Launching a career
Air Force Veteran Jessica Carey
At first meeting, four-year Air Force Veteran Jessica Carey’s smile and people skills would be obvious to any potential employer. But, getting an interview for just the right job is a challenge. “She’s a go-getter,” is the way Betzy Ruiz, RN, Women Veterans Program Manager at VA New York Harbor Healthcare System describes Carey. Ruiz was Carey’s Supervisor last spring when she was a VA Work Study Student, helping to coordinate the annual Women Veterans Health Conference.
On one occasion during her Work Study stint, Carey got a sense of how she could put her graduate school training to work effectively. “I was able to calm a very distraught fellow Veteran and refer her to appropriate support,” she says. “My work study experience gave me the feeling of being a true federal employee. It’s something I can put on my resume.
This year, as she completes a Master’s Degree in Social Work at CUNY’s Hunter College, Carey has been spending four days a week in a clinical internship at a Brooklyn high school, where students are generally experiencing poverty-related problems, substance abuse issues and sadness related to parental loss and other family issues. She knows her students have become attached to her and are uneasy that inevitably, she will complete her internship and leave within weeks. Carey is now a student who wants to take advantage of every opportunity.
On graduation from Sheepshead Bay High School, she wasn’t really ready for college and after a few months, left CUNY’s Medgar Evers College. In 2009, following a friend’s example, she joined the Military. She was based at Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas, Nevada, serving as a supply technician and also deployed to Qatar for six months. Honorably discharged in 2012, she was ready to finish college and enthusiastically embraced graduate school, acknowledging the military was a wonderful experience that earned her the GI Bill and cost-free education. A few hours before a recent final, she appeared relaxed and confident.
Recognizing an opportunity, Carey participated in a Federal Employment workshop offered in late November 2015, at VA’s Manhattan Campus. Experts from the Department of Homeland Security, VA4Vets, VANYHHS EEO and Outreach services worked with participants on fine tuning their resumes and offered guidance on how best to represent themselves on USA Jobs applications.
They also offered to provide follow up advice over the phone. Well aware that there is no sure route to her dream job, which would be working as a social worker at VA, Carey is determined to find work that uses her skills and satisfies her commitment to working in a field where she can help others.
