by Anthony Stough
With your DD 214 in hand, it’s time to start thinking about your life outside of the military. No more PT, formations, someone telling you what to do! Life is going to be good, right?
You’ve heard the stories:
“You’re going to make so much money in the civilian world!”
“It’s going to be easy to get a job! Everyone loves military veterans!”
“I have a friend who found a job in less than a week!”
For those of us who have made the transition, we’ll be the first to tell you not to believe the hype. Transitioning out of the military can be difficult if you don’t have a strategy. Keep in mind that over 200,000 service members transition out of the military each year. There’s always time to celebrate your military career, but it’s time to begin to plan your next move (unless you just retired and have no plans of working ever again-congrats)!
Pulling from my personal military transition in 2015 (active to reserves), and 2017 (officially out of the reserves) after an 11 year career, my advice is to take these next steps into consideration when planning for your own strategy.
Take your strategy into your own hands:
For those in active duty, each branch has their own transition program that prepares military veterans for the next step. It’s a great way to introduce service members to the civilian job process and you graduate the program with a ton of resources. However, the course isn’t there to find you your next role. With so many possible military experiences, it’s nearly impossible to create a “one stop shop” program. Bottom line, finding the next role is your responsibility. Those 199,999 other service members that transitioned with you have become your competition to find that next role.
leave your rank at the door:
In the military, it’s easy to make an assessment on someone even before meeting them in person. By rank, deployment patch, or special identifier tab, you can understand someone’s level of experience. In the civilian world, you may be working in an environment where people have never interacted with a military person before. You may even have a leader or peer who held a lower rank than you in the military. The question,“How is this person above me?”, may pop into your head. It’s easy to get carried away with old habits, but it’s important to embrace the change of environment and be as humble as you possibly can be.
Choose a location that works best for you:
One of the best parts about leaving the military is that you get to utilize your final PCS move to a destination of your choosing. This is a great perk of the transition, but definitely choose wisely. There are a ton of things to consider when relocating. For this article, let’s focus on the employment aspect of the choice.
Not every city is going to have the same job opportunities. Even though you may want to head back home (as I did), it may not be the best career move for you. Prior to my transition, I had opportunities to move into director and manager roles all over the South. As I headed back home to Pittsburgh, PA those opportunities were not the same. Over 6 months (some of which I was in active duty), I submitted well over 100 applications with few responses. For the ones that I did receive, I was told that I was a mixture of being overqualified and under-qualified. My search ended after 4 months of unemployment, only to move into an undergraduate internship role (5 years after I graduated college). Utilizing the skills I learned in the military, I quickly moved up to a manager role in just over 2 years with another organization. With preparation and insight to a cities’ job outlook, you can better prepare yourself for this transition. Keep in mind that a specific location may limit your job opportunities and you may have to take an unexpected detour in your professional career.
I recommend checking out Niche to better understand your future city/neighborhood.
research your career path:
One of the biggest questions that I get when consulting military veterans is: “What job should I go into?” With a number of corporations embracing the military culture, finding a job has become easier. Sites such as military.com and My Next Move have search engines that allow service members to search civilian-equivalent roles based on their MOS/AFSC/rating. This is a great starting point to better understand the requirements for certain roles and careers.
Be creative & don’t limit yourself:
Now that you better understand your civilian-equivalent role, what do you think about it? This is another thing that you finally have a bit more control over. For example, I was a 42B in the US Army, which is an HR Officer. I chose to remain in my field, but that doesn’t mean that you have to. The civilian world has a ton of opportunities and you can utilize the sites above to explore those career pathways. You never know what you may find!
Stay active:
I wish there was a guaranteed timeline for the job search, but in reality there isn’t one. Even with all of your preparation, there are a number of different factors that are out of your control when it comes to the process. I’ve seen people get jobs within days and some over a year from when they started the process. It can be physically and mentally draining, so it’s important to keep yourself mentally and physically active (if you can). For example, remember that you are leaving a job where you were paid to stay in shape. Whether it’s a high impact activity (running, Crossfit, lifting, etc.) or low impact activity (yoga, walking, etc.) it’s important to always give yourself time to just unwind and work out.
