When it comes to folklore about how to manage your career (and there are tons of it!), the interview often gets center stage. That maybe because of the false assumptions about the subject.

Assumption one: the interviewer is very prepared for the process.

The truth: most interviewers aren’t trained for interviewing at all. According to Adam Grant, Associate Professor of Management at the Wharton School “Many managers do no better than random chance in selecting high performers.” (October, 2011)

Assumption two: there are 10 (or is it 15?, 20?) “magic” questions I have to memorize the answers to in order to do well in the interview.

The truth: while some questions are common, it’s hard to believe anybody has gotten a buy off on the magic set of questions as they apply, unchanged, to every career field in every industry in every sector all across America.

And even if the idea is true, you’d have to not only memorize those questions (and an answer for each one), you’d have to recognize them no matter how they were expressed and respond well no matter which order they came in.

It’s no surprise if we leave the interview in the hands of the almost-always-untrained interviewer, what we get is an interrogation. But what you both want is a collaboration.

You want to know the most pressing problem they have as it relates to your career field. After all, if you don’t know what they need, you can’t tell if you can help them.

You’ve had those successful collaborations all your work life. Your boss asks you to solve a problem. You speak with her to find the basic information you need to start working on the solution. You propose ideas. She responds. Soon there is an agreement about what you are going to do, why you’re doing it, and how your work benefits the organization.

That—by definition—is an interview!

Entire books are written about the interview. My purpose was just to introduce a key idea. Make every interview into a collaboration by asking about the key problem the employer needs solved.

When you do everybody wins because the discussion is on ground comfortable to you and the person you’re speaking with.

It’s all about our favorite conversation: how you’re going to help the organization make a lot more money than it takes to recruit and retain you. You know. It’s the same conversation that made your career successful.

So now is the time to capture the problems you solved, how you solved them, the results you help delivered.

If you can quantify those results, compare them to previous performance, and put them in context, so much the better.

I encourage you to document what you do every week without fail. Don’t worry about format or even spelling. Just capture your worth before you forget.

I’m not suggesting you “sell yourself.” That’s demeaning. You have excellence that others need. But they’ll never know how you can help them if you don’t capture your proven abilities.

You may want to use your notes to help your rater prepare your performance review. And you’ll certainly find those examples priceless when it comes to competeting in the civilian marketplace.

It’s been hard (but in no way impossible) to find civilian jobs since the recession began some two years ago. Now, with talk of large cutbacks in military personnel and programs, it may be harder to remain on active duty status.

But if you make it a habit of preserving your examples of excellence, you’ll have the edge when you start on that unavoidable, second, civilian career.

Even if you live off base, the differences don’t seem to mean much until you start hearing about them in the transition assistance program or in stories from other veterans who have already made the leap.

But there is one, very subtle, cultural difference that can delay or derail your career. The good news is you can avoid it. And when you do, you may also be far ahead of your civilian job seeking competition.

This fundamental different starts when you take the oath. The services like to think of their people as leaders. Of course, you have your MOS, AFSC, or job rating. But a key factor in getting promoted is your leadership ability. That’s why higher grades and ranks can take you into new fields. Said another way, the services focus on—I hate this term—the so called “soft skills.”

By the time you end your military career, you’re able to do so many things well because you know how to motivate people to support the toughest missions under difficult conditions.

And so you start looking at job postings. After a while, you begin to notice how badly companies announce these “opportunities.” Typically, the announcements start by selling the company. Then comes a series of soft skill requirements. You’re an expert a communicating well, solving problems, and leading people. And so you apply. And you wait…and wait…and wait.

What most companies didn’t tell you is the rest of the story: the specific capabilities they want.

In the best of all words, you’d see announcements that look like this:

“Wanted: Office Manager

Your résumé will have living, breathing, transferable, verifiable examples of your ability to deliver the following capabilities:

Get the right information to the right people in time to beat the competition,

Free senior decision makers for the things only they can do,

Be the voice of our corporate brand to every customer—internal and external, and

Translate senior leadership’s vision into results by guiding people who do not work directly for you.

Résumés without such example will go directly to the shredder!”

Since we never see such a posting, too many veterans chase one disconnected “opportunity” after another. Since they can’t match their excellence precisely against corporate needs, they fail.

