How I Went From Unemployed to Dream Job
My story begins 2 years ago in October of 2012 when I left the army after 6 years of service. I was an intelligence instructor with serious responsibilities and a job that gave me immense satisfaction. The army wanted to move me to a remote location when my wife and I wanted to start a family and to be honest I was over being in the army itself, so I made the decision to leave and rejoin the civilian world. I had a number of really great job opportunities and even had an offer with an extremely lucrative salary basically for having a security clearance.
Then on my day of discharge, things began to fall apart. I’ll go into why a bit later on, but it began with that lucrative job offer falling through because the company I was going to work for hadn’t disclosed that their contract was up for review. The best day of my life turned into the worst in the space of a conversation when I was told the job no longer existed. One by one, the other jobs fell through. Some I narrowly missed out on, I was almost the national intelligence manager for a large private company. I had managed to stay in the army for another month, but I got a letter from the personnel manager in the army explaining clearly that the army didn’t need me and I was on my own after that month was up.
So there I was after 6 years of service, unemployed. You wouldn’t believe how many jobs I went for in the ensuing month. It was hundreds. Here I was, a former soldier with an extremely important job and I couldn’t even get an interview with a supermarket to stack shelves. I finally managed to wrangle a casual job in a camping store which at least kept some money coming in and got me out of the house. To be honest, I was in a black pit of despair and depression. I felt humiliated — all the people I worked with expected the world of me because I was very good at my job and I had enough qualifications to rival a Colonel, and here I was working alongside teenagers that were still in school doing a job that required zero skill.
I basically hid myself away from the world for those couple of months. I stopped turning up to judo, I didn’t speak to all my amazing friends from work and I tried not to talk to my family at home too much. I was too embarrassed and depressed, only my wife really knew what was going on with me and thankfully she just kept trying to keep me up until things turned around. And finally they did turn around — I got a full time job in Sydney, albeit one in an industry I had no desire to work and for pay that was much less than what I was earning in the military (and was a shitload less than the jobs that I had almost gotten).
At that point though, any full time work was good. So I picked myself up and moved back in with my parents in Sydney, as my wife had to stay behind for a few months and finish up at her job. I think it was good for me, because I had to learn how to be happy again regardless of what job I had or what was going on in my life. I went to work, I went to judo after work and then I ate dinner and went to bed 3 nights a week, the other 2 I’d be at the gym. It was like living the life of a monk and I think it was good for me. I’d been doing judo for 10 years and the dojo felt like home and somewhere I was really in touch with myself.
When I started working at the new job, I already knew how to be successful subconsciously, because the army drills that into you. I turned up dressed to impress, I’d be at work early and I built solid relationships from day 1. I don’t know at what point it was, but I started watching motivational videos on YouTube. I downloaded them onto my phone and I would listen to them for hours a day. Eric Thomas and Les Brown became the greatest influences on my life, and I replaced the narrative in my head of bitterness, being a victim and whining about my lot in life to someone with an unshakeable will that couldn’t be stopped. I had a lot of horrible times in the army that matured me and really taught me to succeed, but it wasn’t enough on it’s own. Once I started to build that positive mindset though, things began to happen.
I thought, I know so much about success and building skill and I’ve lived it, but I’ve made some terrible choices — what if I could do it all over again? So I started writing. I started writing as though I was talking to my 20 year old self, telling him all the things he needed to know. I started up this blog and began putting everything I knew about success and building skill on it. I began spending time with and meeting other creative people, which further energised me. A few months ago at the place I worked a position in sales opened up and I jumped at it, because not only was it a promotion but it was a chance to get out of what I believed to be quite a toxic job handling insurance claims. During the interview the sales manager told me that he wanted me on the team and he wanted me to replace him in 2 years when he was ready to move on. This was despite having career salespeople on the team and me being a complete newbie.
At this time I’d seen a job opening on Seek for ex-military people and thought “what the hell?”, so I sent my resume and got an immediate call back. It was a huge job opportunity for a Fortune 500 medical technology company. I kept learning sales, kept writing my book and kept staying positive while that was going on in the background, because it was not a fast process. A friend of my wife’s gave me the opportunity to speak at her high school so I grabbed it with both hands. This was just a few days ago and I did 2 sessions where I spoke for 50 minutes to 16 year olds about how to be successful, how to find their passion and live their dreams in life. I told them my story of the last 2 years and why you should never give up on what you want out of life. The response was better than I could have possibly imagined.
I just released my book that was 18 months in the making, called School’s Over…Now What? and the first few days of it has been very successful. And to round out the week, I got an offer for that job at the Fortune 500 company which I’ll be taking.
I know a lot of my military brothers and sisters are hurting out there right now, because they also got out and found that there was nothing for them. Some of them are in really crappy jobs and I know they deserve so much better. One phrase comes back to me again and again which was said by Les Brown. He said “you don’t get in life what you want ladies and gentlemen, you get in life what you are”. And the truth is that when I got out of the military, while I may have been extremely qualified with plenty of achievements, I was arrogant and had a chip on my shoulder. I thought I was too good for the army, that it was almost my right based on what I’d done to move up quickly in the world. I didn’t want to play by the rules, so life taught me a lesson and pulled the rug out from under me.
Fast forward to the last 9 months. What I became was someone who wouldn’t give up, someone who stayed positive even when things weren’t going right. I was someone who was doing interesting things, building interesting relationships and being someone that other people really wanted to be around because I energised them as well. One of the pieces of feedback I got during the recent interview process was that “he really knows who he is”. I stopped trying to hide my personality and beliefs away to please people. During that interview process, my mentality was that I was going to be me and if they didn’t like it, I’d be killing it next year anyway and it would be their loss.
Eric Thomas said something really amazing: “the worst thing in life is not to be broke. The worst thing in life is to taste some success and then go back to being a nobody, now that’s hard”. Going from my job in the military to being entry level in a company doing a job I didn’t like, that was tough. People respect soldiers immensely, and if they knew what I did as a soldier even more so. And then all of a sudden I was just an average office worker like everyone else and I had to learn to both make peace with that and transcend it. It was the most humbling and necessary experience of my life.
So if the above still isn’t enough for you, I want to leave you with three pieces of advice:
1. Whatever you’re working on, if you want to get it remember — you must be PATIENT, PERSISTENT AND POSITIVE no matter what. Success rarely follows our plans for it, so don’t give up when things don’t go right. Keep striving, keep working at it, and stay positive.
2. Be passionate. People who hate their jobs and spend their free time watching tv or some other mundane activity are a dime a dozen. Get excited about life, there’s an entire world out there of things to do. If you hate your job, start looking for something you’d actually like to do. If your outside life is boring, take a class in something that interests you. A big part of the reason I got this job wasn’t my work history, it was also all the things I’ve been doing in my own time. All of that makes me a very energetic and excited person. My recruiter for the job told me “talking to you really makes me excited and energised, so just be yourself”. Don’t waste your life being bored, cynical and mopey. Get out there and do things that excite you.
3. Be positive. Too many people think positivity is for hippies or no hopers that just say “don’t worry, be happy”. It isn’t like that at all. Being positive when things are going bad is as simple as telling yourself “I will get through this”. A positive mindset will change your entire world, so cultivate it.
Peace.
Peter Ross is the author of School’s Over…Now What? The No BS Guide to Finding the Right Career for You. Click here for more information.
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