Tag: military transition

Finding Purpose after transition

Far too few people are talking about  finding your purpose after you get out. This is probably the biggest challenge you will face, and it’s largely ignored in transition advice.  When you wore the uniform, you were a part of something bigger than yourself.  You wore the flag, defended the constitution, belonged to a unit with history, medals, and tradition.  If you failed to do your job, people died, the war was lost, the great experiment that is the USA itself is at risk.

But now?  Now what?

Now you make widgets, and seriously, who gives a damn if they don’t get made?
sad homer simpson GIF

You didn’t join the military because of money, and money has never been a great motivator.  You look around at civilians that are motivated by money and pity them.  They have never been a part of something like you.  They value their jobs as if customers not getting their widgets in time is really of any consequence whatsoever.  You’ve seen death.  You’ve seen children starving and abused.  You’ve seen any number of horrible things, and you know these widgets don’t matter.  So what is the point of it all?

This is the realization so many veterans face, often years after they get out.  When they are no longer surrounded by the veteran community.  When they no longer talk to their army buddies every day.  They lose hope, meaning, and purpose, then they make a fateful decision.

This is why I am speaking up, because this isn’t a fucking game.   Because transition doesn’t end the day you get a damn job, it’s only just starting.  Because three years after you get out, you’ll be sitting at a fireworks show and all of a sudden your heart will start racing and you’ll have a hard time sleeping that night for the first time.  Because four years after you get out, you’ll get a call that one of your friends was killed and you’ll have to get up the next day with a smile on your face and pretend nothing happened because you’re meeting with customers and trying to make a sale.  Because seven years after you get out, you’re going to wonder what the hell you’re doing with your life and what actually matters to you.  Because your transition goes on long after you get out, because you’re not learning to be a civilian, you’re learning to live in the civilian world; there’s a difference.

Deciding Where to Step Next?

If you want to avoid this pothole, you need to find something that is going to give you meaning and purpose above yourself.  I don’t know what will work for you, but here’s what works for me:

First it’s my family.  My three kids and my wife are my life.  If you read the book, that will be abundantly clear, I spend half of it talking about my life as a family man.

Next it’s you, the reader of this very article.  I have lost too many friends to the demons in their minds, and I felt compelled to do something.  CONUS Battle Drills is fun, funny, entertaining, but also raw, honest, and in your face.  Why?  Because that was exactly what my life as an infantryman in the 82nd was like.  If in all my ramblings, I can help someone turn things around, then I have made a difference in this world, and that means something.

Third it’s my church and charity.  I know, I cuss way too much, but Jesus loves me anyway.  Giving my time and money to those who need it has allowed me to feel that sense of gravity and import that wearing a uniform did.  I have never felt so much joy with my money as when I have given it generously.

So what will it be for you?  Are you going to start your own business?  Volunteer your time? Write poetry?  Make music?  Give your money?  Do something that matters, that’s bigger than yourself, you need it!

-LJF

 

For more information on transition, get the highly rated book on Amazon:

All These Transition Experts, So Little Expertise

The beauty of the internet and social media is that it has given us a medium to connect millions of people instantly, where all our voices can be heard.  We freely share our experiences and knowledge with each other and even though we’re strangers, we connect and learn from each other.  The problem for the transitioning veteran is identifying what’s good or bad advise for leaving the service. Often times the worst offenders for giving out bad advice are the well-meaning veterans who are self-proclaimed experts that start dangerously doling out advice on things they know very little about.

We’ve noticed a trend, particularly on LinkedIn, where there are thousands of transition experts all giving advice on how to navigate the difficult process.  Some give good advice having been out of the military for a while, learned the ropes of civilian life and offer their transitional experience for the betterment of their fellow veterans.  Then there are those who more often that not miss the target of offering value-adding information. Let’s just put them in categories:

  • The veterans who retired and immediately went to work for the government
  • The veteran who got out of the military 6 days ago, but because he found a job, now he thinks he knows how to “successfully transition”
  • The veteran who sees transition advice as a ticket to making a lot of money
  • The veteran who wants to be a motivational speaker and tells you “everything is awesome!”

