Always Be Connecting! | Military Job Networks

The Challenge.

According to a year-old article on Defense One, What Americans Don’t Understand About Their Own Military, about only 3 to 4% of the US population serves in the military/industrial complex. That means Veterans leaving the service have a slim chance that the person across the desk interviewing them will understand anything they’re saying if they speak military.

Exacerbating this, as Recruit Military CEO and President Peter Gudmundsson has suggested, is the fact that civilian jobs fall into only 1 of 3 archetypes: making stuff, selling stuff, or counting stuff. You’ll notice lead stuff isn’t in there.

Lead stuff is a nice-to-have outside the gate, not a need-to-have. There are folks sitting in leadership roles on the organizational chart already. Often they’re the best whatever-they-are in their specialty or function or department, so they’re promoted to Boss, of which leadership is only a component.

This means you have to be able to convey to the hiring manager which one of these 3 archetypes you can do then: make stuff, sell stuff, or count stuff.

You have to connect the dots for them so they have a clear picture of who you are, what you can do for them, and what value that brings to them. On your resume and in your LinkedIn profile and interviews, you should Always Be Connecting! (The dots that is…)