Posted on Jan 4, 2014
How difficult was your personal transition back to civilian life and employment?
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Corporations claim they are hiring veterans. Among veterans the buzz says it is all hype. At the same time I have two friends who own businesses that want to hire only veterans and can't find anyone.
Posted in these groups: 
Employment
Transition
Employment Transition
Edited 12 y ago
Posted 12 y ago
Responses: 15
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Finding employment is not such a problem, but understanding the difference in culture and work ethic have created difficulty for me.
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SPC John Coleman
I got out 3 months back from iraq in 2005. got out for my wife because she couldn't handle the stress of me being deployed. it took me 4-5 months to be able to stand in a room full of people and not freak out. I got better moved to a new town got a job and went to college. I started at a shop busting tires and doing oil changes after fixing anything that broke on a hummer for 4 years. before was out of school I was in management and ive been a store manager for the past 5 years. I believe that getting a job comes down to who you are and how good you are at what you do. I've hired 4 vets trying to help them out. 1 was great, 2 were lazy, and 1 was worthless. gotta be good in this market veteran or not
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Hiring vets is hit or miss.
With that I had a hell of a time and struggled to do well through undergrad. But that was 2005 at the height of the war in an extremely liberal university. So you could imagine the idealistic youth and their silly little protests. Hated it.
Grad school was great. Being surrounded by professionals. Learned a lot.
The work world. I do well. I've done well and have been successful so far. But there are days where I want to kick people in the face, and I wish I was back at Drum.
Then I realize that my life really isn't bad AT ALL, and things are REALLY GOOD. and it goes away.
With that I had a hell of a time and struggled to do well through undergrad. But that was 2005 at the height of the war in an extremely liberal university. So you could imagine the idealistic youth and their silly little protests. Hated it.
Grad school was great. Being surrounded by professionals. Learned a lot.
The work world. I do well. I've done well and have been successful so far. But there are days where I want to kick people in the face, and I wish I was back at Drum.
Then I realize that my life really isn't bad AT ALL, and things are REALLY GOOD. and it goes away.
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Physically, it was quite easy. I was already hired by GDIT before I actually retired... Psychologically, it was a whole different experience for me... I retired in 2008, and just now beginning not to feel too "lost" about it...
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It wasn't too bad, I initially went into sales thinking it would be a slam dunk but sales is much harder than I anticipated so I graciously bowed out. The only real issue is that almost every single company made the big mistake of mentioning my retirement pay when we talked about pay and benefits. With all due respect its no ones business how much I get in retirement for my 24 years of service and if I am using Tricare Prime or not.
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SGT Jesse Walton
My transition was a difficult one, my mentality was to separate military from civilian life, and had to adjust to cilivian life and employment was the not same, and the workforce may not be as motivated as I was used to
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1stSgt Robert Tracy
Sign-up for Military.com's email list. They periodically send out the list. Also, you may still have access to your transition office where they maintain lists of local companies (usually.) Also, your county workforce center is rich in Vet Services. Workforce Centers used to be known as the Unemployment Office. Current Centers have Vet reps who can help in all sorts of ways: apprenticeships; vet friendly company lists; VA benefit use explanations and programs; and most job postings are to consider vets first.
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PO1 Glenn Boucher
I have seen it and tried it but most of the jobs are low end, low pay and no real future. Landscaping, painting, and stuff of that nature. If your looking more technical most of the positions say entry level but when you look at the qualifications its more like mid career level. I mean come on, what entry level programmer has 10 years experience in programming?
Recruit military is also supposed to be pretty good, and I think they are in larger cities but when they did their job fair in Oxnard, CA it was a complete joke, unless of course you wanted to be an associate at Home Depot or were under 40 and wanted to be a Prison guard.
I know I sound bitter, and maybe I am but I also know that you have to keep knocking on every door and when you have that door slammed in your face you just dust off and keep knocking. Don't settle unless you want to settle though and be willing to relocate if necessary.
Recruit military is also supposed to be pretty good, and I think they are in larger cities but when they did their job fair in Oxnard, CA it was a complete joke, unless of course you wanted to be an associate at Home Depot or were under 40 and wanted to be a Prison guard.
I know I sound bitter, and maybe I am but I also know that you have to keep knocking on every door and when you have that door slammed in your face you just dust off and keep knocking. Don't settle unless you want to settle though and be willing to relocate if necessary.
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