Let me suggest an approach to stop that problem in its tracks. First, most important, your campaign must be focused on the career field you want to follow. A career field is a collection of knowledge, skills, abilities, and passions generally abbreviated by a job title.
Only then can you match power with efficiency and speed. After all, the skills associated with any career field can be practiced nearly anywhere. Office managers manage offices—it really doesn’t matter if the office is large or small, in a private firm or a government office, in Portland, Oregon or Portland, Maine.

Once you have the career field identified, it’s time to consider the three sectors: private, public (government), and non-profit. Most career fields have openings in all three sectors. But if you have a preference, you’ll know where to focus your efforts.

Next comes the choice of industry. Think of an “industry” as a collection of goods or services generally under an umbrella term. So we have the healthcare industry, the defense industry, the service industry…you get the point.

Then, and only then, should you think about the specific organization you want to target.

While that approach is different from the military way of managing people’s careers, it not only works in the civilian world, it’s a wonderful way to concentrate your efforts and build a long and rewarding second career.

You’re on LinkedIn. You’ve joined special groups. You subscribe to the “right” blogs.

And you are annoyed every day with notifications that someone has “added” to the discussion.

Off you go to see what nugget of vital information you must not miss. And, if you’re like me, nearly three-quarters of the postings are a waste of time. Endless “me-too-s,” unsupported opinions off topic messages, and blatant promotions. It’s enough to make you throw up your hands in frustration.

Don’t.

There is a rarely talked about advanced and productive form of networking. It leverages all the “noise” you often encounter. I call it thoughtful contribution.

Start by scanning the discussion titles and the names of the contributor. If the title is too broad or vague, don’t follow that thread. But before you do, look at the contributor’s name. Are her comments insightful, well written, and on target? If the answer is yes, be sure to read what she says.

Now you can begin to see the concept of advanced, productive networking. Its goal is to have you seen as a primary influencer—not by the number of postings you make, but by the quality of what you write.

If you see a topic of interest, give some thought as to what meaningful contribution you can make. Write as clearly as you can. Support your opinion wherever possible.

Won’t that limit your contributions? Yes. . .and it should! I want you to become known as a genuine thought leader.

When you do, you’ll find others will reach out to you, offline, to seek your guidance and support. Now you are connecting with people who can really help you.

Let’s put you in charge of the impact of social networking tools on your life. At last, you’ll be free of the nagging guilt that you must scan every single posting on every single subject.

Rather, the power of your thought—and writing is thought made visible—will enrich the conversations you’ll have with members of your network.

And it’s those conversations informed hiring decision makers use to offer interviews with confidence.

First, you must prove that you will make the target organization more money than it takes to find, recruit, hire, and retain you.

Second, you must provide “living, breathing” transferable examples of you solving the kind of problems a company needs you to solve in your career field.

It is so tempting to just show the results. But there are two problems with that approach.

First, it’s backward looking. An employer, swamped with hundreds of résumés, may incorrectly conclude his organization doesn’t look anything like the one you worked for. Since he can’t see the value of your success story to his business’ success, he may stop reading your résumé.

Second, you probably had much more responsibility that your age group in the civilian world. I’ve known E-5s and O-4s who were responsible for millions of dollars in resources. It’s not that civilian employers don’t believe your claim, it’s just that they can’t see how it applies to them.

Here’s how to counter such difficulties. Think about the problems you solved that are related to your target career field.

What was the problem? Remember to concentrate on the problem and not the symptom. Example: Falling sales is not a problem. It is the symptom. Ask yourself what caused the symptom. In this example, falling sales could be due to a new competitor in the market, a fall in demand, an understaffed sales force…you get the idea.

What did you do to solve the problem? Specific actions count.
What were the results? Quantify if you can. The person with the number wins. If the number sounds overwhelming, use a conservative approach. Does a $23M program seem intimidating? Consider describing it as a “multi-million” dollar program.

If you can compare your results with your previous performance or the company standard, so much the better.

Was there an unusual context? Did you do two weeks’ work in three days? Was this a problem you have never worked before?

Now you are on your way to providing vivid, vital proof that you can return an employer’s investment in you to your mutual benefit.

In today’s world, people get jobs by matching their expertise in a given career field to organizations’ needs in that same field. Said another way, an HR specialist does human resources things no matter where she’s employed.

