EP 10: Deployment to Employment: Strategies for Mil2Civ and Veteran Job Hunting

Welcome to the Military to Civilian Career Transition Power Hour, your indispensable guide on the career journey from Mil2Civ. Dive deep into the world of transitioning from military to civilian careers with your host, Cheryl Cross and a lineup of active duty service members and veteran guests who bring their firsthand experiences, expert advice, and inspiring stories to light.

Meet Our Guests:

• Autumn Wheeler is in the thick of her military to civilian career transition, or as we like to call it, is "in the SOUP", where she is navigating the complicated terrain of what she wants to do post-military.  Autumn's spirit and dedication resonate through our discussion, providing a beacon of hope and direction for many transitioning veterans.
• Richie Lampani, a recruiting expert and advocate for all things military-career, brings practical and useful advice to empower veterans. Explaining what a 'contingency' recruiter or headhunter does, you will gain insights that cut through the complexity of the civilian job market. 
• Shawn Welsh, veteran and podcast host represents the voice of the recent veteran, navigating the 1-4 year post-military journey. Shawn's story, while not uncommon, serves as an example for those who want to 'strike out on their own' and carve their own path. Shawn Welsh owns his unique thumbprint in the civilian sector, and like us, is giving back to the Veteran Community with his own show, the VET S.O.S. Podcast. 
• Carin Sendra, with over five years of experience post-transition, Carin speaks truth to honor in sharing her personal transition story. She talks about what could be done differently and how we all can make an impact for those leaving the military and the 'constant' transition to c

If you or someone you know would like to be a guest on the Military to Civilian Career Transition Power Hour, let us know. Go to www.xchangepodcast.com and click connect. A producer will read your request and get back to you. Thanks for your support!

Learn more about host, Cheryl Cross and her book, "CIVILIAN MISSION: The 3-Year Guide for Military Professionals Planning Civilian Careers" available for order online.

Transcript

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Thanks for listening to the military to civilian career transition power hour 1 hour of tips from experts and real stories from people just like you. For those thinking about what lies ahead, for those going through the job search and those who have paved the way to their next career after the military, these professionals are dedicated to helping you move forward successfully to the next phase of your career after the military. Welcome to exchange. You. Welcome to the show. This episode is kicked off by the person that is in the soup, flying by navigation instruments, trying to figure it all out. And I found a really good one. Her name is Autumn Wheeler. She spent 20 years in the US army. She's currently satcom in Colorado Springs wanting to stay in Colorado, use that big sexy clearance that she has to do a great job. But the issue is she's got a year. So what are you doing in this year of planning? I'm curious what you're doing and what is happening to you. You shared a story of somebody who wanted a couple dollars from you. Why don't you go ahead and say hi and tell us where you're at? Autumn this last year has been interesting. I actually started my what we call exit strategy from the army about five years ago when I encountered a problem if I didn't have a plan. So I started the plan and it's all come to head this last year. So this summer I got my bachelor's in computer networks and cybersecurity. What I'm currently working on is studying for my CYSA plus certification exam to re up and maintain my security plus the network plus certifications. The other thing is I'm going to be doing one final army course, which will be army space control planners course through the Army Space and Missile Command. And then that should help me either maintain a job within the DoD contractor sector for that, or allow me to stay within US Army Space and missile command as a GS civilian. Not entirely sure. So the plan is more schools until I can do my skill bridge. Currently applying for skillbridge programs. I'm applying early apparently, but I need to process my packets by February for a May timeline and then the skillbridge will be from May until August. August I finalize everything. I start clearing in September. Mid September I start terminal leave. And then that's it. That's it. Sounds like a lot. So I tell this to everybody. Getting a job is a full time job, and leaving the military after 20 years is a lot. You have a lot more than just getting a job. How are you handling? Are you balancing it? Or have you even started thinking about it. It's stressing me out immensely, and I worry immensely because I've been planning for so long and doing everything for so long that I'm hitting milestones early. I'm not hitting anything late, thankfully, but I'm hitting them early. And then I have a lot of waiting time. So this summer, I finished a degree. I bought the house. I transitioned my family to our forever home, and now I'm waiting. And I am stuck waiting. And I don't like the hurry up and wait and transitioning my mind to civilian and transitioning my life to we don't know what's happening next. We don't know what's going on next. We don't have the guaranteed paycheck. It's nerve wracking, to say the least. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. You mentioned that there's a saying, a word that you're all using is limbo. You are in limbo. Explain what that is for those who don't know. So, limbo, when you're retiring or separating from the army is everyone in your command knows that you don't have much time left. If you're a senior or in a senior leadership position like I am, you are either still expected to operate at that level with the general military authority, or you're being asked, why are you two still here? You can't really commit to anything, but you really can't not do anything because you're not authorized yet to go to all your appointments, to go to the VA, to disappear for job interviews. You're not at that point yet, and you're just waiting. Did you get any pressure to stay? Yes and no. So there was a point about a year ago where they were asking staff sergeants in the army to extend out past 20 years to 22 years. They also, at that same time, said that if you are able to retire, you can submit your retirement packets two years ahead at your 18 year mark. I submitted my retirement packet at 18 years. It was approved at 19 years. I had a couple of other battle buddies who did the extension out two years in the hopes to make certain first class I had no desire to, and my order of merit list was too high to even be considered available for promotion promotable. But with my mos and the amount of people in the mos, that wouldn't happen till maybe three years from the point I hit the list. And by that time, I would already be retired. And I was also tired. I am so very tired. Was joking with my husband. Tell me the joke that you know. It'S time to retire when your new soldier in your unit is the same age as your niece or your nephew or your daughter. Yes. So my niece turned 18 this last fall, and there's a soldier in my unit who signed in that turned 19, will be turning 19 in the spring. I was like, you're old enough to be my kid. It's time to go. Go. Time to go. As you try and think of the future, and I know a lot of folks that are in your position, it's hard to navigate because there's just so much to do, so much to do in the last year. I know there's a lot of fear. Let's not speak to the fear. Let's talk about your plan. It sounds like you got ahead of the plan, but how are you able to. And like you said, there's so much waiting. Like, hurry up. Wait, I've hit my mark. Wait. What if things don't work out? What's your plan b? So plan a is DoD contracting. Plan B is GS within Us army. Plan C is federal employment. And that is the plans. Plan D and F require me to sell my house and move out of state. And we do not want to think about D and F. We just bought the house. We want to keep it. Yeah. So when you're stuck to a location, it makes your job searching kind of difficult. And as you know, in the government contracting world, contracts are won in certain time periods. They may not have the same job now or then or when you're available that they do now. So it makes for kind of crazy making time when you're looking and I tell people all the time, do your research, you're like, yes, I want this job. It's like, okay, hold on. That specialist job might not be available in nine months when you're available to hit the go button. I did notice because I've had my LinkedIn profile for about five years when I initially started this lovely transition. Every August through September, Lincoln recruiters are more rampant for DoD contracts, and that's because the annual contracts are coming up for reevaluation and renewal and companies are bidding for new contracts. I noticed it really bad this year because I'm within my year that I was getting recruiter emails and messages daily, if not multiple, a day during that time period. And then November hit and everyone's like, yeah, you're too soon, you're too early. It's not worth it. And then, crickets. You have an open to work banner on your LinkedIn. I'm going to give you another option on my website, which is xchangepodcast, the letter xchangepodcast.com. You can go and get a new banner that gives your availability date. Now, LinkedIn doesn't like that. They're like, oh, they're taking themselves off the recruiter hire, blah, blah, blah. But whatever, let them handle it. Three months out, put your damn green banner on. But use my banner because what's happening is, and it's not, people are like, oh my gosh, I get to talk to all these recruiters. Well, let me tell you something. As a recruiter, I love talking to people. I do it all day long. But if I'm talking to a year ahead of time, it's a very short conversation. I'm going to rely on you to keep in touch with me rather than me keeping in touch with you. And it's just challenging. It's a far better conversation if you can plan when you talk to people, especially recruiters. So recruiters, for those of you listening, and for you too, autumn, we're trying to fill jobs 30, 60, 90 days max. So I need to fill jobs now. And it's great to meet and talk with you, but I want to talk with you at the right time. So I'm going to quiz you now. All right, so you've been planning, you're a planner. I love it because you are a military professional. You are somebody I wrote my book for. You are a planner. As you plan. I'm curious, when do you think you should be talking to recruiters or are you talking to staff? Because you're obviously networking. You're very receptive to when I reached out to you. How are you monetizing your time on LinkedIn right now? So my LinkedIn profile, like I said, was created five years ago. So initially I started connecting within the organization that I was working with at the time, which was JCSE, joint support communication environment, connected to their LinkedIn profile, connected to the active duty personnel in the doc, civilians and contractors within the organization, and kept on that going with every unit that I've ever been assigned to. More recently, I've been looking at companies on LinkedIn, and if they are interested in it or I see a job posting, I scroll to the bottom of the job posting and there's a little button that says, let the company know that you're interested in working for them. So I click that button, I follow the company, and because I follow the company, I can now see their social post. So some of the companies that I really enjoy are those that are doing humanitarian work or community involvement. So as they share their posts, I interact by liking or commenting or sharing something that I enjoy. Currently posts that I'm re sharing are job fairs like uso or military operation home front type stories. The companies that I'm interested in are supporting those also, so they're giving back to the military and I'm trying to still give back to the military, so it's in line with my focus. How much time are you spending on LinkedIn? A day? A week? Right now I spend about maybe an hour on LinkedIn. My LinkedIn sends me notifications if somebody messages me. So I'll pop in on LinkedIn, see who messaged me. A lot of it is recruiters who just want to know to send me something. Sometimes it's college. There's a lot of hey, do your masters with us emails, and I'm not doing my master's yet, not until I get hired. They can help me with that because my ta will run out and I don't want it to run out while I'm halfway through a master's program. That'd be bad. I'm not in LinkedIn unless I absolutely need to be. I'll pop in if I see a notification. Hey, somebody reshared your thing or messaged you directly. Are you working with any of the veteran organizations, veterati, american corporate partners, hiring our heroes? Any of those folks I'm working with hiring our heroes? Hiring our heroes helped me most recently with revamping my resume. And they're supposed to be contacting me again about how to correct or fix my LinkedIn profile. Some of the things that I do with my LinkedIn profile is if I find a job that I like and the skill doesn't match my profile that I know I have, I'll add it to my profile. What do you mean you'll add it to your profile? What do you every job posting within LinkedIn, they'll have five or more core skills that they're looking for, such as in my field, computing, windows administration, networking, security clearance, communication, people skills, random generic skills. You can add those from in LinkedIn to your profile and you can associate them to a job field that you've worked in the past. If you're missing that skill on your profile because you didn't know that you could do it when you were setting it up the first time, are you. Also doing this on your resume so it's reflected? Yes, because it was already on the resume. I just didn't have it on the LinkedIn or vice