Terry Sadler
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| 11/17/2006 6:55 AM |
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| The information below is taken from an email written by Bradley Belisle who is a retired Navy Chief to a friend of his who was getting ready to retire from the Navy. Bradley has given us permission to post it on our website for others to benefit from. There is a lot of excellent information for anyone making the transition from military to civilian life. Begin Quote: Congratulations on your retirement and it was great to see you again and thanks for your resume! As a fellow Chief and friend for years, you know I'll shoot straight with you and give you my honest opinions. I read your resume and I was impressed, but I'm biased.. However, to be completely honest, if I was a potential employer, I wouldn't hire you here at Lockheed because I need someone right now to put the "widget in the hole" and you're resume doesn't show you know how to put a widget in a hole, nor do you have a degree in Widget Technology. You have a lot of experience in different areas, and thanks for your service to our country, but, I'm sorry, I need an experienced Widget Engineer. I don't mean to be critical or sarcastic; I'm just trying to bring to light some real problems we all experience when we make the transition "mentally" from that of a military professional to a civilian professional. Let me continue... THE HARD REALITY One of the hard realities about landing a civilian job that I've come to learn is that it really doesn't matter much, to corporate America or its' management, what you did in the Navy if it doesn't relate "directly" to the skills and credentials needed by an employer at this very moment in time. It also doesn't matter how high you rose in the enlisted ranks, for most employers, it's not relevant or impressive. Really. That HR-rep with a gazillion resumes won't care. The automatic resume filtering system Lockheed and other companies use called RESUMEX doesn't care either. What does matter is whether or not you have the skills and credentials to do the job. The problem for us retiring Navy folks is that we have trouble figuring out what job field we are going to target! We lack insight to how things are done in the civilian job market and lack focus on what we want to do for our next career. When we write our resume, we certainly don't want to leave out any of our awards or great achievements in our resume out of fear we won't impress a potential employer with our accomplishments. So, we take the best bullets from our evals and lay our entire career out there on paper and distribute it to the masses with hope that our resume will land in the lap of a military sympathetic hiring manager who is willing to take us under their wing and pay us the big bucks because they understand how well-rounded we are and how talented we must be to have climbed the ladder of success. Unfortunately, we find out quick that the civilian world doesn't have an active CPO mess, nor initiation process. It doesn't care. There is no loyalty, only profit and budgets, Layoffs and hiring’s, projects and delivery. You could be here today, gone tomorrow, no ceremony, no-one telling you what a great job you've done, no shadow box. There is no support providing you with the network of CPOs ready to lend a helping hand or get you in the door sideways. About your resume... WRITE A RESUME, NOT AN EVAL We all make this mistake at first--we write our resume like our evaluation. Achievements, Awards, Rank, and Being Well-rounded in your resume will not get you a great paying job in the civilian world, or even more true, an opportunity to sell yourself in an interview. The Navy is an achievement/reward based system and it serves the Navy well. However, in the civilian world, achievements, awards, and being well-rounded do not get you in the door. Like the Navy, these attributes get you promoted from "within" your chosen job field once you’re hired, but seldom get you an invite for a job interview. What gets you n interview and that great paying job is the right combination of skills, credentials, and achievements on your resume. If I were to rank their importance, I'd say skills are #1, followed closely by credentials as #2, and a far distant #3 are achievements. To expand further: - Your skills tell the employer that you "can" do the job he's looking to fill (Widget Engineer). "Put widget in the hole......." - Your credentials tell the employer that you meet the "minimum" education/certification requirements of that job opening. "B.S. degree in Widget Technology, GPA: 3.5" "Certified Project Manager" - Your achievements tell an employer "how well" you do something and helps determine your market value. "6-years experience putting widgets in the hole with an annual cost savings of 45K" . What gets you a job interview more than any other factor are your skills. But, your skills have to be "specific" to the career/job you are seeking. What can you do for Lockheed...can you integrate a new system with the F-16? If so, can you do wing stress analysis? If you can, can you also do continuity tests using a signal generator? You will also need to be experienced with DOORs and C++? If you are put in charge of a project, can you use Microsoft Project to keep the boss informed? Recently, I helped a retiring Senior Chief get an interview by sending his resume to a manager who needed someone with his experience. The thing that really hit home with me when I talked to the manager was that although he had lots of experience in logistics and supply to offer the company, he "specifically" wanted to consider hiring him for his experience in contracts and contracts only. Goes to show you, managers create job openings to meet needed job skills. Skills and credentials get you the interview, achievements get you promotions and higher pay once you get the job. DON'T "STAY" NAVY ANYMORE Your resume flows very well, but, it's TOO NAVY and much too general. You need to be much, much more specific about what job you are seeking on your resume. The resume you sent me has the following headings: Management and Leadership, Program Manager, Quality Management, Liaison, but.....remember the Widget Engineer? The Job Lockheed needs to fill is a Widget Engineer! More specifically, A Widget Engineer, with 6-years experience working on square-widgets and knowledge of square-widget statistics and algorithms. Employers are looking for specific skills and experience to meet their job requirements and they don't know or care what a CPO or AVCM, or OMBUDSMAN is or do they have the time to care. Remove as much Navy speak as possible. You are going to have to decide WHAT you want to do in your new life and learn to speak that corporate language on your resume. A good place to start is by looking at the job scope listed in an advertised job notice. Regardless, you will need to research and target your resume around a career field and "transfer" your