Of course, the details of the job will change, but the main thrust of the profession doesn’t. Think back to your last PCS in your given rating, MOS, or AFSC. Yes, you were still a logistics person. And it took a little time to know the people and the unique culture of your new organization, but you were productive from day one.

By the way, the situation is the similar in the civilian world. A sales professional is a sales professional, no matter which product or service he’s been selling.

Why do some companies hint that you must “start at the bottom?” Most probably it’s because they want to pay you less than you are worth. (You’ll find more information in my August 2010 post: “Why military retirement pay should never be part of compensation negotiations.”)

You’ve worked hard to build your military career. Chances are you can use much of your experience in the civilian world.

If a company ever hints that you’ll have to “start at the bottom,” ask them why. If you don’t get a good answer, walk away.

The NCO who can always seem to get what the unit needs—even when official channels seem to block him—knows how to network. The staff officer whose been asked to brief a general officer on a subject the staffer knows little about knows how to network. Every person who wore a uniform and planned his or her career knows how to network.

These masters of military networking may be a total loss when it comes to social networking, specifically how to get the most out of LinkedIn.
People like Jason Alba have written entire books about using LinkedIn so I won’t attempt anything like a comprehensive review here. Rather, let me just note the key points that apply particularly to your military transitioning client.

Headlines (the brand statements that appear just below the name on every profile) are vitally important. During the recent Global Career Brain Storming Day, Wayne Mitchell, a top recruiter, said the headline is one of the first thing independent recruiters look at.

But it can be hard for a veteran to write because she’s done so many different things well. The typical military client thinks of himself as a leader. Yet leadership isn’t a career field, or even a well developed brand statement. It’s a vital tool used in almost every endeavor.

You may have to work extra hard to help your military client determine his or her career field as a first step to defining his or her brand. That will lead to a powerful LinkedIn headline.

LI’s special groups might be particularly useful for this kind of client. Enter the terms “military veteran” in the LI Group Directory search engine and you’ll get 52 matches (as of Monday, 06 December, 2010). With the career field in mind, your client can narrow her search to the right groups.

Once she finds the right group, have look together at a few profiles for group members. You are looking for two examples. First, find a typical profile: little more than a posted résumé, a very small network, and sparse updates. Then search for a top notch one. Your client will see the difference at once and you’ll both have a standard against which to aim.

Your military transitioning client probably has much better networking skills than his civilian counterpart. But he needs our help to make the culture shift that will put those skills to work in his new career.

Too often, all those jobs are poorly announced. The postings often include what you think of as minimum requirements: management, strong communications skills, and the ability to solve problems. Your natural reaction is: “I know I can do that job!”

And so you respond enthusiastically. Just after you do, you find another “opportunity” in a field unrelated to the first. Soon you “active” job search has you applying for many, often unrelated, jobs.

But if your résumé doesn’t provide a close match between your excellence in the specific career field the employer wants, you won’t get the job. Worse yet, you can hardly apply to the same company again. The more you follow this flawed model, the longer and more unsuccessful will be your job search.

Avoid that trap by focusing on a specific career field. Think of a career field as a collection of knowledge, skills, abilities, and passions that provide a given service or product. Career fields are approximately defined by a job title.

Now you can apply for any position that calls for a given career field. For example, a production professional understands manufacturing very well. It doesn’t much matter if the manufacturing company he applies to is large or small, in Maine or Washington State, is privately held or publicly traded. To a large degree, it doesn’t much matter what the company makes. Production professionals do production kinds of things.

There are entire books written on the subject of how one gets clear and compelling proof about which career field is right for you. But do get the answer to that question before you apply for that next job.

Some of you have results of the Air Force’s recent Selective Early Retirement Board (SERB), a move directly in line with the General Schwartz’s statement. If you’re affected, you’ll be leaving active duty no more than 110 days from today on 01 January 2011.

If you’re in another service, there are lessons to be learned given the mounting pressures of personnel costs facing the services.

Cope with the immediate impact:

SERBs and Reductions in Force (RIFs) make logical sense—to the service planners. But if you’re on the receiving end, it’s a bit of a shock. Some will see it as inevitable, some as nearly a betrayal after years of service and sacrifice. I encourage you to see if as an opportunity.

No matter how you, personally, react, you should claim the pride of supporting and defending the Constitution. You got much greater responsibilities than your civilian counterparts. You’ve gone places and done things most people can’t even dream of. You know what real leadership is and you know the indefinable camaraderie so rare in the civilian sector. I think the Marines put it best: “Once a Marine, always a Marine!”