versa. One of my struggles is I'm incredibly humble. Singing my own praises of what I do has been a challenge. It's hard military. We just do it. It's just our thing. Do everything. I can do that. I can do that. I hear that a lot. And you can and you could. But when it comes down to skills, and it comes down to. So let's talk a little bit about government contracting, because that's really my wheelhouse. When an LCAT is written from an RFP of a contract that has been won, it's very important that the person that they're hiring matches the skills that is in the RFP or the LCAT. So job descriptions are written specifically from what is called the LCAT, and the LCAT comes from that contract. So people are like, well, I have six years of experience and you need ten. It's like, well, we really need ten years of experience because that's what's in the contract. That's what this company won and that's what they are staffing. So I hear a lot of this when I'm working recruiting in the DoD spaces, but I have almost five years or I have almost six years or I have almost this. It's like, I hate to say this to you, okay, if you're a couple months shy, we can go back and see, but it really has to be. So when you're getting those original, maybe. Thank you so much for applying to this ABC job at XYZ company. It may be that you are not matching in terms of time, what's on those basic qualifications or those additional qualifications. So I want to share that with you because you're truly in the soup and you're going to start hitting the apply button in about five or six months. So you're going to learn this hard skills, hard times. And if you aren't able, autumn, to put together what you did in a very concrete way, work backwards, think of the systems you worked on. Think of the technical aspects of your job. Because if anything, I know you could probably build a house. I say this to people all the time. I can do so many things. Do you want me to build a house? You might not want to live in it, but I can pretty much build it. All right, I'll follow a few YouTube channels. I've seen it done. I know I can do it. And that's how we enter in. And it's funny, too, because companies want us. Oh, women don't apply for jobs that they're. Men will apply for things that they're only 30% good at. It's like, hold on. In the government contracting space, everybody has to have what's on that piece of paper or they don't get through the gate. Now, in other jobs where maybe you aren't utilizing your clearance or it isn't federal dollars, they have a lot more room, a lot more wiggle room, so to speak. But for government contracting, it's very specific. So I'm glad that you're doing that. Make sure that your resume and your LinkedIn also have the same, but always boil it down to technical skills. What did you do on a technical basis? What software, systems, what hardware? Break it down. And if you can explain it that way, if you worked with dollars, if you worked with numbers of people. So look at percentages. Dollars as in the dollar sign numbers, as in put numbers in your resume, break it up and see how that looks and feels, and then you'll start going, oh, I did that. Oh, I did that. Oh, that's right. And I worked on that project before that project, so good luck with that. Thanks for letting me interject. What is the most challenging part for you right now, as you fly by instruments, as you're in the soup, knowing the. Proper times? Because I've been so forward thinking and I've done some things so incredibly early, it's been difficult because my skill bridge program, I've had soldiers that didn't do anything. They were supposed to start their skillbridge in September and they hadn't applied to a single company. That made me nervous. So when I started looking at things and I went to the briefing, I didn't actually go to a briefing. I went directly to our local skillbridge program coordinator. I was like, when do I need to start doing this? He's like, now. He's like, for May dates, you need to have your packets in by February to us in your local command. So that's three months prior to me starting my CSP, backdating from that date. That's five months to give me time to find the company, get approval from the company, and get their letter of understanding and their letter of, yes, we will hire you once it's approved by your local command. I have five months to do that. That being said, I started everything during holiday season, and I don't think I will get a word in from anybody until later this month. But there are some companies I want to share because I think a lot of people think they go through Skillbridge and they're offered. It's an automatic job. It's not so some companies are not going to give you the opportunity to apply to a job that they have at their company. But a lot of folks, and I've helped companies develop skillbridge programs. It's what I do as an HR consultant, one of the things. But they come in and they're like, well, I'm going to get a job, right? It's like, no, we can't promise you a job. You're active duty and the company that I was working with was a DoD contractor. They could not offer you a job. You're still active duty. Even though you're on your Skillbridge terminal leave, you're still a client of theirs. So they can give you the opportunity to apply for a job, which you would then start when you were available, off the books from the army, the Navy, all of those branches. But I don't think people understand that. So they come in and they're like, you're not going to give me a job. It's like, no, you have to earn the job. But there are companies that will, and they will use those twelve weeks or whatever period of time as training. So there's two things I want you to look at. Look at registered apprenticeship programs. Raps those are very difficult to find. If you have them in your state, see if you can get into one. If a company is calling themselves, has a registered apprenticeship program, that's a trademark, they have to be signed up and approved by the government. Skillbridge is a little looser. You can have a skillbridge program. You can go through a third party vendor, like hiring our heroes, who are excellent. But again, they have hundreds of companies that are looking at your resumes you might be interviewing with so many different companies. Keep open. Don't just pick one company and think that's what you're going to do. But I've also met people like yourself, autumn, that they picked their company and then they picked the job they wanted and they had to tell the company, this is what I want to do. Or they had to create the job as the internship or the skillbridge program went on. And to me that just feels like a lot of work. I think companies can do a better job, especially ones that have these type of jobs open all the know. If you want to be a pharmacy tech at a Walgreens or a cvs, those jobs are going to be there, right? They're going to be there today or in a year. So where are you headed? Are you going to use your satcom experience? What are you going to do? What's your dream job? My actual dream job is to train the next generation. I want to be what is called a secondary educator. I would like to train the local population, their jobs for the military or their jobs within the organization. With my extensive knowledge of military satcom communications, I found my love of instructing and teaching while I was an instructor at the schoolhouse for my job series in Georgia. I don't want to go back to Georgia, but that is an option. That's the true dream, is I want to go back to teaching. Okay. But the secondary. If I can't be a teacher, then I would rather stay in the realm of military satcom or even civilian satcom, or use my degree and go into network administration for networks, which broadens my field and opens up a lot more doors so I can actually get out of DoD or government. It just wastes the security clearance. Yeah, don't let go of that. So you also said you're getting your CySA so you could go into cyber. Yes, that is the plan. The goal is to keep on learning, to keep on studying and continuing bettering myself. And that's the tenant I got from my grandmother. She was always in school. She's like, you can never stop learning. You always have to keep moving forward and keep on learning something new. And I think that's what they meant with the security plus. Continuing education is if you don't continue to learn about the changing technology field, you'll be obsolete. Yeah, that's why I'm trying to get the next cert. They're teaching security plus in middle school now. It's incredible. I want to say thank you so much, Autumn. You've shared a lot, and I know that you're so honest and transparent. I want to thank you for being vulnerable and showing us what that looks like. Being in limbo kind of sucks. I'm glad you're not getting any shade or being sent to sit in the corner and fold envelopes or do whatever because you're leaving. I've heard a lot of people get a lot of shade when they know you're leaving or a lot of pressure. But maybe after 20 years, they're like, we're done. Bye. Good luck. Come back. Come back as a GS. Come back as a contractor. We'll see you soon. So, any last alibis before we round off this segment and say goodbye? Just that for those that are in a similar pathline, it's your journey, your story. So keep on trying for what you want. Don't settle. Keep going at it, and keep learning, right? Yes. Keep learning lifelong. Learner. Well, thank you, autumn Wheeler. If somebody wants to reach out to you on LinkedIn, can they find you that way? Are you open to sharing your story one on one? Yes, I'm available on LinkedIn. I'm pretty receptive. If I don't immediately respond, it's because I've been at work and I'm in a so. But I will respond sometime during the day, maybe late my time or super early. It's whenever I actually see the message, but I will respond. Thanks, Autumn. And spell your name for those folks who aren't watching that are just listening on a podcast. A-U-T-U-M-N or alpha uniform tango uniform. Mike November Wheeler. W-H-E-E-L-E-R. You've been great. Thank you so much for being on the show. Well, that wraps up things for our soup segment. I'm super excited. We can't find enough people who are going through the active transition phase. So thank you, autumn, for being with us today. I am Cheryl Cross and I'm your host. And we'll be right back after this break. You're listening to the military to civilian career transition power hour. And we're back. It is the expert segment of our show. I'm Cheryl Cross. This is the military to civilian career transition power hour. And every hour we bring you one expert. Today. I'm thrilled to have another recruiter in the house. I have my friend, and you probably have seen him on LinkedIn, Richie Lempani. He is, I want to say, the jack of all trades of recruiting, but he's done it all. He's currently with an independent boutique agency and he's going to not only introduce himself, but give us some insights on the different types of recruiters that are out there. Hey, Richie, thanks for joining me today. Well, thanks for having me. Yeah, I've wanted to have you on the show since I first started seeing your funny posts. You have a lot of traction. I know you've been working heavily in the military to civilian career transition community. So it was just an automatic that I have you on. So we want to talk about the different types of recruiting. It's important for people who are thinking about getting out of the military, going into civilian careers, or those who are actively job searching or those even out who are resetting or pivoting to a better type of career. When somebody asks you, what kind of recruiter are you, how do you explain it? Well, firstly, I'm mostly a tech recruiter, so I always have to get that out of the way because most people are going to just come to me as a recruiter and think, I'm going to find them a job. Which we all know that from every post on LinkedIn, from every recruiter. We don't find people jobs, we find people for our clients. So I always say I'm tech, so that kind of narrows it down. If you're not in tech, it's really hard for me to work with you unless I have a really specialized order. Other part of the question was, what kind of recruiter am I? