Career Planning Provides Crucial Foundation for Transition

Special Section: Going Ashore

By Rebecca Perron,
Military Newspapers of Virginia

Each service member’s career most likely started with a trip to the recruiter’s office to learn about military life and the various jobs they were interested in and would qualify for. This type of research, also known as career planning, was an essential beginning to their career. Such planning is also a necessity for life after the military.

To help service members start down the correct path with preparing for their career after the military, Fleet and Family Support Center (FFSC) developed the Career Planning Workshop. The three-hour workshop helps participants make career choices through a self-assessment that is based on life goals, personal skills, abilities, preferences and work values.

Paulina Thompson, an employment educator at Naval Station Norfolk’s FFSC, explained that career planning is an important start to the transition process. Career planning can identify and broaden their options and opportunities before they pursue the wrong path.

“The first question we ask is ‘what is it you want to do?’” Thompson explained. “Typically, people will say either they want to do exactly what they are doing now, or they will do any job that pays the bills. For those who want to do the same, we help them identify opportunities, and for those who’ll do any job, we help them narrow their focus, because shooting for everything is not realistic.”

While career planning helps clients broaden or narrow what they are looking for in the next stage of their career, Thompson said it is a process that should ultimately lead to job satisfaction.

“Sometimes there’s a disconnection between the job that is going to pay the most and the job with the most satisfaction,” Thompson said. “For those who aren’t really clear where they want to go, the workshop will help direct them. It can be hard for the employment educator to strategize what the client should do if they do not know themselves.”

So FFSC employment educators like Thompson work through a process that includes three factors.

“First we ask questions that determine what type of person they are,” Thompson said. “Then we ask what is important to them, things that are non-negotiable for them to achieve job satisfaction – job security versus pay requirements – and what are their values. And the third, we use the Holland self-assessment to look at interests and abilities – things they do well, and things they do well naturally.

“When we put these three things together, your personality type, your values and your interests and abilities,” Thompson continued. “We look for what I call the overlap of those three components. That’s where your ultimate career satisfaction is going to be. We then use the Holland book to help match these components to the perfect career opportunity.”

Thompson said she coaches people to not discount a career options because they are not familiar with it or do not have the degree requirement to qualify for it.

“I tell people not to discount that, just because they don’t have a degree today,” Thompson said. “We are looking at what options lend themselves to their personality, their values and their interests and abilities. Now they can begin to research these options.”

This research could include gathering information on the Internet, getting a part-time job in that field before transitioning or performing an informational interview.

“An information interview is talking to someone who is in that field today,” Thompson explained, “asking questions such as what is your day like, how did you get into this field, what do you like, and what do you not like? After going through the informational interview, then they have a clear understanding of what that job entails. They may decide it’s something for them, and they want to spend the time and the effort to pursue what they is needed to qualify for the position.”

Regardless of whether the member decides to go straight for the ideal job, finish a degree first, or go for interim employment while they work to qualify for that perfect job, the first step for post-military employment should be career planning. FFSC resources can be an invaluable tool to assessing career options and choosing the best career path the first time.