There Are Many Advantages of An Air Force Career

My uncle spent 20 years in the United States Air Force and retired at the age of 38 from active service. He went on to work for the U.S. Postal Service and is now getting ready to retire. We had a conversation a few months ago about what he is looking at bringing in financially after he retires, and it became very clear to me that there are many advantages to an air force career.

When he decided on an air force career, it was because he did not have many other options. He grew up in a small town in Texas and knew that if he did join the military, he would have the opportunity to broaden his horizons, serve his country and eventually have a career that would allow him to provide for his family. Admittedly, he was not thinking of his retirement.

He told me that pursuing an air force career was the best decision that he ever made, because he learned self discipline that he doubts he could have learned on his own or in another field. I have noticed that he carries on a lot of the traditions that he learned in the air force, particularly when it comes to neatness and keeping himself in good physical shape.

He also said that because of his air force career, he was able to live on base housing and shop at the commissary, which saved him a lot of money and allowed my aunt to stay home and care for my cousins when they were younger. He also got to travel a lot and take his family all over the world, which definitely enriched the lives of his children.

Now we are at the point that he is ready to retire from his job at the post office, and we got to talking about what type of financial hit he would take. He informed me that it would be so negligible that he would not even really notice a drop. Not only will he have the retirement pay from the air force, but he will also have his pension from the Postal Service and an IRA that he was smart enough to open years ago at the urging of an air force buddy of his.

It is amazing to me to watch the type of life my uncle has created for himself because of his air force career, and I am very impressed. He has had a very satisfying and fulfilling life because of that career, and he has a lot to show for what he has done. It almost makes me wish I had chosen the same thing for myself!

Learning the Ropes of how to Look for Jobs Online

If you are someone who likes to look on the bright side of things, all the choice you are given in the job market  now that just about every job on the planet is on a job board that you can easily access, must really make you happy. If you're the kind who looks at a glass and sees it half empty, you'll probably see that now that every applicant has a resume on Monster.com, the employers have an infinitely large pool of candidates to choose from too and that you are going to have to compete in a much tougher field. Since there are way more applicants who  look for jobs online than there are companies with positions to offer them, the job boards in general don't really have a great reputation with the hiring managers. To them, there are so many potential applicants to pick from, it can be quite a task narrowing it down. For job seekers who look for jobs online though, there are a few ways by which the competition can be overwhelmed.

A resume is so 20th century these days. What you need to catch a hiring manager's interest today is an entire website with information about you, about what you do, with examples of your work and that talks about where you wish to take your career in the future. It'll be kind of like a LinkedIn profile or a Facebook profile, only much bigger and much better. To look for jobs online isn't just about doing the same thing that everyone else is doing; it is all about finding new ways to wow a hiring manager. And a move like this certainly fits the bill.

While the hiring managers are on Google or Bing trying to locate your website, they are also going to try to call you up on a search just to see what they can turn up. You should probably do this yourself before you apply, to see if there's anything unflattering that Google unearths about you. If there is anything like that, you probably want to see what you can do to limit the damage potential of it. You could either contact the website that publishes the information that you find disturbing and ask them if they could consider taking it down, or you could speak to a search engine expert for ideas on how to push those search results off the first page.

How do most people who look for jobs online go about their search? They go straight to a job board and apply there, of course. What you could do differently is, you could go directly to the website of the company in question, and apply right on the website. Every corporate website offers to accept candidate profiles on a form on one of their pages. Even better would be planning to visit all the trade websites frequented by people who specialize in your industry, and making yourself heard on their forums. The more contacts you make this way, the wider your network will be in your industry. And the better will be your chances.