The Special Case of Military Spouses Returning to Work After a Career Break
Featured Guest Blogger August 18th, 2008
Carol Fishman Cohen is the co-author of the acclaimed career reentry book Back on the Career Track: A Guide for Stay-at-Home Moms Who Want to Return to Work, and the co-founder of iRelaunch, a company providing career reentry programming, events, and information to employers, universities, organizations and to mid-career professionals in all stages of career break. Carol recently spoke at the 2008 Joint Warfighting Convention Military Spouse Symposium on the topic of returning to work after a career break. Contact Carol at ccohen@iRelaunch.com.
Military spouses face specific challenges when attempting to resume careers after a career break. Returning to work after years away is complicated enough, but the confluence of lengthy overseas postings, having to function as a single parent when a spouse is deployed, and moving every two to three years on top of the usual issues of lack of confidence, reviving old networks and creating new ones, and figuring out what you really want to do can make the process even more overwhelming. It’s no wonder that military spouses question their ability to make a successful back to work transition even more than their civilian counterparts.
Military spouses have unique qualifications to offer employers that tend to go unrecognized–by the military spouse herself and the prospective employer. These qualifications include:
- Emotional Resilience - Military spouses are emotionally resilient because they have had to deal with a spouse being away on lengthy military deployments, often with his/her life at stake.
- Experience in Dealing with Uncertainty - Dealing with uncertainty about a spouse’s whereabouts and safety, the timing and location of future postings, and maintaining the well being of children through these transitions is a way of life for the military spouse. Dealing with uncertainty is a qualification lacking in many job candidates at any life stage. Employers valuing this quality should seek out military spouses for recruitment.
- Comfortable with Constant Transition - The business world is in a constant state of flux. Transition is a way of life for military spouses and military spouses themselves take for granted their own expertise in dealing with it.
- No Benefits Required - Military spouses have insurance benefits already, so these benefits do not need to be part of their compensation package. Therefore, their overall cost as an employee is lower than that of civilian counterparts. Ideally, this gap would not be exploited by the employer, but instead used as a creative opportunity to offer other benefits as part of the employment package.
At the same time, hiring a military spouse can be problematic because of frequent moves.
- Moving every 2 to 3 years - The biggest issue in hiring military spouses is that their posting in a single location often lasts only two to three years, and sometimes they need to move on short notice. Some employers shy away from hiring military spouses for this reason. However, with frequent job changes among non-military employees becoming the norm, the loyalty of the military spouse to stay with an employer for the entire length of the posting should be considered. Also, companies with a national presence or an option for remote work could benefit by hiring a military spouse if the person could transfer to another company office or work remotely with each new posting.
Determining readiness for career reentry may be trickier for military spouses than for their non-military counterparts. This means military spouses may need to wait longer than non-military spouses to relaunch their careers after a multi-year career break. This also means military spouses need to be extra patient with themselves as they move forward in the process. Issues delaying readiness include:
- Lack of a Support Network - Because of frequent moves, military spouses often do not have time to develop friends and family support networks to turn to when their spouse is away and they need coverage for going to work.
- At Home Responsibilities can be Overwhelming - Since military spouses bear the brunt of the childcare and eldercare responsibilities alone, they may feel these responsibilities too overwhelming to consider returning to work even if there is some sort of support community in place.
So what is the best strategy for military spouses wanting to relaunch a career?
- Take a Series of Baby Steps - Find career-relevant volunteer work (we call this “strategic volunteering”) that can be done when one’s schedule permits, Take one class at a time instead of enrolling in a more demanding program. Seek occasional consulting work from time to time. The objective is to maximize current and relevant experiences, so reference to these experiences can be made during informal networking, formal interviewing and on resumes.
- Consider Employment with Global Employers - Global employers have offices in many locations to which military spouses could transfer or from which they could possibly work remotely. Some of the big accounting firms actually require their CPA’s to switch offices every few years in order to get broad client exposure.
- Seek Employment with a Staffing Firm such as Aquent or MomCorps. These companies place employees in interim or part time positions that often convert to full time positions. These firms have offices and opportunities across the U.S. In Aquent’s case, their reach is international as well. Aquent focuses on marketing and creative fields and MomCorps focuses on a range of fields including accounting.
- Target “Military Friendly” Companies - Military Spouse magazine released a list of the Top 10 Military Friendly Companies in their June 2008 issue. They include Health Net, USAA, Sunbelt Rentals, and West Corporation.
- Target Small to Mid-Sized Companies - Small to mid-sized companies are often thrilled to hire high caliber employees who are returning from a career break, even for a two to three year period.
- Develop Transferable Skills - Military spouses in the fields of human resources, IT, nursing, sales, and teaching report an easier time finding employment after a transfer.
Resources:
- The Rand Corporation study “Working Around the Military: Challenges of Military Spouse Employment” by Margaret Harrell, et al., is required reading on this topic
- www.milspouse.com (for example, see this article on volunteering)
- Military Officers Association of America Military Spouse Blog by Sue Hoppin, Deputy Director of Spouse Outreach for the MOAA
- Sue Hoppin is also the co-author of soon to be released A Family’s Guide to the Military for Dummies
- The website of Krista Wells, The Military Spouse Coach. She also authored an article on Portable Professions in the August issue of Military Spouse magazine (not available on line).
The same problems are present here in the UK although the system is somewhat different. We have now exited Iraq but still have up to 10,000 troops on 6 Months detachment to Afghan on permanent rotation (is is not unknown for 2 tours to have been completed in 2 years). Alongside all these operational tours the usual requirements to station British troops around the world still exists. For example we as are the US treaty bound to keep a number of troops in Germany and we have other obligations such as keeping the threat under control in Belize and the Falkland Islands.
All that said the only tours that are accompanied (wife or partner and children travel) is Germany as clearly infrastructure such as schooling and medical facilities have to be provided. This is the only place this occurs mainly as we have been in situ in British Army On Rhine since 1945.
The situation is not as bad as it sounds though. British soldiers receive separation allowances and Local Overseas Allowance which can add up to almost half the earned wage, at the same times mothers are entitled to child benefit which is paid irrespective of being in employment or not.
The trend here is for mums to do the childcare thing until the kids are old enough to attend secondary school (at 11/12 years old), then a decision is taken where the couple will live when the service is exited. A house is bought with generous assistance from the service and the family take up post. Clearly this still has disadvantages in that a period of separation will still have to be negotiated perhaps up to 5 or 6 years but it does allow the spouse to put down some roots and look at career options.
In some cases the couple cannot bear to be apart so will continue in married quarters (provided service accommodation) and rent out the purchased residence with a view to moving in when they exit the service. This however does not carry as great a financial advantage as both a mortgage and rent have to be paid although rental income will of course offset the mortgage payments.
Anyway an interesting subject and one no one really speaks about.. The employment rights and pitfalls of service wife’s…..