 

The Lack of Experience & Expertise

There is a well-known pillar of how wisdom is accumulated known as the DIKW pyramid. Wisdom is achieved by first collecting data, turning it into bits of information, then compiling it into knowledge. Enough knowledge produces wisdom. Reaching the wisdom phase is not something you can take a course on and POOF, you’re certified; you have to EARN it.  Veterans who lack the time commitments necessary to develop experience and expertise in the civilian world, also lack the qualifications of claiming to be competent sources of knowledge and wisdom for other transitioning veterans.  Basically, they don’t know enough to give you advice.

Transitioning out of the service isn’t easy; it is a never ending process and a constant review of your adjustment in the non-military world. Though it’s not easy, it doesn’t have to be hard.  Lots of folks out there think that civilian hiring managers are dying to hire veterans. With all those organizations out there and transitions assistance resources available, it appears as if there are thousands and thousands of jobs JUST FOR YOU!

Yeah…that’s all bull.

It’s a great marketing technique for a company to say they’re going to hire a thousand veterans. What they’re actually doing is looking for veterans with a few years of civilian experience that served four years in the early 2000’s; not a newly minted veteran who just left the military this morning and is firmly wrapping themselves up in their DD-214 blanket.

Why?

Because the veteran getting out today doesn’t know anything about business. From a hiring managers perspective a veteran doesn’t understand my business, my customers, my product, how to make my product, how to sell my product, my organizational structure, etc.

To put it a different way.  Imagine you had a CEO of some company who decide to join the military. They have no military experience; they’ve never even fired a gun. They were in charge of a multi-million dollar company though.  Would you put that person in charge of a brigade of paratroopers in Afghanistan or, a Regiment of Marines or, a fleet of Navy ships?  HELL NO!  No way whatsoever!  Why?  This CEO obviously has great leadership; they were in charge of an entire commercial business company.  Yeah, but he knows fuck-all about combat and he’s going to get people killed.  Best I’d do is make him a low level Captain working for a seasoned staff officer in the command center so he can learn how we fight. This is exactly the type of job you’re going to get when you transition away from uniformed service and that’s a BEST case scenario.

Unfortunately there are assholes that don’t know any better (or realize it but don’t care) and are feeding inexperienced veterans bad information about how to step right into an executive or managerial leadership role. Or worse, the inexperienced “transition assistant” stepped into a company as an “executive” who’s sole purpose is to help other veterans find jobs. The funny but sad thing is Duffel Blog made a satire story about this very phenomenon. These transition assistants purport to know all the answers, have all the inside hiring scoops and, know the path veterans should take to transition successfully into corporate America.

Comforting Lies

Those people outlined above won’t tell you any of this.  They don’t have the experience to know right from wrong. They haven’t actually been promoted in the civilian world. They don’t understand how civilian hiring managers make decisions because they’ve never been one or around one. They’ve never had to justify the additional headcount of another employee. They’ve never done an analysis on the cost of adding a person and the added revenue that person will bring in; whether it is sustainable for the long term because you don’t want to have to fire them 6 months from now. They simply don’t know.

Comforting lies are…well…comforting. Yelling “everything is awesome!” is disingenuous at best, dangerous at worst.

Besides that, getting a job is only the very FIRST step.   Did you know that 44% of veterans leave their first job in the first year?  Did you know that number jumps to 65% by year two?  Why do you think that is?  It happens partly because they haven’t been told what corporate life is like.  No one told them to consider corporate cultures.  No one told them to consider the product, the environment, their own personal desires, where they wanted to live, what is important to their family, what kind of work life balance they are looking for, why they got out and how this job works into that plan, I can go on – I wrote an entire book on the subject and regularly post here about it.  Finding the right fitting job is more important that just finding any job.

Did you know that veteran suicide rates for GWOT veterans are highest in the first 3 years after they get out?

Are you starting to see the picture yet?

Veterans are getting out, hate their jobs,  get in financial trouble, which results in marriage trouble, which leads to substance abuse, and that to suicide.  I’ve talked about this plenty with “break the chain“, and it’s the whole reason I started CONUS Battle Drills.

It does no one any good to talk about finding a job and calling that “transition”.  The equivalent would be to give someone “marriage advice” but only talk about how to plan a wedding.  Then some asshole gets up and starts talking about how you too can have a successful marriage the day he gets back from his honeymoon.  The wedding (or job hunt) is the easiest part of the whole ordeal, but 90% of the “transition” advice I see out there focuses on this small element of transition.  Don’t get me wrong, finding a job is critical, and there are plenty of organizations out there to help you do that, but it is NOT transition.

