FTA: Hiring managers who have not served in the military are often bewildered by the jargon used by soldiers and weapons specialists, said Becky Brillon, who heads a program at the Community Career Center in Naperville.

A military job title might be listed like this: "25 Romeo visual and media equipment operator and maintainer."

Well, there's part of your problem, then. If you can't spend 15 minutes to work out what the hell it is you actually did, and then write it down using terminology commonly used in your own friggin' industry, it's not the fault of hiring managers & recruiters to puzzle it out. When you fill out your resume, ask someone to "translate" your job for you - of course, if you have to do that, then you may actually have a problem that extends beyond this trite assessment.

FTA: Some military jobs, like a mechanic or technician, are fairly easily adapted to the private sector. But military credentials and certificates for other forms of training do not seem to carry much weight.

That's because you can't make the guy running the Fry-O-Lator run laps until he pukes for not wiping up the grease drops on the floor. The perception is that military training in non-technical areas follows a prescribed military formula that you simply can't execute in a civilian setting. It's easy to demonstrate that you know how to field-strip a friggin' engine. It's hard to demonstrate that you can interact with the handicapped LGBT employee who's just gone through the first round of transgender surgery without opening up the company to a friggin' lawsuit.

Maybe if they had the work ethic of Brian Dennehy, maybe they would get somewhere...

"I can tell you for a fact that definitely in my field in public relations and marketing, private-sector companies do not value (military experience)," Burrell said.

I sort of feel for the guy, but it is not an issue of not valuing the experience, it is the employer has different needs. Vets need to value and adapt too, It's a two way street.

As a side note - an article with a byline of Naperville IL does not engender much sympathy. That place is a bastion of suburban privilege and it shows in the guy's comments. He thinks he is owed something. Clue phone - he got something - a big foot in the door and apparently blew it. Most of us don't even get to the sidewalk in front of the building, much less a chance at a $170k job. HeCH, I would have taken one month of that pay and live for the better part of a year. Then again, I don't live in Naperville in a $750k house worth only $350k. But that is another story too.

"But five months after returning home to Chicago...

Like Chicago is a GOP stronghold.

You do the math you farking morons!

I was a Sonar Operator on a submarine. That doesn't translate to much of anything in the civilian world. It pretty much puts you near the same level as the guy who has a degree but gets work that is non-related to the degree. In other words you're getting a job because you're dependable enough to complete a 4 year degree or a contract with the military. But yeah that puts you to where you're just slightly more desirable than people with just highschool diplomas and no post education or experience. In a world where college degrees are becoming too abundant you might as well drop oput of highschool and go straight to work somewhere and prove your worth over time.

Large corporations may soon be building private "security forces" do deal with widespread malcontent directed (rightfully) at them. Interesting that a bunch of well trained soldiers are going to be returning soon desperate for work.

All I can say to returning soldiers facing tough choices: remember those are your fellow Americans, exercising the very rights you swore to die to uphold, on the business end of your weapons.

Got a clearance? Go get a contracting gig, make insane amounts of money, and stash it away to wait out the recession...

I wonder what Judge Smails would say here.

yogaFLAME: Shawshank Redemption 2?

First Blood (a.k.a. the original Rambo)

/pretty sure

There was a story on NPR about a medic who came back and couldn't get a job as even an ambulance driver despite all his lifesaving experience. Complained that his military certification wasn't worth anything in the civilian world.

Duh. The civilian world has their own bureaucracy with their own requirements and certifications. This guy went through the Transitional Assistance Program for returning vets. Seems like the very least they could have done for the guy was explain to him that he was going to have to go back to school and get re-certified if he wanted to continue with his line of work.

""You can come in, and slap something down that says, 'Here, the military says I can lead people. Give me a department and I will make it dance for you,'" Combs said. "I haven't had the opportunity on the civilian side yet.""

Well, someone that is going to "make them dance for me" spooks me a bit. You wonder how that guy would work out without the chain of command to back him up. This is another "tone it down" moment I think.

Everyone I know that was in the military and has security clerance has never had a n issue getting a job. Damn now I want security clearence.

ShawnDoc: FormlessOne: A military job title might be listed like this: "25 Romeo visual and media equipment operator and maintainer."

