As you transition from the military you are faced with a major decision that you may not have faced before. “What am I going to do with the rest of my life?” Although some military recruits are lucky enough to get into a career field of their own choosing and, hopefully, something that easily converts to the civilian world, many are not so lucky. The military looked at your ASVAB scores, looked at their own manning and where they needed you and you were steered in that direction whether via a formal school or through on-the-job training. That type of career decision may have worked for you while you were on active duty. The military trained you, assigned you to work in your field, afforded you opportunities for advanced training and promotion and paid you decently while you were employed by the Department of Defense. For these reasons many folks never give any thought to where they truly belong based on their own internal criteria. Now it is all up to you! Where do you start? There are a variety of assessment instruments available.

Interest inventories: These are designed to measure your interests in occupations, activities, school subjects and more. Simply put, the theory behind interest surveys is that if you are in specific career field, working with others in the same field and all of you enjoy your careers then beyond the job you probably will have some similar interests. Once your interests are defined, the assessment instrument then compares these interests with people in over fields to see where they overlap.

All career fields can be broken down in six General Occupational Themes: Realistic, Artistic, Investigative, Social, Enterprising, and Conventional (RAISEC). Most assessments will give you a three-letter code based on RAISEC. Any three-letter code relates to a group of career fields. Each 3-letter code can then be transposed into five other groupings with more career fields for you to consider. Each career field can be researched further in books such as O*NET (Dictionary of Occupational Titles), the Occupational Outlook Handbook or the Guide for Occupational Exploration. Each publication includes info on skills, education, whether this is a growing or declining field, expected median earnings, professional associations, and much more.

Skills assessment: Although you may think you know what your skills are, are you able to identify those skills that motivate you to perform, or the skills you need to develop more? It will help identify skills you may have but should stay away from due to them leading you to a high degree of burn-out. By forcing you to determine both your strong skills and your weak skills you will build confidence in those skills you may not have realized you were so strong in. Take another look at your high-interest career fields once you understand your skill strengths Your Transition Assistance Program manual has a good list of skills to start with, but you may want to work with a counselor to help you identify your strengths.

Values assessment: Do your values matter in your career? How do you use knowledge of your own personal values in helping to determine your career choices? If you value integrity and honesty you may want to steer away from the Enron and WorldCom of the world. If you value esthetics and natural beauty you may not want to work for a company that produces products that hurt or endanger the environment, but you may want to work for the Environmental Protection Agency or an organization involved in environmental issues. If you feel strongly about veteran’s issues, you may want to work for the Veterans Administration or a Veteran’s Service Organization. Values assessments takes you deep inside yourself and can be very enlightening and used in conjunction with skills assessments and interest inventories can open some interesting doors you may not have noticed before.

Personality/temperament: Have you ever worked with someone who seemed to be your opposite in the way you work? You get your work done in an orderly fashion and ahead of schedule while your co-worker works on four aspects at one time, and doesn’t finish a project until the night before it is due. You are an introvert, he’s and extrovert. That can play a big part in determining your career path. Do you make decisions based on emotional feelings or concrete thinking? How do you take in information and use it to make decisions? You may use all of your senses – sight, smell, taste, hearing and touch – to provide input to make decisions. On the other hand your co-worker just “goes with his gut” and relies on his intuition. None of these are wrong, they are simply the differences in personality type between you. Knowing your own styles and having an understanding of how other personality styles relate to people and their style of work will allow you to work better with a vast diversity of people and personalities.

Your transition to the civilian world is an opportunity for you to have CHOICES in your life again. Doesn’t it just make sense to get all the facts about yourself before you make the wrong choice?