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that. I kind of lost my train of thought. You're a Contingency recruiter? Contingent recruiter. So, yeah, we are agency. We are all pretty much all contingent right now, which just means that we take contracts without getting paid, and we don't get paid until 30 days after you start your job. So we negotiate with the client what that fee is going to be. Most agencies are working between 20 and 30% right now of the first year. Salary doesn't come out of the candidate. Obviously, the company pays that, and your salary never changes, so they build it in. A lot of people get worried about that. And like I said, we don't get paid until after you've been there for a while. All my contracts pay out after 30 days, and we haven't had anybody quit yet, so that's good. But now I'm going to jinx myself. But, yeah, that's what we do. We do contingency. And we work for government mostly right now, not federal. I just learned a lot of air force bases. We just picked up a bunch of army bases, I believe. I haven't signed that yet. We're a lot in the infrastructure networking space. A lot of the people we're placing came out of SatCom or RF or transcom, those kinds of things while they were in the military, for those roles that led us into the kind of the military transition community where I met your friend Marisol, who's helped me tremendously. I didn't know what a skiff was. Well, six months ago, I didn't know what it was, so she defined it for me. I didn't know the difference between clearances, which I did figure out. She also helped with that, so she's been really helpful in my journey into this whole field. Well, it's a fascinating one. As a DoD recruiter for six plus years or more, it's closer to ten, I can tell you. It's a rich and really fruitful area you've recruited outside of that, which not everybody wants to continue the mission, Richie, and you're learning this. You're talking to people who are coming out of the military and they're like, hey, what do you got? And depending on what your clients are asking you to fill, that's what you got. But what I love about you is you're also kind of lending your voice and experience as someone who sat in different recruiting roles and letting them know what to do. So thank you for doing that. So just to reiterate, contingency or agency recruiters are paid a fee on your placement, which is different from what a corporate recruiter is. Right. So corporate recruiters. And you've done that, too. Go ahead and explain what that is. Yeah. So a corporate or internal, they're going to be mostly on salary. Their commission on placements is going to be lower than ours typically. I haven't seen a lot of internal recruiters that can make a big fee like that on internal placements. I don't know across the board how that goes. We worked with American Express before. I think on their tech roles, they got like $1,000 per placement or something over what they were supposed to do. If they hit their metrics and beyond, they got a little extra. I've done internal in terms of, I have been hired by a startup to build the recruiting department and then recruit for big. No, big corporate, but I did work corporate. So an agency, there's either boutique or the Robert Halfs and stuff, I worked all of that and in between. So internal, anything internal I did, I was actually contracted out by an agency to go into the internal role, build the team, and then they pulled me back out. Wasn't very fun because then you don't see results. You're in there for x amount an hour. There's no commission. So you're acting as an internal recruiter and doing all that, and then no one will hire you as an internal recruiter because you didn't come from internal, you came from agencies. There's not a lot of crossover that's successful in this industry that I've seen. I know it can be done. There are people that have done it. Amy Miller is a really good example of somebody that went from agency to internal and is very good and does a very good job. A lot of times we see internal applies for agency and then they're like, no, this is horrible. Like worse than even coming in blank going from internal to agency. It's a different world, really. It is. It's a different page. A lot of internal recruiters have to be jack of all trades. Like, they're not going to just work on one role on a smaller internal. They're going to work on a lot of different things. Whereas I can niche in tech and in government, and I can be okay, I can make money, but if I'm internal, I've got to do a lot of different things. Agreed, and that's an excellent point. So we're trying to teach the listener the difference between, say, what a corporate versus agency, or they call them desk or boutique agency contingent recruiters, corporate are gatekeepers for that company. They are ambassadors for that company. Only those recruiters could have up to 40 to 80 requisitions. So when you reach out to a corporate recruiter, even if it is at a large company, know that their bandwidth may be very specific. Which is why as a corporate recruiter, I wrote a book about timing because I was meeting people well above and before their availability. But what I love about Richie, so what Richie does is something that, and I've done agency work, and again, I sit in corporate because that's more my pace. But agency recruiters, they're out there representing you. So if you have an opportunity to work with someone like a Richie, if his clients align with your timing, I mean, it's still sort of like if the moon and the stars all align, right? It's not all right. Yeah, yeah, because he's getting contracts, too. But what Richie will do is represent you more as an individual. There's a little bit more coaching, I'm assuming. So let's say, richie, you find a great candidate, a satcom candidate who's coming out in four months and their availability, they can work in three, let's say, the first day of their terminal leave. So their availability is two months out. How would you take that person if they're not working with any companies, they've not applied to any jobs. Walk us through how you would work with that satcom individual and take the mic. Yeah, if they're two months out, I mean, for me, I'm probably going to do review, call with them and go through the resume and make sure. But again, this is a thing where timing has to align, too. So two months from now, my role might not even be open anymore. So in all likelihood, I'm going to point them, I'm going to look at the resume, make sure. Because a lot of times when military people are transitioning, they're giving you a resume that doesn't read civilian at it's someone helped them with just like a guy like me? I can't. Marisol comes in there, too, because she's been teaching people how to do that. And Skilbridge is also for it, too. But if you come out, you have to have a civilian resume, too, because a lot of the people you're going to apply to, they can't read it. They can't understand, get. I have an intelligence guy that sends me this. I don't remember what it's called, but it's wild, the sheet that he sends me. And it's awesome because I understand it now, but if I send it to my client, they'll be like, what is this? I just want to know what they did. So the first thing I would do is make sure that they had the resume resources that they needed. We might do discovery call to see if it's an alignment, if they want to go back on Panama shifts and all this stuff, because that's going to come up in those roles. And sometimes people don't want to do that. So Panama shift is like the 24/7 rotating 365, always open. You're going to switch shifts every once in a while anyway. So we have to explain that, talk to them, make sure they're okay with that. And then when we get into the process, two months out is a little far, probably closer to a month. We would start working with them just because that's what our clients going to need. They're not going to schedule it out that far. Start interviewing for two months down the road. So that's a lot on these contracts, especially the air force bases. They're not going to finalize anything unless they're done. They're going to be closed. So during the process, we're going to coach through the interview. We know the client, we know what they're going to expect. We know what they're going to want to talk about. Now, we don't cheat, so we want you to get the job on your merit. So I'm not going to give you the answers, but I'm going to practice with you so you can eloquently tell what you've done and how that applies now and then those roles. This is the same job you probably had while you're in the military, really? So those go easier, honestly. So there's not as much coaching. Now, on my other clients, we prep before every interview and we do feedback after every interview and we try to figure out where did we make a mistake in there? And if we did, can we correct it before so we can follow up and get the feedback from the client say? Well, yeah, we talked about that. There was a little miscommunication there. We'd get the salary lined up right away. We always give salary up front. With transparency laws, there's no point in withholding anymore. I don't know what the point was actually, when we used to do it in the first place. Right. Nuts. Like you're going to have a three interview process with somebody who never discussed salary and then they reject the offer anyway. Yeah. I mean, we're really heavily involved in the process. I know internal, it's really hard for you as a recruiter to coach someone through the inter. You're not going to. You have to decide based on what they do internally. You can't say, oh, when you get to this guy, you want to talk about this and that and the next thing, because they really like that. That'd be nuts for you. Guarantee everybody a job and it'd be really unethical to do so on our side. We want them to get the job on their own merit because if they get fired in 90 days, I got to pay the money back. Right. We want them to get hired because of who they are, but we also want to remove roadblocks that we know are going to happen if you maybe don't line up perfectly on whatever tech skill, we want you to be able to explain why that's okay. Not lie about it, but why your experience here will transfer here. So we do that. We've had these where they want to see. We had a field servicing where they wanted the tech test before we had people asking for it. And I can't do that because if you get through it and I help you cheat, I'm burning my client. I'm practicing very unethical behavior and it's just something I don't do. So that kind of thing we don't help with. But everything else we coach through, offer, stage, usually make sure nobody's going to counter crazy. But you never know in this market. So all the people we put through on the basis, especially they know what it is going into it. Nobody usually gets into that. It's never sticky. It's a ten year contract. They can pay what they can pay. There's not wiggle like in aerospace, and there's always some little bit of wiggle. Not with these contractors. It is what it is basically every time. So those sign on bonuses, I bet. Not at that one. On the other, government clients up to 25%. So they'll get and reload. And those jobs we've had some people where they offer 25%, and then they get another 15 to 20 for clearance bonus if they hold the full scope polyactive. There's all kinds of stuff on those, but not for the base contracts. Those are just what they are. Right. So let's break that down for the listeners. I talk about this in my book, civilian mission, and how you can utilize a sign on bonus, but know who you're talking to. So contingency recruiters are dealing with clients with maybe five wrecks, and that's their whole focus. They might work with you a little bit shorter period of time than a corporate recruiter who is like, well, okay, so you're 90 days out. I need to talk to you in the 30 day time frame, just like Richie was saying. But the difference is between the two. Well, in government contracting, it's not, because what's written into the contract, they're held to it. So if a huge company versus a small prime, a small sub, rather they're working off of what they've written into the staffing of the contract. Different contracts could have different parameters in the same skiff. I've had people sitting right next to each other that are from two different generations of a contract. And the payment structure is different. Right. The back and forth. So they'll over promise and then have to come in right there. Because if they are awarded it, that's what it is. There's no changing it. So, yeah, what you're saying, and this was especially true for people who were overseas where Hola and Cola were baked into that contract but wasn't in the new one. So not that the people were left in the. They still had to have housing and cost of living, but I think it was coming out of the big prime contractors pockets. So that's the don't as a candidate. So I think this is pretty confusing. As a candidate, I want you to always ask for it because it doesn't hurt to ask, right? Is there a sign on bonus? It's a yes or no. You're trying to get to your salary expectations. Bottom line, I don't care if you're working with a corporate recruiter or a contingency recruiter, are an RPO. So let's talk about. I mean, this is even new for me. So I've always been contingent unless I'm working contract. That's totally different bargain. But RPO, they're paying a certain amount to find a certain amount of people. Right. I mean, that's the base of it. Now there's fractional and now there's whatever else. And what's the other one? Now? Retain search. There's so many different models for this. One thing military people should avoid is reverse recruiters, because it doesn't work. Tell them what that is. Oh, reverse recruiter will charge you up front to find you a job that they don't have. I've never seen it successful. I did encounter early when I was in college, I was a restaurant manager. So there were reverse recruiters that would find you and place you at a different restaurant, and you paid them, right. I think that's where it comes from. I'm not sure. Now we have people that do reverse recruiting, and they'll take anybody and everybody, and then they'll charge you eight grand, say, and you pay four of it up front and then four of it out of your first paycheck. Right. You're never going to pay the other four because they're not going to find you a job. And if you get a job during that time, it's probably not because of them, in my opinion. So it's another variation of the career coach that doesn't know what they're doing. That's just trying to get money. You got to remember, too, that we're not regulated. Recruiting is not regulated. So not on anything outside of, like, discriminatory practices. No one's saying what my fees have to be. No one's saying what my guarantee period has to be. The government's not coming in and making sure that clients are protected from me submitting candidates or even faking people through the job interview process. The clients regulate us. Right. So if I'm sending a bunch of bad people, the client will fire me. I'm done in reverse recruiting. In these other instances where it's kind of career coaching, there are some good career coaches, but in most of it, it's someone that doesn't have a real certificate, doesn't have a degree, and they're charging people that are looking for a job, but they don't have end result on, like, there's no guarantee for you, and the government's not going to come in and say, oh, you paid Joe schmo all this money to find your job, and they didn't find you a job. There's probably language that says they don't guarantee a job at the end of it. So that's something that I have seen target that community, transitioning military people, targeting teachers. It's something to really watch out for is those kinds of snake oil salesmen, and they're all over LinkedIn. I see it every. So Marisol calls them LinkedIn clowns. Yeah, I've heard all of. Still, at the end of the day, the end of the day, it all breaks through. You're