Well, there's part of your problem, then. If you can't spend 15 minutes to work out what the hell it is you actually did, and then write it down using terminology commonly used in your own friggin' industry, it's not the fault of hiring managers & recruiters to puzzle it out. When you fill out your resume, ask someone to "translate" your job for you - of course, if you have to do that, then you may actually have a problem that extends beyond this trite assessment.

We've hired several ex-military guys at our office, and that's one of the biggest problems with them. They view the way things were done in the military as being the only "right way" to do something. They don't want to use industry jargon, they want to cling to the military jargon for as long as possible. They get frustrated unless every process is fully documented and held rigidly to.

It takes a while to retrain them and get them to adjust to a world where everything isn't part of a giant bureaucracy. Some of them adapt and make good employees, others never do and end up having to be let go.

I have a friend that clings to his military way of issuing orders and just barks them out at his employees.

/employees are 16 year old high school kids

So we're gonna have a large surplus of military-trained armed individuals just when OWS is becoming more popular and being harassed by police?

/popcorn

mcreadyblue: I have a friend that clings to his military way of issuing orders and just barks them out at his employees.

One of the managers in our department (down the hall) is like that. he's an ex-Marine MP, bark out orders to everybody under (and around) him. Has the highest turnover rate in the institution. Thankfully, all I have to do is ignore him (different boss). Guy's a tool.

ShawnDoc: FormlessOne: A military job title might be listed like this: "25 Romeo visual and media equipment operator and maintainer."

Well, there's part of your problem, then. If you can't spend 15 minutes to work out what the hell it is you actually did, and then write it down using terminology commonly used in your own friggin' industry, it's not the fault of hiring managers & recruiters to puzzle it out. When you fill out your resume, ask someone to "translate" your job for you - of course, if you have to do that, then you may actually have a problem that extends beyond this trite assessment.

We've hired several ex-military guys at our office, and that's one of the biggest problems with them. They view the way things were done in the military as being the only "right way" to do something. They don't want to use industry jargon, they want to cling to the military jargon for as long as possible. They get frustrated unless every process is fully documented and held rigidly to.

It takes a while to retrain them and get them to adjust to a world where everything isn't part of a giant bureaucracy. Some of them adapt and make good employees, others never do and end up having to be let go becoming police officers.

\FTFM

There are a whole bunch of factors that go into this. I mean, take your average soldier: they do four to eight years active, get promoted to the NCO ranks, then decide they're gonna get out for whatever reason. Four times out of five they move back home to the same small town they left and then start freaking out because there are no jobs. For whatever reason they don't think about life after the transition - they just want to get out, and then when they're finally free, they have no game plan. I see this all the time over on the IAVA forums. Resume writing is also a huge problem for these guys - it's often hard for them to work out how to translate what they did into something that's intelligible for future employers, and the Transition programs aren't very helpful in that regard, either. There's also a sense of entitlement for a lot of guys - lots of them want to transition into GS jobs and then throw hissy fits about not getting "veterans preference" when they're not hired.

On the flip side, even when you can articulate your military time into corporate speak, it's often not counted towards anything. I lead a team in Iraq and when I got out and was looking for work, was continually told that I lacked management experience.

As for the military PR guy who can't get a civilian job, it's not necessarily because he can't effectively translate his military experience for civilians.

The major problem is that in the PR field, very, very few people have military experience. I was in military PR, and now I'm a civilian, and I've seen it.

Middle-aged managers who never served are reluctant to hire a veteran even if he has amazing experience and knowledge, because that manager is threatened by the military guy, who has probably done higher-level PR in the military. If the manager is a man who never served, then forget it --- he doesn't want see a daily reminder that he was too wimpy/privileged to join the military.

The second problem is that PR is very tight right now. Corporations usually trim PR staffs first, they stop hiring PR agencies. Plus, PR professionals are competing with legions of downsized reporters for those same PR jobs.

Now I have a lot of civilian experience, so I don't need to rely on the military portion of my resume, but still it sucks when it's not even acknowledged.

For those of you who cannot adjust and have slipped back into the warm, safe waters of the military-industrial-contractor complex, it's called riding the gravy train, boys.

