People retire from or leave the Canadian Armed Forces all the time.
But at an average age of 45, many of those who do leave still want or need to work.
However, many of them, including Nick Holyome who was serving at 19 Wing Comox, have no idea what to do.
“It was definitely a big question in my mind as to what I was going to do next and the cybersecurity stuff for me was a great transition,” Holyome told CHEK News.
Holyome was an intelligence officer in the air force and came across a team called Coding for Veterans, an organization that bridges people leaving the military to jobs in cybersecurity.
“Today, there are over 200,000 open jobs in job titles related to what we teach in the cybersecurity field,” said Pat Shaw, co-founder of Coding for Veterans.
The students take online courses at the University of Ottawa in three streams, software development, network administration and cyber security architect, learning how networks work and hackers hack.
“We have banks, we have government agencies, just lining up, literally lining up to interview our graduates in the program,” added Shaw.
Salaries start around $75,000 a year and 120 veterans have already graduated since recruiting began two years ago.
“The people leaving the armed forces today, their bias or their DNA is towards completing projects, they don’t go home when the battle is half fought, they stick around until the job is done, which will serve them well in this field,” said Shaw
“My program is now called the Cyber Security Architect, which to tell you the truth sounds pretty good on a resume so yeah it’s worked out really well,” he added.
Coding for Veterans is travelling to military bases across the country including 19 Wing Comox Monday and Tuesday then CFB Esquimalt Wednesday and Thursday.
More information about the Coding for Veterans can be found here.
Dean Stoltz
