What 2007 could mean for you

Despite all the promises made to a partner, to a family or to yourself in the euphoria of New Year’s Eve, Monday 1 January 2007 will probably turn out to be just the same as any other Monday. True, it is a bank holiday … but so are several other Mondays during the year. Maybe the hangover is a bit more severe after several extra shots to ‘see the new year in’, but having one of those is hardly a new experience. Perhaps the mouth is rather dry, the cough a little worse, the lungs a bit more sore than usual, but, hey, it only happens once a year and it was a great party.

During your time in the Armed Forces, you will probably see in a good many new years, some of them in rather strange places. But – and it is a big but – you may not have as many of them in uniform as you imagine right now. Resettlement statistics show quite clearly that the vast majority of people who join the Services leave before the end of their contract, and most of those who do complete a full Service career are comparatively young when they hand in their ID cards.

Very few can afford to retire when they leave, and even fewer want to. In this they are no different to their civilian counterparts. Whatever you may read about relatively young men and women retiring at 40 to sail round the world on a big farewell handout and a fat final salary pension scheme, such people are rare. For the vast majority, working life continues until the default state retirement age, and sometimes beyond.

So, even someone completing a 22-year engagement will still have 25 years left in a second career that, mathematically, will be longer than their first one. Even if at the ten-year point and in the middle of a fire-fight in Afghanistan, it does not seem like it, the simple and inescapable truth is that anyone who survives a first career in the Armed Forces is going to have another one in a very different world, unless they retire very late because they are very senior or very specialised, or they have enough money (or have married into it) to afford not to work, or they die.

You ignore this at your peril. At some time you are going to emerge from your current employment and compete with people who have been doing the job you are after for many years; who have skills, experience and a track record; who have a network in place to help them. Sadly, employers are generally not interested in how well you performed under fire; their front line is the bottom line – profit and loss. That figure decides how well they eat, where they go on holiday and what car they drive. They may be interested in hearing about operations in Iraq, but they will employ the person who will bring the most value to their organisation.

Therefore the exam question is: ‘How do you ensure that you are that person?’ You do not have the years of civilian experience that will be in your competitors’ CVs, but you probably do have relevant experience if you translate your Service skills into the employer’s language. You probably also have a number of personal qualities that are not necessarily found in other people who would not pass Service selection and could not get through the training. How to explain this to a potential employer is taught by the Career Transition Partnership during the resettlement process.

The other answer to the exam question concerns qualifications. Very often they are necessary to get through the initial sift of applicants for a job, and they are becoming increasingly necessary for all walks of life. Just one example is highlighted in this month’s building trades feature: you will soon need a formal qualification to work on a construction site; something that would have been unimaginable a few years ago.

Service people can get qualifications, and you are given far more financial help to achieve them that your civilian counterparts – around £10,000 at the last count if you include standard and enhanced learning credits and individual resettlement training costs over a 22-year career. Your Personal Development Record is your road map in this area, and not to use all the opportunities available is to ignore the realities of the post-Service phase of your life.

To help in these decisions, this edition of Quest covers desk-bound jobs like careers in the City of London, and accountancy and book-keeping. Both cover a wide variety of skills, and both are becoming increasingly dependent on IT. For the more practical individual we cover aviation security and close protection. It only takes a glance at a newspaper to see that both are growth industries, with the relevance of Service training and experience too obvious to describe further. Finally, for the generalist, we look at management and supervision, and the vast range of jobs on offer in the hospitality sector. Both require strong people skills, which are a feature of most Service leavers.

We hope that something sparks your interest. It is your future and only you can make the most of it.