Got a clearance? Go get a contracting gig, make insane amounts of money, and stash it away to wait out the recession...

/Really think you're "worth" that taxpayer money?
//Never forget whose money you're stealing.
///Ultimately, you're stealing your own future.

BadChipmunk: I lead a team in Iraq and when I got out and was looking for work, was continually told that I lacked management experience.

Did you ever have to interview someone for a position? Did you write budget forecasts? Did you have to terminate positions and let people go, either because they made a big mistake or because the company just couldn't afford them anymore? Ever have to work with vendors to decide on which item the company should purchase? Ever negotiate contracts with either vendors or customers?

No? Then you don't have management experience. You, at best, have team-lead experience, but only for a specific discipline.

I was an LPO in the Navy and a manager in the civilian world. The roles had very little, if any, overlap.

ShawnDoc: FormlessOne: A military job title might be listed like this: "25 Romeo visual and media equipment operator and maintainer."

Well, there's part of your problem, then. If you can't spend 15 minutes to work out what the hell it is you actually did, and then write it down using terminology commonly used in your own friggin' industry, it's not the fault of hiring managers & recruiters to puzzle it out. When you fill out your resume, ask someone to "translate" your job for you - of course, if you have to do that, then you may actually have a problem that extends beyond this trite assessment.

We've hired several ex-military guys at our office, and that's one of the biggest problems with them. They view the way things were done in the military as being the only "right way" to do something. They don't want to use industry jargon, they want to cling to the military jargon for as long as possible. They get frustrated unless every process is fully documented and held rigidly to.

It takes a while to retrain them and get them to adjust to a world where everything isn't part of a giant bureaucracy. Some of them adapt and make good employees, others never do and end up having to be let go.

Correct. My husband works for a retired sergeant as a civilian contractor, and the guy seems to think that because they are working on a base, civilian rules and laws do not apply. He talked to my husband about "being consistently late" at one point, when my husband had not once been late. Turns out he thinks that to be on time, you need to be at least 30 minutes early to your shift, unpaid. He also tried to deny him taking a couple of hours off for a doctor's appointment, tried to demand overtime without compensation, etc. He made a potential new hire come in for "training," unpaid and not yet officially hired, and when the guy asked if that were legal, he told him "if you want the job you'd better comply!" I'm surprised he hasn't been fired or gotten the company sued yet.

Plenty of marines are sharp, but if you want to apply your experience to the private sector, I imagine you had better make it clear that you understand the difference between the two working environments.

The Repubs are correct. All we have to do to stick a chicken in every pot is just cut rich folks' taxes to zero ...

You mean killing brown people for four to six years isn't looked at as proper work experience? Holy shiat who knew?

One HUGE part of the problem going into the service, is your first point of contact is a lying ass recruiter. They will tell a kid anything they want to hear in order to fill what ever slots they need. The NCO core is supposed to be (according to the propaganda) the gold standard of integrity. Yet, the first representative the young person will meet, is an NCO specializing in bending the truth to get the numbers. The kids (still in high school, mind you) are being told that the jobs they have to offer will set them up for when they get out. They hit schools in areas were jobs are often times the hardest to find.

My brother was told a combat Engineer would be able to work as an engineer in the civilian world. He looks for bombs on the side of the road.

I was told I could work at an airport afterwards, since I was going to be a radar operator. Air traffic control and counter fire radars are not even close to the same.

My daughter went into logistics being fed every silly lie you can think of (graduating basic training as an officer was one of my favorites.) She is still trying to figure out how she ended up in a warehouse, scanning bar-codes.

If they tell you your gonna be a light truck operator, chances are you're gonna be pushing a wheel barrow.

I tell everyone i ever see being stalked by a recruiter the same thing. Don't believe them. and especially don't believe the guys at the MEP stations. They are trying to fill quotas. that is all they want to do.

As a hiring manager in the IT field, I always look for people with military experience.

It doesn't matter if the experience is job-related or not, I've found that veterans usually have a better work ethic, don't tolerate or generate work-related bullshiat and do whatever is needed to get the job done.

