MERRILLVILLE | It has been a long time since Drew Meyers left Northwest Indiana behind, but the 1982 Hobart High School veteran never has forgotten his time in the region.
The former Marine is bringing his organization, RecruitMilitary, to Merrillville for a veterans career fair Wednesday.
Meyers, who left the Marines in 1993, said he discovered a large percentage of military personnel re-entering the job force were having a tough time with the transition. In 1998, he started RecruitMilitary, to help veterans connect with careers and employers across the country.
"Some veterans do have trouble," he said. "Look at it this way, 200,000 rotate out every year. There are 1.4 million people in the active duty right now. So, even in times of war, 200,000 people will rotate out and some of them will have trouble figuring it all out."
RecruitMilitary connects veterans with jobs through its Website, www.militaryheadhunter.com. Also through a staff of recruiters, on-base advertising through the organization's In Coming magazine and career fairs.
Myers spent most of his formative years in Montana's Stillwater, County, where his parents owned and operated the region's Columbus News newspaper. His mother was a Gary native and when the family sold the paper in order for his father to work in Chicago as senior editor of World Book Encyclopedias, they settled in Northwest Indiana.
Meyers attended Indiana University-Bloomington after high school and earned a degree in political science. Following college he was commissioned into the Marines. In 1990, he was assigned a recruiter position in Cincinnati and has remained in the city ever since.
Meyers said RecruitMilitary will conduct 104 job fairs this year. The Northwest Indiana stop will be the organization's first. It has visited Chicago several times.
"We usually try to do these in NFL or Major League Baseball stadiums, but I really wanted to do one in Northwest Indiana ,so we found the best venue for it at the Star Plaza," he added.
Currently 25 employers are going to be represented at the fair with an expected turnout of around 300 job seekers.
Among the companies that will be on hand are U.S. Steel Corp., Snap On Tools, Caterpillar, CSX and US Customs and Border Patrol.
