by Heidi Russell Rafferty of VFW Magazine

Choosing the Right Civilian Career

Match your values with the right company and you have a surefire formula for career success. Today, many companies target veterans as employees.

Out of the gate, 33-year-old Capt. Holly Turner-Mosack knew she'd made a mistake with her first job choice after exiting the Army in 2004.

It seemed like a good opportunity at the time. Her résumé sparkled with front-line wartime leadership experience as a company (personnel and finance operations) commander for the 82nd Airborne Division in Fallujah, Iraq. A headhunter successfully wooed her for a management post. But Mosack, naïve to the civilian workplace, quickly discovered her leadership style didn't mesh with her employer's.

She was out of there within eight months. "I didn't know my qualifications in the civilian world," she says. "I took the job, but it wasn't a good fit for me," adding that it was "hard and scary" to admit that she had to start over again.

Mosack's experience mirrors thousands of exiting veterans who are at a loss when seeking employment. A June 2006 survey by CareerBuilder.com revealed that 25% of hiring managers said it was hard to find veterans meeting their job requirements. And 28% of veterans reported they were actively seeking another job. More than one-half of the rest said they would be open to another position if the opportunity was right.

Emerging Corporate Contingent

Mosack's situation, however, had a happy ending. She now helps other veterans make the same connection she did. She's in charge of an aggressive military recruiting campaign for Advanced Technology Services (ATS) of Peoria, Ill., a factory services company.

ATS is part of an emerging contingent of companies that recognize the values that veterans bring to the workforce. The company has increased its veteran hiring goal from 22% of the workforce to 40%, say Mosack and Jim Hefti, vice president of human resources. ATS projects a total workforce of about 3,000 by 2008.

"We give them a chance," Mosack says of her former brothers-in-arms. "Coming in, they might not know maintenance or may have never worked in a factory. However, they might know hydraulics or electrical engineering. Do they require handholding? In the beginning, yes. But a few months down the road, they're on the right track and ahead of their peers."

It sounds like a formula, but business coaches agree a veteran's employment success largely hinges on three key things: The company has a propensity to hire and embrace ex-military; it provides needed training; and it offers a host of veteran/employee support programs.

Former Army Ranger Kelly Perdew was the 2004 winner of NBC's hit show "The Apprentice 2," and is co-managing director of Angel-Leveraged Capital, a venture capital firm in Los Angeles. He's also author of Take Command: 10 Leadership Principles I Learned in the Military and Put to Work for Donald Trump (Regnery Publishing Inc., February 2006).

Perdew says it pays off to heavily research the employer. "Find out if people from the military have gotten jobs there," he says. "It can make a world of difference. You could either be the person breaking new ground or meeting friendlies who are already in place."

Sorting the Differences

Before accepting a job, a veteran first must understand conflicting emotions surrounding the differences between military and civilian workplaces, says Dr. Billie Blair, an organizational psychologist who also is president and CEO of Leading and Learning Inc., a Los Angeles management development firm.

It takes three months to a year for a person to "heal" from the transition of one environment to another, she says. It's even harder for a veteran, who is accustomed to a team environment where people depend on each other for their lives.

The problem is, most companies aren't aware of this unique transition, Blair adds. "This leads to frustration and a desire on the veteran's part to quit," she says.

The corporate world is structured around people's selfish motivations, says former Marine Jim Stroup, management consultant for Bosporus Business Consulting in San Diego and author of Managing Leadership (iUniverse Inc., April 2004). Conversely, the military "is an altruistic calling," Stroup says. This leads to further disillusionment.

"It's hard to promote that attitude in civilian life," Stroup says. "You don't join General Motors to save the free world. People join these firms to make money. So the civilian managerial class has an attitude that people aren't naturally motivated to work."

Retired Army Col. Rick Kiernan found that to be the case in his first job as director of press relations for the 1996 summer Olympic Games in Atlanta. He'd hoped to find the same objectives and goals to which he'd grown accustomed in the Army. He was wrong.

