As you think about your transition into the corporate world, you are likely thinking about potential jobs, roles and companies that you think could be a good fit. When you do find jobs or companies that seem to be a good fit, you certainly want to ensure that the job is the right role, but you should also think about what comes after that first job. I know what you're thinking..."I don't even have a job yet and now you want me to also think about what comes next...Geesh!" I bring this fact up because you will want to understand what a career path might look like in your company of interest and to determine if this seems like a good fit with your own personal interests.
The reality is that as a junior officer, I feel like the military does a good job of giving you a good balance of both command roles and staff roles, which can keep you interested in your job and help avoid burnout. My experience in the Army was that just when I got tired of dealing with soldier's problems, I had the opportunity to move to a staff role. Then when I was just getting tired of doing paperwork and wanted to get back to working with soldiers, I was given the opportunity to serve in command/"green tab" type roles.
In the corporate world, there is less awareness of this concept. When I left the Army, I went to work as a production supervisor (a typical JMO job opportunity) for about 3 years. Initially, it was a good fit, but at about the 2.5 year mark, I was ready for something different as I was getting burned out running my production department. In the company, most supervisors were in their roles for 5, 10, 15 and maybe even 20 years. I knew that this would not work for me and started to look at opportunities both internally and externally. I had an interest in transitioning into a more corporate role (sales or marketing), but the company didn't really view this as a realistic job progression because I had no experience in sales or marketing. Within about 2 months, I had a job offer from P&G to do market research, enabling my desire to move into the corporate world and do marketing-type work....so I left the company.
There are different expectations on career progression in the corporate world than there are in the military. My advice is to at least ask a few questions in your interview process to understand what the company could offer in a career progression. If they want to hire you, they will likely also be interested in keeping you around, so questions should not throw them off. Just make sure you don't ask so may questions about the next job that you make them think that you don't even want the initial role.
The key here is to understand how they see someone like you developing in their company. Ask them if they have ever hired other JMOs and what career paths looked like for them. Ask them how long is typical for staying in a role within the company and how they view moving around in the company. These are all things that I wish that I had better understood when I left the Army and accepted my first job. Not thinking about this did eventually contribute to me leaving this first job, so learn from my mistakes and you may put yourself in a better job/career situation from the start.
Enjoy the search!
Greg
