By Lee Kirby, Co-founder and Chairman of Salute Mission Critical
Salute doubled in size for the third year in a row! I am grateful to those who have given us a chance to prove the value of this mission and honored to be associated with Salute and its supporters. I believe this proves once and for all the value of veterans in this industry, the value of our services and the importance of our mission. We compete on commercial terms, the value of our services withstands scrutiny and once we earn the business, we maintain it due to the quality of services delivered.
Our military background, I believe, is the key to our success, it is in our DNA to train and deploy. Salute brings people, process and procedures with military precision to our clients. This year we launched, Salute Intern, a program designed to allow companies to bridge the gap of the first couple years experience requirement by leveraging Salute’s training and on-boarding program. At the end of the two-year intern contract, the successful candidates are available for hire by the company as a fully qualified data center technician who will already have intimate knowledge of their environment. This has been an enormous success and evolved into a highly valued managed services program for companies choosing to outsource the hybrid roles of onsite “smart hands”. We are seeing many of our veterans accept positions in data centers and are proud of those who are finding a career at Salute as we grow with our clients.
You are helping us change the world, one person at a time. Approximately 11% of the veterans we hire each year were living in homeless shelters. In 2016 Salute, in partnership with VA homeless shelters, will launch a further reaching temporary labor program. Chicago is our first market and we look forward to increasing the number of veterans we employ. Allowing additional veterans the ability to support themselves because they have started a career in an industry that needs them as much as they need it