Spouses may have years of experience in one field but after a number of moves, many jobs outside of their primary field appear on their resumes. While there is a general appreciation for attaining many years of work experience, many spouses are concerned that their experience as a teacher or bank clerk will not be as impressive on their resumes when applying to ideal companies within their primary field.
Answers
According the BLS (Bureau of Labor Statistics), average tenure for <30 is 3 years, for <40 it only jumps to 5-7 years. The world is use to different careers and positions. As long as there are valid reasons for leaving, poor performance or let get of course are not good, any employer picky about tenure now days will be searching from a very limited pot. Old career dogs are not the new way. My Gen X'ers children have 17 years tenure averages with one company and that is a long time. As long as you focus your search and resume on the position with what they want-what else could they want? They want value, it is their job to keep you happy and sell you on their company. Tell them you will give them "what" they want and then back it up. General operational success stories can always be tailored to fit many careers. Thank you both for your service to our country, spouses serve a role as important as our service members. God Bless and best for your future.
I would say the biggest hurdle is that the person on the other end may make an assumption that the spouse is a job hopper. A lot people only glance at a resume for a very short time and move on. I would recommend addressing this upfront in a cover letter and/or in the resume that the position changes were due to a military spouse's change of location. Then I would highlight the skills gained, regardless of what type of positions, that align with the position they are really looking for long-term.
Dominique - Great question. I guess it is a matter of using ALL of your experience and ALL of your education to find the ideal job after moving from base to base has come to an end. It's the perfect time to choose a career from this point forward. What do you want to do? What experience and education do you need to get there? Talk to people in your desired industry to determine what you need to do to take the next step. A good resource for current and former military spouses his Hire Heroes USA. Check out the link here: https://www.hireheroesusa.org/serving-spouses/
I had the exact same problem recently. I just landed a desired job with pay higher than I had expected due to my career gap + lack of career focus. If you know anyone who need someone who can relate to their situation to talk to, you can send them my way.
Hi Dominique,
Thank you for the great question! I would recommend taking the time to look at the positions you have held over the years and identifying skills that are applicable to the role that you want. This is good advice for any job seeker but I think it will be especially important in your case to show your prospective employer that your experience can be applied in some way towards the position you are looking at. There are also some great sites out there that offer resources. I would recommend taking a look at the spouse career advancement page on military.com:
https://www.military.com/spouse/career-advancement
Lots of good advice articles! I hope some of them are useful for your job search!
Best Regards,
Konstantin
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