Far and away the best employees I've had or worked with had 4+ years of service. Marines are the best for just getting things done, Navy is good for a process-heavy environment. Army puts up with the daily grind. Air Force... well. They make good coffee and usually have a good grasp of technology.

CaptainSmartass: BadChipmunk: I lead a team in Iraq and when I got out and was looking for work, was continually told that I lacked management experience.

Did you ever have to interview someone for a position? Did you write budget forecasts? Did you have to terminate positions and let people go, either because they made a big mistake or because the company just couldn't afford them anymore? Ever have to work with vendors to decide on which item the company should purchase? Ever negotiate contracts with either vendors or customers?

No? Then you don't have management experience. You, at best, have team-lead experience, but only for a specific discipline.

I was an LPO in the Navy and a manager in the civilian world. The roles had very little, if any, overlap.

Sorry, I should have clarified - I was looking for a position as a team leader. However, even later, after I'd worked as an individual contributor within the company for a while, when I sought a promotion to a team leadership position, I was still denied, based on the same line of thought. It's as though it never happened.

I suppose pride is another factor as well - I look back on my service in the Army as a high-stress, high-value period. I was doing a lot and responsible for more, so it's frustrating to come back to the civilian sector and have people ignore the experience because it lacks a perfect mirror in the corporate world.

Delightful Mister Horse: Got a clearance? Go get a contracting gig, make insane amounts of money, and stash it away to wait out the recession...

Those are drying up now too as both #Occupy and the Tea Party are crying for drastic spending cuts.

I feel bad for these guys, I really do. If its any consolation, lateral work experience is having a hard time translating too.

I've had insane conversations such as this:

Acme company: Do you have five years experience with the Acme internal inventory system?
Me: As your system is internal and proprietary not as such, however I have six years experience with RDBMS, legacy systems in COBOL, Delphi -
Acme company: Sorry but you're wasting our time. We needed someone with Acme experience. Thanks for stopping by.

Either they wanted to hire internally and needed to put on a dog and pony show or they're fundamentally retarded.

/I suppose it's sour grapes, but I wouldn't want to work for those idiots anyways

four12: As a hiring manager in the IT field, I always look for people with military experience.

It doesn't matter if the experience is job-related or not, I've found that veterans usually have a better work ethic, don't tolerate or generate work-related bullshiat and do whatever is needed to get the job done.

Far and away the best employees I've had or worked with had 4+ years of service. Marines are the best for just getting things done, Navy is good for a process-heavy environment. Army puts up with the daily grind. Air Force... well. They make good coffee and usually have a good grasp of technology.

Outfit I work for is loaded with ex-military. On the plus side, they'll do what you tell them to do, provided it's been explained to them how to do it (doesn't always happen).
.
/can always spot the jarheads, they make the most noise about having done the simplest task

Why don't they just move across the country to a farm and pick vegetables for minimum wage? God, veterans these days.

iollow: So we're gonna have a large surplus of military-trained armed individuals just when OWS is becoming more popular and being harassed by police?

/popcorn

Unfortunately, grabbing popcorn is about the only thing one can do. People are already mentioning all the vets being hired up as private security forces, don't forget about the vets NOT getting hired up for private security and are taking part of the protests. Things aren't going to get less ugly any time soon.

Please remember that they have worn the "Magic Suit" - simply wearing BDUs makes them qualified for anything, anywhere, anytime. Also increases a sense of entitlement and superiority.

I have to work with a number of entitled retired military in my office. Try talking to them about anything that isn't a war story - you can't - they live in their own world - and it is a very closed, authoritarian world. They will put themselves on a pedestal and act idignant if everyone around them doesn't worship the ground they walk on. They're the first to tell you about their command experience and how admired they were by everyone they took orders from and everyone they gave orders to. Ever ask a retired O6 "if you were so farkin great, why didn't they make you a General/Admiral"? I have, the silence was deadening and their attitude became very surly. Great guys. Very moral also - ask a vietnam era vet about their R&R in Thailand or the Phillipines - it usually begins with "Dear Penthouse"

Think it's bad for those who get that half-assed Transition Assistance Program? If you get medically discharged, you don't get that. You're disabled now. Work is for luckier people.