applying for a job, you're interviewing for a job, and you're accepting or declining the offer for that job. Anything else? The psychology of interviewing. Great. You maybe could get some help on that. But there's a resume template for everybody on word. I have a free one on my site. A basic resume will get you in for an interview if you have the qualifications needed for that job. I've never rejected anybody for too long of a resume. I've never rejected anybody for being on contract that wants to go full time. My clients might need some convincing sometimes for that. And I've never rejected anybody for mental health, parenting or educational job gaps. If they've been in jail, I'll reject them. I mean, I have to most of the time on that. Because of your contract? Yeah, because of your contract. I can't. I have to do background check. My clients know if there's something weird on there and it's not explainable. I got a DUI as a kid. Those things are okay. But I've had a guy lie to me all the way through and they had a CSC charge and it makes me look really bad. So we can't work with felons. We just can't. And maybe internally you can, but an agency, most of the time it's going to be a no. Our clients won't let us. Right. Depending on the contract. So if you're working DoD specific, anybody justice served might get weeded out. And it's simply because of the clearance process. Now I'm going to have a clearance expert come and talk about that. We've given a lot of good information about the different types of recruiters, corporate recruiters. Those are the people at job fairs. You're going to meet them at the hiring. Our heroes job fairs, any of the USO job fairs, anything that it's doing on base, those employers are going to send their recruiters or their HR people or their company representatives. Sometimes if they're an engineering company, they're engineers. But those folks are paid salary, just so you know. And some of the smaller companies may give bonuses for their metrics, but that has nothing to do with you, the individual. That's their performance. Um, and then there's the agency folks. So that's why Richie is here. So, Mr. Lempani, you are an agency recruiter working in the DoD, which is very specialized, but your roles are whatever your roles are. So it's very similar to what's going on on the corporate side because you're trying to fill roles for contracts that you have been given and once they're filled, they're done. I think that the big misconception out there for people wanting to continue the mission, wanting to utilize their clearance, continue working with the DoD is that if they get an agency or a contingent recruiter or a headhunter, that they will get all of this money, that they're only working for them. And some of that's true, but you've probably got a few clients that you're working with and a few candidates, too, because. Right. You're not going to make your yearly salary on one person. Right. That's important to note, too. On average, I would say we submit about three people per opening. When the rec opens, when I have a new ip controller, I will find three people I'm competing against myself, but my client expects that they want to look at three people for that one role and if we don't get it that time, we'll go and find three more, probably. And that's the way it works. It's not one person per role. And that's why you should never really work with one agency recruiter at a time or sign anything saying you will only work with them. You shouldn't work with more than one on one role. It doesn't work out very well. But for each role that agency recruiter has, they're going to submit. And even in this market, they're probably going to go up to ten on it. We don't do that because it's just stupid. But they are submitting multiple people per role. So you should have a couple of recruiters in your back pocket that are specialized in what you do and they understand that most of my people that I submit that don't take my jobs end up being client side candidate or client side clients later. So they're representing the company now I want to work with that company, too. So, like I told you, our newest client is from a guy that he didn't go to the final. He got another job offer within the space. He works for a company that he was going to go work for, a CIA DoD focused company ended up going to Medicare and department of Veterans affairs. Now his clearance isn't active anymore. He doesn't need. But. So he didn't want to go back into FBI from NSA or whatever he was at, so he went to the non cleared side. Now he's a client instead of a candidate. So that works out for me. But he also had, obviously, other recruiters that were working with him. So it is what it is. A lot of recruiters will get mad at you if you don't go through with the final. But I find that keeping things civil is a lot better way to go than getting mad about stuff like that. I know it's going to happen. It always does. Somebody you love that breeze through the final and they're like, yeah, I took another job. We get that every day. It's just what it is. If you get mad about it, you're in the wrong industry. That's true. Yeah. Mr. Lampani, you eat rejection for lunch. Agency recruiters. And I think that's what's so exciting about agency recruiters. You're working, man. You grind. You grind because you have no time. And as a corporate recruiter and an HR lead and people who've hired people like yourself, I loved throwing things out to, we call throwing requisitions out to the agencies, because it was like suddenly we had this influx of people that maybe we couldn't find. Sometimes internal be like, good luck, see you later. We've tried everything. We tried everything. One wreck for a deployment engineer, and she told me, she's like, you're not going to find this. I'm like, oh, I'll find it. There's no such thing as a unicorn. No, I can't find it. You've already looked everywhere, and there's like four in the country and they don't want to talk to me. So, yeah, that happens. But it is a good way. If I can find something you couldn't find, you're going to give me the easier one, usually next time, hopefully. Or you're going to keep giving me the really hard ones because I'm good at it. But either way, I love this job. I hated it when I came into it, but really rewarding. Oh, yeah, I couldn't stand it. I couldn't believe I took it. 50 grand a year. I had to drive around half the state of Michigan. I was working on state of Michigan contracts, and they were impossible to deal with for tech, anyway. And then we had a lot of big clients, but they were really hard clients. And we had one recruiter, me for half the one recruiter, and me doing sales and recruiting for half the state of Michigan. We did really well. I broke some records and I was like, I don't know if I can do this forever. And now, twelve years later, here I am, and I love what I do. Right. Well, hopefully you're not killing yourself. Yeah, no, we just got back from Disney World. We had a little vacation. Nice. I didn't look at my phone the whole time either. I only posted on LinkedIn once, so I was pretty proud of myself. Good for you. Yeah, because you said yes to this interview. Well, thanks, Richie. I've wanted to talk with you for a while. I'm thrilled that you're here teaching the listeners about the different types of recruiting. And just for those of you listening, it's tough for us, too, to understand this. I just want to let you know, when I joined recruiting 20 years ago, I didn't know what an RPO agency was, but I was working for one. So I might work on one contract for a few weeks and then be moved to another contract, but I was only working on those contracts. I was not paid a fee on top of the placements. I was given a salary. So what was confusing to people was I was coming in with a very different email address, but I was representing a company that was not the same as my email address. So people were always a little hesitant. So it was every day I was explaining, so, I am a company ambassador for XYZ company. They have hired my company, which you see on my email address, and that is. And I'll be working this for the next six weeks, and then I'll move to another company and work on that contract. So they are agnostic in the sense that they're not probably floating you between their contracts. They're representing you to that client because they've been paid either in advance or they're being paid for a certain amount of people. And again, this is so confusing to the person listening. So let me just boil this down. Corporate recruiters, they're your friends, too. Everyone's your friend in the space. Just understand their limits. Corporate recruiters are filling jobs in the next 30, 60, 90 days max. Okay? Everyone says, reach out to the recruiters. Make friends with recruiters, okay? Get in their database, get in the system. Make sure you're very clear on your separation timeline. Go to my website, exchangepodcast.com. Throw a banner that's not open to work. If you're more than 90 days, that shows your separation timeline, so they can see it, and then be very clear with them on your availability date. Figure that out. So, corporate recruiters, then we talked about agency. That's Richie Lampani and his partner, Amy. They are a very small boutique agency working within the DoD on placing people for their contracts. So even though he gets paid a fee on placement, he's working fast to try and get the right people in front of his client. And those have expiration dates, too. He tends not to have those evergreen wrecks. Evergreen wrecks we're going to see at the Amazons, the home Depots, those companies that have the same type of, and many hundreds of those jobs all the time that are open because there's a lot of movement. So if you're looking as a specialist, a DoD specialist with a high level clearance, chances are everything in your life is going to be with timing. Everything. But do talk to both the corporate recruiters and the agency recruiters within that sweet spot of your availability. And I hate to sound like a mom, but I keep telling you, when people would reach out to me so early and I would just. I'm sorry. I'd love to make friends with you, but I have 80 requisitions that I have to fill today. And let's follow each other on LinkedIn. They're going to be very kind to you, but the timing is just really, it's tough. We're all there. And remind recruiters, too, when that time comes up. I've had people that I'll watch for a month because I have an open rack I'll forget about because the wreck will fill, but I will get another of the same thing. And then I look back and they're somewhere they're already out. So I have a guy right now. He ended up at a really good job, but had he reminded me instead of the three months out, told me when he was going to be out, and then I had that wreck open probably two months later again and I missed it. And if he would have hit me up, he'd be making like 60 grand a year more right now because I know where he went and I know what he got paid. So remind that recruiter that you made friends with when you come up close to, especially agency, we have to move so fast that I have so much competition in this market, I don't have time to wait two months to talk to you. I won't remember. So make friends. Yeah, right away. I talk to almost everybody military. That hits me up just because we have so much going on. I won't remember two months from now. So if you're getting out and you're ready to be submitted, tell me a week out because then I'll be ready to go. If I didn't already get back to you. I can't keep track of everybody. I have twelve recruiters I think we have eight clients right now, two of which have over 40 recs open right now. So we don't have all of them, but we can work on all of them. We're not focused in on all of them, but we can submit to all of them. So they might assign them to us, but we can always work everything else that's open in a company that's open to agency. So it's one of those things where I have a lot of stuff and I always tell people too, if they get rejected and I like them for something else down the road, hit me up every other week and just remind me who you are because I probably get 50 plus dms a day. I know you can search now. I didn't know that before, but I won't remember to look back two months to see who I talked to two months ago. I'm going to start a new search entirely. That's the way it is in this world. It's a new crop of people. I don't think anybody's going to be looking for a job two months from now. I just never think that way, even though probably they are in this market. But my brain is go, go. I've got 48 hours to get people in for this and I'm not going to look back through it. If you're in my ATS, I'll probably find you though, right? Yeah. And so to answer your question, I can't speak for all the clients that I've had in the past or the companies I've worked for, but the big ones usually have a tracking system within their atss. That's applicant tracking system. And what that means is you're able to interface with that. So you're getting the right newsletters, you're getting the right information from that company. A company does not want to let you go. If you've talked to a recruiter or even a sourcer in the recruiting department, they want to make sure you're still engaging because there's a lot of competition out there. Right? So if you're able to put your timeline in and they have something built into their ats that shows that you're available. In a perfect world, we talk to everybody at the right time. Everybody would be in their availability date. But this is why we do what we do, because there's these challenges. And I just hope that the folks listening understand a little bit more about recruiting. I will continue to talk about this. I talk about this Wednesday mornings on LinkedIn. Audio on LinkedIn. Every Wednesday

07: 1:00:58

