As a resource created to educate and support military spouses, the Military Spouse eMentor Leadership Program is an online program that gives you one-on-one career guidance from general job search advice to support and motivation along the way. Mentors who have experienced these challenges in the past are there to help make your journey more informed and efficient.
The eMentor program is open to spouses, widows and divorced spouses, to provide focused attention by mentors from military spouse-friendly businesses to help you get the job that fits your unique situation.
The process is simple: start off by filling out an online profile to express your goals. From there, you can look through mentor profiles to find someone who you feel could effectively advise you about various situations and how to approach those situations through a proactive action plan.
One MilSpouse’s eMentor success story
As Anna Morgan’s two children entered high school, she began to feel it was time for her to get re-focused on herself and her career. While Anna has a Master’s degree, like many other military spouses her resume shows a big employment gap—12 years– which she thought was turning away potential employers.
Shortly after Anna joined the Military Spouse eMentor program, she received an email from the Program Manager encouraging her to seek out a mentor. She accepted the Program Manager’s help to identify a best-fit mentor, and contacted a few of those who were recommended.
She was able to connect with two wonderful mentors right away. Both mentors helped her focus on how to begin envisioning a new professional future for herself, which she had found difficult to do on her own. Both mentors also helped her improve her resume. Anna learned that the employment gap on her resume could be radically reduced by including her 10 years of volunteer work as significant experience. She discovered that the skills she gained while volunteering were very valuable to employers, and should therefore be recorded on a resume. Her new resume showed that she positively bristled with experience and abilities!
Anna also struggled with deciding what type of new career she wanted to pursue. Her mentors suggested several different exercises to help her organize and focus her experience and interests. Anna was surprised to discover how easy the process was, and that a mentor with a different viewpoint could so quickly and clearly help her see how her work experience and career interests could lead to an exciting new career she had never considered. Within just a few months of working with her mentors, Anna successfully landed a great job in her new career of choice with an employer she really likes. In Anna’s words, “I could have had just a job, but with MilSpouse eMentor I found a career!
How to get started
For more information or to find a mentor that’s right for you, visit ementorprogram.org.
