Maya Yegorova ⋅ New York, NY American Corporate Partners ⋅ 1 years experience

Good morning Miguel,

Thank you for utilizing ACP AdvisorNet for your questions! In the mentorships we facilitate here at ACP, we definitely find that our participants are pursuing a different career field than the one they were in the military. That's exciting that you're pursuing Urban Planning!

I suggest identifying the strongest skills you learned from the military and then applying it to your future career. The skills you learned from the military can be transferrable to future careers. I recommend taking a look at the following articles to get started:

-https://hbr.org/2018/03/how-military-veterans-can-turn-their-skills-into-a-corporate-career
-https://www.gijobs.com/military-values-that-translate-to-civilian-jobs/

Please let me know if you have any questions and if you would like more resources. Good luck!

All the best,
Maya

Jeff Martin ⋅ Ashburn, VA The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System ⋅ 25 years experience

I’d suggest that you network at the target company or industry. Use LinkedIn to find people already working there and reach out to them. Ask them the process they used to get hired and ask them to help you navigate the hiring process and if they are willing, ask them to submit you as a referral. These activities require much more time on your part but in my opinion would greatly increase your chances for success. Good luck!

Jerry Welsh ⋅ Middleville, MI Master Military Transition Advisor/HPS GPO ⋅ 30 years experience

Miguel,
The best way to gather information that is relevant to the career is to start conducting Informational Interviews. This will provide you with the opportunity to speak with people doing the job on a daily basis. Create a good introduction, so you get past the screeners and actually get to speak with the planners. You need to define a set of questions, open ended so the folks get to speak freely about the career. How many do you conduct, is up to you but I would say until you feel like you could carry on an hour conversation about the career field you need to keep interviewing. Why? This is what an interview will be about an hour and you need to express to the hiring entity you are qualified. See if there are any internships, this is a great way to learn and network also. Join a professional group on LinkedIn and Facebook has a lot of professional groups also.
I would also start searching job postings for positions that are positions you may be interested in. This will give you a foundation for some of the requirements and also the language and terms you will need to know. It would be good to learn about some of the terms you many not be familiar with in the informational interviews. Thanks for your service.

David Conroy ⋅ Dallas, TX Logistics Technology Industry ⋅ 12 years experience

Hi Miguel,

I agree with your assessment that the best way to learn about a job or career field is to talk to people currently in that job or industry.
Therefore, I’d recommend LinkedIn as your best resource as you can easily search by companies and job titles. Reach out and connect. You can also filter by past companies (so select all military branches); that way, you can see veterans working in this industry who may be more likely to respond.

Richard Byrne ⋅ Hillsborough, NJ Intel Corporation ⋅ 53 years experience

I added some job search links to my EE webpage
http://eehot.com/ee.html#jobs
and also some links to Government agencies and video channels (ie. HUD):
http://eehot.com/ee.html#fgov

I did a search and found some urban planning internships, 12,360 jobs
https://www.governmentjobs.com/jobs?keyword=urban+planning+intern&location=

Another Federal Government jobs search for International Affairs found 32 jobs:
https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?k=government%20policy%2C%20%26%20international%20affairs

Logistics 1322 jobs:
https://www.usajobs.gov/Search/Results?k=logistics

An Urban planning intern search Newark, NJ: 36 jobs
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/candidate/search?form=jobs-landing&search=Urban+Planning+Intern&location=Newark%2C+NJ

An Urban planning intern search New York, NY: 36 jobs
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/candidate/search?radius=25&search=Urban+Planning+Intern&location=New+York%2C+NY

I learned a lot doing a historical renovation of an Urban building in the 70's.
Good luck on your school applications!