High Caliber Career Transitions

High Caliber Career Transitions
By: Steven W. Siegel

You’ve just completed a successful 25-year career in law enforcement, and now whether you get your next job may come down to six seconds. That’s the amount of time, on average, a recruiter spends looking at your resume before deciding to continue reading it or throw it in the garbage. Coincidentally, it’s the same amount of time an interviewer takes to draw an initial perception of a candidate. Fortunately, if the perception is bad, and you have good interview skills, you can change it. That’s not going to be the case with your resume.

With today’s unfortunate mass exodus from our chosen profession, it is more important than ever that you properly plan your transition to your next career. For many of us, that is likely to be a position in the private sector. Understand that you will be going from a “mission-oriented” agency to a “metrics-oriented entity.” There are challenges and obstacles, none being insurmountable, with the proper knowledge.

Speaking to people in law enforcement, I invariably hear that they do not believe they have skills that are transferrable into the private sector. That’s simply not true. You have many of them. It’s just a matter of identifying and translating them into the language of business. Take salesmanship as an example. Consider the times when you responded to the scene of a crime and got a reluctant victim or witness to tell you what happened? Or when you convinced an armed subject to surrender and go to jail. And of course, those times when you obtained a confession from a suspect. All are examples of very powerful salesmanship, exhibited under conditions of high stress far greater than in any customer-salesman interaction.

How do you intend to sell yourself to a prospective employer if you don’t believe you have good sales skills? You are a product to be sold, no different than a can of Coke, a flatscreen TV or a car. You must develop your personal brand and what we call your “Value Proposition”. Those traits and characteristics deemed desirable by hiring managers. You need a marketing strategy in writing, through your resume and cover letter, over the internet, through your social media presence, and verbally, through the interview process.

There are many myths surrounding the job hiring process. One is that the only resume an employer will consider is the one you send them. However, the other “resume” they may review is your internet presence. How many of you know people who in every other photo, they a have drink, beer or shot glass in their hand or they are espousing hateful messages? That doesn’t bode very well for your personal brand.

Another myth is that you can’t apply for a job unless there is a posted job opening. Not true! There are many non-conventional methods you can use, including use of your network to be considered by hiring managers without a posted job opening. This is a great situation to be in where the company may look for a suitable position for you and best of all, you may not have any competition.

Another myth is that it is all about what you have done. You need to convey that in your resume, cover letter and throughout the interview process. Again, not true! Like people who sell financial products say, past performance is not indicative of future results. Employers don’t necessarily care about what you did in the past, but they certainly care about what you can do for them in the future, if they hire you. Now, we don’t ignore the past, but we must take what you have done and translate it to what you can do for them in the future.

The last myth I’ll mention is the myth that the most efficient and effective way to get hired is through responding to posted job openings. That is completely false. Actually, it is the least effective way to spend your valuable time. Only about 20% of all jobs are filled through that manner. The majority are filled through the “Hidden Job Market.” This includes networking, cold-calling, referrals and recommendations. Using these non-conventional methods, you can avoid having to constantly push yourself toward jobs and instead have jobs pulled to you.

I’ll conclude with the story of a man who retired after a successful 25-year career conducting and supervising criminal investigations with a prosecutor’s office in New Jersey. He retired during a fairly good job market applying for about 60-70 posted jobs well within his wheelhouse, over several months without landing a single interview. That person was me! It wasn’t until I started using the “Hidden Job Market” that I began to have success.

Enter the process with as much knowledge as possible. Be a “Problem Solver” not a “Job Seeker” and you, too, will enjoy success!

Steven Siegel founded High Caliber Career Transitions in 2020 to help law enforcement and military veterans successfully transition into their next career. He enjoyed a 25-year career conducting criminal investigations for the Union County Prosecutor’s Office in New Jersey retiring as a Detective Captain. He has over 18 years’ experience in the corporate world as a fraud investigator.