If you are thinking about getting out of the military or have already gotten out, your next move may be trying to figure out what next to do with your life. Career-wise for the last few years (or decades), you knew what you were going to do each day when you got up. Now your life will be, or has been, thrown upside down and you now have some choices to make to enter the next chapter of your life.
If you are like many before you, your first thoughts may be about what school you want to attend, what degree you want to get and then making a career choice. While that is a method, it is the wrong method. In fact, your choices should be in reverse order! Make your career choice first, then select your degree and finally pick your school.
Why in this order? Because it makes the most sense as far as using your GI Bill education benefits in the most efficient way. You only have 36 months to use, so if you make the wrong choice in your degree or school, you may have to do it all over again … and this time on your dime instead of Uncle Sam’s.
Some careers require a certain degree or accreditation to get the job you want in that career field. So, it makes sense to know those prerequisites before choosing a degree or school, so you can make the right choices. We’ll discuss how to do that in more in detail in a future article. Now we turn our attention to choosing a career.
Choose your career
If you like what you did while serving, maybe you will want to stay in that same line of work. If so, you can probably pick up some credits that would shorten your time to a degree.
Or…you may choose to do something entirely different. So how do you make that choice? There are actually a few different ways.
First, look at your strengths, or in other words things you are good at doing. This can narrow down the possibilities. Next, look at things you are passionate about. This will narrow it down even further. By limiting your career choices to things you are good at doing and passionate about, you increase your chances of having a more rewarding and successful career.
Next, talk to people who have been working in these careers for a while and ask them questions. What they like about it? What they don’t like about it? If they had to do it over again, what would they do differently?
Another way to help sift through your list is to seek out short-term internships where you can work for a few months in each career on your short-list. Some companies offer shadow programs, where prospective employees can work side-by-side with someone doing a job in one of your fields of interest. Regardless of how you do it, this should shorten your list even further. Plus, if you happen to like one of the careers, interning or shadowing can get your foot in the door so that when you are ready to start your career, you have an inside track with that company (or companies).
In the next article, we delve into how to choose a degree, picking a school and more on accreditation both of degrees and schools. There is a difference between the two!
