A few people have asked for a quick list of notes from the Transition Opportunities course in Las Vegas. The following was submitted by Tom Tagg:

Notes From Transition Opportunities

Have a 5-year plan. Your retirement should not be a surprise. Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare.

Get your medical records taken care of now. Start having entries now. Thinking any minor problems you may have will make it on your out processing physical is unrealistic. For VA, you need to show appointments for these items.

There are civilian equivalent IDC/IDMT positions. They are high pay with high risk. Basically what you are doing now in the same areas.

TAP Class, There is a lot of information and each base does it differently to some extent. Pay particular attention to the VA portion. There are a ton of benefits and entitlements if you know about them. Seek out the VA Advocate.

Résumé’s: Demilitarize your resume. They won’t want to know about your medals, or where you have been. Stress your supervisory experience and the number of people supervised. You can post on Monster.com or similar for practice to see what comes up. You need to personalize each resume for that company and for the position you are seeking to fill.

Job Interviews: Practice. Do some where you know you won’t accept the position, just to get used to the types of questions they are likely to ask. Get to know the company that you are seriously applying for. Do your homework. Know what they do, how they do it and where they expect to be in the next 5 years.

If you have a network great, or start on yours now. Corporate mentoring is great. Having someone in an organization take you under their wing and show you how things are working on the outside. Also go to some job fairs and start networking.

There are jobs in FEMA, and Homeland Security as well as local governments and agencies for our skill set in writing and planning for disasters and response plans.

Education: Get your degree, don’t wait. Torou University and Southern Illinois University are quite flexible with your current schedule.

If you want a job with a security clearance, go to google and search for security clearance jobs. There are plenty of agencies that will either hire you direct or help you find employment. The better ones will charge your new employer and not you.

Also try 6figurejobs.com