"People's values were not more than just money-oriented," Kiernan says. "It was every man for himself. The military environment is based on integrity, trust, teamwork, selfless service. Those things are foreign to the corporate world."

His next job was more closely aligned with his values. He's now vice president of strategic communications for MPRI, a government contractor in Alexandria, Va., that supports national security. Most of MPRI's 3,000 employees are veterans.

Finding the Fit

Veterans will adjust more easily if they interview the company rather than the other way around, say those who have made the jump. Marine Gunnery Sgt. Troy Pronto, who retired after 20 years of service, joined ATS in June as a site coordinator specialist in Cherry Point, N.C. He'd interviewed with four companies, but ATS stood out with a "culture of excellence," he says.

"They actively pursue military people-those who demonstrate trainability and a willingness to overcome obstacles," Pronto says. "The other companies I interviewed with were not as committed to getting the job done."

Here are other signs of a good prospective employer:

. They're willing to train. Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway (BNSF) of Fort Worth, Texas, regularly hires veterans who don't have a college degree and lack practical work experience, says Connie McLendon, manager of military recruiting. BNSF immerses them into railroad industry training to fill positions in locomotive engineering.

They attend a conductor program at a technical training center in Overland Park, Kan., and learn operating roles and transportation techniques before continued field training. The railway hired 750 veterans in 2005. By last October, it had hired more than 1,000 for the 2006 year, McLendon says.

Ben Marx, an Army transportation captain who did tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, recently went through BNSF's comprehensive training program. When he finishes, he'll be a front-line supervisor based in Seattle.

"You learn the ins and outs-every component of the railroad," Marx says. "It's multi-faceted, which was one thing similar to the military. You perform your duties but are always multi-tasking with something new."

. They have strong support networks. General Electric (GE) of Piscataway, N.J., prides itself on providing coaching and support to its ex-military employees, says Susan Kratch Schiren, human resource manager for GE Military Initiatives. GE hires more than 600 veterans per year, with a focus to go higher, she says.

Schiren heads up GE's Junior Officer Leadership Program, a two-year rotational program. She also oversees 30 recruiters whose sole focus is ex-military. Non-union GE shops have wide open opportunities, where a large number of former enlisted soldiers work, adds Schiren, a disabled Vietnam-era Air Force veteran.

"We aren't like a lot of companies that hire veterans for the sake of hiring veterans," she says. "We look for leaders who want long-time careers. We do everything to coach them and mentor them so that the retention rate is high."

Ty Remington, an engineer officer who was in Iraq in 2003, says his transition to GE's Junior Officer Leadership Program was seamless.

"The program is composed of all former military," Remington says, adding that the career opportunities at GE are vast. He's in the Global Development and Strategic Initiatives Group in Albany, N.Y., which develops projects for customers that use GE equipment.

GE has become the poster child company for supporting veterans. Schiren regularly consults other companies on best hiring and retention practices. For example, participants in the Junior Officer Leadership Program are assigned mentors who are program graduates, as well as "buddies" who help them with the initial job transition. They also can tap a network of any of the graduates, and they get together socially.

GE's support reaches beyond career goals, Schiren says. "I tease them, because they decide to finally start families. I joke that my flower budget is bigger than my travel budget," she says.

Employees who must deploy receive the difference between their military and GE salaries for up to three years. GE also has the Operation Home Front program, to provide help while they're gone, and the Operation Yellow Ribbon program, which does the same when they return home.

Schiren personally sends teddy bears to their children. The bears are clad in the uniform of the employee's service branch. Each uniform pocket also contains a photo of the child's parent.

Remington advises that during the job search, seek out companies that hire people whose values are closely aligned with yours. The rest will follow.

"The people here are just like those in the Army-top-notch," he says. "Everyone takes pride in their work and goes the extra mile. They're not just out for themselves. It's a very unselfish environment. I guess I picked well."

Heidi Russell Rafferty is a freelance writer based in Evans, Ga.