skills to your resume to FIT that specific job/profession. If you need additional education, skills, or certifications, you'll need to get those credentials to compete in your chosen job field. THE IMPORTANCE OF CREDENTIALS Unfortunately, you, and so many of my fellow Chiefs near retirement, lack "credentials" to back up their skills and achievements.....you see, the Navy trained us well as technicians, mechanics, managers and leaders. However, The Navy doesn't stress enough (or we don't listen enough) the importance of education/certifications (credentials) on the outside as a prerequisite for a great deal of jobs that our technical, management, and leadership skills, training, and experience qualify us for. This one hurts you the most Master Chief, unfortunately....you don't have your bachelors degree and it will hurt you in your job search for a management position, at least, making the kind of salary near what he Navy paid you while on active duty and that's the sad part, because in reality, you could run circles around most of the managers I work for, they don't know much about leadership either, but they have credentials...you need them too if you are going to compete at their level, we all do. Is a degree absolutely necessary to get a management/supervisory Job? Not always...but consider the alternatives: On the management side, without a bachelors degree, you could break-in to management in the retail/food/sales industries after starting out at a lower level, but management jobs in these industries tend to be low in salary compared to other industries. For example, Radio Shack and Home Depot hire a lot of ex-military and you could be running your own store in a few years, but, it pays somewhere in the Mid-to-upper 30s to start. If you use one of the military recruiting services, you could break in as a Supervisor/Forman somewhere if you are willing to move or relocate. I talked to one recruiter who asked me if I knew Spanish...? You are looking at about 35K/yr. if you want to move to Little Rock. Regardless, ask yourself this question: Do you want to crawl your way up from the bottom at age 45-55 starting at about 28K - 35K a year, or hire on at 55K to 75K a year and do a job worthy of your skills and experience? The difference will be your credentials. On the technical side in aerospace, you are either a technician or an engineer. Without a degree, you have the skills and credential to be a technician. Do you have your A&P? If you target Avionics Technician, you might find hourly work at companies like Boeing, Lockheed, Bell, or American Airlines. You might even find work as a Quality Technician or Technical Trainer. It all depends on what you want! I recently talked to a retiring ATC with his associates degree and he told me that an hourly Avionics Technician job is all he wants and that's fine. In another example, another AVCM friend of mine went to DeVry after he retired and got his Electrical Engineering degree. Lockheed recruited him a couple of years ago, and he's now working on the JSF project. He and I are currently enrolled in a Master's degree program here at Lockheed (100% tuition and books paid by company) because we are hoping to break in to management someday--both of us realize that without the proper credentials, we won't get to the management ranks. THE AEROSPACE INDUSTRY Unfortunately, without a degree, it's unlikely you'll see the inside of a board-room as a manager in the aerospace industry. From what I've seen, most of the management jobs in aircraft maintenance also require a degree and even an A&P. My research in the past indicated that most aircraft maintenance manager jobs wanted someone with a bachelor's degree in either maintenance management or technical management. Note: Many open job positions at Lockheed and other companies advertised on the internet say, "bachelors/Masters degree or equivalent experience required." All that means is "Outsider requires bachelors/Masters degree, current non-degreed employee may be promoted to the position if business need dictates." It doesn't mean you have a chance getting an interview even though you don't have a degree. As for myself, without my degree, I wouldn't have hired on here as an engineer (professional). The remarkable part is that I don't have an engineering degree. My degree is in professional aeronautics, but, because I have the skills/experience they need and I have the credentials (minimum B.S. degree), I was hired the day after I separated from active duty. Truthfully, No one cared that I was a Chief and a leader in the Navy for 7 years, my boss didn't want to hire a Chief, he wanted a Systems Engineer with more than 8-years experience testing avionics subsystems, on jet fighter aircraft. He wanted someone with experience in technical writing, and he wanted someone with a secret clearance. Master Chief, for somene with your level of people and management experience/skills, you need at least a bachelors in management and maybe even an MBA. With an MBA, you could break in to most any industry at a nice salary. There are some general realities about civilian life that I've come to accept....and the importance of credential is one of them. Bottom line, to break-in to aerospace and many industries, the minimum credentials are: - Executive Management: Masters/PH.D - Mid/Lower Management/Supervisory: Bachelors with experience, Masters highly recommended - Professional: Bachelors in area related to job opening, experience/achievement as the difference in pay. - Hourly: Highly skills driven, very specific, associates degree helpful but not required, mostly union jobs. CONCLUSION I know this sounds like a TAP class or a theses paper, but, I want you to know what I've learned and that until you see it in action, it is hard to believe. Hopefully you will begin to research your next career and target your resume around that field. You have a lot going for you in the way of skills, but, your problem is going to be in getting an interview so that you can convince an employer you should be hired as a manager/leader at a salary worthy of your experience/skills even though you don't have a bachelor's degree. It's a challenge if your looking for a salary equal to or near what your making now, it's not so bad if you are patient and willing to try and break in at lower pay in an industry that will immediately put your experience to work without a degree. To get an idea of what career fields are out there and what they pay in your area, go to a website called--Salary.com. Also, if you know of anyone with a bachelors degree who is getting out soon who might want to get on here at Lockheed, please tell them DO NOT PUT THEIR RESUME on the Lockheed job website, instead, email me at bradley.a.belisle@lmco.com FIRST. If they have a secret clearance and it's about to expire, have them get it renewed "before" they put in their retirement papers. Always a Chief, Good Luck! End Quote. |
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