Last week I posted about the importance of identifying skills when preparing a job search.  While this is crucial for all jobseekers, it is particularly important for veterans because of the translation from military experience to civilian experience.  Once these skills have been identified you can use them to assess the industries and organizations that look for those skills and begin the process of creating a targeted resume.

Developing a resume can seem like an overwhelming task for anyone, but especially for veterans.  Many veterans haven’t had a need for one and they must first understand what a resume is designed to do before they can sit down and start creating one.

I discussed this topic with Linda Williams, one of our career coaches who has worked with over 100 veterans to help them create a professional and effective resume.  These individuals were separating from the military with the goal of transitioning to a civilian role.  As Linda says, “a resume is simply a document that is meant to get you a conversation with a potential employer.”  According to Linda, the most important questions that need to be answered are:

• How can you get an employer to recognize the advantage in hiring you?
• Does the resume display a balance between military experience and civilian skills?
• Is the resume formatted in a way that will speak to an employer?
• Does the resume combat any perceived biases those in the private sector may have regarding military experience and what you, as a veteran have to offer?

How does coaching help?

Linda knows that the value for the veteran is in the one-on-one conversations that allow him/her to identify a direction so that the resume will be highly targeted.  “Veterans must be able to highlight their experience in a language that is specific and most meaningful to civilian employers”.  In addition, the veteran must be able to speak to this experience and that is where the coaching is invaluable.  As Linda says, “since the resume is meant to get an interview or a conversation, understanding the language of the resume and being able to speak to it is the crucial element in creating it.”  She goes on to state that coaching helps because the career coach will:

• Explain to veterans the significance of having a couple of different, highly targeted, resumes.
• Show the veteran how to layout the experience in a structure an employer will relate to.
• Prioritized the significance of experience so that it makes sense and is structured in a way that works in today’s job market.
• Help the veteran learn how to talk about accomplishments rather than responsibilities. Simply listing responsibilities is no longer effective.  These responsibilities need to be tied to outcomes and effectively explained in the Career Summary and Accomplishments sections of the resume.
• Help veterans not only create the document, but help them translate the language so that they have a clear, confident understanding of the resume and have learned how to speak to it.
• Career coaches understand the civilian marketplace and know what works when designing a resume.

As Linda knows from her experience in working with veterans, many have highly focused training, often providing stronger skill sets than those with a civilian education.  The key to a great resume is translating this specific education so that civilian employers can see right away that this is a huge advantage.

The resume is what determines whether or not you get an interview.  Once you get the conversation, being able to confidently speak to the experience the resume demonstrates is of utmost importance and that ability is honed through the process of working with a coach.

At this point, you have identified your skills, experience, and targeted employers who need these.  You’ve  gotten it on paper with an understanding of how to talk about it.  So what do you do next?  In my next post, the discussion turns to understanding how to execute a successful job search.

Understanding that having the confidence to market themselves effectively in the civilian world can be a major obstacle for veterans, I am going to break that down into the different components of the job search and how each impacts this confidence.

Mastering each of the components in this series of posts is important when running a job search campaign.  Career coaching not only educates veterans on the tactical parts of the search, but the process of working with a coach on these individual areas gives veterans a feeling of confidence that is difficult to achieve without that personalized attention.

Identifying skills is harder than it sounds, particularly when it comes to the differences between employment with the military and employment in the private sector.

I spoke with one of our Career Coaches about this topic, Brenda Dilts.  Brenda has firsthand knowledge of the challenges for veterans transitioning into the civilian world – she is a retired Senior Master Sergeant from the Air Force.  She agrees that many veterans will tell you they are unsure of where to start.

To confidently and effectively market themselves, veterans must start by understanding exactly what they have to offer.  Brenda explains that “one thing veterans may not be able to realize on their own (simply due to a lack of experience in the civilian world) is that although skills that have been learned throughout their career may not have the same labels in the private sector, the experience and requirements of the position are often very similar.”  Many times veterans have a military perspective that makes it difficult to understand how to use their skills in a civilian world, which doesn’t necessarily have the same structure.

