Christmas – a time for contacts

Christmas has traditionally been a season when families and friends gather together to eat vast quantities of celebratory food, to exchange presents and to send cards to all those people you haven’t seen during the year but who still feature in your address book. It is a time of parties and fun; although military families will also have thoughts for loved ones abroad. For a few it will be a time of sadness and anxiety as the days to the end of an operational tour tick by.

Quest sends all our readers all the very best wishes for an excellent holiday and a happy, prosperous 2008 but, even at Christmas, there can be some advantage to be gained from thinking about the future. It is a time of networking, which is simply communicating with other people and developing a range of contacts for mutual benefit. It is something that all of us do daily, and it has a special relevance for job hunting.

The vast majority of jobs in the UK are never advertised, and can therefore never be accessed by everybody. They may be new positions, they may be old positions filled by promoting or reassigning current members of staff, they may even be jobs created to suit the talents of a particular individual. Or they may be filled by someone known to the boss or through a speculative letter and CV arriving on an employer’s desk at the precise moment that a vacancy arises.

By far the most likely way for this unadvertised vacancy to be filled is through networking. Somebody known to the employer or recommended by someone they trust happens to be available, who fills most of the requirements of the job description and the personnel specification.

A network is everyone you know – and everyone they know: parents, family, friends, teachers, MoD suppliers and contractors, and many more. But do not forget other people in uniform, and those you know who left before you. They may well have priceless knowledge and experience – and other contacts.

The concept is one with which everyone should be comfortable. Every time you phone someone in another unit to ask for a favour, in the knowledge that you will return it in the future, you are networking. Every time a mutual friend introduces you to someone who might be useful, you are building a network – and this applies just as much while you are in uniform as it does when you have left the Services.

An important aspect to networking is that it is for mutual benefit. This means that it should be in both parties’ interests to have a dialogue. While the Service leaver talking with an employer may be using the meeting as a means for gathering job intelligence and selling themselves as a prospective employee, the employer may be learning about the Armed Forces, or even satisfying curiosity about people who put themselves in harm’s way voluntarily.

It is not difficult to build a network by contacting people you know and asking them to put you in contact with people they know, who can then put you in contact with people they know … The ways in which this is achieved are covered in numerous books and on courses available to Service leavers. However, there is a ready-made network that has only recently started to become apparent to people serving in the Armed Forces and that is reservists.

Whereas they used to be quite separate from and rarely seen by the regulars, members of the reserves are now much in evidence. Some serve in units performing tasks similar to their civilian occupations, while others like a change from the day job, and you may well find a company director or city whizz-kid chilling out in a relatively lowly rank. Never confuse military position with civilian expertise! While a reservist serving with your unit may not be able to help directly, they may well have the contacts that will enable you to build this all-important network that will be so necessary for the rest of your working life.

In this month’s edition, we have a selection of old favourites among our feature articles, as well as some other offerings. Many Service leavers choose second careers in sports and fitness, diving, telecommunications and charities. The similarities and the ease of transferring Service skills in these areas are obvious, so it is not surprising that many people enter these sectors.

Aviation has always been popular with skilled pilots and engineers, but some may not realise that, for example, up to one-third of all jobs in the sector are security-related – that is a great deal of employment. We look at what has been happening in the MoD’s Resettlement Directorate, and pass on some tips on how to plan resettlement training. And, for the budding entrepreneur in any sector, we take a brief look at what is involved in running your own business, offering readers some signposts to help with their own research.