Transition Assistance Program

The Ultimate Guide to Finding a Job for Soldiers in TAP

Welcome home brave men and women of our proud Armed Forces! Your dedication and commitment to the ideals the United States holds dear is what makes this country of ours so great. Your country appreciates the hard work you have so willingly and courageously given during your tour of duty. Now that you are preparing for inactive life in a civilian world, we would like to honor you by easing your transition into a dynamic and rewarding career.

We are Federal Resume Writer and we would be honored to put our expertise to work for you through our innovative and exciting Career Guide program.

What is This Career  Program About?

Put simply, Federal Resume Writer would like to help men and women currently taking part in the Armed Forces TAP program with our innovative Career Guide.

Your years of service in the military have given you a unique skill set that is highly sought after and valued by our federal government as well as thousands of private sector employers across the country. The education and experience you have is deserving of compensation and benefits. The commitment you’ve shown to protecting our country and the freedom we have built generations on is a valuable commodity in civilian life.

Federal Resume Writer has designed their Career Guide program just for you and we hope it provides you with the tools and resources you need to make a smooth and flawless transition into a rewarding and well-deserved post-military career.

Basically, you rock for all you’ve done and we’d like to give something back. Our expertise lies in federal resume building and writing as well as job search and career coaching and we’d like to make all of this available to the men and women of our Armed Forces.

The Federal Resume Writer Career Guide program is broken into four sections:
Readiness, Confidence, Acquisition and Follow Up. By following the recommendations in each section, you just might find yourself with the post-military career you’ve always dreamed of with amazing compensation and fantastic benefits.

READINESS

Your military training has taught you all about readiness. Finding a job in the federal government or corporate world is a different kind of animal, but you can adapt the skills you’ve learned in the military to tackle this project.

An example of readiness follows:

Former Army PFC Steve Wiideman left Fort Hood, Texas with 12 job interviews scheduled and a clipboard with four pages of potential positions he compiled two weeks before his ETS date.

His first day back in California was a Monday. He suited up in the nicest attire he could afford, giving the same excellent attention to detail as he would if he were being inspected by a four star general.

He purchased a professional leather folder and printed 25 copies of his resume and his references on the nicest paper stock he could afford. He wore an American flag pin on his lapel to remind his interviewers of his history of service. He also had one page of study notes he had put together from the research he had done on each company he had interviews with.

By Friday of the first week, Wiideman had four firms ready to hire him, giving him the freedom to decide which position best matched his career goals.

More often than not, the unemployed and those in the midst of career transitions find themselves desperate to take any position they can get. This is understandable in part from worries over the economic crisis and, for some, simply from a lack of readiness.

Before you leave the military, complete the checklist provided to you by TAP as well as our own checklist below. Better yet, be as prepared as Former PFC Steve Wiideman was by downloading this free PDF he used in his own search. Print 10 copies, attach to a clipboard and start filling out job opportunities.

JOB HUNTING WEBSITES

Not all websites that aggregate job listings are created equal.  Finding the right one for you depends on a number of factors such as the industry you are interested in and the city you live in.  For instance, if you’re looking for a job in the Federal Government there are two main websites to register at and comb through opportunities on:

Local Job Hunting Resources

Whether you live in Los Angeles or Nashville – your city has unique resources for job hunting. From the websites of your hometown newspaper to free sites like craigslist, job hunting resources are just a click away.

Most Popular Job Websites

We’ve all heard of Monster.com but it is not the only job site in town. Following is a list of popular job hunting websites:

Free Classifieds

Depending on where you live and the type of job you’re looking for, free classifieds can either be great or…not so great.  For instance, sites like Craigslist can be a great resource in large metro areas and somewhat less so in smaller cities and towns.

Job Aggregators

Job aggregators are search engines for jobs that crawl and aggregate job postings and job content in one place. There are distinct advantages to this for the job seeker as these sites are very comprehensive, listing jobs from many of the main job boards and local job sites. Job aggregators can be a big time saver, since you are checking one site rather than dozens, enabling you to search a large number of jobs in one place.

Our favorites include Indeed, SimplyHired, LinkUp, and GreenJobSpider.

Typically job aggregators pull job listings from thousands of individual sites, including:

Professional Networking

Sign up for an account at www.LinkedIn.com and fill out your profile.  LinkedIn is a free and easy way to network, identify leaders in your field and search for available jobs that match your skill set and career aspirations.  You can set your preferences to receive emails listing “Jobs You May Be Interested In” on a weekly or daily basis.

RESOURCES

From Salary Calculators to what to wear to your interview to how to negotiate benefits – the Internet is full of resources to guide you through every phase of the job hunt and answer nearly every question you  might have.

What’s the Next Step?

How about contacting one of our Career Coaches or requesting a free review of your resume by a Certified Federal Resume Writer? Who says nothing in life is free? We believe in you and want to see you succeed with your job hunt. Select the button below to get started.