(Washington) – Speaking to the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, the Chairman of The Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives, Wes Poriotis, today called on Congress to establish and deploy a ‘Veterans Job Development Corps’ to help make the “final connection between veterans and employers.” Poriotis also urged the Committee to authorize a national advertising campaign to help “re-brand” and market military service in order to increase the demand among private sector employers for veteran hires.

Federal employees have neither the training, resources, nor time to connect the veteran job-seeker and the private sector person with hiring authority,” Poriotis told the Committee. “They simply don’t have the necessary private sector experience or contacts to successfully place veterans in quality jobs,” he said.

“That’s why The Center proposed the Veterans Job Development Corps, a public-private partnership to place veterans in quality jobs. The Veterans Job Development Corps would locate hidden jobs, market veterans to employers, connect them directly to persons with hiring authority, get them interviews and – most importantly – get them quality job offers,” Poriotis said. “In addition, the Corps would have mobile “Delta Force” teams that would be deployed to help those veterans who face significant barriers to employment by going directly into their homes and their local job markets,” he said.

“Funding for the Veterans Job Development Corps could be tied directly to successful job placements and for less than 5% of the amount currently spent on veterans employment programs, the Corps could be deployed to significantly increase the number of positive outcomes for veteran job-seekers,” said Poriotis

Poriotis also recommended that Congress authorize, “…a new marketing campaign to change the image and perception of military veterans in the private sector using classic ‘re-branding’ techniques. Just a couple of weeks ago, we convened a summit of corporate branding and marketing experts in New York City to apply proven consumer marketing techniques to re-brand veterans as a valuable business asset,” he said.

“Whether such a campaign would be funded by DOL, VA or DOD remains to be seen, but there is no question of the need to change corporate perceptions about the value that military veterans can bring to private sector employers,” said Poriotis.

Today marked the fourth time that Wes Poriotis has testified before Congress on veterans employment matters. Poriotis founded The Center for Military and Private Sector Initiatives in 1995 after presenting a report on veterans employment to the President and the Joint Chiefs of Staff about deficiencies in federal jobs programs for military veterans. Poriotis is also the Founder and Chairman of the Board of Wesley, Brown, and Bartle (WB&B), one of the America’s leading management consulting and executive search firms, and the nation’s premier diversity search firm.