Sure, there was a time when you ate snakes and Apache gunships took your calls. But now? Now you enjoy fly-fishing on three-day weekends and mowing the lawn. And yes, it’s true: sleeping atop some ridge in the Hindu Kush was nice, the night sky lit only by stars and the occasional mortar round, but that was a long time ago. Today, you’re more of a Sealy Posturepedic type of person. En route to Southwest Asia, you’ve flown across the Atlantic in the cargo bay of a C-17, and while it was an experience to tell your kids about—the way you were wearing three layers of winter gear and still curled on the floor, freezing —the Air Force doesn’t have frequent flyer miles, and you’ve become accustomed to that first glass of wine with your First Class upgrade.
The point is that you’ve had your adventures, but you’re a civilian now. You’re in your 30’s and have a kid in grade school and if your life insurance policy gets cashed in, it’s more likely to be the result of some texting teen crashing into your minivan than a donkey-borne IED. You still hold that security clearance, though, and want to put it to good use. With a little help from ClearanceJobs, you can use that TS to get a job—just not a job that mentions “cyberwar” or “Pakistan” in the description. You want a 9 to 5 with holidays, and you want to go a month without hitting the gym, and never worry about morning PT or physical fitness tests. You want a personally fulfilling career to take you into your dotage. Here are 3 career paths you should consider.
Accounts Executive
Remember the scene in Glengarry Glen Ross that opens with Alec Baldwin, in a flawless command voice, telling a salesman, “Put that coffee down. Coffee is for closers only.” Here’s your chance to be a closer and drink all the coffee you want. Credence Management Solutions in Dayton, Ohio (go Flyers!) is hiring an account executive who is “responsible for identifying, capturing, and winning business opportunities” with the U.S. Air Force. The job (and others like it) is beneficial to the government and industry alike, using the nimbleness and problem solving abilities of the private sector to solve the seemingly intractable problems that proliferate in the Defense Department. Expect to spend a lot of time on the golf course.
In terms of buzz alone, Credence is the happening place to work these days. It won the GovCon Award for Small Business Government Contractor of the Year in 2013, and has been an Inc. 500 | 5000 for three years running.
Logistics
If you hold a security clearance, there’s a good chance that at some point you had a job where you had to get things done—the kind of job where your boss didn’t care how you did it so long as the task was accomplished. If that’s the case, then you should consider a career in logistics management. The job is deceptively simple: get things from point A to point B. With every added element, however, it grows exponentially in complexity. There’s the time factor, and cost; shifts in demand and the ability to adapt; market pressure and the need to streamline operations to remain competitive; new technologies and their integration; unexpected bottlenecks; and so on. From “point A to point B” you quickly get a worldwide system that’s as tightly integrated as a Swiss watch. That kind of career needs smart people who can get the job done. Northrop Grumman, among others, is presently hiring logistics planners and managers. Here’s your chance.
Project Management
Before he was the chief executive officer of IBM, Lou Gerstner was the CEO of RJR Nabisco. Before he was the CEO of Apple, John Sculley ran Pepsi-Cola. Before she was CEO of eBay, Meg Whitman ran the Playskool division of Hasbro. On the surface, none of these jobs connect—selling cookies before running a supercomputer business? Managing Mr. Potato Head before building an auction empire? But, in fact, the jobs are identical, and amount to marshaling men and women to do great things. The skills necessary to run an organization as diverse as Pepsi apply perfectly to an organization in the cutthroat technology business. The principles of leadership apply everywhere, equally.
The same is true for project management. Consider this job at Northrop Grumman, for Passenger Systems Program Directorate (PSPD) Project Lead. The job concerns U.S. Customs and Border Protection, but check out the job requirements:
Oversees and manages the operational aspects of ongoing projects and serves as liaison between project management and planning, project team, and line management. Reviews status of projects; manages schedules and prepares status reports. Assesses project issues and develops resolutions to meet productivity, quality, and client-satisfaction goals and objectives. Develops mechanisms for monitoring project progress and for intervention and problem solving with project managers, line managers, and clients.
Those tasks apply to any large project. There’s a good chance that you’ve been charged with carrying them out before, and did the job well. The details might vary: running a maintenance platoon in Iraq versus running part of the Customs service, but the broad strokes are the same: keeping teams organized, on-target, and moving forward to accomplish the mission.
Leadership – it’s a skill you’ve already mastered
Regardless of whether you were an infantryman or a spy, a computer specialist or an accounting lead, if you have the clearance and the fire, these jobs are waiting for you. None involve carrying a gun, but all require the skills you learned in the military or intelligence community. You’re a leader, and that’s what you should be doing: leading.
