The Red Bulls

COB Basra – As Soldiers with the 34th Infantry Division prepare to head home from Iraq, some will return to relatively unchanged lives while others will have to cope with changes ar work and even job loss.

Courses being held on Contingency Operating Base Basra, Dec. 30 to Jan. 7, seek to aid Soldiers who may face these sorts of changes.

“We’re doing a series of resume writing classes and interviewing classes,” said Staff Sgt. Adam Hoffman, database manager in the Key Leader Engagement cell of the 34th Inf. Div. tactical command post.

The courses also offer Soldiers information on taking advantage of education benefits, said the Avon, Minn. native, and one course will help Soldiers with job seeking techniques.

The courses take place in the Sandstorm Conference Room in COB Basra’s Division Main building in the morning from 1000 to 1130 and in the evening from 1700 to 1800.

“It’ll definitely be a good outreach to troops,” said Hoffman.

Subject matter experts will teach the classes, like other similar courses offered intermittently since September.

One such expert is Sgt. 1st Class Aaron Meyers, a recruiter with the Recruiting and Retention Battalion, who teaches the course on interviewing skills

As a recruiter, he conducts many interviews when searching for new recruits.

During his class, he told Soldiers that unemployment in Minnesota is currently about ten percent, and of those, fourteen percent are veterans, which he said is “unacceptable”.

He went on to say that military skills give Soldiers something significant to offer potential employers.

One thing he noted was the “trial by fire” – or high stress setting – Soldiers have been operating in and will be returning from.

“Not a lot of people have been in this deployed environment,” he said.

He cited adherence to Army values as something employers would find admirable and that, for leaders, evaluation reports have much to offer.

“They use a lot of buzzwords and action words. Those work great in interviews,” he said.

In an early class, Meyers asked a Soldier to pretend he was trying to get the Ultimate Fighting Championship shown on the network the other classmates owned. 

It was a subject he was well-versed in and the other attendees said he was effective.

Next, he asked the same Soldier to get “Girls Behaving Badly”, a reality comedy show on the female-focused Oxygen network, on his classmates’ network.

This was a subject he was not as informed about, and the students examined the difference between the two presentations.

Meyers stressed the importance of preparation on a subject beforehand.

Also, Meyers highlighted the value of mock interviews and conducted one during class.

Soldiers can schedule to conduct such practice interviews during the series.

Hoffman said he thinks that the theory and practical exercises presented by Meyers and other instructors will benefit Soldiers greatly

“I think it’s definitely a positive experience,” Hoffman said, “It’s a small-level class at a basic learning level, definitely a good thing to come out and learn a little more. If you need any information it’s right here at your fingertips, versus when you go back to the states, you might not know who to talk to.”