Staying Connected Changing World Industry Applying Work

¶ … Staying connected changing world industry applying work related skills current future employment benchmark success. Identify skills adapt career area graduation. Explain plan increase abilities skills.

Staying connected: Transferable and adaptable skills

Every soldier brings two fundamental skill sets to the workforce, when transitioning from the military to a civilian job: that of his or her transferable skills and that of his or her adaptive skills. I am a Command Sergeant Major with over 33 years of active military service. I have gained both transferable skills and adaptable skills over the course of my service.

The most useful transferable skills, the skills I have directly and actively used while serving in my position that can be easily deployed in the workforce involve my capacity for mentorship and teaching. As part of my duties as senior enlisted advisor to my commanding officer I have served as both as an advocate and representative for soldiers and families. My job involves working with people. Empathy and affirming the self-worth of fellow soldiers is a critical component of my work as a counselor and trainer. I am a guide as well as an advocate, when I help the population I am serving. My position is one of leadership, and communication is a critical component of leadership, as a leader must understand the needs of his or her followers.

Another of the functions of my position involves training troops to ensure they are ready for combat. This demands that I am able to teach in a caring and responsive fashion as well as exercise firmness. I do enforce discipline but I do so not to affirm my own ego, but rather to ensure that the organization I am working for functions well. Serving in the army as a trainer has helped me understand the difference between disciplining others to make myself feel better vs. disciplining to make the person I am leading perform to his or her highest capacity. I also visit units to conduct inspections. This requires that I listen with empathy to problem-solve and to address the needs of various units. There is a fair amount of psychological astuteness required in this task, as I praise what the unit is doing well while still providing constructive criticism when needed.

Within industry, the communication skills and teamwork I have honed are foundational to success. Employers do not merely want qualified candidates -- they want employees who can work well as a team and put aside their own personal needs to create high-functioning units that can serve the needs of the company. They want leaders who listen to others and can draw upon the skills and interpersonal attributes of a diverse range of people, not leaders who merely impose their will upon others. They also want leaders who understand what a team truly is -- a group of individuals pursuing a common goal, with common values -- and can form a team from a diverse group of individuals.