VTRNgroup, LLC

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Strategic Consulting on Veteran, Family Career Initiatives

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VTRNgroup offers strategic consulting on veteran career initiatives for business and industry, universities, and colleges. Federal contractors have relatively new obligations to initiate affirmative action hiring programs for veterans, and one obligation is to establish effective outreach programs. With a target goal of 7% of the workforce, identifying likely hires, and engaging recruiters, hiring mangers, and front-line supervisors is critical to meeting the goals. Retaining veterans, providing significant meaning and opportunity for veteran employees to contribute, and advancing them in the organization requires cultural competency and focus.

jschmeling_1377222128_94James Schmeling has extensive experience advising businesses on the establishment of their career initiatives and assisting in building effective outreach programs. He can engage with your organization on strategic consulting that will take your organization far past compliance and into the realm of competitive advantage through veteran and veteran-family career initiatives and connect you to sources of veteran talent. He can also help establish talent development pipelines for your company, and tap into your existing employee resources. It doesn’t matter whether your organization is large or small, veteran and family-member talent can be leveraged to enhance your business. And done well, these initiatives will promote retention and reduce turnover costs.

Because veterans and family members are also inclusive of other diverse people, Eugenia Hernandez’s experience as a woman, Latina attorney, and her engagement with the Hispanic National Bar Association, the National Association of Women Lawyers, and as a former commissioner of the Iowa Commision on Latino Affairs, is available to ensure your career programs are inclusive of women and minorities.

If you’re building pipelines from higher education STEM programs into career opportunities, then the work of Dr. Elisa Grajales is directly relevant to your needs. She has broad experience with traditionally under-represented populations from higher education recruitment through degree completion and onto careers. She’s an experienced trainer and educator, and holds a PhD in clinical psychology and a master’s in industrial and organizational psychology. Her training curricula can be used independently by HR professionals in your organization.

Veteran Career Initiatives

Many consultants and firms can assist you to comply with guidance from the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) for veteran recruitment. VTRNgroup is focused on far more than compliance. We help you connect to top veteran talent, to the programs focused in making them even better, and after you hire, to retain veterans in your teams.  We do that through helping you establish effective veteran outreach programs, demonstrating your commitment to veterans seeking opportunities to join your teams, and understanding the veteran talent opportunity – including their motivations and goals, who are the excellent prospective team members you want to hire, and keep, and more.

Not a federal contractor? Then connecting to top veteran talent through our expertise is even more important for you. Federal contractors are working on meeting their 7% benchmark goal for veterans in their companies, so competition for the best is even more important for your recruiters and hiring managers.

Retaining the most talented veterans is critical – why hire them if you don’t understand what motivates them and keeps them in your company? The best veteran employees have a need to continue to serve – their communities, their colleagues, their companies, as well as non-profits, and others. While money is important, the right opportunity to use their skills, to achieve career growth, to make a difference, are all critical as well.

If you’re a small company with a need for outside assistance to connect to the right prospective employees, and you  don’t have an in-house recruiting and hiring team, we can help. We establish ties to  veterans who are seeking career opportunities across the nation, and help them find your opportunities. Don’t know much about veteran talent? We can share what we know with you quickly, or do in depth training and education.

Are you a big company that wants to learn from the best? We can help connect you to your peers, deliver our expertise, and help you achieve your compliance goals and more importantly your business goals. Bottom line? We’ll help you tie into the most important sources of veteran talent in the nation, and they’ll impact your top and bottom lines, they’ll improve your teams, and they’ll enhance your competitiveness in the marketplace.

Training is available to your business leadership, your HR executives, your diversity and inclusion practitioners, and your employee resource groups. Or, we can design a program of effective outreach, recruitment, and hiring, and then lead into retention and advancement for your veteran team members. Please request an initial 30 minute to one hour consultation through our Contact Us form to assess your needs, and our ability to provide assistance. Rates are available on request for business and industry.

Veteran-Owned Businesses

Need business advising? VTRNgroup does that! We focus on veteran and family-owned firms, particularly small firms that supply goods and services to other firms. We can help you understand how to do business with private sector companies who want to buy from veteran-owned firms. Inquire about how we can help through the Contact Us page. An initial 15 minute consultation can be done at no cost if the information shared in the Contact form isn’t sufficient to determine if we can be of assistance. If we can work with you, then we can set consulting hours, at an hourly rate commensurate with the value we will provide to you. We won’t work with you if we can’t deliver strong value.

