How Can a Military Person Transfer Career Capital to Civilian Life?

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00:00:03.440 | Hi, Kyle.

00:00:07.080 | My name is John, and I'm a serving military member

00:00:10.520 | that will be released medically over next year.

00:00:15.400 | My question to you is regarding career capital.

00:00:18.640 | And specifically, do you have any advice or tools

00:00:22.840 | that I could use to evaluate my career capital

00:00:26.160 | so I can transfer as much as I can when I transition

00:00:30.120 | to my civilian life?

00:00:32.000 | Thank you very much.

00:00:34.920 | I get this question somewhat frequently

00:00:37.760 | from people who are nearing the end of their military career

00:00:40.360 | and thinking about the transition.

00:00:42.000 | And I usually have two points to make.

00:00:44.640 | The first point is what you're talking about here

00:00:47.520 | is the right thing to be talking about.

00:00:49.160 | That is, thinking about assessing the career capital

00:00:51.640 | you have already built up in your current military position

00:00:55.280 | and being pretty accurate about that

00:00:57.440 | so you can target what jobs you go for.

00:00:59.760 | I think that makes a lot of sense.

00:01:02.160 | You want to avoid, if possible, starting over

00:01:04.480 | from a career capital position after you leave the military,

00:01:07.720 | saying, let me just go start with a completely unrelated job,

00:01:10.400 | because you probably have built up some valuable skills.

00:01:12.840 | The right way to get that information

00:01:14.440 | is just look at who has gone before you.

00:01:18.400 | People with similar positions within the military

00:01:21.680 | who left in the last four or five years, where did they go?

00:01:24.680 | You've got to go out there and gather this intelligence

00:01:26.920 | from other people coming out of your same specialty,

00:01:31.040 | from your same rank, et cetera.

00:01:32.960 | So for example, let's say you're in the Navy.

00:01:35.760 | Let's say you're a nuke and you're about to leave.

00:01:39.640 | And you might say, OK, where do nukes go after the Navy?

00:01:42.040 | And you see there's a couple options here

00:01:43.840 | that are pretty common.

00:01:44.800 | There's some government options.

00:01:46.360 | There's the NRC, maybe the NSAA.

00:01:49.520 | There's some places that make sense.

00:01:51.120 | Then there's some industry options

00:01:52.520 | that might make sense, OK, you go

00:01:53.920 | work for the nuclear industry, et cetera.

00:01:55.680 | And maybe there's some consulting or sales options

00:01:57.840 | where they like that particular skill set.

00:01:59.800 | And then you have that information.

00:02:01.260 | Now you know these are positions that value what I do.

00:02:05.000 | So gather that intelligence.

00:02:07.160 | The second point I make is it's often frustratingly difficult

00:02:12.280 | while you're still in the military

00:02:14.520 | to try to acquire new career capital

00:02:18.280 | in a self-directed manner.

00:02:20.320 | So I get questions about this a lot

00:02:21.840 | from people who are frustrated.

00:02:23.280 | They're in their last year or two of service.

00:02:25.560 | And they're like, oh, I want to build up skills now.

00:02:28.720 | That's going to be very valuable when I leave.

00:02:31.720 | And they're stymied by the bureaucracy.

00:02:34.160 | They're stymied by the lack of flexibility.

00:02:36.600 | They're stymied by the fact that they

00:02:38.640 | are trying to build up cutting edge computer IT

00:02:43.840 | skills to get this job right out of the military.

00:02:46.000 | But they're still using Commodore 64s

00:02:49.440 | for this particular Admiral scheduling system.

00:02:52.440 | And you have to put punch cards into the thing.

00:02:54.440 | And it's so out of date.

00:02:55.440 | And it's not relevant.

00:02:56.760 | That's just the reality often of very large bureaucracy.

00:02:59.800 | So that's my other piece of advice I give

00:03:01.760 | is do what you do in the military very well.

00:03:05.040 | Whatever program you're in, do that program very well.

00:03:08.040 | Serve with distinction.

00:03:10.040 | Build up whatever skills are available.

00:03:12.320 | Match that to the extent possible

00:03:14.280 | by asking what other people have already

00:03:16.160 | done who have left in similar situations.

00:03:18.640 | But other than that, you have to maybe relax on thinking

00:03:21.600 | what's going to come next.

00:03:22.920 | Once you leave the military and you have that next position,

00:03:25.840 | now you're going to have all that autonomy

00:03:27.680 | that you didn't have before.

00:03:29.040 | Now you're going to have that flexibility that you didn't

00:03:31.440 | have before to start asking the questions of, OK,

00:03:34.560 | what now do I want to learn?

00:03:36.120 | What's the path I want to navigate here?

00:03:38.400 | What's the skill I could start learning now?

00:03:41.560 | So you sort of relax these last couple of years.

00:03:43.760 | Do your job well.

00:03:45.360 | Feel out the market.

00:03:46.240 | But once you're out of the military and have that job,

00:03:48.760 | now it's time to put the career capital foot back down

00:03:51.640 | on that accelerator.

00:03:53.040 | Now it's time to start asking, what should I do now

00:03:57.400 | that I can do almost anything?

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How Can a Military Person Transfer Career Capital to Civilian Life?

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