WHAT’S NEXT Transition to Civilian Life By Eve Nasby
3.5 Steps to a Successful Transition Excited and nervous your adrenaline is pumping as you sit at the exit door. The postage stamp sized earth below continues to shrink. The wind buffets through the door and in an instant the jump master gives you the signal. As you free fall, your pack securely attached, you begin to try to remember all that your instructor taught you many months ago in preparation for your first jump. You rapidly try to recall the brochures on skydiving that they gave you at the 8-hour training that you attended at the time. When do you pull the cord? What altitude? Where did they put the cord? How do you steer your body in free fall? You thought you would just remember after you jumped? Sounds ridiculous, but this is exactly what hundreds of thousands of veterans have gone through before, during and after separation. You received a class or two of transition a few months before you transitioned where speakers and experts alike threw up all over your desk and then walked away but not before leaving you mounds of flyers, a plethora of phone numbers to call if you need help, and little follow up. You were meaning to get to a transition plan, but your current call of duty kept you focused on the “here and now”, not the “when you get out”. In this column we will focus on real world steps to success in transitioning. Know this. Companies want to hire you. In an interview I conducted with the CEO of WD-40 Company Garry Ridge on the TV show Operation American Dream I asked, “Why is it important to WD-40 Company to seek out and hire veterans?” To note, 40% of their hires that year were veterans. “It’s simple.”, he quickly and confidently replied. “There are two things in life you need to be successful in life. Passion and purpose. And veterans are passion driven and inspired by purpose.” This is the truth. So, why don’t more companies hire you? Great question. 38
SanDiegoVeteransMagazine.com / AUGUST 2019
Oddly enough, they don’t know where to find you. And if they find you, they don’t know how to read your resume. And if you get an interview, they don’t know how to interview you well enough to understand who you are and what you can do for them. Who is to blame? It can be argued that the company needs to put forth effort to find you and to understand your resume and to understand how to interview you. However, you need to do the same. Position yourself in the marketplace to be found, write your resume in corporate lingo and learn to communicate in the interview in a way that they can understand the value you bring to them. Most recruiters in America have never been in the military. Therefore, no company can expect their Talent Acquisition team to know what they are looking at when a Veteran resume passes by their desk. Most of us with a recruitment background will agree that we are looking for reasons to screen out the hundreds of non-qualified resumes we get daily. If we can’t decipher military acronyms, the resume is usually placed in the “No” pile. But in this great talent shortage, that is obviously a dangerous loss of potential talent. How valuable are you? A Fortune 100 company did a two-year study in which they compared the activity and productivity of their non-Veteran MBA Managers with the activity and productivity of Veteran non MBA grads. Guess what? The study concluded that the Veteran leaders outperformed their MBA manager counterparts 2:1. As a previous host of Veteran centric radio and TV shows I’ve interviewed dozens of Executives and business owners who include Veteran hiring into their short- and long-term business strategies. These individuals understand that Veterans uphold a high level of teamwork, remain calm under pressure, are punctual and produce results while maintaining a positive attitude. You are wanted.