When Jason Weekes retired after his twenty-year military service, he started doing odd jobs, searching for skills that would lead to his next meaningful career.
After dabbling in multiple fields, he knew what he wanted: a business. He also knew he needed current, relevant, and marketable skills that would translate to building a business.
Today, he has completed more than five courses with his GI Bill benefits at Noble Desktop, an NYC-based school, and is preparing to launch his business.
Noble Desktop has several veteran-approved programs to teach in-demand skills and offer career mentorship.
For veterans like Jason, who are moving into civilian life, redefining their professional identity, and seeking guidance about their careers, it’s the answer to four common questions:
- Will anyone actually hire me?
- What skills should I even pursue?
- Can the GI Bill support new skills training?
- Who can I turn to for guidance?Â
How Noble Desktop Helps Veterans with Career Transition
You might’ve noticed how challenging the veteran job market is. Maybe a peer is still trying to find their first job, or an ex-colleague is stuck in a menial one. Naturally, the main question looming over you would be:
Will Anyone Actually Hire Me?
The worry is valid. Every year, 150,000 veterans transition into civilian life, and more than half earn less than they did during their service the first year. It can be difficult, especially if you don’t have a four-year degree.
However, veterans have employable skills, technical proficiencies (installations, troubleshooting, equipment maintenance, etc), and soft skills (discipline, resilience, adaptability, and more).
Finding employment takes time because, as a veteran, you need to translate military skills to civilian market skills.
Either you can develop existing skills and align them with current, in-demand skills, or learn those skills from scratch. Noble Desktop helps you with both, offering flexible learning and NYC State-licensed certificates of completion, while easing other career transition questions, such as:
What Skills Should I Even Pursue?
When 31-year-old Hillary Esposito returned to New York after a one-year deployment in Iraq, she wanted to explore other careers. She liked technology, but couldn’t identify specific skills to hone, so she signed up for the Software Engineering Certification, the UI & UX Design Course, and the Data Analytics Course.
“I was working in healthcare for eight years, and the environment had a darker undertone,” she said. “I needed a change, and I decided to take all three courses to see where I land because I wasn’t sure what I was drawn to, and I wanted a breadth of market-relevant skills.”
Noble Desktop’s 200+ courses are spread across coding, design, and business. As you’re thinking of entering a new field, it might be overwhelming to navigate the options. But Noble Desktop allows you to take multiple courses with free retakes, whether they’re Digital Marketing, JavaScript Development, MBA Business, or Generative AI.
The list of courses is curated by thought leaders and experts who work full-time and keep up with their industry’s needs. So the courses teach skills that matter today.
Can the GI Bill Support New Skills Training?
Many of Noble Desktop’s courses are Veteran Affairs-approved, and you can sign up for them if you’re eligible for the Post-9/11 GI Bill® (Chapter 33), the Veteran Readiness and Employment Program (Chapter 31), and the Survivors’ and Dependents’ Educational Assistance (Chapter 35).
You can apply to multiple programs within the 36-month validity period and retake them. The application process is quick and seamless because the team is communicative. You can either enroll for a course and choose “Veteran Affairs” at checkout, or reach out to the team for assistance.
Hillary found Noble Desktop when she was researching schools that supported her GI Bill.
“I was looking for a bootcamp, but not that many programs qualified for VA benefits,” she said. “I was drawn to Noble Desktop because I could go and learn better in person versus online, and I could use my benefits. Plus, it was the highest rated out of other programs, so I read the reviews and figured this was the best option.”
Since she had served part-time, she got 60% of the GI Bill benefits, and the team ensured she could sign up for her first course within days.
Who Can I Turn to for Guidance?
One of the hardest things about transitioning is dealing with the lack of structure. Combined with the social disconnect, the loss of identity, and isolation, it makes it difficult to set a routine. Veterans recommend preparing for the transition, i.e., looking for jobs, training programs, etc, to adjust better.
The in-person classes at Noble Desktop offer you the structure, sense of community, and guidance that you need during this. You also get to attend them in a state-of-the-art training center, connect with instructors, and your classmates.
“There are people from different backgrounds, and you get to learn from them,” said Hillary. “There’s also an area where we can eat together and chat, so it’s like a community. I was talking to a few of the people who said it’s hard to dive into something new, and getting into companies can be a little difficult, but we’ve been talking about combating that and creating a network to find job opportunities.”