00 a.m. My time. So if you want to join me there or just reach out to me through LinkedIn and we can have a conversation. Richie's pretty good at this, too, even though he's really busy filling his job. Well, thanks so much. Any last alibis before we knock off and end this segment? I don't know. It's a tough season. Just keep going. It's one of those things where it'll come when it comes, but you have to do the work. So keep going no matter what. Read the good recruiter content on LinkedIn. Stay away from stuff that seems too easy because if it is too easy, it's probably not going to work. But yeah, resume, LinkedIn are the most important tools you have coming out. Use them. Network. That helps everybody. That's it. Really. Try not to be taken advantage of. That's the big thing with all of us, right? It makes me sick every time I see it, every time I hear about it. I'm doing free resume reviews right now, too. If people hit me up on my LinkedIn, I don't have open availability on my calendar. But if someone really needs help with resume and LinkedIn, I am doing 15 minutes free quick calls for the holidays. We killed our career services. We're too busy for it. But I do have a couple of weeks where I have some extra time, believe it or not. So I did eight so far this week. They're really sad calls. Usually they're not fun. It's people that have been out of work or looking for a little bit. So if anybody needs help, hit me up on LinkedIn and I'll help out. Right on. Thanks so much, Richie, happy holidays to you. Thank you so much for being with us. And I'm just going to close out this segment by saying you're listening to the military to civilian career transition power hour on exchange podcast series. This is our expert segment. We're going to take a quick break and come back with somebody who's been in the workforce between one and four years. We'll be right back. Welcome back. We've got our second veteran episode, which is really the third segment of our show. I'm Cheryl Cross. You're listening to the military to civilian career transition power hour. Truly the longest name in podcast history. And I've got fellow podcaster and friend Sean Welsh. He is the producer, host and creator of Vet SOS podcast. Hey, Sean, how are you doing? Great, Sarah. How are you doing today? I'm good. What an honor to have you here today, sir. I just was talking to you before we hit the record button about your current situation. And I was really worried where to put Sean, because in the industry, in our, know, our niche group, he's an expert, right? And I have an expert on every show. But I went to look at his LinkedIn this morning and was like, he's only been out of the military just a few months. He's got 80 some OD shows recorded that he's been putting out for so long. But you're so prolific in the space, and I think we assume that because you are this advocate for all of the folks coming out of the military that you're the expert, but you have a current situation going on. And I want you to give some light to your transition process, which you also talk about on your show. What's going on with you right now? Well, first, let me say thank you. I don't consider myself an expert at all. I know you've had people on here that are much better experts than I am, but I'm trying to catch up with them as best I can. So as I've said numerous times, I had a wonderful transition as I went through my transition. We started bedsos. So I was fortunate enough to learn from them as we went. And so I heard all these horror stories, all the things not to do. And so I was able to really put a lot of work and have a very positive outcome in my transition. So everything's going fine. I retired from the military. I'm working my job, same job I did my skill bridge with. And then I find out about a month ago that the business unit I'm a part of, which was something we were trying to stand up in the company, is not going to be funded next year. So all of a sudden, I find myself in a situation where now I got to find a job. Now, the positive thing is they want to keep me. They're not firing me. The job specifically that I was hired for is going away. But I'm in that situation where I have to find something else within the company that'll work for me. How has this challenged you, Sean? I mean, again, you're somebody who listens to all these transition stories. You kind of know the lay of the land, which is what we're all trying to do, right? Expose people's stories so that when you're faced with this, you know what to do because you remember that person that went through that thing. What are you doing because of the vet SOS podcast or just how are you managing? Are you flying by the seat of your pants. What's going on? A lot of people say I fly by the seat of my pants a lot, but it was actually one of my former guests that had come on the show. They asked me, why aren't you using your network? That's quite the idea. We talk about that all the time. Every time. Yeah. One, I never panicked because, one, I knew the company liked me, so they weren't trying to get rid of me. And there's a couple of spots that I could potentially go within the company, so I figure everything's going to work out anyway. But I got to thinking after him, and I talked, and I'm like, okay, so why don't I put my money where my mouth is, so to speak? And so I drafted this email, or not this email, a LinkedIn post explaining the situation, what had happened, and I was shocked by the response. It is one of the biggest posts I've ever had. Just the number of people that responded to it reached out, wanted to know if there's anything they could do to help me, which was just. It was heartwarming. I was just flabbergasted by the amount of support that I received in a community that I was already in awe of how much support we received when we transitioned. So I get all this response back and people willing to help me with different things and ask me what type of jobs I'm looking for and making posts on my behalf, and hooking me up with recruiters. And it was just an amazing experience to go through. So one thing it did was reconfirm the fact that we have to continuously work on our network. A lot of people will build this network on LinkedIn, get a job, and then stop. They're ghosting. So you can't do that. And that's one thing that I didn't do, not because I was expecting to ever be looking for a job I thought I was going to. Everything was just working out perfect, but going through, I realized, you know what? This is exactly what we tell people, and this is why. And so far, everything we talk about has been 100% true. I reach out to organizations that I did programs with, and they've been willing to help me brush up on a few things or fix a few things. I've reached out and talked to recruiters, gotten some pointers on potential jobs. So all these conversations going on and meeting new people, it's just been a phenomenal experience. We have a great community. We really do. And I know it's growing because more people that check into your podcast. My podcast. Lori Norris's podcast. Lessons learned for vets. They grow and gets more so. Well, I'm glad you're having a positive experience. You never appeared to me, even though we've just really met. Met the first time today when I've been checking you out or listening to you, I always felt that you were super confident. Sometimes, though, that's a mask, right? You said that. What's the word? You weren't panicking, but it's concerning, right? Yes. So when the whole thing happens, at first you're like, wait a minute. I did everything I was supposed to do. I had this perfect transition. I listened to all the advice. I followed all the rules. I did this, I did that. Then. Now I'm potentially looking for a job. It's like, wait a minute. So I wasn't like scared, nervous, depressed or anything like that. I was caught off guard thinking, well, I didn't think that was going to happen. But then, like we tell people, take a breath, regroup, and then you know what to do. I did 26 different transition programs. It's very excessive. It was beaten to me. What to do. I know what to do. I have the resume. I've done interviews. I've done all these things. I know what to do. So don't freak out. Take a breath, and let's start moving forward and using the things that we've talked about and what we've been taught so much of. That reminds me of the saying my mother used to say, rules for thee, but not for me. You don't want to be in an environment where the rules only apply to some people, not you. Good. It's good that you're having this. And this is what this is about, is the story, the transition, honest transparency, the talk. I had another guest, Eric Dosty, also went into Skillbridge program, created a transition Skillbridge program for the company. Loved it. And reorganization happened. He didn't have a plan B. He has one now. He has one now. Yeah. And he's preaching about it because this is how we learn, folks. We have to go through. It's a process. And you're going to refine and redirect transition. I've been told this, Sean. You might have heard this a lot, too, is constant. It doesn't end. It doesn't end in any of the segments that I'm putting, either the soup or one to four years or five years. It's forever. Because what the military has given you is a structure where people have your six. You can always find a solution. And if not there's somebody there that will try and bring it to you. And in the outside world, it doesn't seem that that structure just comes with everything. You're missing that group. A woman said to me recently, I live in Michigan. If I'm skating across the lake and I'm with my coworkers and I fall in the ice, I can't tell you that any one of them would know how to pull me out. Wow. But if I was with my platoon, I would go into that icy water knowing that somebody was going to be there in a minute or help was on the way. And I thought, that's really a telling scenario because she's working in a group where she doesn't feel safe or supported. When people say these stories to you, again, you're the OG in this. You've been having 80 conversations more than I am. I'm only 37 days old as of this podcast recording date. But when somebody comes to you, either as a transitioning expert or you got them on the podcast, what do you say? What do you say to them about the corporate world not really being a community, it's more of an independent. Everybody's out for themselves. What do you say to them? Well, the first thing I would say is you hit the nail on the head with the transition piece. It's constant, and that's one. My co host actually talks about that numerous times where he hates the word transition because it almost signifies like there's an end to it and there really isn't. And you can have multiple transitions throughout your life trying to look at it from that standpoint of what do you do when one of life's changes hits you then? What's the case now going to your current question, as far as what we talk about with people when it comes to the corporate world, I think there's still a tribe to be found there. We're used to a certain type of tribe, right? So it's easy to build an unbreakable bond with somebody when you've gone to a war zone with them, when you've gone through some traumatic experience with them, probably not going to go through that in the boardroom, right? Hopefully it's nothing major traumatic, but I think you can still build a tribe, but there's still something to be said with that bond. And when it comes to veterans, you can walk into a room and immediately have a connection with another veteran just because you both went through something similar, maybe different services, 1 may have deployed, 1 may not have different jobs, whatever the case may be. But the fact is, you went through that experience. You know what it means to be a veteran. You know what we stand for. You know what a lot of us go through. And you personally may be still struggling with certain things, whether that is PTSD or something else. You still may be struggling with something where another veteran just understands and doesn't have to say anything, can simply sit there and listen. And that's all you need, is someone to talk to. Excellent points. On the corporate side, there's something called business resource groups. They're called brgs or employee resource groups. Ergs. And those groups can be for anything. They could be for veterans groups, they can be for PTSD survivors. They can be for African Americans, Asian Americans, women in it. It just depends. And if there isn't one, start one. So go to your HR person, as an HR person, talking to you. If you're working in a company that does not have these business resource groups, just put some time on the calendar of the HR or maybe the CEO, and say, I'd like to create an informal business resource group. It will only empower us. And I'm telling you, I would be shocked if they said no. What else is really good about that is we have organizations that are dedicated to helping veteran resource groups get started and start the right way. There's organizations that will help you off. The top of your head. Veteran leadership council is the name. Don't quote me on that. I have to look it up. I did do an interview with somebody from there in one of my episodes, and one of the things they're doing is capturing best practices from brgs and figuring out how do we do this. So there's organizations like that out there that will help an organization build a know erg for veterans. Yeah. Good. Thank you for that. See, you're full of information, man. You're always teaching, always teaching. Getting Sean to tell his own story. You said that you posted this and it got incredible amount of support. You were kind of blown away. It doesn't surprise me at all because you are a bit of a legend on LinkedIn. Aside from LinkedIn. I mean, these are the folks that are listening. They may be in your shoes. Maybe they've been out for a minute. They are looking for new things. Let's say someone comes to you and says, sean, I want you to mentor me. I really don't like what I'm doing. I'm my first year in. It's really not serving me. What advice would you give them? Put on your transition hat for me and tell me what you would say to them. So first and foremost, veteran leadership council, I think is the name of it, the organization. One of the things they do is help organizations with standing up. Veteran research group. The first thing I do when people ask for my help is ask them if they've, first