January 2014 |
Transition-e-news Volume 3 Issue 90 |
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Transition Insight
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Leaving the Military — Career Checklist
by Barbara A. Adams, MFCA-T, MMRW, MFRW, CPRW, CEIP It's a new year and you're scheduled to retire or separate from the military. Congratulations ... and thank you ... for serving our country in these uncertain times as part of the military. Civilians probably don't say it often enough, but I'm sure it's factual to say that we're all grateful for everything you do to defend our nation's freedom. As you prepare to transition from your military career to life as a civilian, it can be a scary time. Questions abound about where you will live, what your life will be like, and most importantly, what career path you will need to take. We, at militaryresumewriters.com, suggest it's never too early to start preparing for your post-military life. You will find that by taking a few proactive steps now, your transition will be virtually flawless as the day comes when your DD-214 is finalized. (We generally suggest you begin planning for your post military life no later than 180 days or even one year prior to your separation, but you can of course begin the process earlier if you wish.) Below are some suggestions to help you begin for your life after the military: Gather your paperwork into a personal portfolio. You'll want to make sure you have copies of all past performance appraisals (NCOERs, EVALs, EPRs, FitReps, OERs), awards, citations, and decorations, training certificates, letters of appreciation, your VMET (Verification of Military and Education Training) and any other documentation that you find important such as an article or other write up that has your name on it. I suggest taking all of this information and scanning it into your computer to build a Military Career file, or put these documents into a loose-leaf binder. It's helpful to place them in chronological order within broad category sections (i.e. "Awards," "Training", etc.) or in separate electronic files within the primary file. This way you not only have a comprehensive historical account of your military service, you have a valuable reference you can use for the next step, which is... Begin thinking about what you want to do. You have acquired some of the best training and experience this country has to offer, thanks to your participation in the military. However, one of the biggest challenges for people about to transition to civilian life is that they struggle with translating the military jargon, which has become a second language, into the civilian language that is customary for human resource managers. By reviewing your paperwork assembled in step one (above), you can quickly put together a list of skills and strengths you have acquired while in the military. Once you have this list, translating it back to civilian experience should be relatively easy. For example, if you operated machine guns, chances are you won't need that skill in your civilian position unless you're pursuing a career in security or law enforcement. Actually there is a $1.6B security and law enforcement career industry that exists post 9-11. Other transferable skills include experience you gained in logistics, supply, electronics and mechanical maintenance, personnel administration, intelligence, information management, and many more that are certainly good transferable skills to offer the civilian world. As you translate your military experience to civilian-speak, make sure that you remove any specific military terms, e.g. instead of "commander" write "senior manager" or "director". Spell out all acronyms and if they're too "military-esque," try to find a civilian equivalent. For example, instead of saying, "Led a battalion through simulated warfare exercises with no loss of life or equipment" you might say "Led a group of 75 personnel through high-risk field exercises with zero incidents." Determine where you want to work. This is probably the toughest decision you'll have to make because you have many options. Let's look at the decisions that fall under this category in more detail: Federal Government: Many transitioning military personnel first look at the federal government for employment for several reasons. One, their veteran's points usually give them an advantage in qualifying for a position over someone who has not served in the military. Second, certain positions more closely align with the training and experience received in the military; for example, an Army intelligence-gathering specialist would probably have all of the requirements necessary for a similar position with the CIA, FBI or DHS. Third, the benefits, while not an exact match, are usually structured similarly. Fourth, the government pay scale, like the military, is structured based on experience and knowledge. Private Sector: The civilian or private sector is a little more challenging to get into because every company pretty much has its own way of doing things when it comes to the hiring process. Whereas the federal government is standardized in terms of job descriptions, pay scales, interviewing and evaluation, private companies (and we include publicly traded companies) are not regulated by one central hiring office like the federal government. I recommend that you post your resume on military friendly job boards and search for military friendly employers, which can both be accomplished at www.taonline.com. Lastly, if you have doubts about whether your military background will fit in, be assured that it will. Employers generally appreciate the discipline, training and attention to detail our former service personnel bring to the work environment and there are numerous private employers who are considered "military-friendly" when it comes to hiring former US Service personnel. You can find this list at http://www.taonline.com/military-friendly-companies. Determine if you want to go back to school on the GI Bill. Once your military service ends, you are under no obligation to pursue a career path that mirrors what you did in the service. So if, for example, you were a food preparation specialist in the military, but you really aspire to be