By Natalie Burg
Without intending to, Yinon Weiss and Aaron Kletzing accumulated a number of shared life experiences. They both served in the Army. Later, they both studied at Harvard Business School, where they became friends. They soon discovered something else they shared: the challenge of negotiating the vast cultural divide between their military careers and the business world.
“We went from one environment in which networking was somewhat discouraged,” said Weiss, “into an environment where networking was a main part of our job. It was going from that one extreme to another that we saw what we were missing.”
Yinon Weiss and Aaron Kletzing, Co-Founders of RallyPoint. Credit: RallyPoint
Lack of experience with networking may explain why some veterans struggle to find work when their military career ends. Fifty-three percent of separating post-9/11 veterans face a period of unemployment, according to the 2015 Veteran Economic Opportunity Report. Weiss and Kletzing set out to solve the networking problem, both for themselves and their peers.
The result was RallyPoint, a social network for military members and veterans. RallyPoint is career-focused, but it also gives veterans and military personnel the opportunity to connect with one another on topics such as marriage and moving to a new city. Just three years in, RallyPoint has amassed 750,000 members.
The Cultural Divide
The cultural divisions between military and civilian worlds exist for logical reasons. Military culture follows the chain of command, which is important, particularly in wartime. Attempts at networking—chatting up visiting superiors, for example—can come across as an attempt to circumvent that critical chain.
When veterans enter the civilian workforce, they’re at a disadvantage because they don’t know how to network or market themselves. Weiss learned this firsthand when he asked a friend to review his application essay for Harvard Business School.
“He said, ‘This is great, but you don’t talk about anything you did. Nothing is about ‘I,’” Weiss said. “That’s part of military culture. You talk about the team.”
And when would they have the chance to do so? Military personnel don’t interview for jobs. They don’t have resumes. They don’t become advocates for their own careers. RallyPoint aims to change that.
“We want to teach them to learn networking skills and build their network—not when they leave the military, but when they join the military,” Weiss said. “Because when you need a network, it’s too late to build one.”
Partnership And Mentorship
When one veteran was struggling in her new job at a casino, she asked the RallyPoint network for advice. She was always on time, enthusiastic and performed at a high level. But these qualities alienated her from her underachieving co-workers. The RallyPoint community reassured her that she wasn’t doing anything wrong; she just wasn’t well matched with her workplace’s culture. She needed to find a better place to work.
Without this feedback, it would have been easy for her to simply lower her standards, negatively affecting the rest of her career. But on RallyPoint, people can ask about a range of issues, and they can get advice from the only people who really know what they’re going through—other military members and veterans.
At RallyPoint, members can also find recruiters. The network partners with employers such as Time Warner Cable or universities that are actively looking for veteran employees and students. Northeastern University, for example, doubled its number of veteran students through RallyPoint.
Helping Thousands
There are now thousands of veterans whose lives and careers have been helped by RallyPoint, and Weiss and Kletzing are among them. Weiss said that developing the business was more challenging than expected, for the same reasons it was needed in the first place: It has been a cultural change for them.
RallyPoint is a mission-driven organization, but that’s not the case with many of its partners, which are all about business. “In the military you kind of take that [mission] for granted,” Weiss said. “You have a clear sense of purpose: You’re serving the president and defending the Constitution. In the private sector, that’s not there.”
Keeping the organization mission-driven in a business-driven world has been challenging, but thanks to the discipline and leadership skills Weiss and Kletzing developed in the military, RallyPoint has grown exponentially in its short lifespan. Beyond its large membership, the business also has 17 employees and an impressive board, which includes one of LinkedIn’s founders, a former head of the Army and a former head of the Air Force.
Even so, Weiss still sees himself as a veteran navigating the tricky transition from a military to civilian career. “I still have a hard time marketing myself,” he said.
It’s safe to say that, as the center of a growing professional network that is 750,000 members strong, RallyPoint is now serving that purpose for him pretty well—while giving thousands of his peers the opportunity to grow their careers in ways veterans and military members never could before.
A former downtown development professional, Natalie Burg is a freelancer who writes about growth, entrepreneurialism and innovation. She has regularly contributed to The Lansing State Journal and The Ann Arbor News, and continues to write for Concentrate, Metromode, The Ann Arbor Observer, and to serve as the Development News Editor for Lansing's Capital Gains.
This article is not an endorsement of any particular product, service, or organization, nor is it intended to provide advice. It is intended to promote awareness and is for educational purposes, only.
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