5 Naysayers Transitioning Military Must Overcome

For senior military members, getting through transition is like running an obstacle course of naysayers. Slugging through all those big fat NOs is absolutely necessary in order to get the right job, in the right place, at the right time. In my work as a career coach for transitioning military, I’ve noticed at least five naysayers senior military must overcome:

You the Naysayer

Your first naysayer is so close you can smell it. Your brain evolved to despise, abhor and generally avoid change. Your neurons are up there firing together to warn you that leaving the military now makes no sense. You are going to quit a job you know and love so well at the very peak of your success just because it is expected? What are you, a lemming? I often see the effect of this naysayer in senior military who confess to having weak interest in the job market, cannot find time in their schedules to work on it, and are studiously ignoring their looming retirement date. 

Stakeholder Naysayers

When it comes to the job hunt, your stakeholders are the people whose lives are directly affected by your transition choices. For senior military in their 40s and 50s, this is a prodigious group: not only husbands and wives, but ex-husbands and ex-wives, grown children, semi-grown children still on your cell phone plan, teens with friends, sweet little children with big sad eyes, mortgage brokers, elderly dogs, $35 cats with $10K vet bills and, increasingly, aging parents. They all have their needs and they firmly believe that after all the times they have accommodated your career it is THEIR TURN NOW. It is enough to make any jobhunter tremble.

They-sayers

While I can understand accommodating your brain and your stakeholders (because pretty much all your happiness will come from them), worrying about what an imaginary “they” might say about your next job is just silly. I grant you, most of your peers, friends, coworkers and classmates are nice people and they probably have some suggestions about what you should do. In the long run, however, they do not know what is best for you and they will not have to live with the consequences of your decisions. Let your they-sayers go and get on with it. 

Ghost Naysayers

Something about transition makes you remember every dumb thing you ever did, every boss you ever had that didn’t like you, and every job skill you did not learn while you were out there operating in the post 9/11 world. For most of the senior military members I talk to, these ghost naysayers do not represent serious, life altering, or war-related events. These are the ghost of the little things. I usually notice this as a fleeting look of doubt on the faces of jobhunters. Luckily, that is what good coaching is all about—getting past niggling self-doubt and on to a more accurate, relevant business proposition.

Actual Naysayers

Now that you have finessed all those other naysayers, you get to meet with the real naysayers. These actual naysayers are hiring managers who think you are awesome (and feel genuinely grateful for your service) but don’t know what you would do for their company. While these seem like the hardest group to overcome, this is where the greatest amount of improvement can occur with the right kind of effort, information and feedback.

Naysayers are only one of the obstacles senior military have to overcome in the job search. That is why I am piloting a free career coaching program for senior military members. The program is designed to get you past all the invisible sources of NO and get you to the right place where hiring managers are ready to say yes all the time. 

If you are a senior military member transitioning within the next 18 months, find out more about the free pilot program here.