 

A Successful Transition…..?

This article is more about helping you, the veteran, identify potential pitfalls in your journey of moving into the civilian sector – your transition.

SO…how does a veteran judge themselves as having successfully transitioned? Is there a manual that has standard metrics, benchmarks or specific goals to achieve? One veteran’s perspective of success is wildly different from another. Some veterans want to get out and land a federal job while others want to be managers and executives in corporate America, still others want to work in civil service (police, fireman, teachers, etc.). Some just want to get out and hang out on camp couch under the 1st parents division for a while – however we highly advise that this not be your definition of success. Success is ultimately measured by the individual, not by other veterans or transition assistance “experts” metrics of success. There is no such thing a “successful” transition because success is measured differently from one person to the next.

Furthermore, a veteran never transitions out of the military, they learn how to meld their military and civilian lives together. NOBODY, not even the veteran themselves can ignore their military past. A transition by definition is process or a period of changing from one state or condition to another. A veteran isn’t changing from military to civilian; they blend and harmonize the two.

As noted earlier, it is a never ending process and a constant review of your adjustment in the non-military world. The question you should always be asking yourself is “How am I leveraging my experiences in the military to advance my post-military journey.” There is a process that business’ across the spectrum use to analyze themselves to plot their grow – it’s called the Deming Cycle.

  • Plan: Forward moving steps to include points of reference to measure your success (i.e completing a class, earning a degree, getting hired, getting a promotion, etc.) – be it short term, long term, or some where in the middle
  • Do: Implement the plan you developed
  • Check: The progress of your plan to see if your meeting the measurement points – it’s alright if you fall short; the key is you made some goals to achieve.
  • Act: On the review of the plan, identify what went well and what didn’t and, take the lessons learned back into the planning phase.

This cycle is a never ending, always repeating process of improvement. Some times the iteration is short and sometimes it is long. Either way the idea is to make goals and points of reference to measure yourself by so that you can adjust and steer your own personal ship (i.e your post-military journey).

I say again, Transition isn’t easy, but it doesn’t have to be hard.  Don’t fool yourself into thinking that it’s over once you get a job.

Finally, for those of you struggling out there: you’re not alone.  The majority of veterans have gone through this as well.  You can do this.

-LJF & BY

 

For more information on transition, get the highly rated book on Amazon:

How to Fix Your Terrible Resume

Recently I received an email from a reader (we’ll call him Max) asking if I would review his resume.  When I first glanced at the document, I was on my way somewhere with the family and only had a few seconds to take a look.  I didn’t see anything exceptional and as I walked away I tried to recall anything about the person in the resume I just read.  I remember thinking, “wait…was that guy a battalion commander?!”  Here is a copy of that resume, although you can’t fully read my comments, you can see that I had a lot of them (2 pages):

bad max

 

 

Later, when I had more time, I printed it out, marked it up, then prepared to send a very blunt email.  I noticed that Max was a West Point and CGSC grad, had two master’s degrees, and was a battalion commander, so I suspected that this Resume was not his best work.  I sent him some stuff I’ve written on resumes in the past, and I explained the following:

  • Your resume is not the place to be humble
  • Tell me about YOUR accomplishments- focus on the back of your OER not the front
  • Use the STAR format
  • Include KPIs or Key Performance Indicators- numbers, values, objective results
  • Highlight your degree not where you went to school
  • Your society/memberships and military schools (like Basic training) really aren’t as important

With some trepidation, I hit send and waited.

To his credit, Max took the advice and sounded totally energized.  He had plenty of questions and got to work.  He basically scrapped his entire resume, created an outline, and started over.  In one of his emails, he sent me a STAR chart which was a great invention, and something I will be sending out in the future for resume outlines.  It allows you to put a job, your rater and senior rater comments, then several accomplishments in the position.  See the examples below (2 pages):

Star Chart

 

After he filled this out for every job in his 23 year career, a very enthusiastic Max sent me his updated resume which you can see below (2 pages):

good max

It’s clear that Max is a true top 1% performer that is probably ready for executive level leadership positions in the civilian world, but his initial resume didn’t convey that.  As a recruiter, I would have completely dismissed him with that first resume, but that second one puts me in a position where I HAVE to talk to Max further.