Higher Education Careers

Many institutions of higher education can benefit from access to top veteran talent, just like other sectors. But, most institutions of higher education don’t yet think about veterans as employees, even though most have employed veterans, and many veterans became researchers, scientists, and faculty members after their service. Most veterans, as they continue through their careers, are exposed to education and training both as student participants and as instructors. Military members also teach in service academies, in education programs for senior officers, and more, and do this jointly with the most experienced faculty in the nation at institutions of higher education. We help higher education recruiters and HR managers access this talent pool, and can help higher education create career initiatives, employee resource groups, paths to the professoriate and more, that echo other efforts to recruit talented women, minorities, first generation college students and others to careers in higher education.

In addition to faculty roles, veterans often have experience in technical roles that enhance their skills to serve in research, experimental and lab roles. They are administrators and leaders who can transfer those skills into higher education administration. And in roles that require compliance with safety and related standards, veterans are ideally suited to ensure the safety of your critical operations, including reporting and inspections.

Our packages include consultation and training with your university and HR leadership, training and assessment with your HR and diversity and inclusion teams, and engagement with your veteran employee groups. We can provide training sessions varying in length from 90 minutes to eight hours, and at rates inclusive of travel and training time, as well as with materials for use by your teams. Virtual sessions are available when in-person training isn’t an option, though we highly recommend on-site or of-site training and education for your teams. Reach out to us for a consultation, and we’ll schedule time to assess what we can do to assist you in reaching your goals, and design the specific program for your work. Our initial half-hour session is available at no cost to institutions of higher education focused on enhancing their veteran work force.

Planning and Implementation

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VTRNgroup assists with planning and implementation to reach your strategic goals. With extensive program ideation, creation, and management experience, James Schmeling, Eugenia Hernandez, and others can assist in planning and implementation for your strategic goals. VTRNgroup can make recommendations on hiring, engaging consulting teams or short term employees, and more.

We tackle higher education intrapreneurship and entrepreneurship, veteran career initiative planning and implementation recommendations, and other topics including diversity and inclusion goals. We also have the ability to focus on international commerce, import/export, Foreign Corrupt Practice Act issues, and more.

Reach us through the Contact Us page for more information if you need assistance achieving your business and education industry goals.

Speaking

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James Schmeling speaks publicly, at private events for industry groups, to business and industry leaders, to higher education leaders, and to human resources leadership in public, private, government, and philanthropic organizations. James has spoken to the Veteran Jobs Mission including providing training to new member companies, at Hiring Our Heroes summits, to the National Industry Liaison Group, to SHRM chapters, to universities individually including Cornell University, Syracuse University, various community colleges, and to higher education groups including the New England HERC’s Annual Diversity Recruitment Conference to senior administrators from Yale, Harvard, Northeastern, and many other institutions. He is available to speak at your organization or conference.

James also speaks on university and academic entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship initiatives, research centers, faculty and staff careers in entrepreneurial centers, and more. He is interested in how universities and their teams engage with the world, fund their work, and deliver value, and has extensive experience establishing and leading such research organizations, including with funding from external sources.

Other members of the VTRNgroup speak on ethnic diversity and inclusion, women in leadership, women and diverse professionals in the legal industry, at the Hispanic National Bar Association, on Latinos in the legal profession, on student inclusion, STEM education, diversity scholarships, and other topics.

Please send us your request for a speaker through our Contact Us page. We can arrange special rates for non-profit organizations, and hourly or all-inclusive honorarium rates as required for your organization starting at $2,500 for conference talks. Travel reimbursement or pre-paid arrangement is required for all speaking engagements outside of the Syracuse or Washington, D.C. areas.

Coaching, Advising, and Mentoring

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Sometimes you need an outsider who’s engaged to give you good advice, to look past the trees to help you see the forest. James Schmeling is experience in complex environments, working with diverse stakeholders and helping you reach your decision points and achieve your goals. Ranging from 30 minute Skype sessions to in-depth team-building workshops, James can coach your team, mentor individuals, brainstorm with you, or help you discover what your real needs are, and determine if he can deliver value to you.

