Our Blog

BY Joel Junker

Research, Deliberation, Faith and the April 2012 Career Conference

The Cameron-Brooks team and the April 2012 Career Conference JMO candidates will arrive in Charlotte, NC this Friday to kick off our second Conference of the year.  As we make final preparations for the conference, I wanted to share some thoughts heading into the Conference.

There is an ancient Chinese Proverb that goes “He who deliberates fully before taking a step will spend his entire life on one leg.”  I believe this quote is very appropriate for JMOs making a big decision about whether to leave the service.  The reality is that big life choices cannot be fully deliberated, especially ones that involve a lot of change.  In these situations, there will always be an element of the unknown that requires a degree of trust and faith.  In these situations, it can be very easy to get stuck in deliberation as a way of avoiding taking that first step in a big life change and many cases, a person will retreat to the safety of what is familiar.  At Cameron-Brooks, we have watched thousands of JMOs make decisions over the years and we have come to realize that good career choices involve a balance between research, deliberation, and trust.  All three of these must be present to take that critical and necessary first step with confidence and to navigate a big change like leaving the military.  Our Development & Preparation Program and counsel with our candidates helps with this step a great deal.

My colleague, Chuck Alvarez, likes to use the analogy of a tall mast ship with its sails set for a voyage on the open sea.  Sailing on the open sea is the ship’s nature and what they are designed to do and are no good in the safety of the harbor.  It is ludicrous to see such a beautiful tall mast ship anchored in the harbor with its sails down.  In many ways, this is what happens when a strong leader/JMO retreats to the safety of what they know (like DOD, GS jobs, 3 letter agencies).  In some situations, those are appropriate fits for their goals but in many cases, the JMO is not choosing that path because it’s the best for their long term goals and objectives, but rather because it is familiar.  It feels good and right because it is safe.  They get stuck in deliberation before they take that first step.  The candidates attending the April 2012 Career Conference have taken that first step and all of us at Cameron-Brooks applaud their efforts.

We have another great Career Conference lined up this weekend for both the companies and the candidates to continue a great 2012.  Sample industries for the April conference include: Medical Device, Biopharmaceutical, Consulting, Construction and Building Products, Oil & Gas Exploration, High Technology, Consumer Products, Logistics, Financial Services,  Consumer Products, and more.  Sample companies include:  Atlas Copco, Boston Scientific, Ernst & Young, Carrier Corporation, Celgard, Corning, Eli Lilly & Company, Cypress Semiconductor Corporation, G3 Enterprises, Kraft Foods, Johnson & Johnson, and many more.  The companies attending this conference represent a wide array of industries and sizes to include Fortune 500 type companies, smaller rapidly growing companies, privately held companies, as well as those that are internationally based.  Sample positions include: Account Manager, Mareting Product Manager, Field Clinical Representative, Sales Account Executive, Applications Engineer, Operations Management, Project Engineer, Product Marketing Engineer, Financial Management, Senior Consultant, Operations Team Leader, Business Strategist, General Manager, Plant Manager, and more. Although we are still finalizing the interview schedules, we expect the average number of interviews to be ~12 which is in-line with the 12-13 interviews we experienced in 2011 and the 11+ interviews we have experienced since the end of 2009.

Continue to follow the blog. Next week I will write a post on the results from our April Career Conference.

Rob Davis