The biggest job hunt mistake military spouses make is that we totally miss the first interview question. It blows right by us and we are left wondering why such fab folks like us can’t even get an interview.
Confused? So was Heather. Heather is a military spouse in her early 40s. Her kids are squared away and she is ready to go back to work. Even though she is using her military spouse career tools -- on-base career counseling, Military Spouse Employment Partnership, Military Job fairs -- Heather isn’t finding a job.
“What kind of job are you looking for?” I asked her.
“I have so many skills. I could do just about anything,” Heather answered. “I was coming to a job fair so you all could put me in the right direction.”
Alarms went off inside my head. Not because Heather isn’t qualified to get a job. Heather has all kinds of experience. Alarms went off because Heather missed the first interview question: What kind of job are you looking for?
That is one of the biggest mistakes military spouses can make on the job hunt: We sometimes fail to know what we want. We sometimes fail to recognize that being able to articulate what kind of job we want IS a job skill. In a job market that is tough on military spouses for a hundred reasons, knowing what you want and being able to explain it to a normal person is a primary job skill.
That is why everyone asks that question once they find out you are looking for job. Your friends. Your kid’s teacher. Your COW. The guy at the next table at Starbucks. It is the first interview question, even though none of those people have a job for you.
We spouses miss how significant the question is because it seems like a normal conversation. It seems like the right answer should be something along the lines of, “Oh, I don’t know. I’m really organized and I’m a quick learner. I could do anything.”
We don’t recognize that being able to answer ‘What kind of job are you looking for?’ IS one of the steps of getting a job. It is every bit as important as pulling together a resume and brushing your teeth before the interview.
Because knowing what you want is the work. Identifying the things you are good at compared to other people is the work. Finding out what kind of jobs people with your skills do is the work. Making the effort to call around and find out what buzz words employers would be looking for on your resumes is the work.
Failing to identify and commit to what kind of job you are looking for means that your social network never kicks in for you. People want to help you, but they are not so imaginative that they can think up a job for you. That’s the work you do yourself. It is hard work. It is soul searching work. It is work that has to be done by you and only you.
Heather started that work right away on the phone. “I want to work with military families again,” she said. “They told me at the career center I should call up and find out the buzz words they want on resumes. I could do that…”
Yeah, Heather, you can. We can all do a better job of articulating what we want. Once we know the question is coming, we can do the work of trying out answers until we find just the right thing.