Recruiters are only going to spend a few seconds on your resume.  Give them no option to dismiss you.

-LJF

 

For more information on transition, get the highly rated book on Amazon:

How to approach the GI Bill

Good morning Mr. Fernandez,

I picked up a copy of your CONUS Battle Drills off Amazon last month and I am currently on chapter six. I just wanted to inform you how I appreciate your efforts and time in the creation of this book and I thoroughly enjoy how it is written – it’s almost as if we are having a casual conversation face-to-face. It’s not bogged down in formality like a military instruction manual.

As I’ve read thus far a lot of the things you have inscribed make sense and actually provide a pretty new and unique experience on things I haven’t really contemplated yet; and the things that I already had an idea or understanding about, your prospective definitely provided a new way for the information to resonate and solidify.

I have a question though if you do not mind: Obviously as an officer you entered the military with a bachelor’s degree (in History you said), but I am enlisted and joined straight from high school. I’ve been in for three years now and have three years left on my enlistment – how would you incorporate going to school in your guide?

Answering your four big questions:

Question 1) My finances are in order.

Question 2) I enlisted to figure out a purpose in life, knowing the military would provide and care for me in whatever capacity was required and hopefully it would provide me with direction, or at least at a minimum some skills that I could transition with later in life. The reason I want to get out after my six years is because I do not particularly enjoy what I am doing now in my MOS and I’ve always viewed the military as a stepping stone to help position in a better financial and skill set holding later in life – I want to move onto something more personally challenging, interesting, and rewarding.

Question 3) I’m a single pringle; location is not a bother for me; I’ve lived in California in the first 18 years of my life and Japan the last three as sea-duty FDNF.

Question 4) Not a fucken clue – and I feel that is something you and I have in common – we both intended (you actually did) get out and were open to anything (granted as long as it provided for your family). I’ve thought about school (which is why I mentioned above that I wish you would of hinted on that for us enlisted folks (maybe you did but I haven’t found it yet), but I’ve also thought about trying to start a business (I think I have a pretty solid conceptual plan), or civil service (such as firefighting).

Anyhow – I hope you have time to reply it would be incredibly appreciated. The book is great and I will continue to read and reread it surely.

Thank you,

Chandler

Chandler,

Thanks for taking the time to write and I’m glad you’re enjoying the book!  It’s funny that you ask this question because it encouraged me to write a post that I’ve been planning on writing for weeks but haven’t made it a priority (sometimes life gets in the way.  Your question as I understand it: When should I get my degree and what should I do?

So I’m going to try and answer your question without really answering it since these next steps are a matter of your own preference, but I’ll try and offer some perspective.

First let’s talk about the degree you choose.  As you know, I was a history major in college.  I was in ROTC and knew that I was joining the military, so I treated my degree as a path to get gold bars.  That was a mistake.  I see it in enlisted guys taking classes so they can get enough points to make rank.  We are wasting this great investment opportunity, and if I could go back and sit down with that 19 year old me who was leaving engineering because he didn’t like it and studying history instead, I would smack him across the face.  Instead of being a history major with an MBA, I could be an industrial engineer with an MBA; job titles and promotions for the latter would come much more easily!

The bottom line is this:  Don’t waste your major.  Consider college an investment, look at hiring trends and pick a major that will open up the most job opportunities in both quantity and quality.  Even if you’re not a huge fan of the course material, the workplace is rarely simulated well in the classroom.  That being said, don’t pick something you absolutely detest because you’re not likely to do well.  The US Military is the premiere leadership organization on the planet, couple that experience with a Bachelor’s of Science, and you’ll be well ahead of your peers.

Now, as far as timing for schooling, that’s going to be up to you.  I’ve seen soldiers go to school while serving and others that used the GI bill to pay their way and became full time students after ETS.  If you’re a single guy with no dependents, going to school full time seems like the better option.  I think you can challenge yourself further and have better results.  If you have a family, trying to get out and live off the E-5 base pay (without all the other assistance that you get while in uniform) is pretty difficult.  Again, it’s up to you.  You know your work schedule and your command climate, if they will support you then go for it.

One final point, if you’re starting a business, you need to consider that it costs a lot of money to do that, carries a lot or risk, and most new businesses fail, so you’re probably going to want another source of income.

Good luck and Godspeed!

Louis

 

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