Mountain View, California — In a novel twist showing its keen concern for the common people, global search engine giant is now becoming a Good Samaritan, aiming to do its bit for unemployed military veterans who are currently unemployed with the launch of Google for Veterans and Families a dedicated site that pulls together a number of existing tools and services, including Docs, Calendar and Gmail to help them find jobs, connect with fellow vets, transition into civilian life, and record the story of their service.
Google marked Veteran’s Day in the U.S. by unveiling a new website aimed at helping military veterans communicate with one another based on Google+, as well as transition back into civilian life, and offer some valuable job-search assistance, while Google also created a special Veterans YouTube channel for ex-servicemen and their families, with the search giant advising supporters to upload videos as tribute.
For example, the newly launched site– Google for Veterans and Families, presents a variety of useful, pre-existing online tools such as: Google Calendar, Gmail, and other resources, as well as veteran-specific Google Plus and YouTube services.
Another great addition is a Resume Builder based on Google Docs that generates an auto-formatted resume that can be easily edited, saved and downloaded to help these individuals build their resumes instantly. In addition, the site also offers some valuable resources like calling through Google Voice to keep in touch with other veterans and loved ones, assistance through Google Finance to track expenses and investments, and several other resources.
“There are almost 22 million military veterans in the United States today and millions more around the world,” Google’s chief legal officer David Drummond said in a post on Google+ announcing Google for Veterans, as well as a new Veteran channel on YouTube where Google is encouraging people to share thoughts on their service. “My father was a Tuskegee Airman and a veteran of WWII and Vietnam, so it is important to me that Google supports veterans; I’m proud of the work we are doing on this front.”
In cooperation with the National Resource Directory, Google also established a Veterans Job Bank, a job-search tool customized for returning soldiers. It currently contains around half a million job vacancies around the country.
“As pages are updated or removed from the web, they are automatically updated and removed from the system, keeping the available job postings on NRD fresh and up to date,” says custom search team product manager Christina Chen.
Additionally, the search engine company targets veteran-committed job openings in several employment databases and offers employers some instruction how to make their vacancies appear in veteran-specific searches.
However, a brief description on the Google for Veterans page describes that the site “was conceived by some veterans, family of veterans, and friends who work at Google. We understand the challenges of serving, coming home and transitioning to civilian life. We have been there. Some of us are still figuring it out. Here are some free Google products we have assembled together that have made our lives easier. Hopefully, they can do the same for you.”
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The Mountain View-based firm’s future plans for the site include a Tour Builder app for creating 3D maps of vets’ military stories, including photos, videos and links.
It is powered by Google Custom Search technology and crawls the web for JobPosting markup from Schema.org to identify veteran-committed job openings.
It also makes it easier for potential employers to list vacancies on the NRD by simply adding the markup to their own web page. For employers who have jobs to offer, a simple addition of the markup on their site will make them appear on the NRD list of job vacancies.
For more information about Google’s new services for military veterans at the official Google blog.