How can coaching help?

Brenda says “career coaching is invaluable when it comes to identifying skills.  Coaches help veterans see things from a different perspective by helping them explore questions” such as:

• What are the similarities between the job criteria and what you’ve already done?
• What are the differences?
• What experience do you have that directly relates to these job requirements?
• How do you breakdown a job description into bullet points and correlate past activities to each point?

Brenda states that “coaching helps veterans better understand the experience they possess but then takes it a step further.”  Creating the list of activities that make up their overall experience helps veterans explore things like:

• What careers might require these skills?
• Which skills do I have that I enjoyed doing?
• Which skills do I have that I acquired because I had to do them and not because they provided me with any satisfaction?
• Which skills do I have that I would like to continue to use and how do they create value for different career options?
• Which ones do I want to be sure not to have to do again?

Working with a coach to answer these questions helps veterans (and all jobseekers) determine what type of job to pursue.  And a targeted job search is the most successful kind.

Another reason Brenda believes that identifying skills is so important is because for veterans, this may be the first time in their career they’ve truly had choices as to what comes next.

In the military, there are often few choices.  Veterans may have had general options as to the types of jobs they could do or they may have just been assigned to do them.  Even if they chose the type of work, they had little to no say in what their daily work environment was like.  They didn’t have a choice in the location of their job, what the work atmosphere was like, etc.  This is very different in the private sector and veterans may not have thought this through simply because they are unaware of just how much control they actually have.

Brenda says, “for many veterans, identifying and assessing these things will help them gain a clear knowledge of not only what type of job they’d like to find, but also the culture and atmosphere they’d like to work within.”   This can be a foreign idea to veterans.  They may have had little control over those things before and it can make a difference in their long-term job satisfaction.

In addition, veterans may have lost the sense of purpose they had by being in the military and that makes the process of identifying new career options even more important.  How else can they seek employment that will continue to provide a sense of satisfaction and fulfillment without the understanding of the choices they have?  Or without investing the time in analyzing skills, likes and dislikes?

Identifying skills and areas that these skills can be applied is an important first step in any job search process.  In the next post, I will discuss the sometimes overwhelming task of creating a civilian-friendly resume.

As you may know, CareerCurve is in the midst of a best practices case study for returning veterans seeking employment.  This study includes 2 hours of no cost career coaching and a completed resume for each participant.  I wanted to spend some time explaining in further detail our approach, what this program will do for veterans and why recently separated job seeking veterans should register for the program. 

I’ve enlisted the help of Bob Scudder, a retired Navy Captain, who played an integral role in the development of our veteran job search program.   Bob is also one of our career coaches and based upon his own transition, he understands the true value of one-on-one, personalized career coaching from all perspectives.  I’ve interviewed him on the subject of moving from a military role to a civilian career and the particular challenges that this transition entails.  That interview, combined with the feedback we are receiving from the participants in our case study, have led to what has turned into a series of posts discussing the veteran job seeker’s unique challenges, what Bob, as a coach and 24 year Navy veteran, does to help build our veterans’ confidence in promoting themselves as strong candidates in the job search process  and how career coaching pulls it all together.

Understanding that not everyone can or will participate in this program, our goal is to provide added value through our study for all veterans while we work to create expanded career transition offerings. Using the expertise of coaches like Bob to jumpstart more and more veterans in their job search in a very high-touch way will not only reduce the time and frustration experienced by so many job seekers but will also result in a better “fit” for the veterans in their new careers.

Bob explains that ”one of the biggest hurdles in job seeking for veterans is a lack of confidence in their ability to navigate the job search process.  Building confidence is the area where coaching has the greatest impact.”  As Bob says, there are many key aspects to the search such as identifying and translating military skills to match the civilian marketplace, creating a great resume, networking, etc. and with the increased confidence in tackling each of these pieces, veterans can and will get to the place they need to be in order to effectively market themselves to an employer.  And confidently being able to relay the depth and breadth of knowledge a veteran possesses is the real key to getting hired. 

