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USA TODAY SPECIAL EDITION
THE TROOPS
CIVILIAN RANKS Advice for veterans looking to land their dream job In early 2017, retired Army Lt. Col. Frank Stanley stepped into a newly created role as head of veteran recruiting for commercial real estate brokerage Cushman & Wakefield. He’s watched veterans nail the job search and then make missteps. Here’s how he advises military job hunters looking to join the civilian ranks: What should be a veteran’s first step in the job search? Get clarity. Some of the things I ask veterans are: What would motivate you to wake up in the morning and go to work? Do you want to manage a portfolio of properties? Does it excite you to manage personnel? I don’t want to just give you a job, I want to give you a career — something that will keep you motivated and excited. How can veterans convey the depth of their experience? Tell stories. Many veterans have dealt with real-life situations and made life-and-death decisions at a moment’s notice. You need to explain that. The resume might say you had a platoon of 30 people. But what does that do for a civilian employer? It means you managed a budget, people and logistics. So you come prepared to tell those stories. ANDREW BURTON/GETTY IMAGES
Sgt. 1st Class Sam Kaestner, of the U.S. Army Band, works with a Toyota recruiter at a Hiring our Heroes job fair in 2014 in New York City. Some military veterans need help translating their skill set into terms civilian hiring managers can easily understand. those who make hiring decisions said it helps them when veterans and retirees can lay out in practical terms what exactly they did while in uniform. “I like vignettes,” said Steven Davis, global head of talent acquisition at Broadridge Financial Solutions. “A story helps me as a hiring manager to visualize what you were doing. I can see you in the moment, in action, and that helps me to understand what you did.” It helps, too, if the veteran can then connect that story back to its private-sector
equivalent: Show how managing a military supply chain aligns with similar duties on the civilian side. “While specific skills or tasks don’t necessarily translate, there are a lot of things that are very relevant to the corporate world, and vets need to draw those parallels,” Davis said. Former Army Capt. Lucas Hanson didn’t feel ready to tell that story when he first left the armed forces. He took a job but decided he wasn’t really sure what his post military career should look like. He decided to go for an MBA, using the Post-9/11 GI
Bill. Two years later, feeling more focused, he landed his present position as a planning and strategic operations manager with Cisco Systems Inc. It’s a career route he recommends for those who are still feeling their way. “If you don’t know what you want to do, take the time to go back to school and figure it out,” he said. “For the past six or eight years, I had been focused on other people, and this was two years when I could just focus on growing myself. That’s a big opportunity that the military gives you.”
What’s the biggest job-search mistake veterans make? Too often, a veteran takes the first job that is offered. They are looking for security; they want that paycheck, but in reality they also need to look at the environment of the company. They need to look at the opportunities for upward mobility. If they take the first job offered to them, they may be wasting their talents and capabilities. — Adam Stone