It’s really frustrating as someone who is trying to help guys have a smooth transition when I get a message from a guy who is one or two months from ETS and asks me to look at his resume. There’s really no time anymore, and you are way behind schedule, but I really can’t blame you because no one has told you otherwise…until now!
12 Months, 9 Months, 6 Months, 3 Months
Alright, so I’m going to try and break this one down barney style so you can remember easy and share with your buddies that aren’t as far ahead of the power curve as you and aren’t reading this blog.
12 Months out
Answer the 4 Big questions:
- Are you financially ready to get out?
- Do you know WHY you’re getting out?
- Do you know where you want to live?
- Do you know what you want to do?
You may click on any one of those for details, and if you haven’t read it before, please click on each one now. Go on. I’ll wait…
Alright, good, so now you know how to answer the 4 Big questions. You have to take care of that 12 months out because everything you do next is going to be driven by those answers. Particularly if you’re not ready in #1, you’re going to need at least a year to square yourself away (some of you might need more than that).
9 Months Out
At this point, I want you to contact your recruiter. Yes, you need a recruiter. No, you are not going to have more success finding a job on your own. Look, there are a lot of shady folks out there and crappy companies. I only recommend Lucas Group because that was who I decided to work with and they were awesome. The bottom line is that these guys make a living out of finding you a job, they are the best at it. They understand the job market better than anyone, they know how to translate your skills, and they have inside leads to what jobs are out there.
You need to make contact 9 months out because of the answer to big question # 3. If you want to move back home and are severely restricted geographically, you’re going to need a long time for them to find you a job. You’re also going to relieve a lot of stress and pressure on yourself if you don’t NEED to find a job in the next two days.
6 Months out
Take some leave. Seriously, go on a vacation, enjoy some stress free time. I know you want to save it up for terminal leave, but shit is about to get crazy, and you are not going to be on vacation after you get out, you’re going to be starting a whole new life. So take a bit of that saved up cash and go spend some alone time with your significant other, visit the family, go on a cruise, whatever makes you relaxed, do that.
As soon as you get home, you need to start preparing for your interview. Read more about that here. Your recruiter will be calling you and inviting you to hiring conferences, and you want to be prepared.
3 Months out
Interview time! Hopefully you’ve already had one or two interviews, but if not, this is when you really need to start devoting a significant amount of time to interview preparation and conducting interviews. If you haven’t gotten any interviews and your location restrictions were too narrow, you should open them up to a region or a state at an absolute minimum. This means you might need to revisit the four big questions with your wife. If she was expecting to move back home near mom and dad, but you’re three months out and haven’t had one interview there, you need to open up that geography or you’re going to be in a financial shitstorm pretty quick.
1 Month out
At this point you better have a damn job offer in hand, know where you’re moving, and have a budget set up for your new job. Transition needs to be your full time job. Do not allow your command to pressure you to do your job, in a few weeks you’re not going to be around at all, and guess what? The military is going to survive without you.
Alright, I know that things may be different in your exact scenario, and there are a lot of good reasons for that, but I want to highlight a couple things:
- You need to be planning at least 1 year out
- This is an absolutely critical time in your life and you need to take it seriously, keep the lines of communication open with your family, and prepare ahead of time so you can adapt to the challenges you will face
Good luck!
-LJF
Thank you for doing this. I’m not a veteran, but have many friends who are. Clearly you care a lot about the cause and having only read this one article, I can tell you’ve got a lot to offer. I would encourage you to cross pollinate with Veteran Farmers if you have already. They too look to be doing a terrific job helping our returning veterans during what must be a terrifying and baffling time upon return from combat duty.
God bless. Tim