Here are a few of the many reasons a high level of confidence may be lacking:

Differences in military life versus civilian life can leave a veteran feeling as though he/she is speaking a different language.

Lack of experience in the technical areas of the job search like resume creation and interviewing.

Lack of understanding/appreciation of the transferability of skills from the military to civilian jobs.

Many veterans haven’t needed to identify, let alone access, their network of contacts in the past.

How does coaching help?

Bob states that the term emotional support is commonplace when it comes to helping veterans adjust back to civilian life.  He goes on to suggest that “while career coaching IS a form of emotional support, it is also much more than that.”  Having someone you’ve created a professional relationship with coach you through the mechanics of job seeking not only helps at a technical level, it builds confidence through discussion.  Effective career coaches do not do the work for the veterans but instead provide a roadmap and explain the steps and reasons behind the process.  This in turn enables veterans to see themselves for what and who they really are – experienced, skilled assets to an organization.   The career search process enables personal growth in how the veterans view themselves and this is possibly the most powerful element when meeting with a potential employer.

The series of posts being created will discuss the various aspects of running a successful job search campaign for veterans and how it all ties into the increased confidence that is so critical to landing a position, the right position, in the civilian world.

Our next conversation will be on the topic of identifying and translating skills, another extremely important aspect of transitioning back into a civilian role.

Free Program Providing 2 hours of 1 on 1 Coaching & a Completed, Professional Resume For Eligible Veterans – Registration Begins at 8am Tuesday, April 17th!

CareerCurve is proud to announce the launch date for our free coaching program for Veterans.  CareerCurve has partnered with JSTN to provide 2 hours of free, one on one coaching plus a completed, professional resume to the first 50 qualified Veterans who apply. The application process is set to launch April 17, 2012. 

CareerCurve, as a workforce solutions organization with vast experience in the career transition arena, is aware of the emotional difficulties that come along with job seeking.  We also know, as I posted previously, that the challenges for Veterans are unique and can prove to be even more trying due to additional components such as learning to navigate corporate America, learning to translate and effectively communicate skills and abilities both on paper and during interviews, as well as managing all the emotions that come along with transitioning from a military environment into the civilian world.  Because we also know that 61% of our candidates value coaching more than any service during the job search and because we have coaches who have come from the military themselves to deliver this coaching, the development of this offering gives us the opportunity to use our experience to truly help our Veterans.

We have the support of DEA (Direct Employers Association) and Univers.Jobs and our Free Career Coaching Program for Veterans is a pilot program available to the first 50 eligible Veterans who apply.  We hope this will lead to expanded offerings that will allow us to use our experience to reach even more Veterans currently making the transition to the civilian workforce.

Please click here for specific details about the program and to find out where to go to apply on April 17^th to become one of the 50 Veterans who will receive this valuable assistance.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with all the publicity surrounding hiring veterans.  But do you understand why this is so?  The initiatives being created, the programs being implemented and the financial incentives for hiring veterans go beyond a moralistic desire to help simply because it is the right thing to do. 

Take a look at these statistics.

• The unemployment for vets is 12% – quite a bit higher than the national average
• The  unemployment rate for vets between the ages of 19 and 24 is 29%
• 300,000 more vets will be coming out this year
• Our military represents 1% of the US population
• The last 10 years represents the longest period of time in our history where we have been actively at war/conflict  

 No one is suggesting we give all of our jobs to vets but there ARE important reasons the job search can be more challenging for them.

