews, my unemployment had run out, and I was thinking I would lose my house.
I was about to accept the first job offer that presented itself to me– no matter the pay. Then, INvets stepped in to help.
INvets Helped
INvets cares! With them you are not just a number. They not only listened to my sob-stories but also earnestly searched for positions for me as if they were helping one of their own family members. They pushed so many opportunities my way. Then one day Katelyn, the employment specialist with INvets, asked, “Would you think of working as a driver for the Lieutenant Governor?”
I had been considering everything at that point. So, of course I said yes. To tell the truth, I was hesitant because I had been fired in April 2022 and was applying in January 2023. I figured they would look at the recent firing and lack of employment as a blight on my character and move to the next candidate.
But INvets put in a good word for me. I believe that was the key that led to me getting an interview with the Lieutenant Governor. The interview went well. But after months of rejection after rejection, I was super skeptical. When I told Kate this, she said, “I have a good feeling about this one…If you really want this, I think you are going to get it.”
Things Got Better!
A few weeks later, I was called into an interview. I began working as the Lieutenant Governor’s special assistant two weeks after that interview.
I enjoy working for Lieutenant Governor Suzanne Crouch immensely and am thankful for INvets’ “outside of the box” thinking that led me to a position that I enjoy but might not ever have considered.
INvets cares and makes things happen!
Forever grateful,
James A. Holden
Special Assistant to the Lieutenant Governor of Indiana