Plan for the transition:

Your service is ready with a plan. Sometimes it’s called the Transition Assistance Program (TAP); sometimes it’s called the Alumni Program. But what ever it’s called, be sure you go.

The quality of the career transition services is getting better. If you’re a senior officer or a top-three NCO, ask about an Executive Transition Assistance Program (ETAP).

Regardless of which TAP you attend there is information about your benefits that is vital. Don’t put off attending. Call the local OPR now to see when the programs are scheduled. And make sure you aren’t tapped for TDY on those days.

That last point is very important. I call it deferred compensation. For years, you missed kids’ or your spouse’s birthday parties, anniversaries, graduations and the like. You even gave up some of your rights as a citizen. You sometimes worked “crashes” that meant 16 hour days, six days a week. And you accepted it all when you raised your right hand. Now, however, the Services owe you deferred compensation: time to make the transition.

It’s natural for your unit to try to benefit from your extensive experience right up until the last day. But it’s also time for you to remind them about preparing your replacement.

Make this transition work for you:

To get the most out of any transition program, take a few minutes to jot down some questions—ideas you should go over with those who depend on you. Here are some suggestions:

- Do you know which career field interests you? Think of a career field as a collection of knowledge, skills, abilities, and passion general described by a job title. So, for example, logistics planning is a career field. Logistic planners do basically similar things whether they are planning a time-phased force deployment list or managing FedEx shipments.

- Leadership or management is not a career field. It is a tool used in almost every endeavor.

- Will you relocate? If you will, what must your new location offer you and your family?

- How much income do you need?

There are other questions, of course. But if you have them written down, you can ask the TAP instructor for guidance.

There is a very rewarding life waiting for you after you hang up the uniform. In a sense, you’ll continue serving by helping America become even more competitive.

I was going to wish you luck in that new career. But I think you make your own.

You’ve seen the questions often enough: what are your salary requirements? What is your salary history? Your first reaction is probably the right one: it’s none of your business! But in the private sector, it is part of their business.

A big part of every corporate budget is compensation they pay employees. Firms have a right, even an obligation, to get the greatest return on the every investment they make, including payroll. And most companies honestly try to pay a full day’s wage for a full day’s work.

But those in the private sector have an advantage retiring or separating military professionals don’t have. Their pay isn’t a public record as it is for anybody wearing the uniform.

There are many fine books on the subject of negotiating for salary, benefits, perks, and severance. The “bible” is Jack Chapman’s Negotiating Your Salary: How To Make $1000 a Minute. I won’t repeat any of his guidance here. But I do want to touch on the special circumstance of the retiring military individual.

Sometimes, uninformed hiring officials let it slip that they’ve “adjusted” their salary offer because…after all…you do have retirement pay. Those same interviewers wouldn’t think to ask a private sector applicant to reveal her bank balance. How then might you react if you find yourself in this situation?

First, cut the interviewer a little slack. Chances are he’s never served on active duty nor has anyone in his immediate family who has. Tempting as it is, don’t try to “educate” the interviewer on the differences between your years on active duty and any job in the private sector. Yes, I know you were probably underpaid. Yes, some of our younger enlisted members qualify for food stamps. And I can never remember a failed general being offered a $12M severance package. But that is all beside the point.

Offer the interviewer the return on investment he is seeking. After all, he got approval to fill the position only after he gave his pledge to his boss that the next person he hires (you?) will make the company more money than it takes to find, hire, and retain you. So use the success stories in your résumé to document that ROI.

Here’s an example: “Payoffs: Produced $1.6M savings by streamlining production, just as the tempo of operations shot up to wartime standards with little notice. Reduced deferred maintenance and functional check flights by 66 percent, cycle time slashed from 120 to 21 days.”

Then guide the conversation back to the issue at hand. You want to know (and the interviewer certainly knows) what the bottom and the top of the salary range is for the job you’re shooting for. You can then compare what they are offering to the range, a measure of your value on the market.

If the interviewer continues to lowball you, consider walking away. If you can’t do that because of today’s economy, there is another option.

You can offer to share the risks and the rewards by asking for an early performance review. Make it clear during that review, you’d want to review your contributions as a baseline reevaluate your pay. If the reviewer agrees, get the arrangement in the letter of offer.