With 30 years of candidate placement behind me, the rear view mirror is full. One thing that is clear to me but may surprise you is that half of all military to civilian job seekers end their job searches by going to work for a company they never heard of and/or in a job they did not even know existed  back when their searches began. Fortunately for them, they took the time to look behind Curtain Number 3.

Don’t get me wrong – Curtains 1 and 2 have much to offer. Open Curtain 1 and you will see all of those familiar companies – Proctor & Gamble, Amazon.com, ExxonMobil, General Electric, Corning, et cetera – excellent organizations with strong consumer products brand recognition. Open Curtain 2 and there you have all of those well known job titles – production supervisor, sales representative, engineer, tech rep, consultant, et cetera – common and likely positions for separating military personnel.

Maybe one of those jobs with one of those companies will indeed be the best job for you, but if you stop there you may be disregarding half of your options.

Consider this:

Know anything about USEC, Ecolab, Lutron, Gore, Clipper Windpower, or Johnson Controls? These are excellent companies and industry leaders but they market primarily to clients in business and industry, not to Joe Average Consumer and they may remain unknown to you. These and others are among those “invisible” companies that hire hundreds of military to civilian job seekers every year.

Or this:

There are many jobs out there for which you are qualified or trainable but are unknown to you currently, such as Process Improvement Analyst, Sourcing Agent, Account Specialist, and Customer Engineer. Although perhaps unfamiliar to you, hundreds of those and similarly “invisible” ones are filled every year by separating military personnel.

Moral of the story? Do not fear the unknown. Investigate the familiar but consider what may be behind Curtain Number 3!

Filed under: Military Career Transition, Military Job Seeker Advice