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Finding the Infantry in the Professional Services Enterprise

Career Exploration

Transitioning from the military to a professional services role in a large company should be a satisfying move. Large companies provide a level of organizational structure, career path diversity, benefits, and employment stability that are consistent with military service. Hard and soft skills learned in military service translate well to the private professional services market as well providing an ability to move beyond entry level positions. Why then do so many people struggle with job satisfaction shortly after starting with a large company’s services organization? The answer may be that while the company may have been the right fit, the organization within the company was the wrong fit.

While researching a company’s mission, values and culture are often cited as keys to a successful job hunt, knowing more about the organization inside the company that wants to hire you is key to long-term job satisfaction. This holds even truer if you are joining a professional services company or the services organization of a large company.
Most large companies are still organized along Army organization principles. A corporate headquarters financially and administratively manages a set of subordinate business groups, units, functions, and regions. Services within the company can be provided through a standalone services unit, organized under separate product groups, or provided through a central or regional service center.

Unlike the Army though, companies do not make it simple to find out how a service's functions are performed. When someone joins the military, their first decision is which branch, specialty, rating, or designation best suits their background. This means that at the earliest point in joining a military branch, the individual makes a decision on whether they want to focus on a main combat war-fighting effort, combat support, or a service support career.

While individual jobs throughout a military career vary, their branch specialty will always keep their career focused on combat warfighting, combat support, or service support activities. An Infantry officer may hold different staff, command, and even administrative jobs in their career, but those jobs will most always be within an organization responsible for closing with and destroying the enemy. What happens though when someone wants to be an Infantryman, applies for what sounds like an Infantryman’s job description, but finds himself in a logistician’s job? He is going to be unhappy with the long-term career prospects within that organization.

This is what happens often within large enterprises with varied service organizations. Jobs that, after reading the description, seem to fit your background, experience, and skills are scattered through multiple organizations within the same company. Even worse, once inside a company, jobs with similar descriptions in different organizations are off-limits or difficult to transfer based on organizational priorities, management bias, or HR constraints.
How do you know how to find the right organization before you accept the job offer? It takes company research and information gathering, through the interview process, online research, sometimes through networking with current and part employees to discover if the services organization is the right fit for you.

Why is it important to figure this out? Here is an example:

After a career as a tanker, you want your second career to be a project manager. You love the idea of managing people, procuring equipment and resources, making project budget decisions, and interacting with the customer. You get interviews for two jobs at the same company, both are for project manager jobs. The first is in the regional service center for a product division and the second is in the systems integration division. In your interviews, you find that the first job manages a revenue of $120M annually and the second manages $40M. Both are matrix personnel management jobs. With the larger revenue management, you decide to take the first job. After a month of training, you find that this role manages the service support team responsible for scheduling and coordinating service calls for the product. The daily interaction with customers is to schedule the calls. Trying to transfer to the systems integration division is not an option now because the division’s management believes skills from the product division do not translate well into their organization.

To manage your career now, you either have to leave the company and try to get it right somewhere else or stay in the sales organization and change your career plans.

So, how do you do the research to align your career plan to the right organization within a company? Here are some places you can focus before and during the interview to get the information you need to make a decision.

1. Read and analyze the entire job description. Usually at the beginning of externally posted job descriptions, there is a paragraph dedicated to explaining the company’s core mission and provide some organizational detail. Search for clues and devise organizational follow-up questions based on what you learned from that paragraph. Look for keywords in the organization title. A Regional Support Center may house the majority of the personnel, but may not control any of the business decision making on behalf of the company. Read the duties and responsibilities. See if the role appears to have more administrative, technical, process management, or leadership tasks outlined

2. If it is a public company, read the SEC filed 10-K or annual report. The report will outline the financial reporting structure of the company. This will highlight the major profit and loss reporting chains. These are called reporting units and typically comprise the main effort(s) of the company. The report will also typically explain which units are expanding, which are cash-cows, and which are in decline. If a services unit is absent from the financial reporting, services are likely provided under a product group or through a support center. Be assured though, if it is not a reporting unit, or a named subordinate division under a reporting unit, it is not a main effort.

3. During the interview, find out if the organization is a fixed cost or variable cost organization. Variable cost means the organization costs are directly tied to revenue. Fixed cost means the organization is considered a corporate expense. While not guaranteed that all fixed cost organizations are supporting units, it is a pretty good indicator.

4. Ask the interviewer to lay out the organizations key performance indicators or KPIs. These are the success criteria set out by the company for the organization to meet the overall company objectives. If these refer to meeting revenue targets, order targets, etc. it is probably a main effort organization. If KPIs focus on expense management, administrative reporting, or process development, it is probably a supporting organization.

5. During the hiring manager interview, or if you get a chance to interview with the hiring manager’s boss, ask about the role’s profit and loss responsibility. If the organization’s bonuses or variable compensation model include payments for meeting profitability targets, you are likely a part of a main effort. Be careful though, many managers may think P&L responsibility and P&L tracking or reporting are the same thing.

6. Don’t confuse personnel management with corporate responsibility. The theory of command does not apply in most corporations. Many individual contributors have more responsibility and sphere of influence across the organization than resource pool managers, especially in project management and sales positions.

Most importantly, when interviewing for service positions, take a good look at what you enjoyed and disliked about your military career. If you felt like your enjoyment came from the excitement of making quick, informed decisions that influenced the outcome of an operation, focus on finding and getting a job in a main effort organization. If planning, people management, process development, performing technical or administrative work were your forte, seek out the support organizations of a company for the best fit. Don’t be the Infantryman stuck in logistics or the Transporter stuck in the Infantry.

Take a little time looking under the company’s covers to know if the organization you are interviewing with is the right fit for your next career.

If you have comments or feedback about any article, please email your thoughts to info@acp-advisornet.org.

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