Changing careers is challenging. Sometimes, just knowing others are facing the same challenges is helpful as this lets us know that we are not on an island all alone.

COMMON CHALLENGES VETERANS FACE

• Young in career exit challenges:
  • Relatable experience
  • Working environment
  • Chain of command
  • What is and what isn’t acceptable in the work environment
  • Level of work direction vs. autonomy
  • Drive and self-discipline
• Older / more experienced in career exit challenges:
  • Age
  • Starting at the bottom
  • Routine
  • Civilian lingo
  • Authority / direction setting
  • Leadership styles
  • Being gone from home

WHAT HELPS?

• Understanding what a competency is and how your competencies transfer between military and civilian work worlds
• Realizing that you have to figure it out – you have a lot more autonomy
• Learning
  • Chain of command
  • Work environment
  • Terminology
  • In the civilian world, knowledge and ability to lead are key to getting work done, not chain of command (say what you will do, and do what you said)
  • How to prioritize
  • How to be home
• Being with the right company

HOW DO YOU DO THIS?

VETERANS

• A mentor is critical – seek out a mentor (businesses – assign a mentor)
• Use small victories to measure progress – learning something new, reaching a milestone, celebrating your idea being used
• Connect what you know from the military to what is relatable in your new career.
• Seek out support groups or military mentors who can help connect the dots who are in a similar career or field
• Talk to your supervisor about the way work was in the military vs. the way work is in the civilian world at your company.
• Ask if you don’t understand terminology. For example, after many years with us, one of our employees says, “I’m going brief them up.” It took a minute for the people we worked with to understand that a briefing was the same as their huddles; but now, everyone is ready for their briefing.
• Know that its ok to be cooperative and put in your two cents during meetings and planning. If you overstep, someone will let you know.

EMPLOYERS

• Recognize that there are differences between military and civilian work and leadership styles.
• Seek help in transitioning your employees.
• Encourage speaking up and open participation and realize that was not always allowed in military circumstances.
• Take time and be understanding.
• You have to understand there are concerns that a Veteran will have when transitioning into the civilian world and be open to talking to your employees about this.
• Ask as anyone else in your community who has made a similar transition – don’t be afraid to talk to others to help make those connections.
• Employers and employees – talk about goals of each other are do your best to align employee’s personal goals with the business goals.  You’ll be amazed at how successful both of you can become.

FROM MY PERSPECTIVE

Over the past nine years, our small businesses have hired multiple Veterans. Some relationships have worked out and some haven’t. We learned lessons with each person. The information above is based on some of their / my personal experiences. We want to share this because we feel it can help others. We have worked through a lot over the years, and I would not change any hire we’ve made as growth has occurred within all parties from all relationships.

A FEW THINGS THAT I’VE LEARNED THAT EMPLOYERS SHOULD DO:

• Help with terminology
• Be understanding of appointments
• Discuss goals
• Teach the civilian way to work and be patient in the transition
• Reward for expression of autonomy
• Provide feedback often and directly – be specific
• Be open to feedback from employees to you – sometimes we don’t handle things correctly and we need to be ok to hear that from our employees
• Help clients understand terminology differences
• Understand strengths and weaknesses – if you can put someone where they are strong, do that; but work on developing their weaknesses to become strenghts.
• Have a work plan – don’t let people get lost or become disengaged waiting for direction
• Provide more direction at first and back down as people become comfortable with autonomy
• Show as well as tell
• Make sure to create the proper work environment – people who have traveled their entire career are adjusting to not traveling and being home all the time. This is hard on families as people become set in their ways. Understand this. Understand that some people must “go to work” – not sit in an office.
• Learn the person – spend time with them.

IN SUMMARY

We will continue to try to hire Veterans first for any positions for any of our companies. We now have a mentoring system that naturally occurred where our longer-term employees help transition our new Veteran hires (all our hires actually). Our Veterans are critical to the mentoring process because they have relatable experiences and connections. To say that we are perfect here is far from the truth. To say that we continually work at it and learn is spot on. We could not be successful today without any of our employees, and to them – past and present, we are most grateful. And to all of our Veterans, we thank you for your service and look forward to building more positive relationships throughout the years to come.