Why Veterans Trust Noble Desktop to Build New Careers
A Reliable School that Puts Veterans First
One of the reasons people enlist in the army is the education benefits. Veterans deserve quality education, certifications, and unwavering support. Yet, the VA has warned them about choosing their schools and colleges carefully, as some have misled them by:
- Inflating their hiring numbers
- Offering a substandard quality of education
- Authorizing loans to students without their knowledge (irrespective of them having their GI Bill benefits)
Noble Desktop is one of 400 NYC-licensed schools that offer clarity about your GI Bill benefits. Since it offers VA-approved programs, it saves you the time taken to verify its reliability or claims, eliminating the overwhelm of researching multiple schools.
Flexible Learning that Matches Your Transition Needs
Transitioning to civilian life isn’t straightforward. Noble Desktop’s flexibility helps you learn at your own pace through video recordings and free course retakes throughout the year.
Instructors adapt their teaching styles and pace for students from different backgrounds, including veterans who need extra support with certain topics.
Since the average class size is just 12-15 students, instructors invest time in answering your individual questions, reviewing your code or projects one-on-one, and providing personalized feedback that addresses your specific learning needs.
Confidence-Building with Project-Based Learning
When you start a course with Noble Desktop, the instructors give you access to the software in the first class to build your proficiency quickly. The in-depth, extensive curricula are paired with hands-on learning and a portfolio project that you can show potential employers.
Let’s take the Software Engineering Certification as an example, where you’ll learn:
Your portfolio project pushes you to use these skills to create a real-time, functional application or website. If you’re stuck or need extra support, the instructors help you one-on-one to complete it.
This project proves you’re capable of handling modern software and professional work, but it’s also crucial in building your confidence with technical skills. For Jason, starting his business led him to question if he had the multitude of skills. As he practiced with software and worked on more projects, he started gaining that confidence.
“I didn’t think I’d be good at certain things, so I was apprehensive of doing them. It held me back from getting my hands on them,” he said. “At Noble Desktop, I’m learning what I need and building my skills so when I’m ready to make a career move, I can apply the skills I’ve learned.”
The quality of learning and your portfolio qualify you for a certificate of completion. If you’re worried about whether your skills will get you hired, this certificate will prove that you’re well-prepared for the job.
Instructors Who Help Turn Military Skills into Marketable Skills
Noble Desktop’s instructors are experts and thought leaders with extensive field experience. They’ve undergone several hours of instructor training during licensing and know how to support diverse learning needs with patience and flexibility.
“The instructors are lively, and they break concepts down with analogies and illustrations, and they share real examples of what’s happening in the industry,” said Jason. “If the example in the book mentions that we need to add something to a web page, the instructor will say, “The book has this, but since I’ve been in the field for a long time, I’ve seen that developers don’t prefer that method. They prefer another way, and I’d recommend you use that.’”
Beyond technical skills, the instructors also teach professional skills such as receiving feedback, communicating and interacting in the workplace, working on revisions, understanding expectations, and overall best practices in the workplace to help veterans understand the civilian work context better.
Mentorship with Career Support
The instructors and student correspondents encourage students, especially veterans, to attend one-on-one mentoring sessions that help them transition into a job with new skills. These sessions aim to determine veterans’ needs and offer additional support, if they need it.
Every veteran’s journey is different from other students’ and other veterans’. Noble Desktop’s multiple mentorship sessions personalize their journeys and validate their worries while offering tailored solutions for job search, skill improvement, and networking.
The team also knows the major gaps that veterans need to fill — an updated resume, LinkedIn profile, job application procedures, etc, and correspondents focus on those before discussing job prospects.
While Jason is yet to take mentoring sessions (that the team reminds him to get), Hillary has gained insights into her skills through them.
“They were really helpful to get feedback that I could use if I wanted to apply for jobs right away,” Hillary said. “I have tons of questions, so multiple mentorship sessions are great. And they’re geared towards my doubts and my goals, which help even more.”
Noble Desktop’s Aim for Veterans
Career transition is stressful and anxiety-ridden for veterans. You need a trustworthy school to support you and guide you through the financial, social, and emotional pressures it brings.
For Jason and Hillary, Noble Desktop’s VA-approved courses helped them use their GI Bill benefits to start fresh, with new skills, a new career, and a new mindset. If you’re ready to start fresh as a veteran, Noble Desktop can prepare you for your next professional chapter.
This article was produced by the Class Central Report team in partnership with Noble Desktop.
The post How Veterans are Restarting Their Careers with Noble Desktop’s VA-Approved Skills Training appeared first on The Report by Class Central.
​Â
