By Bobby Ettorre, MBA Class of 2020

One of the greatest challenges facing Veterans who transition from the military service into the private sector is a lack of business acumen. Speaking from personal experience, when I left the service, I didn’t know how to communicate my work experience to recruiters and was unfamiliar with the professional recruitment cycle. I remember being completely lost at my first career fair; figuring it out as I went along.

Fortunately, there is one career fair that is specifically tailored to help Veterans. Every year in October, Chicago hosts the Veteran MBA Conference. This conference is smaller, with typically only 500 candidates, but has the same wide range of high caliber employers found at other, larger, career fairs.

This year five Penn Stater’s attended the conference and took advantage of the fair’s opportunities.

The Veteran MBA Conference takes place over two days. The first days is focused on employer presentations and dedicated networking events. This provided us with an opportunity to hear about different employment opportunities and make a connection with the recruiters for those firms. Many of us were even invited out to dinner with companies to further develop our professional networks.

The second day was an opportunity to attend professional panels and learn more about functions we are interested in, such as supply chain. However, the highlight of the day were interviews. Each Veteran from Penn State had an opportunity to interview with at least one company.

The event was a great opportunity for the Veterans in the program to help find employment with their dream company.