CareerChange #JobHunting #NoDirection
Understanding the Motivation
After a decade in the military, you transitioned into civilian life with new IT certifications. While your friend’s success inspired you, the reality of hundreds of rejections has left you disheartened. Now, having lost touch with the skills you learned, you find yourself starting from scratch. This journey has left you questioning your direction and doubting your self-worth. Let’s explore some avenues you might consider to find fulfilling and satisfying employment.
Assessing Skills and Interests
✅ Recognize Transferable Skills: Your military background has provided you with valuable traits such as discipline, leadership, teamwork, and problem-solving. These can be highly transferable to various civilian jobs.
✅ Identify Interests and Strengths: Reflect on activities that engage you. What tasks did you enjoy during your military service? What are your hobbies? Interests often guide us toward fulfilling careers.
Exploring Job Options
With no defined direction, starting with broad and accessible roles can be a great first step.
Entry-Level Jobs
✔️ Customer Service: Jobs in customer service can be a great entry point. They hone communication skills and often provide growth opportunities within the organization.
✔️ Administrative Roles: Strengthen your organizational skills in roles like administrative assistant or office manager. These positions are the backbone of many businesses.
Blue-Collar Jobs
🔧 Warehouse Worker: As you mentioned, warehouse jobs are plentiful and don’t always require specific skills. They can be physically demanding but also extremely rewarding and stable.
🔧 Retail Associate: Much like warehouse work, retail positions offer stability and essential experience in customer interaction.
Online and Remote Work
📱 Freelancing: Websites like Upwork or Fiverr provide platforms for offering various services such as content writing, graphic designing, or virtual assistance. This can be great if you have any niche skills.
📱 Remote Customer Support: Companies often seek remote workers for customer support roles, which can offer flexibility and opportunities to work from home.
Leveraging Education Benefits
🎓 Utilize the GI Bill: The GI Bill can be a powerful tool. Consider identifying schools with strong veteran support programs.
Veteran-Focused Programs
🔍 Skills Bridge Program: Designed to allow transitioning service members to gain civilian work experience through internships and apprenticeships.
🔍 Hire Heroes USA: Offers personalized job coaching for veterans and military spouses, specializing in translating your skills into civilian terms.
Building Self-Confidence
💬 Join Support Groups: Engaging with fellow veterans who have successfully transitioned can provide both guidance and moral support.
💬 Continued Learning: You don’t have to go back to school full-time. Sites like Coursera and LinkedIn Learning offer affordable courses that can build your skill set at your own pace.
Conclusion
Finding your career path without a clear direction is challenging but not impossible. It’s about recognizing and leveraging your existing skills, exploring opportunities, and continuously building your confidence through small, manageable steps. And remember, seeking advice and guidance is a strength, not a weakness. Good luck! 🚀
What do you value in your work? Or would like to have in your day to day?
Clear assignments and tasks? Or creating your own scope of work?
Do you like managing humans or more solitary work?
Do you appreciate autonomy and not being micromanaged?
These are some questions I had to ask myself to figure out what I could tolerate day to day for my working life.
Would you be open to running your own business one day in a new field?
I think taking advantage of the GI bill is a great idea. You could dive into something new or find a course of study that augments the skills you have now.
That’s a great place to start though. You could stock shelves and figure out what you do and don’t like about the job. Then you search for something new after that. If you’re unsure what to do, the best thing to do is just DO something. Collect information. Try things. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ve learned valuable things about yourself and your priorities. And maybe you’ve made some friends and professional references along the way.
Sounds like you can do whatever the heck you want. I always found the electrical union interesting. Carpentry or masonry. You could go to school for something management flavored, or accounting, or whatever.
The IT field is rather saturated and undergoing a reckoning that might or might not end well at the moment so that’s not a suggestion you’d get from me.
If you’re former combat arms you could look into armed security for the short term
If you like working with your hands, maybe look into a trade….
I think mentioning what your military job entailed would help; you might be surprised that someone knows a career that matches it
If anything why not try going into the police force? It would take some time though since you’d need to go through the academy and whatnot
A couple friends and I were very much in your shoes a few years ago. Book that really helped: Designing Your Life by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans, based on a class they used to teach. You can look up snippets of Bill talking about the ideas on YouTube. Highly recommend the book though because it has exercises to help you think thru what you want out of life, to give yourself some options.
I hope that helps you! Something that stuck with me: we don’t have to choose ONE path. We can try out different paths at different times in our lives. You’re at the perfect place to do some exploring.
You can use your GI bill for a trade school. Most programs are a year max, some even as short as 6 months. Depends on if you like working with your hands/physical work though. If you really have NO idea what to do, you can do an Electricity course, there’s a lot of variety in the careers you can get in the electrical trade.