LinkedIn has job-hunting and recruiting down pat, but there's one area where it falls flat: the military. It's tough to be all things to all people, and the military is a particularly tough niche to penetrate. RallyPoint is a slow-growing professional network that aims to do for current service members and veterans what LinkedIn has done for the rest of the job force.
The network has obvious money-making potential, but it was also rooted in personal experience: Its founders, Yinon Weiss and Aaron Kletzing, met while serving overseas in Iraq and reunited at Harvard Business School. While the two didn't personally struggle to find careers after returning to the States, they noticed the transition from a military life to a civilian one was incredibly difficult for other returning service members. They launched RallyPoint last year to help active members and veterans network and find jobs within the military and outside it. The network is gathering steam with 135,000 users and plans to introduce tools for prospective employers.
"What RallyPoint does is provide value for people early in their military careers," COO Kletzing said. "You might use LinkedIn to build relationships or find another job. In the Army, you can't use LinkedIn to find a company commander job. You can't do anything close to that."
The network has no official relationship with any branches of the military, but is endorsed by two former chiefs of staff.
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