After completing this activity, you will:
- Understand why role alignment is important.
- Understand how to determine the right fit.
Knowing what types of roles you are interested in is an important part of the job search process. If you are open to anything and your profile reflects that, it’s extremely hard for a recruiter or hiring manager to know what you can actually do. In order to stand out, you need to pinpoint the exact type of role you are looking for and market yourself as someone who is the right fit for the role.
This is a veteran’s paradox, as most veterans and servicemembers, while in the military, are expected to be a jack of all trades and must be capable of doing anything. For example, if you’re a senior enlisted advisor who is in the transition, you could find success in Project Management, Human Resources, Operations, Sales, etc., as these are all components of what you do on a daily basis. Adaptation is the name of the game for mission accomplishment, but civilian recruiters, see uncertainty and potential for not having role alignment.
Knowing how to overcome this disconnect is one of the most difficult parts of career transition, but doing so will set you up for success.
Why Role Alignment is Important
Aligning to a specific role is important because it allows you to hone your story and professional profile in a way that resonates with a recruiter or hiring manager. When an organization hires someone, they are hiring for a specific need. Either something is broken and they need someone to fix it, or they are at capacity for work, and cannot be successful without bringing someone else in.
If you cannot pitch yourself (Candidate Card, resume, LinkedIn) as someone who can solve their need, they will not hire you!
In an ideal world (e.g. what you see on a job description), a hiring manager asks for all of the bells and whistles for what they think they need in a new employee. Someone with experience, that can solve a niche task, a team player… you get the gist. What they’re really asking for is someone who is capable of doing what they need to be done, that fits into a specific ideal set by the team.
By knowing the types of roles that are right for you, you can begin to craft your narrative and ultimately answer the call of these hiring managers!
How to Determine the Right Role
If someone were to ask you what you wanted to do for work, what would you say?
- Would you say you want to be a consultant or a project manager?
- That you want to lead people?
- That you want to get sh*t done?
These are the types of answers you may hear during TAPS, or when you ask someone who has not done much research into a role. It’s not a knock on anyone, but for a majority of people who default to this, it’s a surface-level deflection. Taking the time to understand what you want to do and researching what career paths align with your desires is paramount in not only finding career success but ultimately living a quality life.
Identifying your energizers
Start to note the things that energize you at work on a daily basis. Using whatever format you prefer, either as you go through your day or as a reflection at the end of each day, keep track of the elements of your day that you find energizing and enjoyable as opposed to tedious and deflating. When you find a part of your day that you find energizing, it might be useful to dig deeper by examining the activity through the lens of the following categories:
- Activities: What were you actually doing? Was this a structured or unstructured activity? Did you have a specific role to play (team leader) or were you just a participant (at the meeting)?
- Environments: Our environment has a profound effect on our emotional state. You feel one way at a football stadium, another in a cathedral. Notice where you were when you were involved in the activity. What kind of place was it, and how did it make you feel?
- Interactions: What were you interacting with – people or machines? Was it a new kind of interaction or one you are familiar with? Was it formal or informal?
- Objects: Were you interacting with any objects or devices – iPads or smartphones, hockey sticks or sailboats? What were the objects that created or supported you feeling engaged?
- Users: Who else was there, and what role did they play in making it either a positive or negative experience?
By going through this exercise, you can start to uncover what you enjoy in life and use your insights as the building blocks to finding your next career. Your results can help you refine what you choose as a career path (e.g. You enjoyed testing a new system at work that allows you to easily keep track of Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) reports and share insights with visualized data.)
Once you’ve identified what energizes you, head over to Gunny Google or Lieutenant LinkedIn and search for roles that are related to your interests.
On both Google & LinkedIn, you can search specific key terms (e.g. data visualization) and add additional filters to narrow down specific careers that may be aligned with what you’re looking for. From here, look at the roles listed, the descriptions, experience requirements, etc., and see if that sounds like what you want to do/what you are capable of.
Once you’ve identified a few roles that fit what you’re interested in, you can begin to craft your personal narrative!
Additional context: At this point in the process, you would also benefit from informational interviews, which will be covered in a separate course!