How Military Skills Help Soldiers to Find Work

One of the biggest concerns that many people have going into a military career is whether or not they will be able to find work when it eventually comes to an end. This is something that can pose a fair amount of anxiety for personnel but in most cases it is unjustified.

And the reason for this is that the army teaches so many amazing skills that are 100% transferrable to future careers. Perhaps not everything you'll learn in the army will be directly related, but nevertheless the rigorous training, broad life experience and skill development will overall make you a fantastic candidate for any number of high paying jobs in the civilian sector.

How Army Skills Help in Future Careers

Regardless of your particular position, chances are that you will have learned some pretty amazing skills in the army. Whether you learned how to save lives as a combat medic, whether you put together gas masks as a CBRNE soldier, or whether you were an 11B and had to ruck the mountains in Afghanistan – any of these skills are incredibly useful.

Do many civilian sector jobs require you to be able to understand a gas mask? Not really. But the skills you learn as an engineer here are nonetheless highly transferrable and very relevant to a whole range of different jobs. What's more, when you learn how to take apart a rifle, you also demonstrate that you are adept at learning new skills – which essentially means you'll be adapt to almost any given situation.

Leadership

There's a good chance you will have gone through the Warrior Leader Course (WLC) or even the Advanced Leader Course and Senior Leader Course. Either way, you'll have learned incredible leadership skills that will help you to stay cool and calm in a crisis, to take command of a situation and to inspire your team to get the very most out of them. Being able to manage subordinates, stay on track of operations and earn respect are all things that are incredibly crucial for any manager or any other position for that matter.

Staying Calm

Another thing that ex-military personnel excel at is staying calm in a highly stressful situation. This is perhaps the most valuable skill that any employee can have when it comes to the crunch but it's also unfortunately something that all too many of us are lacking. When everything is going wrong and you have angry clients breathing down your neck, being able to rise above your emotions and make the most calculated and logical decisions in any given situation is absolutely invaluable.

MOS Schools

If you're still concerned that the general skills you pick up in the army won't be enough, you can always seek further training from Military Occupational Specialty training. This type of training is highly intense and once you're finished with your Advanced Individual Training you will be an absolute expert in your field. This makes it far easier to then pursue careers in that given field once you leave and looks fantastic on a CV.

Learning to Sell Yourself

Despite all this, some ex-military candidates still have trouble getting through the selection process and landing the jobs they want going forward. This is because they don't know how to sell the skills they have and how to translate their skills and training into 'civilian terms'. Recognizing the qualities of leadership and fast decision making in yourself is the first step, while you also need to remember that employers don't know what a 74D20L3L4 means… You need to tell them that you have medical experience, that you trained in X special field and that you used X equipment.

Helping Yourself Get Started

It's also important to generally take a little time to readjust to civilian life which can often feel quite jarring at first. You should also look at potentially getting a loan from a company like the US Military Lending Corp to make sure you have some funds and the chance to land on your feet.

But just remember: being ex-military is definitely not a drawback. You are not trying to get a job in-spite of this. Rather it is an asset and will likely help you land a much better position than you otherwise could have.