Again, there is nothing stopping you from picking up a job after retirement. It is an individual choice, whether you wish to take the plunge or really hang up your boots, relax and tend to your kitchen garden, autobiography or grand children.
My recommendation again, will depend on whether or not, you are drawing a pension.
If you are drawing a pension, it gives you the flexibility and the time to think about it and wait for something to come by that fits your set of requirements (I will get back to what requirements later in another blog). If you are keen to get started, and especially if you have financial committments that cannot be met from the pension you draw, the earlier the better. But if your children are well settled, and you are comfortable and in good health, take a break and travel the world, catch up with your reading, re-discover yourself and your interests once again. Remember, that your interests may be nothing that you may have imagined it to be and you may well find that you need to re-invent yourself. This takes time as sometimes it is a question of chance and opportunity. It involves exploring your new environment, meeting new people or doing a professional course that may have picqued your interest. Try getting involved in activities where you can meet and interact with people, like your local RWA, a school reunion, a social group, industry event, trade show, golf club or even an NGO. Volunteer your time and energy and very often you may end up finding something you are passionate about or something you never dreamt of doing and would now never exchange it for any job in the world.
If you are not entitled to a pension, you may have no choice but to find something of interest that will challenge you and give you the kind of returns you expect. You will have to move quickly, often even before retirement to make this happen. If there is a one-to-one correlation between what you do in service and the kind of opportunities available outside, it is a relatively easy transition (for instance, like for our flyboys). If not, you may think of picking up another supplementary qualification (I would like to think of this as more of a re-orientation). B-schools offer a good six-month post-grad diploma program for serving officers through the directorate general resettlement. If you can land one of these, it is ideal, of course with some caveats. B-schools do not guarantee placements for your seniority level, so you may have to collectively take matters into your own hand. How? Here are three steps (a) tailor your resume (b) select a set of companies and determine points of contacts, and finally (c) plan a campaign and market your batch, just as you would any other product! Start early in the program so that you begin to get results by the end of the program.
Get your resume prepared by a consultant, or a friend who has done this transition in the past. It may cost you a penny, but rest assured, it is worth it. I have come across resumes that most faujis do, listing out all their command and staff assignments and courses done - ensuring thereby, that it heads straight for the bin. When you think about it, how does it matter to the company you target if you have "commanded a unit of 800 men in an extremely challenging terrain". Nobody out there understands any of this stuff anyway. The question in the head of someone reviewing your resume would be "What are the key words or punch points that indicate a fit to my job description?". Very often, it is a keyword search that sorts the first responses to a job advertisment. So your resume needs to be translated into the language of the industry. Service officers fit a number of profiles, and it may be necessary to draft more than one resume, depending on the type of role you are seeking. Let me assure you that you have absolutely no experience in crafting one. Leave it to a consultant, and remember, you will have to pay for it.
If you are senior management material, with 15-20 years of experience, then sending resumes to job advertisments is a lost case. It is only networking that will bring you the opportunities. Networking means meeting new people and having the opportunity to interact with them. These interactions should not be done with a narrow view to just position yourself (that is selling). Seek only to establish a rapport. If an opportunity presents itself, see whether you can contribute to add value. Ask questions that will enhance your understanding of what they do? Draw out the kind of challenges they face on a day to day basis. Instead of asking whether the company has plans to recruit in the new year and what kind of opportunities will be opening up, you could ask what new plans are in the offing, whether they are expanding into new sectors or geographies. Make use of all opportunities to network.
In all the open seminars or workshops I conduct in my line of work, I have made it a point to send a special invitation to all three service chiefs requesting nominations so that these interactions can happen while officers are still in service. More often than not, I draw a blank (and I respect that as chiefs are surely not thinking of what officers will be doing post retirement and there is little need for informal industry interactions of this nature.) But officers have attended these events in the past and while the benefits may not be immediately realized, the industry gets a sense of the capability and versatility of officers, and the memory sticks. I am sure that if these executives where to hire people in the future, a service officers resume will make the short list. There is no alternative to networking at this level.
The second thing that you need to do is to translate your pay into civvy street terms.This is important, both for job seekers as well as for those who will be involved in negotiating your salary. Find out in advance the typical salary structure in an industry. Map that structure to the one you have on your last salary statement. Those that cannot be mapped can be placed clubbed into a head called "special allowance". Your take home pay is not your cost-to-company(CTC). Figure out all the heads, convert it to "market rates" and then tally it. Again, it is useful to get help, wherever possible. This will at least help you understand what your CTC is in real terms, and help you peg the expectation at an appropriate level. Your new salary should be 20-30% more that your last drawn salary. You will be surprised as to how many officers routinely undersell themselves as they have not done this simple exercise. If you are not prepared for this stage of the interview, you will be the loser.
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