• Vets lack the skills in translating their military experience, skills & training to civilian roles
• Employers lack the skills in understanding how military experience, skills & training translates to their job openings
• Employers have a subconscious bias against hiring veterans because of perceived cultural fit issues despite feeling it is the right thing to do
• Many employers lack pro military hiring programs
• Most employers vocally support hiring veterans but in most cases, they just don’t do it
• Veterans are becoming demoralized by their long job search and their inability to secure meaningful employment
• The veteran problem is compounded by slow job/economic growth

I’ve written before about reasons to hire vets and the challenges in interviewing them, but I’m happy to change the topic a bit to solutions for veterans and employers.

We are in the midst of a lot of creative problem solving and some really neat offerings are being developed, both for employers and vets looking for work.  In fact, CareerCurve is in the process of developing our own pilot program (scheduled to launch April 17, 2012) for veterans.  We will be providing an introduction soon.

In the meantime, check out this site that connects employers with job seeking veterans.  Milicruit is using the latest technology to hold virtual career fairs.  Companies can market all they have to offer and speak in real time and online to veterans looking for work.  Another neat tool offered by Direct Employers Association  and The National Labor Exchange is their Military Crosswalk.  Using the Military Crosswalk, veterans can enter their military occupation plus the .jobs suffix to find relevant civilian jobs. 

Can you provide any other creative solutions you’ve seen either for employers or for veterans?  Please share any valuable resources you’ve discovered in the comments and don’t forget to come back to read the introduction to our program.

More than ever companies are concerned with how to keep their top talent.  Among the reasons employees leave are lack of career progress, poor work/life balance, not feeling valued by the company, and bad bosses. 

One retention strategy is to promote from within.  This is a great idea as it addresses a number of retention goals in one shot.  Promoting from within shows loyalty to your employees.  It demonstrates the value an employee has to your organization.  It also provides a path for career progress and creates great bosses. 

Or does it?  Are you actually setting your employees up for failure?

Anyone who has done any research on retention is familiar with the adage “Employees don’t leave bad jobs, they leave bad bosses.”  So if your company promotes from within, how could you have bad bosses?  After all, you are careful in your promotion process.  You evaluate and assess and only advance your highest performers.  

But what do you do after that?  How do you develop and train your managers once they get that promotion?  What are you doing that could be preventing your promoted managers from being successful?

Just because an employee was a high performer in his/her area doesn’t automatically mean he/she will make a great manager.  The abilities required to be an effective leader often differ greatly from those needed in the role the employee just left.  Yes, knowing the previous role inside and out and having excelled there is important, but often, soft skills that haven’t been required before are integral to doing a good job as a manager.  Some of these new necessary skills include:

Objectivity – the new manager is now in a role where being objective is mandatory.

Diplomacy – managers often have to deliver difficult messages. 

Delegation – high performers tend to take on a lot of responsibility.  This is usually why they are high performers.  Delegating means relinquishing control and this can prove to be a difficult adjustment.

Managing Conflict – conflicts will arise and the manager is now responsible for resolving them.  This is probably not something the manager did on a regular basis.  He/she may have even been part of the conflict in the past as opposed to being the one who fixes it.

Business Acumen – managers have to understand the company’s long term goals and realize how the short term objectives fit into these goals.  Then they have to get their team to understand this.

Understanding of Corporate Culture – As an employee, the manager probably didn’t spend a lot of time analyzing the culture but rather adapted to it.  As a manager, the responsibility shifts to understanding it in order to get the team to buy into it and perform accordingly.

Communication – Not only does the manager need to understand the corporate culture and goals but he/she needs to effectively relay them to the team in order to achieve not only the objectives, but alignment with corporate philosophy.

Consider that previously the manager was responsible for his/her part in a project and although most of these skills were undoubtedly required on occasion, the actual work produced was the most important focus.  Even if there were stumbles with these soft skills, the work produced trumped these issues.  Now consider the change for the manager when the work he/she needs to produce IS these soft skills.

