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You've heard it a number of times. A failure to plan is a plan for failure. When you're
transitioning from the military to the civilian world, no matter what your background, you
need to make an effective plan. In the previous video, I've also talked about the timeline
and some of the other resources. This time I'd like to talk about what your plan should
consider.
In the Air Force, we used to talk about this is as the 6P Principle: Proper Preparation
Prevents ***-Poor Performance. And obviously, if you're making this transition, you want
to make it successfully. Lots of folks have, you can too with a couple of simple things.
First of all, you need to think about what do you want to do. Sometimes that's very obvious.
You may want to do it exactly what you're doing in the military. Or you may want to
do something really related. It's not uncommon for me to talk to security policemen and marine
guards who are thinking that perhaps they'll go into the security field or executive security.
So that may be really easy.
On the other hand, it's also not uncommon to talk to a pilot who has realized that pilot
opportunities in the civilian world are very, very scarce, and who has no clue what he wants
to do next, and really needs to do a career search in-depth. Whichever of those or anywhere
else on that spectrum that applies to you, the first thing you need to do before your
resume, before anything else is figure out what do you want to do.
There are a lot of resources to do this online. There are a lot of things that you're transition
office can help you with. But your primary part of planning is to figure that out yourself
and have time to do the homework you need to, to figure that out before you start an
active job search.
The next thing that you want to do is think about where do you want to do it. Are you
going back to your hometown? Are you moving to a different location that you've seen along
the way that you loved? Or are you really open? Each of those choices make the big influence
on how you will do your search. It's much easier obviously in your hometown. You know
more people there. You're more likely to have connections that can help you. And you understand
the location, the areas, and you could find out more about the local opportunities. Conducting
a national search is much tougher because you have targets of opportunity all over the
country. So you need to think about that piece in your planning process.
And then you need to think about the timeline, how much time do you have before you can get
out? How much time can you afford to take after that so that you have a timeline for
all these activities? The timeline is critical to your plan also because it will drive how
much work you have to do every week, how much work you have to do everyday in your plan.
And you need to think about your finances. How long can you afford to keep going without
that paycheck?
Each of those things are critical to putting together your plan. But one of the things
that is so important and that we so rarely do well is to write down our plan. We know
there's terrific research that shows this that those people who have a specific goal
and a written plan to achieve it are far, far more likely to achieve that plan. So take
out your notebook, your iPad, your whatever and start by designing what do you need to
know. How are you going to answer those questions? Where are you going to find the information?
And what is your specific career goal? How will you get there?
Put it all in writing and then it is critically, critically important for you to look at from
the contacts you already have, how will you make connections in the civilian world that
will help you. These maybe through the people you know. That's always the easiest place
to start. But they also can include through a community college that you might be attending,
through something that in fact you're doing professionally, or in your community as a
volunteer. All of those ways are the easiest way to meet people.
If you are active in social media, you can join groups on things like LinkedIn that are
groups dedicated to your interests and meet people that way. Broaden and deepen the connections
by personal emails and eventually perhaps phone calls and then list those people in
your search for success.
And then, when you have this plan for what you need to do, actually do it. You know far
better than most from your experience the difference between the plan and the reality.
So you need to be sure that in your case, you have that plan but you actually are actively
engaged in working your plan.
It can be a tough transition. It can be an easy transition. It's up to you to make it
work for you, for your future, for your success.