Meet PVM’s First Hiring Our Heroes Fellow

PVM is proud to announce a new partnership with Hiring our Heroes. The Hiring our Heroes Organization connects businesses with the military community to create economic opportunities and a strong, diversified workforce. Meet PVM’s first Hiring our Heroes Fellow, Emily Arnsberg, and learn more about the program. 

Tell me about your experience with Hiring Our Heroes (HOH) before, during and after coming on board with PVM. 

First, I’d like to start off by saying that HOH is a really great organization.  

I was formerly active duty with the Air Force, and I looked into a program called Skillbridge where in the last six months of your time in active duty, you go work at a company in the civilian world to gain experience. This way you can transition from the military to the civilian life a little easier, but at the time my focus was to go into the Reserves. I didn’t quite want to go into the civilian world yet. So, I did the Reserves for a while and afterwards, happened upon the HOH program and applied. 

From there, they reached out to me to chat about the program and see if it was something I was really interested in. After that, the onboarding process was really smooth. During the program, they provide opportunities like resume development and resume releases where they have different professional development and career fairs that help increase your chances of getting hired.  

I had been thinking about potential companies and I will say PVM was not on my radar. I hadn’t heard of PVM, but HOH gave me the opportunity to discover companies or arenas that I wouldn’t have necessarily thought about initially. It brought together diverse companies and my skills and experiences.  

PVM reached out to me, and the whole process has been seamless. Dana Hensley, Talent Acquisition Lead, did an amazing job of introducing me to the company and setting up interviews.  

Right now, I am in the fellowship stage of the HOH program which lasts for the first 12 weeks (about 3 months) of employment. I work four days a week and the fifth day consists of professional development and a check in with my HOH program manager. They are always there to support me throughout the entire process, which is great! 

Hiring our Heroes supports the “military community.” What is your relationship with the military community? (service members, military spouses, and veterans)? 

I guess you could say I fall under all the categories. I was active duty for over seven and a half years in the Air Force after which I transitioned into the Air Force Reserves which is what I have been doing since 2018. My husband is currently active duty Air Force, so I’m also on the spouse side which is the category I applied to HOH under.  

Can share more about that background/experience and how it set you up well for the position you are in now with PVM? 

When I was on active duty, I was an Operations Research Analyst. Different Department of Defense customers would come to us for assistance with streamlining processes or to find the best course of action for an issue they were having. We would use different mathematical techniques to provide a recommendation for them and a way ahead. I did this kind of work in different arenas as well. It started with the Air Education and Training Command, who manages all the training for the entire Air Force, and then I moved into the test and evaluation realm where I worked with one of the Air Force bomber aircrafts called a B1. As analysts, we designed tests. For example, if there was a certain mission set that they needed to test the aircraft for, we would design that test and the pilots would go out and actually conduct the test and we would then do an analysis to find out what worked well or didn’t.  

My last job on active duty was doing personnel policy analysis. For example, when COVID happened a policy needed to be put in place for how to maintain key personnel and ensure they supported COVID efforts. We would do the mathematical analysis of any type of policy they needed to create. 

Now as a reservist, I’m on the personnel policy development side so I’m not doing the math or analysis behind the policies but instead developing them.

Leading and supporting people is a really big thing in the military and PVM also does a really great job at that already, so I hope to bring my expertise from the military and continue to help PVM lead and support!

As an intern in operations, what do you hope to learn and contribute? What drew you to this opportunity?

As far as the learning part goes, this a brand new world to me. I’m really excited to learn how operations teams keep businesses going and how you can create different processes to help that company move forward and grow.  

I hope to contribute to the culture at PVM. I love the culture that you all covet. Just in the short time I have been here, everyone has been positive, hardworking and I can tell everyone wants to be here. I want to contribute to that culture and be a positive team member to help the company grow and scale. I have been in interviews with other organizations where culture isn’t even discussed but in my few weeks here it was made evident that culture is a big priority. I have been able to reach out to various team members to learn more about their roles at PVM and everyone makes the time for me.  

Working in a new area and the culture at PVM are also the reason I was drawn to this internship opportunity. It’s a new challenge and I love challenging myself and on top of that, I was excited to want to work for PVM and have the opportunity to be a part of the culture. I love the mission-oriented aspect of the Air Force. PVM is mission-driven and fosters a great culture. That’s really what drew me to this opportunity. 

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Interested in joining our team? Visit our careers page to discover open opportunities.