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BY Joel Junker

The August 2012 Career Conference

The Cameron-Brooks team and the August 2012 Career Conference JMO candidates will arrive in Charlotte, NC over the next 24 hours to kick off our fourth Conference of the year. As we make final preparations for the Career Conference, I wanted to share some thoughts heading into it. Military officers started as an atypical recruiting source for Corporate America some 45 years ago, and although it has become much more mainstream in recent years, it still remains an atypical source of leadership talent for commercial business.    When a company attends one of our career conferences, they realize they are getting both a high performing JMO with a high potential to be a future leader in business, but they are also getting an individual that, in most cases, has no relevent business experience.  The company will have to spend time, money, resources, etc to train them on the business, company, position, etc. They do it because they know they are getting the high performance and potential but it’s not without some risk on their part.   It is important to bear this in mind when you are interviewing with a company and to approach your interviews with the  right attitude. 

As officers serving in the military, you have been successful because you have taken a selfless service approach to your unit, soldiers, chain of command, etc.  You have put them above your own needs and as a result, you have earned their respect, trust, and loyalty.   As you transition to the business world, it’s critical you don’t stray from what made you so successful in the military.  As the old saying goes, dance with the one that brung ya!  Imagine if you were a hiring manager for a leading commercial company looking to hire a JMO and that JMO walks into the interview with a very “me-centric” attitude.  How likely would you be to pursue that candidate?  Probably not very likely.  As I explained above, a company is already assuming some risk in hiring a JMO and they are perfectly willing to take that risk, but not with someone who doesn’t have the right attitude.  There is absolutely a time and place to put yourself first but you have to choose the appropriate time and that should be when you have offers in hand and you can then weigh the options and choose the best one for you and your family.   The good news is that in a meritocracy like Corporate America, that selfless service tends to be paid back much more quickly than in the military.  Companies recognize, value, and reward those that approach their work with the right attitude.

So my advice to all of the August Candidates and any JMO preparing to transition to Corporate America is to approach your interviews in the same manner that got you to this point in your military careers; demonstrate a good attitude and show the value and skills you can bring to a company and/or organization.  The rest will take care of itself.

 We have a great Career Conference scheduled for the next several days and I wanted to break down some of the sample companies and positions for which they are recruiting:

Sample industries for the August conference include: Medical Device, Biopharmaceutical, Consulting, Construction and Building Products, Oil & Gas Exploration, High Technology, Consumer Products, Logistics, Financial Services, and more. 

Sample companies include:  3M, Boston Scientific, Cameron Valve & Measurement, Eaton Corporation, Ernst & Young, L-3 Communications, Linde Group, Medtronic, Oldcastle, PNC Financial Services, Shell, 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: Supply Chain Analyst, Field Clinical Representative, Inside Sales Manager, Corporate Finance, Business Strategist, Senior Consultant, Product Design Engineer, Operations Manager, Process Engineer, Program Manager, Regional Transport Manager, Senior Product Performance Engineer, Business Development Project Manager, Territory Sales Manager, Manufacturing Manager, and more. Although we are still in the process of finalizing the interview schedules, we expect the average number of interviews to be ~12 which is in-line with the  interviews we have experienced during the first three Career Conferences this year.

Continue to follow the blog. Next week, I will write a post on the results from the August 2012 Career Conference.

Rob Davis