Tackling the challenges of moving to Civvy Street

The biggest challenge faced by military people moving into civvy street is explaining how their skills are applicable in the business world.

“In the military there’s more learning on the job,” said Daniel. “The difficulty for servicemen is explaining what you did in terms that someone from a different environment can understand.”

The Legion also has celebrity supporters banging the drum for the military including Dragons’ Den star Duncan Bannatyne. “As a former stoker in the Royal Navy I know that British Armed Forces are second to none,” he said. “As an entrepreneur and a dragon I know that service leavers make good business sense. They bring what I look for in terms of discipline, loyalty and a can-do attitude.”

One ex-serviceman to successfully transition to business life is Nigel Peters, (pictured right) a partner at interim management placement business Alium, who left the RAF in 2005 with the rank of Group Captain. His more than 25-year career with the airforce began as a fighter controller on the frontlines of the Cold War, and took in roles running the helicopter support force in the Middle East pushing operations into Afghanistan and working in Strike Command, in charge of nearly 25,000 personnel at 47 stations.

His departure from military life came because he wanted to “scratch an entrepreneurial itch” and have a second career. Having told his boss he was leaving in two weeks thanks to the leave he had built up, Nigel used his resettlement programme to learn cabinet-making – “very useful, I can repair things at home”, he says – but soon started in management consultancy. “It taught me the process and structures behind what I had been doing for 25 years. I knew how to get things done but I needed to learn the business speak of what I had been doing.”

Having learnt how to communicate without using “MoD-speak three-letter acronyms”, he found transitioning into to civilian life a manageable process, though the his first role missed elements of some of the things he had enjoyed in RAF.

“I missed the leadership, the people, delivering. There was too much Powerpoint and I wanted to get back to people,” he says, and this was behind his move to outsourcer Serco where he ended up as director of transformation running a £1bn turnover division.

The biggest challenge was the focus on the bottom line.

“In the military it’s about managing complexity, running a large cost centre – except in wartime when the strategic objectives are pretty straightforward – and that does not prepare you for the brutal commerciality when you come away from it.”

He says the structures he worked within while in the military where “pretty well honed” having been refined over hundreds of years in some instances and found the private sector “far more immature”.

“In the business world it’s obviously entrepreneurial and you have to succeed,” says Nigel, though he adds those coming out of the forces are well equipped to be successful.

“The military provides such tremendous skills and training and leadership,” he says. “It gives you an attitude to cope and solve problems in stressful environments.”

His advice for anyone looking to move to civilian employment is to remember this.

“The military has invested so much in you and those skills are worth their weight in gold. Really believe in yourself and don’t undersell yourself.”

His views are echoes by Dawn Huggins, (pictured right) who left the Army in 2012 as Warrant Officer Class 1 – the highest rank attainable without a commission – in the Adjutant General’s Corps. She

made the move to civilian life after 23 years’ service, despite an offer to remain in the Army until she was 55, taking a job as executive assistant to the partners of a City firm.

“The Army was an amazing life and I would never turn the clock back and do it differently. I served in the UK, Germany, Falklands and Bosnia. I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

She left without a clear plan of what she wanted to do, and found not having a job something of an adjustment.

“In the Army you’ve always got a wage coming in so you never have to worry. As part of my resettlement I sent out CVs but only got a few answers and they said, 'Sorry we haven’t got anything’. I also got to the final interview for a job at Buckingham Palace but lost out,” says Dawn. “It was a kick in the teeth as in the Army I’d never failed at anything. We were taught to be the best and the training was so tough and good that you always succeeded.”

However, through her network of military contacts she soon found her current job, working for bosses who are also ex-services.

“Although my bosses are brilliant and understand, it’s been a bit of a change. In the military if I told someone to jump they’d say 'how high?’ I can’t expect that now. The politics are different. I had to learn a new way of getting people to do things for me.”

Dawn says at first she sometimes needed to tell a trusted colleague what she wanted done, so they could translate “my Army-speak into civilian-speak’.

She also says she’s found life out of the services very different – not better or worse just different. “I love my job but it’s been a change from the camaraderie of the Army,” says Dawn. “There’s banter but the difference is the really close ties you get in the military. Now people

go to work and then go home. In the Army we worked together, ate together, lived together.”

A key lesson for those leaving the Forces is “to prepare for failure, I wasn’t prepared for that,” says Dawn. “Things are not going to fall into your lap – you’ve got to network.”

Even though she came out of uniform with strong administrative skills that made her attractive to employers, she says companies that dismiss soldiers without such abilities are making a mistake.

“There are horrible stories of guys from the infantry who are homeless because they can’t find a job because they have no [transferable] skills,” she says. “But they can be trained up by business to do anything. They are highly motivated people who want challenges – they just have to be given them.”

Terry Scuoler, (pictured right) chief executive of manufacturers association EEF, offers a more macro view of servicemen in industry.

“These are people who have been trained to push themselves in circumstances where you do not want to be pushed, who show leadership and problem solving in dangerous environments,” says the former captain who served for five years in the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders, and later held senior positions at Royal Ordnance, BAE and Ferranti. “These are resources businesses should look to recruit.”

Nigel agrees and advises companies that dismiss those with a military background to reassess are missing out.

“I think business is polarised – companies either get it or don’t,” says Nigel. “Military people bring such an awful lot of strengths and abilities with them and if a business can embrace that they will have a friend for for life. There’s a loyalty that’s very hard to recreate… Those businesses that know former services people bring love them. Those businesses that don’t are missing out.”

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