If your organization doesn’t pay attention to the magnitude of this promotion, everyone loses.  The company no longer has the high performer in the previous role, the new manager may feel lost and unsure, the team could feel as if they have no leader, and ultimately, everyone is disengaged and starts seeking greener pastures.  Your “Promote from Within” retention strategy just became an anti-retention strategy.

What does your company do after promoting high performers?  Is enough emphasis placed on the difference in skills required to do the job well?  What could the organization do differently?

In memory of many and in honor of all, THANK YOU!

In a previous post I listed a few of the challenges for both hiring managers and ex-military when it comes to transitioning to civilian work life.  I also very lightly touched on whether or not there is any responsibility on corporations to make extra efforts to bridge the language barrier that exists between the two so that it is easier for veterans to get hired.  Rather than get bogged down in a debate about corporate responsibility, I thought I’d just list some of the personality traits of those formerly in the military. Then you can decide for yourselves whether or not it’s worth it to make some extra effort at learning how to communicate with and understand what these candidates have to offer.

Understands Leadership.  Those in the military have witnessed the dynamics of leadership and understand how to manage people in order to achieve results, even in the worst of circumstances.  A lot of their training was lead by example which means that whether  they did the leading themselves or followed their leaders, there is a healthy respect and understanding for leadership in general.

Team Players.  Although there is a huge difference in the command and control culture of the military versus the collaborative culture of corporate America, military personnel are still ingrained with a huge sense of responsibility toward their colleagues.  This means these candidates can be natural team players.

Quick Learners.  Those in the military are often forced to learn things very quickly and under high pressure.  This can result in the development of an accelerated learning curve.  A faster learning curve means less time training.

Efficiency.  Similar to the way these candidates have learned, they have also had to perform effectively under high pressure.  This translates into efficiency.  Military personnel have had no choice but to get the job done not only correctly, but also quickly.

Tolerance.  Those in the service have a familiarity with diversity.  They’ve had no choice but to work with and for whoever happens to be serving next to them.  This experience makes these candidates sensitive to cooperating with different individuals.

Tenacity.  Veterans have the experience of performing their duties in less-than-perfect circumstances.  This means they have most likely overcome and experienced success even under the worst of conditions.  Having experienced triumph over adversity can make them great employees when things are difficult because they are less likely to give up or give in.

Appreciate Receiving Feedback.  Former military personnel are used to receiving direct feedback.  They have learned to absorb what they are told regarding their performance without taking it personally.  Because of this, they not only handle the feedback well, but appreciate being told how their performance aligns with expectations.

Give Honest Feedback.  Because of the experience explained above, you may also be more likely to receive honest feedback from veterans.  The culture in which they’ve been taught means they won’t have qualms about telling it like it is.

Yes, it can be challenging to interview former military and understand both what they’ve done before and why it is relevant to the current role.  Often, the difficulty in understanding is only matched by their ability to explain it in non-military terms.  But before you even get into detail on background, consider what personality traits you will see from a former service person that match what you look for in a future employee.

When you sit down and think about the characteristics you’re searching for when looking to hire top talent, how many of these fit the bill?  Are these traits valuable enough to make it worthwhile to do a little extra work when it comes to interviewing ex-military personnel?  Are there other positive attributes you’ve seen when hiring Veterans?

The number of retired military entering the workforce continues to rise.  This presents challenges for both those coming out of the service as well as those doing the interviewing, and for many different reasons.  It seems to me that there is a lot of pressure on veterans to adapt to civilian life but is there any responsibility on HR or hiring managers to bridge the gap?  I don’t know if there is a responsibility per se, but former military have a lot to offer in the workforce and aren’t companies missing the boat if they don’t invest a little effort into learning how to interview ex-military?  I’m not trying to suggest that these folks should get special treatment; I do think it makes sense to keep some things in mind so that companies can reap the rewards of their experience and veterans can have a better chance at employment. 

Here are just a few of the challenges presented when former military personnel interview for new roles.