an IT support desk technician, there's certainly no reason why you can't acquire the training you need to make this successful transition. Under the terms of the GI Bill, you might be eligible for full or partial reimbursement on accredited education programs offered by nationwide institutions. This means that if you put college on hold for your military career and now wish to go back to complete a degree, you can do so without taking on the added debt of student loans. For more information about the GI Bill and your rights, please visit the US Department of Veterans Affairs web site at www.gibill.va.gov. The most important thing to remember, as you prepare for post military life, is to not wait until the last minute to get started thinking about your future Here's wishing you much success with your military career transition! Barbara Adams, President and CEO of CareerPro Global (CPG), the parent company of www.careerproplus.com and www.militaryresumewriters.com, has been a member of the careers community for the past 20 years. Ms. Adams holds four prestigious industry certifications. CareerPro Global is the only ISO 9001-2008 Certified Career Service in the industry, as well as one of the fastest-growing Military, Federal, and Civilian Resume-Writing and Careers-Coaching companies. The team of Certified Professional Federal and Military Resume Writers at CPG assist thousands of clients in applying for and gaining employment each year. We can help you land your military to civilian job. |
Resumes Part 2: Strong Profiles And How To Format To Fit Recruiters' Scanning Habits
By Rachael McDermott — reprinted with permission (Last month, Rachael McDermott wrote about ways to view your resume from the employers' viewpoint to review that article, click here.) A reader's eye tends to read down the left side of the page and recruiters tend to look at a few key areas in their brief 6-second scan of a resume — titles, companies, education, dates you worked somewhere, first few bullets and first few words of bullet statements. Based on this:
Professional Profiles Most people focus on the top third of the resume so a strong profile creates a good first impression and enables you to put the most important details front and center.
Don't make your profile generic. Please don't state you are a dynamic multi-tasker with strong communication skills who excels at leading teams. You probably are all of these things. But this is so boring. And of course we'll all say we have "strong communication skills." I mean really, what would you say? That you are a misanthropic asshat who doesn't like people and can't handle multiple duties without freaking out? For my own profile, I might say something like "Effective employer outreach and relations strategist, noted for increasing numbers of employers recruiting on campus by 40% over previous years." While I'm sure I'm not as exciting as I think I am, this might make an employer want to know HOW I did this. Job Descriptions and Bullets
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Don't Reinvent the Wheel
© Tom Wolfe, author; all rights reserved; excerpts from Out of Uniform: Recently I joined a group of colleagues in a discussion that focused on military to civilian transition, specifically as it relates to finding a job. This group assembled to address the gross disparity between unemployment in this country as a whole and the unemployment rate among veterans and what could be done about it. The data is staggering. According to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, at the end of 2013 the unemployment rate for veterans was almost 50% higher than the national rate (9.9% vs. 6.7%). The ideas coming out of the group were all over the place. Although some of them were quite creative, much of what was proposed was nothing more than rehashed conventional wisdom. Regardless, the one thing that stuck with me when the dust settled was a glowing conundrum. On the one hand there are hundreds, maybe thousands, of organizations that openly and vigorously state a sincere desire to hire veterans. On the other hand, there are thousands of veterans in the ranks of the unemployed. There is an obvious disconnect somewhere. How can that be? I have a theory. I believe this disconnect has two root causes. One, most military service members lack the necessary tools to conduct a job search. I will use myself as an example. I joined the Navy when I was 18 and got out when I was 27. During those nine years I never had to look for a job. Never had to interview. Never had to write a resume. Never had to put on an interview suit. Never . . , well you get the drift. Talk about being ill equipped! There was no need for these tools in my professional tool kit. Any tools that may have been there were most likely rusty or in severe need of sharpening. Although the VA, DOD, DOL, and other government agency sponsored programs like TAP and ACAP address the problem, the increasing unemployment rate among veterans certainly indicates more must be done. Our separating service members and veterans need not only the appropriate transition tools but also the guidance and instruction on how to use those tools. Two, even with the best intentions, most civilian employers are not prepared to hire separating military personnel and veterans. They have little understanding of what service men and women actually do in their assignments. What they think they know is often over-simplified or based on stereotypes: fight wars, shoot people, fly jets, drive ships, stand watch, come back from overseas, etc. Additionally, because of the emphasis on bottom line (profit) and accountability to shareholders, those employers frequently focus on immediate results and real-time value-added. Although that approach is valid and defensible, it also works against hiring people out of the military. Here is another personal experience to illustrate. When I was a partner in a military recruiting firm I was frequently approached by companies that had heard that hiring military personnel was a good thing and although they had never considered it before, they wanted to give it a shot. My first question to them was always: How quickly do you expect those new hires to start adding value? I told them