of all, what have they done? I need to know what you've done. There's 40,000 plus organizations out there. What have you done? Surprisingly, a lot of them tell you nothing, which is really surprising, especially the closer they get to actually getting out of the military. But the next thing is usually, have you checked out veterati? I'm a big fan of veterati. My co host convinced me to get on veterati. I didn't feel that I was the guy had to be on veterati. But I've had a couple of calls. They've been awesome. Really enjoyed talking to people who just want to bounce ideas off you and ask for some advice or what they could possibly try and sharing information. So it's been a lot of fun and that's. I always push people to better out. When I was transitioning, I was doing five calls a week. I was doing one every day. Wow. And one, it helped me whittle down what I didn't want to do. If it's something I knew I had the skills to do, I'd find somebody in that field, call them. And then I learned very early that I was never going to do a PMP. It was one of those things. But Betterotti helped me do that. And so going through and figuring out what they've done, and then I have a couple that I like to recommend, ones that I did that I really enjoyed and really found valuable. And so I recommend those. But I also tell them in the same breath, don't just take my word for it, talk to other people. Get at least two recommendations. Because I may have done one program and loved it. You may have done the same program and hated it. So trying to figure out, is it the right one for me? And that's really what you got to. Try to figure out. You're so right. As much as this is boilerplate and we feel like sometimes we're saying the same thing over and over, the one thing I have to remind myself is no two transitions are alike at all, which is why I want to bring 100 different voices to bring people's awareness that, yeah, you stand in taps class, you could be a tap leader, you could be an etaps leader. You can talk until you're blue, you don't even have to look at the workbook after a while because you just know it. But it's not going to apply to everybody, especially in that sequence. So thanks for bringing that up. You brought something else up, coach. All coaches need coaches and I can't remember what famous coach said that, but I used to have it on my wall that I don't care how smart you think you are or if you have the winning team, you still need John Wooden. UCLA. Yeah, John Wooden, he was my favorite. Yeah, the pyramid. I had the pyramid on my desk office for a long, long time. But coaches have coaches too. You may not see it, but everybody has a mentor. Robert Hamilton Owens said the same thing during. I did a feature with him, an hour long feature and he said the same thing. I'm constantly getting support and he was a minister of 3000 people. He's a world class endurance athlete. He just rode 3000 miles across the Atlantic. He's the original iron man. You'd think the guy is like set, but no, he's constantly reaching out for mentorship. So I like that some of the themes that we're talking about is if it doesn't exist, make it right. Reach out to the veteran leadership council or groups like that that can support you and maybe be the liaison for your company. Also, coaches have coaches and even if you know the information, know that life is going to throw you a curveball. And I hope this isn't the last curveball that you get because you're so friendly and you're so helpful. So tell us about your podcast because I've been rushing through all this story so you can tell a little bit more about the podcast. You're 80 episodes in, you've got 100 and some OD booked for the next of this time that we're talking up into the future. So tell us about it. I love telling this story. Most people just, I don't know why they think I started a podcast, but truth be told, I never wanted to. It was not on my radar at all. It was not something that I was, you know, I'm going to start a podcast. My original co host Mark, who stayed on for the first year, he was Air Force veteran and helped us get started and everything. He came on board specifically to help me get started. His partner Trevor, with their organization, he's the one who kept selling me on, hey, you need to start a podcast. And so he was sort of the driving force behind actually doing this. And so Mark and I started planning, started talking and finally Trevor's like just record already. You got to start. But finally we picked a day. Let's uh. So we started and it took us about three months to get a couple in the bank so that we weren't like freaking out every week to have an episode. But we started right from the beginning where we do four to five episodes in one day. That way we had them for the month. And I was amazed by the number of people that wanted to come on, not knowing really anything about me or Mark. Because Mark wasn't in the transition community. He was in Texas doing his own thing. Financial planner. So nobody that we brought on really knew him either. All these people that I talked to, people like the Bruce Thompson's, I called him multiple times on Betterati. He was one of my early guests. And he comes on there and he's fully supportive of me. Even know really had no idea who I was other than a couple conversations. But he was willing to. So, you know, we had all these people on and then people start recommending other people and then it just kept going. And so the one year Mark, Mark decided he was going to step down at that point. He's still with us. He's behind the scenes now. And Eric brew joined us as the co host for season two. The season finale aired in, you know, by the time this thing airs, we're starting season. You know, Eric jokes that he stayed on a whole season. Know, I just let him know he has one of those Texas A. M. Contracts and I can't afford to buy them out. You're so tv, you're talking in seasons like, oh, this is so fun. That was Eric's idea. I was not originally going to do seasons, so don't freak out when you look. And season one is 52 episodes and season two and three are 25. Well, you know, when you're publishing weekly, it's easy to go. I launched with four. I've got eight. I'm only 32, 35 days old. So yeah, I'm ahead of the curve. If we were just going to do one, but I started with a few and I could take a year off or who knows what's going to happen. Seasons, I love that you're doing that. So season two, season three, how has the podcast changed you? Well, like I said earlier, it made my transition amazing. I really can't complain at all about the whole transition process. I met great people. They shared wonderful stories with me, a lot of them tragic stories, but taught me what not to do. And I've met some amazing people. And so going through this and getting to share the screen with them and learn their story and find out what they went through and what they're doing to help our community has been even better. And then as we continue to grow it, build a following. The fact that we're not changing who we are, we are focused on the transition space that is the niche that we want to stay in and we want to educate. That's our goal, is to educate the people coming behind us about all these organizations that we're not told about here. In season two, we were able to interview a couple of local agencies that are either local to a specific town or we did season three. Episode one is going to be invents. It's all Indiana, which is fantastic. We got a Kentucky organization coming on, so we were able to talk to the director of retirement services for the mean. That was phenomenal here, straight from the know. It's one of those things where people were willing to come on and talk to us. And I'm just like, this guy's in charge of army retirement and I'm still not retired. I'm still on active duty at the time. Maybe he'll answer some questions. We had the director of Soldier for Life come on. So it's just been a blessing and it's just been a lot of fun. It really has. Because I didn't necessarily get out wanting to find my tribe. But the more I hear that and the more I think about it, I kind of never lost my tribe because I interview them once a week. Once a week I'm talking to somebody that can relate to me and what I did and we can talk about things. So it's kind of cool. Kind of a fanboy at times, too. I've caught myself where if you watch closely, there's some interviews where I'm not there. I'm like paying attention. I'm like, oh, this is awesome. And I realize, oh, I should probably ask a question. I need to pay attention. You get caught up. I've fan girled out a few times, too. I get it. Yeah. It's really neat to have a platform, not only to share. And I noticed you did this on one of your recent posts because someone that had been on my show actually posted. You were like, hey, who do we need to know about? And I thought, that is so cool. You are really pushing more and more connection by doing that. Who are the underserved folks? Who are those agencies maybe that have worked for you that we can put on our list? Let's stand together. I always say this, we're all standing on a rooftop. We're holding hands so we don't fall off, but we're all screaming from the rooftop. There's so many places that want to help. Right? But is help great if it's not coordinated for the right time of your transition, the right agency for what you need? Are they asking you for money? If it's money you want to spend, great. But if it's not something that you feel like maybe somebody was taken advantage of, you're going to hear that. So everything has a time and a place during your transition. And here I'm a proponent of three years out that gives it even more Runway to be more confusing. Right. So people like Sean and Eric and even Mark when he was on the show, all those that you listen to and the beauty of podcasts, you can listen to them anytime. You can listen to them going on the treadmill, taking the kids to know, driving to and from wherever you have to be. They're anywhere and they're always there, and they're timeless. So this information transition hasn't changed a whole lot in the last. I was just joking with Sean that the person that was sitting on a panel recently with me probably didn't even have a taps class. But aside from, like, they're in a taps class and they're sitting in front of a bunch of people and they didn't even have the same process, they've completely forgotten about their transition. But the more options you have sometimes makes it a little bit more confusing. So for those folks who are looking at this litany of information out there, it's easy to get overwhelmed. What do you say to them? I usually have a couple, like I said, that I recommend ones that I did that I absolutely loved. And then I also recommend a few of the bigger networking ones. You're going to meet a lot of people. You're going to get a lot of information. The biggest thing, Alfredo Torres was one of my early guests. He came on and said that transition is like a buffet. It's like the best description I can think of for transition. You literally walk into a buffet and you pick what you want. Now, part of that is you got to do a little research. You got to figure out what you need, what you want, find those organizations that work best for you. And that's what we hopefully deliver through the podcast, where they get a little bit of the personal feel before we get into what they're doing. So you can say, hey, I connect with this person. Let me check out their organization. But really, it just comes down to figuring out those key things for my family, our first thing was decide where we wanted to live. Once we decided where we wanted to live, then we could focus on school districts, jobs, houses, all that stuff, so then I could focus my efforts. I knew all my job search stuff was going to happen in one area, and then from there, I had the big job, and it took me probably six months to whittle down. What am I going to do? What do I want to do? Because there's thousands of things we could technically do coming out, especially retiring. You go through all these schools and everything, really. I try to encourage people to take as much time as they can. Dear. Earlier you can start the better, and really put in the work, do the research, figuring out the different things that apply to you, and then find those organizations that are going to serve your needs. You don't need to do 26 of them, I'll tell you that right now. No, you don't. It sounds so simple. And we're trying not to oversimplify something that is truly like a buffet, but knowing what you want. As a corporate recruiter, I always knew when I was speaking to somebody who had done their homework, there's a saying in the endurance world that I learned you can see discipline. You can see it in their body. You can also feel it as a recruiter. People who know what they want, they come across with a different level of confidence. So when you go into a salary conversation, which is usually the most important part, right, or location or job description or whatever, they know what they want, they've done the homework, and they're not inflexible to the point, but they're also not going to be taken advantage of. And that is not something that you round the bend. It's challenging. And this is why I think there's so many people like us coming from so many different walks of life, from taps, from career services, from resume writers to corporate recruiters to. We were talking about Jay Salters, who's not even retired yet. He's wanting to put a thousand people in tech jobs. I mean, he's on his, you know, we all have a different impetus, but we're all speaking to you, and hopefully this will fill the pie that you're trying to fill the section. So thank you, Sean. Thanks for letting me fangirl out over you. My goodness. I told Sean earlier, I made his face red. I said you were on my list, and when somebody put my name on your who do we know? I was like, it's like you write a fan letter to somebody and they respond with a headshot. No, I'm joking. I didn't get a headshot of Sean. But if you do want to check out his podcast, it's vet SOS. Tell me how we can get so a lot of people are listening, as