•  Identifying skills.  Because the interviewees may have little or no experience with civilian jobs it may be difficult for them to see how what they’ve done is relevant to the role they are pursuing.  Asking the right questions or phrasing questions the right way can go a long way in making this experience visible.

• Translating skills.  The interviewee may know that what he/she has done is a good match but lack the vocabulary to explain it.  This is something you can work through together through the course of the interview.

• Assumptions about experiences.  Interviewing someone from the military may make you want to assume certain things, such as the fact that this person has been in combat and may be affected by that.  Fight the urge to interview differently because of these assumptions.  It is generally believed that only about 10% of troops have seen combat.

• Not team players.  Due to the hierarchal structure of the military it is commonly thought that veterans don’t make good team players.  While the structure IS different than in business, there is a lot of teamwork in the military.  From the time they enter basic training, these interviewees do things in groups. 

• They lack technological savvy.  This is not necessarily true.  Think about it this way:  our military spends a lot more money on training and development than corporations do.  In addition, veterans may have global knowledge of technical trends that could be very useful in the corporate world.

Veterans transitioning to corporate America face a unique set of challenges, but so do those doing the hiring.  What have you found challenging when interviewing former military personnel?  What have you found helpful?  Being aware of just a few of these can make it easier to bridge this gap and in a future post I’ll discuss why this is so important.

A while back, I wrote a couple posts about managing Gen Y.  The first post was around the idea of understanding this generation before you attempt to manage them.  The second was about how you could adapt your business to incorporate some of things that are important to these so called “trophy kids” and how doing so may turn out to be a win-win for everyone. 

We are at a unique place in history when you consider the wide range of generations who need to work together and “play nicely in the sandbox”.  While each generation has its own unique requirements and desires, as I mention in this post about the mature workforce, the best place to start is by getting an understanding of the individuals that comprise each group of employees.  Knowledge is power and this knowledge can certainly make you a better manager.

On that note, my posts about Gen Y prompted some reaction and are generating conversation.  I was approached by a Gen Y blogger who wanted to share some insight about his generation.  Below you will see his thoughts on Gen Y and performance reviews. 

The workforce is changing, and just as a company would adjust its business model to a changing market, organizations must rise to meet the challenges of managing freshest batch of workers: Generation Y.  A big question posed to human resources professionals of late has been, “Can Gen Y handle performance reviews without the sugar coating?” Kyle Lagunas from Software Advice says the answer is yes.

Some analysts have dubbed Gen Y “trophy kids,” and believe we grew up being rewarded for our endeavors regardless of scale or success. Many assert that we cannot handle life in a less-than-adoring work environment. However, contrary to popular belief, we don’t need our hands held or our egos stroked regularly. Though there is some truth to the “trophy kid” complex, leaders and managers need to understand things from a Gen Y perspective before they can get the most out of our performance reviews.  

Here’s how we see it:

1. We don’t get it. Performance reviews are important, but are executed so poorly. Dust off your thinking caps, modernize your reviews, and capitalize on your most valuable asset (your people).

2. Lose the sugar coating. You weren’t the only ones suffering through the recession. Our idealism, though strong, has been tempered. If our performance can improve, give us strong, actionable feedback with measurable goals.

3. Connect with us. Regular feedback doesn’t have to be complicated. If you don’t have an instant messaging client in your office, get one. They’re a great tool for maintaining informal lines of communication (which we love).

4. Positive reinforcement isn’t a bad thing. Whoever demonized trophies should think again. Rewarding good performance can be as simple as an “Atta boy!” or “You go girl!” sent via email–and they go a long way in giving Gen Yers a sense of accomplishment.

To read this article in its entirety, check it out on Software Advice blog: http://www.softwareadvice.com/articles/hr/performance-reviews-gen-y-perspective-1062011/

____________________________
Kyle Lagunas
HR Analyst

So what do you think?  Can Gen Y handle performance reviews?  Have you changed your style to adapt to this generation?  Does Kyle have it right?  Keep the conversation going in the comments.