James has coached and mentored numerous veteran-owned businesses during his work at the Institute for Veterans and Military Families when he was managing director of programs, during his teaching at many of IVMF’s and SBA’s entrepreneurship programs, as a mentor at two Techstars Patriot Bootcamps, and as an advisor to a Techstars company. He also worked with many businesses owned by people with disabilities as part of the Burton Blatt Institute and the StartUp NY initiative funded by the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Disability Employment Policy. (not the current StartupNY economic development initiative).

James is also available to serve on startup boards, non-profit organization boards, and other leadership positions.

Higher Education Intrapreneurs

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James Schmeling is a nationally-recognized academic executive leader responsible for co-founding two, and developing a total of three, highly successful and impactful academic research centers and institutes at two universities. He collaboratively wrote, won, and implemented over $90 million in grant funding to conduct research, outreach, education, and training, reaching over 44,000 individuals directly in the most recent center, and he has focused on academic research center establishment, collaborative team building, engagement with government, business and industry, and more. He personally developed partnerships and collaborations with many of the largest and most innovative business, industry, government, non-profit, and academic organizations in the nation.

One of his passions is intrapreneurial startups within universities. James consults with university leaders, research administrators, faculty, and staff on creating centers and institutes within universities and colleges. Startup communities are everywhere. Many people think the role of universities (in addition to teaching!) is to do basic research and, sometimes, to partner with communities, governments, business and industry and others to commercialize their research by spinning off patents, maybe spinning out companies to commercialize patents, or to commercialize specific products invented at their university. Very few people think about the potential of university team members to step out of their typical roles and create more or different value for themselves or their universities, let alone for their communities, or business and industry partners! Some people think about academic entrepreneurship – inventing things and then creating companies to commercialize their inventions or intellectual property. And, even fewer people think about universities faculty and staff as members of startup communities. In fact, Brad Feld specifically says in Startup Communities don’t look to universities for entrepreneurial leadership. James thinks Brad is wrong.

James is passionate about these communities:

I’ve built three university centers with awesome colleagues during my career in higher education. (So far!) It’s been exciting to build these “businesses” inside universities. I want to share how to do this with people who want to do it! And I want to help universities build their capacity to help people do this for the benefit of the university and their goals, and to help their people realize their full potential to contribute. It’s a bit about entrepreneurial DNA and a bias toward action. It’s a bit about who you work with. And it’s a bit about those things you’re passionate about. Sometimes it’s about what needs to be done right now. I and my colleagues have built these ventures inside universities to do the things we love, that are important to us, to, as Gaping Void says, Make a Dent in the Universe. We’re going to help you do the same thing. Convince those you need to convince to support you (or at least step out of the way!) and your vision. Find like-minded team members in your university, your community, or anywhere in the world. Fund your work, find partners, build products and services, and more!

Simply put, we’ve done it. Over and over. We love what we do inside our universities and organizations and with partners in business and industry, government, communities, and local, regional, national, and international stakeholders! We want to help you do what you love to do, inside the institutions you love, or outside of them. (And we’ll simultaneously help them find you, work with you, and build together.)

Reinventing the wheel doesn’t make sense when there are rich resources around you. People who’ve learned the hard lessons and want to share them. Conveners and mentors who are ready to help. A community that shares collective wisdom for collective impact.

No one else is teaching people inside universities how to pursue their goals to build resources, centers and institutes, products and services. Or teaching entrepreneurial startups, communities and governments, or business and industry where to find the talent and expertise they need, whether short term projects or long term engagements. The university community is rich with opportunity and expertise. Faculty and staff know how to build classes and curricula. Some know how to turn their expertise into consulting. Others have expertise in building products and commercializing them. James and his colleagues will teach your university or you personally how to build opportunities, leverage research proposals and grants, bring together the teams for bigger impact, and then how to turn those pieces into bigger opportunities. And he’ll make connections for those who want to tap into this rich community of expertise and networks. He is available to consult with individual faculty, staff, universities, or research leaders.

 

Business-to-Business Commerce

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James Schmeling has spend the past year and a half building the case for including veteran and spouse-owned businesses in Fortune 500 supply chains, whether supplying goods for resale or providing services and goods for use in a business. This builds on his examination of Fortune 100 supplier diversity policies and practices related to people with disabilities, employment of veterans and spouses, and more. He can assist your small or medium business to understand what’s required to sell to the Fortune 500, or to other businesses.

Eugenia Hernandez has extensive experience with import and export, and can advise on doing business in foreign countries or across borders. Her work on compliance, international HR issues and more can be a resource to your business.