There are several ceremonies this weekend to commemorate Veterans Day.
According to a recent report, Tampa is one of the best places in the country for veterans to live.
Beautiful weather and beaches aside, this area has affordable housing and several VA health facilities.
Another big factor is the jobs available. One Tampa-based company is seeing the win-win of putting veterans to work.
While the unemployment rate for veterans has significantly gone down over the past few years, there's still a push to recruit them for jobs. JDog junk removal and hauling in Tampa has found that vets can be a company's best asset.
"It just all feels like a family here, like it did with my unit in the army," Tyler Nickelson said.
Nickelson has worked as a fleet commander at JDog for a couple months. Prior to working here, he spent six years in the Army Reserve and worked at other companies where it just wasn't a good fit.
"With other workplaces you come in and everybody's coming from different backgrounds," Nickelson said. "But you come here and everybody's kind of gone through the same thing, and had similar experiences so you kind of share that with other people you work with here."
JDog is a hauling business that will take junk off your hands. The company does its best to recycle and re-purpose it.
They proudly boast being veteran and military-family owned and operated.
Kevin Haseney, also an army veteran, has only been at JDog a few weeks, but believes other companies should embrace this employment model.
"Being able to walk into an environment that is so closely related to something I spent so many years doing and feeling that instant culture and camaraderie was something that sold me before I even met the owners," Haseney said.
CEO Danielle Woodruff told 10News why it's important for them to hire veterans.
"Veterans are the whole reason we can even open these organizations," Wood ruff said. "They protected our freedoms and defended our constitutional rights to allow us to have these opportunities."
Woodruff also talked about the qualities veterans bring to the workplace.
"When we seek our veteran talent we look for their B.A.M.: their beliefs, attitude and motivations, which they have already learned while they were serving in the military," Woodruff said. "They bring those attitudes beliefs and motivations into our organization where they execute missions just as they did in the military with respect integrity and trust and you can't beat that service."
District partner Kevin Haseney says more companies could do what JDog is doing.
"I live my army values still 28 and those values are shared across the board with all the branches," Haseney said. "So it didn't matter where you came from, we all live and breathe that so when you bring that together into a company.
"That company is learning that that manpower is unstoppable."
Woodruff says the biggest challenge for companies hiring veterans is the differences in terminology, between what's used in military service as opposed to the civilian workforce.
"When we can understand our veterans, understand their needs and understand the processes that make them thrive and we instill those processes, we are able to provide an environment where they are successful," Woodruff said.
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