If you happen to live in the Pittsburgh, PA area, I highly recommend checking out JAM Fitness Coaching. Part of my transition was missing the team camaraderie that the military provided. It’s important to surround yourself with a great team while in this process.
Another great organization for my service-oriented folks is The Mission Continues.
Military headhunters are a good thing:
Another great opportunity for your toolkit is to align yourself with a military veteran staffing agency (or headhunter). These are organizations that partner with civilian corporations and find military talent (officers, NCOs, and technicians). Each staffing agency has their own prerequisite checklist (evaluations, resume, training, etc.) to ensure you are a great fit for the company. Once you are placed with the company, the staffing agency charges the company a “finder’s fee” and all the services are free to you. Staffing agencies may not be the best fit for everyone, but they are effective for the search. It’s important to remember that the agency is providing a service for the civilian company. The downside: sometimes you as the candidate are limited to the available companies and opportunities. The upside, the agency has your salary and level of military responsibility in mind and will coach you when appropriate. In no particular order, these are ones that I personally used (but to no avail due to my limiting location of Pittsburgh, PA):
start networking:
If you haven’t read our other article about LinkedIn, you definitely need to check it out and learn about this professional networking site with over 500 million users, 200 million posted jobs, and unlimited networking opportunities.
Another powerful site for networking is Veterati. This free service provides service members and military spouses access to thousands of volunteer mentors that range from CEOs, recruiters, managers, fellow veterans, and civilians.
Military Job Boards & Career Fairs:
Job boards such as Indeed, Monster, and Glassdoor post millions of jobs. These are great reference points to better understand what jobs are available, but always ensure you are applying on the company site. RecruitMilitary and CASY maintain their own job boards that are specific for military veterans. Exploring these sites also gives you insight on military-friendly organizations with links to their career pages.
Another service that RecruitMilitary provides is access to military career fairs for veterans. Check out their calendar to see if there is a career fair heading your way.
Resume:
This is definitely a topic that will have its own article in the near future. The resume is a snapshot of your professional experience in 1-2 pages (I’m focusing on a traditional one for now). Aside from yourself, this is the paper that will get you to the interview. It takes time to build this out and it’s important to really put effort into building this document. On average, corporate recruiters are trained to review a resume in under 15 seconds. They are trained to search for specific things on a resume, so it’s important to begin to translate your military experience into civilian terminology. Military OneSource lists some additional resources to better translate your experience. TheMuse has two great articles that list out a step-by-step guide and tips to better your chances at getting your resume noticed.
Practice your interviewing:
If you’re like the majority of people, it’s pretty awkward to sit in a room with strangers and talk about how great you are. Interviews happen in a number of formats: phone interview, 1:1 interviews, panel interviews, group interview, video interview, etc. No matter what the situation is, if you are unable to tell your story, you aren’t going to get the job. It’s very important to practice interviewing (ask a friend or co-worker) until you feel comfortable with it. You should also practice over the phone and in front of a mirror. Sounds strange? Sure it does. However, interviewing yourself in front of a mirror allows you to pick up on nervous tendencies that you didn’t realize you have. During the job search, any opportunity throughout the day could turn into an interview and it’s best to prepare for the unexpected. Check out this article by themuse. It does a phenomenal job of outlining 31 common interview questions and comes with recommended answers.
know what’s available:
With so many helpful sites and military advocates, the amount of support that is at your fingertips can be a bit overwhelming. Take your time with this article and invest the necessary time towards your transition strategy. Remember, your transition will be different than your peers’, so take advantage of as many opportunities as you can. Two additional sites that I want you to have in your toolkit are below:
Onward to Opportunity is a free program that provides professional certifications to transitioning service members, members of the selected reserves, veterans, and military spouses.
HireMilitary connects transitioning service members to employers for internship opportunities for up to 6 months.