Edge4Vets matches veterans and employers.

Veterans and companies that want to hire them gathered at Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport recently for the South Carolina launch of Edge4Vets, a program aimed at helping people hone their military skills into civilian careers.

Tom Murphy, author and director of the Human Resiliency Institute at Fordham University, said he founded Edge4Vets after seeing a young soldier struggle through an awkward moment among civilians while traveling. He has partnered with Airport Council International to use airports across the country as sites to host workshops that put veterans together with potential employers.

"Fifteen hundred vets have taken the program since 2011 and a lot of them came back to us and told us it's been life changing," he said before leading the first work shop at GSP's Conference Center. Murphy said the veterans' military experience gives them the job skills they need to pursue a career, but often they have some difficulty transferring those skills from service to the civilian workplace.

"Think of Edge4Vets as a product or resource or a facilitating agent to help veterans translate their skills to a job that sets them on a career path," he said.

"We want to help you find that job or career that will lead to the life that you want," Murphy told the veterans at GSP. "That is our goal for you."

Before he started Edge4Vets, Murphy saw plenty of opportunities for veterans, often through job fairs aimed at vets, but he said nothing was there to prepare them for the job fairs. He said what makes the program unique is bringing in potential employers on the front end to take part in the workshops, where they sit at tables alongside vets and help them identify their strengths and map out a plan for personal success.

Aside from the fact that his inspirational moment for Edge4Vets came when Ford witnessed a soldier dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder on an airplane, airports make sense because of the wide variety of jobs and careers they offer.

People think of pilots and flight attendants when they think of airport jobs, according to GSP human resources director Ashley Bruton, but airports are like small cities, with job opportunities that range from police and...