you know, spell out how they can find the website. All right, so it's very simple. Just Vetsos podcast.com. Easy. No periods in there other than the. And the exciting thing that he shared with me that I want to support is that he's looking for corporate sponsors. We officially became an LLC this year, and our goal is one to pay some employees. We're trying to focus on the military spouse community to help continue to help our community any way we can. And then also we want to give back. We want to give at least 50% of the profits that the podcast can make back to the 501 that we're interviewing on the show. That's really what it comes down to for us. We want to find ways to continue to give back and keep this community strong. So if we can find the right sponsors, great. We'll talk about it, we'll run with it, and then we'll do what we can to keep this community great. Not make it great, keep it great. I love it. And all the folks that are listening to exchangepodcast.com or the military to civilian Career transition Power Hour, head over to vetsospodcast.com and check them out as well. We're all here to help one another. Thank you so much, Sean. I'm going to close this segment up because we've talked beyond our 15 minutes. Shocker. And we'll probably do a little bit of editing, but not much because everything you said was really valuable. Thank you so much for being my guest and sharing your knowledge with our listeners. Thank you so much for having me on, Cheryl, this has been a blast, and I can't wait to see, now that you're coming into the community, how many more people we can reach. This is going to be great. I'm only going to reach 100 and then I'm going to do something else. So, man, the onus is on you. We're going to be in touch. I'm going to close out by just saying thanks to Sean and letting you know that next is going to be somebody who has been out in the civilian workplace at least five years. So we're going to get a whole nother perspective, but we're going to take a short break. We'll be right back. Hello again. We're ending up our hour, power hour, which is about an hour and a half probably at this point, because, you know, these folks are really important, and the 100 voices of transition are just growing and growing. I had an opportunity to learn about this woman who is an outspoken advocate not only for veterans rights, but policy. She is a former US Air force enlisted person. She's been out more than five years, but that doesn't matter. She's still working in the space. And her transition story, it's been told, we're going to tell a little bit more of it again, but we're also going to give her a chance to talk more about what's important to her and what she's seeing in the space that can help you. Please welcome Karen Sendra. Hi, Karen. How are you doing today? Hi, Cheryl. I'm doing pretty good. It's really a pleasure to have talked. I had to hit the record button because we were going off on these tangents before we hit the record button about what's important to the two of us. One of the things that I really like about you that I said in the introduction is you are a strong female post 911 veteran and you have a very distinct voice, which I think is missing from these dialogues. So for the listeners listening, were you always this outspoken, or is that something that has been developed over the past several years? Right. Good question. So I would say life experiences definitely contributed to me having to have a strong voice. So I'll just kind of go back a little bit. Coming from a military family, my dad was Vietnam. My grandmother was a marine. That's a big deal right there. Grandfather, army, uncle, Navy, blah, blah, blah. So I've had quite a few patriots in the family. So I enlisted after 911, obviously had the calling. And the military, as you mentioned earlier, it's a male dominant organization. It's primarily men, and it's very masculine in its structure. So having to deal with that, there's two ways you can go as a female. You can either be submissive and blend in and just get along for the sake of getting along, or you can choose to step up and not let that separate you from the pack. And if you have an opinion or you have a sense of direction that you like to share, not back down just because you're surrounded by 30 men, maybe you're the only female in the room. So I've had to learn. I've been thrown in highly visible positions in the military, where I've had three and four star generals around me and high executive individuals, where you have to be very pronounced in your disposition or you'll get run over. So the military really set me up for being a strong female, but it came from the family. Having a strong female grandmother, military background, family that really prefaced it. And I think today, not to go on a tangent, a lot of the families are missing that kind of backbone of being patriotic, respecting the flag, and being brought up that way. So to fast forward, I've been in a lot of challenging positions within the workplace. Post service. I've had challenging dynamics with leadership. And what I've learned is every time, and this is kind of retrospect, I've looked back at having a conversation where I was in a leadership position. However, when I spoke up or I chose to bring in some data points for the organization to consider, I always seemed to conveniently be let go not too long after that. And I've noticed that carfuffle has repeated in multiple situations, and there's never been derogatory language from me. I've never acted unethically. It's just the fact that I dared to deem to have a thought that may have been a bit out of the box, that just kind of throws people into a kerfuffle and usually ends with me having to look for a different job. So that wasn't something that I was expecting post service. I really thought there was going to be a lot more supportive, veteran friendly organizations that looked for that strong female, that looked for that leadership dynamic and that discernment. But the truth of the matter, Cheryl, is a lot of people don't want that. They may say they want that type of person in the organization, but they don't want that. That's kind of been my journey so far with having that strong voice and putting it out there. I ended up getting onto LinkedIn begrudgingly because I'm not a big social media person, actually. I don't have all these platforms. And a lot of people say, I don't know why you don't have all these platforms, because I'm fairly conservative. I think that's why I chose to stay off the Facebook and Twitter and all of that. I just didn't want to be exposed to the world that way. But LinkedIn was like my safe place, because when I came onto LinkedIn, I was like, I'm going to do this for the military vets. That's why I'm on here. So I felt more focused and less exposed. But then I started noticing that I was sharing my perspectives, stories, experiences, all in real time, meaning these aren't stories that I heard from other people. These were things that I was going through, and it was resonating with an audience, and it was touching, untapped conversations that I didn't see anywhere else, not in this perspective. And so that's kind of how the voice grew throughout the years. And I'd say most people that I am connected to through LinkedIn, that's what they know me for. It's this candor. This is what it's really like as a post 911 vet, let alone female, strong leader vet, as you said, with a strong voice. And these are some of the things that I've had to experience. And so that's kind of how it's been for me up to this point. Well, I was very attracted to your voice, and as a strong woman myself, we all have different styles, and this is for men, too. One of the things that we're talking about on this podcast is how might you keep your identity as you transition into this incredibly difficult, weird, fungible, organic environment? You're losing your tribe. You're losing people who will literally die before you and then going into these social company constructs that you don't know who to trust. So I salute you for being outspoken. And you'll see all the Memes, and you'll see this in corporate ethics and core values. Be yourself. Be who you are. But sometimes that doesn't work. And I remember having a conversation with a corporate executive who was quite aggressive, former marine. And I said, you know, I really love it when you say stuff in meetings. He's like, I've been told to walk that back my entire career. So how might we motivate people, Karen, to find their space? I mean, you found your space. You're a successful writer. I see your videos. You're on every podcast. Now you're on mine. So how might we encourage people to really advocate for themselves and keep that voice? I mean, do you have the answer? Is there an answer? Well, it's certainly a journey. And I think that the path that I took was very unorthodox. When I got out of the service, it was fast. I don't even remember my taps exit. I don't remember any supportive services that I got. I just remember being a civilian and quickly going back into contracting because I needed work. I didn't have all this fluff and accoutamants that today's vets have. To me, they're almost overly saturated with information. I would probably say maybe I prefer the fact that I did get out stone cold, that I wasn't inundated with all of this information and all of these experts and subject matter experts and everybody knows best people. I find those to be challenging because that information seems to be shoved down the throats of the transitioning vets, and I think it just confuses them. So all of these veteran service organizations that you see, and they're there ideally to help with the transition. I mean, I hate to go against the grain and say, but perhaps finding your own path and shutting out all the noise might be a good place to start, because it kind of is insulting if you think about it. It's kind of like you're highly successful in the military, you're able to be adaptable and overcome and resilient, and you have all these great skills on one side, which is the corporate promotion piece, but then they basically treat you like a child when you get out. But you know nothing. You need us. You must go through our twelve week workshop, you must look at all of our resume formats. You must come to me for advice, you must have a mentor. All of these things just seem so cloak and dagger to me because I really find that that's essentially how vets lose themselves. I don't think they find themselves in that process, and that goes against what everybody's promoting, the truth of the journey or the journey in the exterior world. It really is an internal job. And I'm not saying don't connect with people, I just say be very and don't let all the accoutrements of them being experts. And you see these highly successful names in the LinkedIn tags, your CEO and entrepreneur, there's nothing wrong with that, but you have no idea what they went through to get to that point. And unless that person went through some genuine hardships and struggles and had a pretty tumultuous transition, I don't know how insightful they're going to be for the individuals that are getting out today's market, because it's not all sunshine and rainbows in the veteran space. And clearly you can see the amount of open to work banners on LinkedIn, the turnover that's extremely high. There's a lot going on here and it's not really getting addressed. So I think, again, certainly if you feel called to a certain group or person, go for it, but be very discerning with how much information you really feel you need. And don't ever let people on the outside assume they know more than you. They don't know you. I see this a lot and I hear this a lot. So occasionally I'll talk to someone. I just spoke to somebody last night in Germany, and we were communicating through Im on LinkedIn, and he thought that the conversation that he was having with an employer was an offer, and he kind of built his life around it. And it's like this is common, and a very hopeful conversation does get you excited. But until you see the offer, it's not an offer. An offer. And by the way, folks, those of you who are listening, if somebody says, I'd like to offer you a job for $80,000 on the moon, that's an offer. That is a legally binding verbal offer. So recruiters will be kind of pull back. They'll hold a little close. Well, we're very interested in you, and we'll let you know. They really loved you. We'll be in touch. Is not an offer. It's exciting, but they're going to say that, so be mindful of up. I can talk to you for an hour. Karen, you brought up some really good points, and I really want to hone in, know, finding their voice. What I see, another thing is people are take. Just take care of this for me. I've not planned. I don't know what I want. I've not gone inside. You say go inside. They haven't done the prep work, so they come out. And this is why the numbers for people leaving their first job within the first year are in the 70 percentile as a workforce development councilwoman. It drives me nuts. It drives me nuts. That number has not shifted for 20 years. More than two or 3%, and it won't. And people are like, cheryl, you're focusing on the wrong thing. Yes, I am. But I see that as a problem. As an HR consultant working for companies, you spend a lot of money trying to get somebody, and they leave within a year. What is it? Is it you or them? I mean, I'm here to fix shit, excuse my language. And this isn't working. Nobody can figure out the why, so go more into detail on that. When they go inside and figure out what it is they want, I want you to really unpack that more. We can go into the self awareness, emotional intelligence piece, which is very different with every person. So depending on where they're at with their inner journey, their experience is going to be based off of that. So what I've seen is a lot of folks, when they're. Let me just give a little background in my situation. I had an honorable medical discharge that went just like that in outgone. I wasn't expecting it there was nothing wrong with me that I knew of. So all these people that have these two years to plan when they're getting ready