that successful onboarding of a military hire takes time. There is a learning curve and a start-up period. You must make an investment in them that exceeds their paycheck. This transition is not only about assimilation of technical and operational competencies and re-training. There are other gaps to fill, including the need to recognize the cultural, environmental, social, and workplace differences between military and civilian employment. Also, keep in mind that there are frequently mental and physical health leaps of faith involved. Has your hiring plan addressed these issues and can you afford to wait? Will you invest time and money in these hires and wait for a return on that investment? Are your expectations realistic and manageable? There are exceptions to this, of course. An excellent motor mechanic coming out of the Marine Corps has the skill and experience necessary to do the same job almost immediately for a civilian employer. If you fly helicopters in the Army it will not take long to get up to speed on the NewsChannel 5 Eye in the Sky. A nuclear plant operator in the Navy needs very little start up time to do the same job for a power company. An Air Force meteorologist would be a fine understudy for Al Roker. So how do you, the reader of this column, address these issues? WORK HARD and WORK SMART. I suspect you are already on board with the first of the two. Preparing for your job search and interviewing is hard work, physically and mentally. There is much to accomplish: resumes, cover letters, references, wardrobe, networking, research, timelines, sample interview questions, practice interviews, and more. You will work hard at these tasks and you will do all the things necessary to succeed. But hard work alone is not good enough. You also need to work smart. By work smart, I am mostly talking about being selective. Here is where to start. First, understand that interviewing for a job is a form of sales. No, that does not mean that you have to go find a sales job, although for many of you that might be just the ticket. What I mean here is that when you are interviewing you are selling a product called YOU to a company called YOUR EMPLOYER. Now, as any successful sales person will tell you, it is much easier to fill a customer's existing and acknowledged need with your product than it is to convince a prospective client that the need even exists. How does that relate to finding a job? Remember that as hard as it may be to convince an employer to hire you, what if you had to first convince that same employer to hire a veteran for the first time? Even if you are successful in educating that employer about veterans and convincing that hiring manager of the potential value added by a veteran, you have yet to convince him or her to hire you. This is where working smart comes into play—you would be much better served to target employers that already value veterans as employees. So, how do you find these predisposed, military-friendly employers? Easy. Here are four ways.
Bottom line: be selective, focus, work hard, but work smart. Good Hunting! © 2014; Tom Wolfe, is an author, columnist, career coach, veteran, and an expert in the field of military-to-civilian career transition. During his career he assisted thousands of service members in their searches for employment, placing more than 3000 in their new jobs. Prior to civilian life, he graduated from the U. S. Naval Academy and served as a surface warfare officer. He teaches transition courses, gives seminars on career and job change, writes about the career transition process, and continues to counsel current and former military personnel. His book, Out of Uniform: Your Guide to a Successful Military-to-Civilian Career Transition, was published by Potomac Books in 2011. Tom lives on the North Carolina coast with his wife, Julie, and their Chesapeake Bay retriever, Maggie. |
The Best Companies for Veterans to find a Job are...
By Ron Rutherford This is the most obvious question veterans and transitioning military ask when going through TAP, talking to a recruiter or coming to a career site like TAOnline.com. Unfortunately, the answer isn't as obvious as the question. First getting the numbers isn't always easy. Employers aren't always rushing to report new hires. Employers want to spend time concentrating on their business, not necessarily on reporting who they hired and whether their new hire fit into a certain classification. This may start to improve with new OFCCP compliance. However, OFCCP regulations only affect Federal Contractors and Sub-Contractors. But, there are employers who want you to know about their veteran hiring success. Walmart says it's hired more than 20,000 veterans since May, 2013. New hires range from entry-level to career-track positions. In May, Walmart made a commitment to hire 100,000 Veterans over the next five-years. A Military Times Article touts USAA as tops in their Best for Vets: Employer Survey, 2013. The survey actually uses 2012 data, showing 12% of its total hires for the year were veterans. This survey focused more on what the company did than the number of total veteran hires. The complete list shows some companies with a higher percentage of veteran hires as well as companies spending on veteran hiring. Some exceed USAA, but are still ranked lower. Bright.com took what data it could find and came up with a different '#1' in veteran hiring. It's clear winner, PepsiCo. Bright.com didn't base it's rankings on the total number of veterans hired. Rather, Bright.com ranked it's winners by dividing veteran hires within a company by the total number of resumes submitted to each company. According to Bright.com, a successful Veteran hiring program is more dependent on the number of resumes gathered than on the actual number of veterans hired. So, to answer the obvious question, it really depends on how you want to measure who is hiring. Raw numbers — the answer could be Walmart. Focusing on what a company does — the answer could be USAA. Looking at the ratio of veterans hired to total resumes received — the winner could be PepsiCo. The reality may be, it isn't just who is hiring, but who is hiring that needs someone like you. |
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