A California Volunteers staff member said the agency has launched Core to Career, a program to connect California service members with employers and careers they want and to help them transition to civilian employment.

The program is designed to create direct connections between service members and employers, the staff member said, and to present service experience as workforce-ready training. "What we're finding is by focusing on this effort to help our service members connect to employers, that not only is it very useful because we're creating connections, but it's very helpful for the employers because employers now have a pipeline to a whole generation of people that are coming to the workforce prepared with what we used to call soft skills, but are now actually the hard skills of our economy," the staff member said.

The staff member listed examples of those skills: teamwork, communication, adaptability, punctuality and professional presence. She said employers benefit from a steady pipeline of candidates who already have experience working in teams and meeting workplace expectations. The staff member also said the program will be scaled going forward: "These are all skills that our service members are learning through their service that we're helping provide the future workforce for California, and we're excited to continue to scale this program."