to retire, and this ridiculous amount of time I'm going, I think I had two months and I went right back into work. So it wasn't that big of deal to me. But all these people that when they're in active duty and they're trying to plan what it's going to be like on the other side of the fence when they're not out, to me, there's a little bit of a disconnect there. Now, I don't mean don't do your basic financial preparation. Get your house in order the best you can. I think if you can try to have as much of a nest egg, that's the best plan. But ideally to jump ship from, and this is more of the career vets, not so much like someone like me that wasn't in super long, but someone that's been in ten plus years, and then they jump ship from that life right to a position. If it's not almost exactly the same line of work, why not give yourself time? You need time to just not be in the military at all. You really need some time. Most vets aren't wired that way. And I get that. They're like, no stability. I need a paycheck. I don't have time. I have to line a job up. I see all these vets talking about, I'm six months out and I don't have a job. I'm like, that's actually not a big deal. You know how long I've been unemployed in between jobs? And I look at these vets, too, with some of their unrealistic expectations of how fast they should find a job when they get out of the service. I'm thinking, who's telling you this? Where are you getting such high bar that you should have this amazing job, this six figure salary or what have you, within three months from getting out of the service? I don't know how realistic that is, and I don't know who's setting the bar. I don't know if it's the vets or if it's their advice that they're getting from their community or transition space, but I would say, if possible, don't jump right into a job when you get out. Try not to do that. Actually. Just be get out of the uniform. Go see what it's like to just communicate with the regular folks. And I'll even say something like this, which I've done even later in my years. I've taken internships just because I wanted to see what it was like working in those organizations without committing. And I think that's something vets should consider is some type of opportunity. If they can financially go see what it's like without signing their life away and assuming it's going to be this great, wonderful opportunity, I think there's a definite story being told where you got to take all these steps. And I know I've seen people pass this stuff around your resource checklist, I'm thinking I didn't even have that when I got out. I didn't have a checklist. I just had to go live my life. So I just don't know if all these cookie cutter strategies are hindering the vets from having that actual awakening and their inner self and seeing what it is that they're actually about without all the rules and regulations, because the civilian world outside of the government space, isn't like that. You're going to find yourself in a very different type of culture than what you just came out of. So why not give yourself time to really just see what life is like before you jump in and commit? So the structured way to approach getting out of the service, I think it's a little bit too much. And I don't necessarily think that that behooves people. And statistically, I mean, obviously I love to know more about that because I've done some writing in that space as well, of what those opportunities look like and the turnover when individuals get out and how quickly they jump out. Were these some of the individuals that were so eager to sign away to that job? Did they take time? Six months, even a year? I know when I got out of the service, I didn't work for a year before I took my first job, and that was actually a conscious choice. I wasn't in a hurry and I just needed to breathe and just recalibrate. So I think there's just other ways to look at the approach. And I think the rigid way to check boxes, I think might be a little too old school and it might be hindering veterans from actually having more of an experience in the now and seeing what it's like just to breathe. As a civilian, I've created Skillbridge programs, I've enhanced existing Skillbridge programs for companies. And the one thing I've seen over and over is these folks who are coming in, I don't care if they were NCO, commissioned, enlisted, whatever, and they're like, what do you want me to do? Yeah. What's next? How do I do that? Well, aside from walking you to the bathroom and giving you a key to get into the room, it's pretty open. You're going to have to start asking questions and it's not what can I do for what's next? Where's the sop on this? And I'm not putting them down, but it's truly, you're coming from this very structured, predictive career environment and you're going to be walking into, and I've heard people say this, they're terrified I'm going into the abyss, I'm jumping off a cliff. And again, I try and be a problem solver. This podcast is trying to solve problems by offering stories exactly like yours, but I don't have a solution. Yeah, again, the only thing I can say to that is, and like I said, we're all wired very differently and depending on what we did in the service, some were more in the order taker position, some more were think on their feet, use your own discernment. So it really depends on what you did. So I can certainly see that side, but I don't think it benefits you to just be so reliant on things outside of yourself to know who you are. I just don't. That's why to me, the flood of workshops and all these resources, I just feel like it's too much. And you're not really allowing the vets to figure themselves out. And the only way, and I hate to say it this way because some vets are going to have a reaction, is to just get out there and experience the workforce. You're just going to have to sink. You're going to have to go into bad, toxic work environments, get under some horrible leadership, realize you absolutely loathe being in a cubicle and you'll never take a Cubicle job again. You just have to get in there. I don't think all this preparation that all these people white knuckle their paper lists and their checklist, I just don't think it's realistic and I don't think it's healthy, especially if you're navigating out of matters of national security and you're no longer in charge of securing the nukes. Let's just say, do you really need to be that rigid in your transition? I think you need to loosen the grips a little and let life take you a bit. And I know that will scare people because that requires trust. And again, it's a journey. You have to get to that point and I really encourage folks. The best bit I can give is don't jump into a job right out of service and think that you've conquered your transition because you're successful now. And I see this story time and time again. They're so excited, they're so excited. All these I can't wait to get out. And then it's within six months. I'm seeing the open to work. I'm like, yeah, you didn't give yourself a chance to calibrate. You can't calibrate if you're always on the go. If anyone knows that, it's vets in particular, combat vets and high adrenaline vets. You can't always be on the go. You have to have time to disconnect. And I think that disconnect is the scariest place for vets because that's going to force you to have to just know yourself, be with yourself, be with your own thoughts, good, bad, indifferent, dark or light. You're just going to have to sit in that. And that's when the pts and other things can come to surface. But don't you want to acknowledge that sooner than later and stop burying yourself in work, which a lot of people do, in particular military vets, they just love to bury their problems by being busy. It's not healthy and it's always going to come out. It's going to come out in a work environment, it's going to come out through your conversations with people, it's going to come out through your home environment, how that's going, or you're just going to find yourself brewing and being miserable. I just don't think there's enough time to just disconnect. Everything is so scheduled and pointed when you get out of the service from all these resources. I'm just like, I would have never found my voice if I sat in those rooms and went through those workshops. I don't think I would have. I had to live my life and just get out there. I don't want you to stop talking. If I say something, you're going to stop. I just want you to keep going. I love this. Thank you so much. We're recording this on a Saturday and this is supposed to stay timeless, but it's right before Christmas and I know everyone's really super busy. And Karen, you are super busy and you're looking at new avenues and really expanding your voice to new places. So I am honored that you shared this time with me today, especially during this time. I'm here to advocate for you and I believe many people, not just women, but men, too, are going to want to reach out to you because you are so incredibly grounded and authentic. How might someone find you? Is it through your writing? Is it through a website? LinkedIn? How do we get in touch with you? So I would say for the most part, my base when it comes to vets in particular, is LinkedIn. So they can find me fairly easily. Just look me up. My name's very unique, so there's no one else that has my name. So you can just find me that way. Spell it. Spell it for them. My first name, it's pronounced Karen but spelled Carin, and my last name is Sandra Sendra. So thanks, Karen. And you're definitely not a Karen as everyone's pointing fingers because she spells it different. No, you're not. Zero complaints. Don't talk about it. Do it. I love it. I love your mentality and I wish more people had it. You bring something up and I'm going to end with this and then I'll ask for your last alibi. I just interviewed Robert Hamilton Owens, and he's a minister and a 72 year old endurance athlete. I did an hour long feature with him. He was called to action. A friend of his, Navy SEaL, committed suicide. Very suddenly. Nobody saw it. They were all working on veteran support through seal fit and other projects through the Courage foundation, which is owned by a very famous Navy SeaL, Mark Devine. And it just rocked. Did how did this person slip through? So knowing self. And this is what Robert Hamilton said. Robert Hamilton Owen said, you know, you got to go in, you got to figure this out. And one of the things he said to me, Karen, was hurt people hurt people. There's different levels of pain. I was talking to him about his row across the Atlantic, 3000 miles. But when he started talking about internal pain, it's like, oh, we're not talking about a documentary anymore. Hurt people. Hurt people. So keep that in mind. All right, you're awesome. Last alibi from you. And then we'll shut down the segment and go to the end of the show. Yeah, I don't really have too much more to add. Like I said, I've been on LinkedIn for a while. I've got quite a bit of content out there. It's not meant to promote me in any kind of way. It's always meant to be that voice, that alternate perspective. And I've had quite a few folks over the years send me private messages talking about the very things that they didn't feel comfortable documenting in public. And that just lets you know that there's a lot of roots to a lot of these topics that aren't so common. Where vets need a bit of an outlet. Taps is not a one stop shop to your life. If you want to get to know yourself, you're going to have to be with yourself. And the best way to engage with what your truth is to stop listening to everybody else unless you're really feeling called or there's an intrinsic desire to learn more. I think that don't be fooled by all these titles and subject matter experts that are beating the drum. I think it can mentally exhaust you. And ultimately, again, I conclude if you possibly can, and I know it's uncomfortable, just choose, do all the best that you can to prepare to get out financially because I think that's significant. But then just maybe don't necessarily have a job lined up. And I don't think too many people are going to say that one. I don't think going from a to b just like that is your best idea. Just be for a while. Be with your family, be with your dog. Go out there in the public and just see what it's like to just be you. Then maybe start getting into the job placement. Find yourself, find your sense of purpose. Redefine, redirect. Those are great messages. Thank you, Karen. All right. My name is Cheryl Cross. I really appreciate you listening to this incredible woman, a strong voice. Do reach out to her on LinkedIn. We're going to close up this segment because we've probably gone well past an hour and I call this the power hour. So stick around. We'll have a little end segment after this short break. I can't believe it's been ten episodes. You're sitting with number ten. And I have brought you 30 of 100 voices of military transition. Either people who are going through the soup of actively applying and getting those rejection letters or getting those offers. The people that have been out one to four years and people who've been out at least five. Hey, transition is forever. Moving from the military into the civilian workforce is not something that just flick a light switch. It's for a long time. So thanks so much for tuning in. And by the way, thanks to our special guests. This episode, I'd like to say thanks to autumn Wheeler. Sean Welsh, a vet SOS podcast. Karen Sendra. I love her outspokenness. And my fellow recruiter, Richie Lampani. I'm Cheryl Cross. You're listening to the military to civilian career transition power hour. And as I tell you each and every time I'm going to tell you again. The military has given you great skills. You are strong, you are brave, you are skilled, and you are trained. These are all things that the civilian workforce needs and appreciates. You're going to find that great job and I really appreciate you putting us on your journey as you focus on your career. I'll see you on the next episode. Bye for now. Audio and video post production for the podcast is done by oceantreecreative.com.