Career Services Liaisons

The Career Services Liaison (CSL) serves as a volunteer SVA chapter officer that is responsible for the engagement and development of their chapter’s relationship with their Career Services office. The CSL is functionally responsible for engaging student veterans in career-focused aspects of their education, including employment and internships during college and career opportunities near graduation.

The CSL program helps your campus establish a dedicated contact in your campus’ Career Services that directly support the student veteran and military-affiliated population on campus. CSLs are student veterans who help their peers find and use Career Services earlier in their educational journey and help build a relationship with their respective Career Services in order to build professional experiences and connect them to career-related opportunities from companies looking to hire student veteran talent.

The focus of this program is to create cultural competencies related to improving access of student veterans to your campus Career Services in order to better understand the knowledge about the skills that are acquired during military experiences and improve the knowledge about how military-acquired skills might apply to employment outside of the military. Most student veterans don’t know about Career Services, and when they do find out, they don’t know when to use them or how they can assist them during their military transition to a college campus. That happens more often than not because they are missing a peer-based connection and mentorship on how Career Services can help them as a student veteran looking to develop their professional identity and how they can connect to career opportunities.

If you’re a student veteran using the GI Bill, you can be paid by the VA work-study program, so you earn tax-free income and the school gets a highly effective, no-cost, veteran outreach and advocacy program. You also get the intrinsic reward of continued service, helping your peers. SVA supports you by serving as a resource and connects you to information and other CSLs, so you don’t feel so lost. CSLs connect student veterans and the Career Services office in a more meaningful way, simply through introductions and through having a peer-to-peer connection.

The CSL learns and conducts cultural competency training for those working in Career Services about how to best connect with and develop student veteran talent. An additional perk of being a CSL is getting access to SVA’s Spring and Fall career opportunities (like workshops, internships, access to mentors, and employment opportunities) before they are released to the public. The Campus Services Utilization and SVA Census surveys are one-of-a-kind research initiatives on student veterans across the country. This research helps augment the support that CSLs can create for their military-affiliated community on campus through continuing education presentations from this data to keep their campus updated on trending issues. Simply put, having a CSL is a valuable resource on campus.

To submit your interest in becoming a Career Services Liasion, click here!