Navigate the transition to the civilian workplace

- Remember when you joined the military that very first day, and you knew you were going to be prepared and you were going to be given the tools and the skills and the resources to be successful and you were successful. But I bet you didn't imagine that this day would come. And this is the day when you leave the military career and you join the civilian workforce. I've worked with hundreds of veterans over the course of my time serving military, and I can tell you that while your transition feels unique and scary and full of fear, that your transition is very similar to the transition of most military. When you're in service, you are trained and conditioned to be combat ready, to be skilled with the tools and the resources to make quick decisions under high stress situations. When you're a civilian, our situations are different. And when you take that uniform off, many of the veterans I've worked with say the biggest struggle is creating a narrative, creating a story that makes sense for this next part of your career that may or may not dovetail exactly with what you did. When you take your uniform off and become a civilian, I can't tell your story. Your story isn't on your clothing, like it is in the military, so you're going to have to learn a new set of tools and a new new set of skills. And what I'm going to share with you in this course is the idea of personal branding and it is self promotion. And I get that that feels uncomfortable and it feels like it might conflict with the idea of service before self and those values that you were taught. But self-promotion and personal branding is not bragging. It's not about being arrogant. It's about understanding your value proposition, what makes you relevant and compelling to someone who wants to hire you or partner with you or invest in you and how you're going to build a career using tools and skills that you design for yourself. In this course, we're also going to talk about the importance of networking. And I can imagine that right now you're getting uncomfortable, because networking is not a topic that is usually widely accepted with my military friends, but it is about relationship building. And in the civilian world, we build relationships, we hire on relationships. Who knows about you and what do they know about you? What values do you bring that they consider important? We're going to talk about how to build networks that work for you. And we're going to talk about the fact that a resume and a cover letter are tools. They're tools you need in your toolbox, but they're not going to make that job offer show up at your front door. They are tools you need to have and if you build your brand first, they will be very successful tools for you to use. You're moving from a culture that is very values-driven into a culture where values look different. We're going to talk about values. We're going to talk about what is important for hiring managers when they're evaluating candidates. We're going to tie it all up at the end and show you how to develop a marketing strategy that works for you, that gives you the control and the dignity to have a meaningful career after your military service.