Hello, my name is Tony Grayson and I’m a Navy veteran of 21 years. And welcome to another addition of Transition Tips. For today’s discussion, to help motivate myself, I actually put on my Facebook vet hoodie and my AWS shirt to get myself motivated. Today we wanted to talk about three topics, military jargon in the civilian sector, networking and then I want to close with an ask. First, I know why we did things in the military that motivated the team, terms like, hooah, or hoorah, show motivation and show confidence in the mission. But unfortunately, in the civilian sector, they can be seen as divisive and alien to the non veterans. So if you think you want to do it, please just don’t do it, don’t do that kind of stuff. There are other ways to motivate your team by saying those kind of terms.
Second, I want to talk about, networking is key for any level of job. If you’re not on LinkedIn reaching out or writing posts, you really need to be. And it’s not only a way to find job opportunities, it’s a good way to connect with your peers, mentors to start trading experience and knowledge. In your posts don’t be afraid to be wrong. Heck, I’m wrong two or three times a day, probably even more than that, that’s part of being human. I think the most important thing is to actually put yourself out there so you can learn from others. I truly believe that we most often learn from failure, and the best way to learn is actually learn from the failure of others, so learn from the mistakes.
Finally, I wanted to close today with an ask to the veterans in the civilian sector. I think we need to be doing more for those transitioning and for those that have actually transitioned. By that, I mean everything seems to be focused on when vets come out, we sit in our chairs, we sit behind our booth, we welcome them, we give them opportunities, but I think we need to be doing more. We actually need to be doing proactive. We need to be going out to the bases. When we’re talking to the vets early in the pipeline, we need be giving them guidance for when they get out so they can start thinking about things.
I am by no means saying that we actually needed to be taking vets from the military. I just think we need to be talking about what actually happens during a transition, giving them advice, so we can provide them the best possible experience. So if you’re interested in doing something like that, I’m just trying to start a new mission or something, I’m not sure what form it’s going to take. But please reach out to me on DM, email, put something into the comments below. Let’s have a conversation about what we can be doing more for the vets. And this is by no means just focused on the United States, which we all tend to do, this is focused on vets anywhere. So I don’t care what military you’ve served with, I want to help you out. Thank you.
