 Welcome to Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii, where we discuss the impact of change on workers, employers, and the economy. I'm your host, Cheryl Crozier-Garcia, inviting you to join in the—you can do so by calling us at area code 415-871-2474, or you can tweet us at Think Tech HI. We've had a number of shows dedicated to discussing how to make better use of under-utilized groups of talent. Today we're going to continue that theme, discussing another group of people who have a great deal to contribute to the workforce—military spouses. Now, most of us know someone who is married to a military member, and so we may have heard about some of the challenges they face in securing meaningful employment and managing their careers while still supporting their loved one in uniform. Joining us today is someone who knows a great deal about this subject. Anne Wilson raised her family while her active-duty husband moved between duty stations. Today, Anne is going to tell us about the contributions military spouses can make to those who employ them, and she will also have advice for spouses who have just arrived in Hawaii and may need advice about how to navigate through the employment community. Welcome, Anne. Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure. Tell us about your own experience as a military spouse. Which branch you were affiliated with, and maybe some of the places where you've lived. Oh, okay. Well, after 23 years of military experience as a spouse, we've been to Japan twice. We started out in North Carolina. We actually took, like, a detour assignment, a small detachment in Amarillo, Texas, in Hawaii, and, you see, yeah, that's about it, and we extended a few times, but that's pretty much about it, 23 years. And during, did you, now you raised your children during that time as well, but were you employed simultaneously while your husband was stationed in various places? No. Okay, he was Marine Corps, and we started off really young. So we had an interesting kind of situation where we were so young that we started out right from high school. So I still, I actually had a job at the Federal Reserve Bank, which I wanted to pretty much pursue that career, but I was so new to the job that I had just started getting into the corporate ladder. Then we moved to our first duty station. At that time, I was trying to reinvent myself by going to banks and trying to get employment there in North Carolina, and basically it was not as open as it was in St. Louis, Missouri, where I was from. That was the first time I experienced culture shock and how the workforce was a little bit different. At that time in North Carolina, they didn't have as much opportunity as they have now. That was like over 20 years ago. And I ended up staying at home a lot and raising the children, because employment was just like, literally, I was making like $5 an hour. Wow. Wow. What were some of the challenges or some of the resistance that you had to overcome, say, from potential employers? What sorts of things did they perhaps mention to you that led you to believe that maybe you were less qualified or less attractive a candidate than maybe some others? The first time I experienced that was at the banks. What was interesting was they would call me for interviews, and when I would get to the interview, I remember one lady, she looked at my interview, looked at my resume, and then she looked like you're Ann Wills, and I was like, yes. So I'm not really sure exactly what some of the situations were, but it was in North Carolina, and it was over 20 years ago. So there could have been a lot of biases that were taking place, but it was very difficult. I experienced a lot of... It wasn't necessarily the best situations, and then a lot of times I would get phone calls and cold calls for positions, and one time they called me, and my son was crying in the background, and she asked me if I had children, and I told her that I did, and then she just said, oh, okay, well, let me call you back, and she never called me back. And then it turned out that I found out that this person... And I ended up working at a better company, and the company that I ended up working for, there was someone that worked with that particular lady, and they explained that she did have a bias against people with children and military, so it was really interesting. So when you find out those kind of things, do you really want to work for that kind of person anyway? I was happy that I didn't get hired there. Yeah, yeah. What kinds of situations made you feel like pursuing, because you say you got married, you were fresh out of high school? Wow. Yeah. But over time, you've managed to complete both a bachelor's degree and a master's degree. What was it about education that you felt was going to be helpful to you in building your career? Well, I knew that pretty soon that the military life was over, because when you get close to 20, it's like you start wrapping it up and trying to retire. And I also knew that I need to make myself marketable, because I understood that with all of the traveling, there were so many gaps in my resume, and so many, you know, breaks in certain... And so many different jobs that I ended up having to reinvent myself for, I knew that education had to be something that I needed to, like, just delve into so that I can make myself marketable since we were going to finally be stable for an economy. So you got an undergraduate degree in what? Well, I actually started out with an associate's degree in general studies. And so I got that in Central Texas College. And because we moved around so much, I had to get general studies, because we moved around so much, I could not finish a degree in one particular field, because whenever you move, then you find out that school you go to, they don't offer it. And 20 years ago, they didn't have so much online classes as they do now, so technology has really helped a lot. But then after that, I ended up getting my bachelor's degree in human resources development. And so then I moved right on and got my master's degree in human resources management, because I know that I really do need to at least have a master's for this economy. And so you're looking at HR as a career? I am looking at HR as a career, but what I'm finding is very challenging. I didn't realize some of the obstacles that I would face. So not only am I facing the obstacle of having the resume that is not like the norm, but I'm also finding that HR is the kind of field where they're usually looking for more experience. And basically, unless you can do that transition where you can say that you're experienced in this field, because there are skill sets that you have that can relate to certain HR situations, like recruiting or basically problem solving when you do equal opportunity or something like that, then basically you wouldn't have that experience. So what you find, they want one to five years of experience, or else you're going to be looking at, as one recruiter told me, he called me and said, we can start you off at like $15 an hour. And he said, no one's going to give you the keys to the kingdom. So I just said, OK, I got a master's degree in human resources management, and he's telling me he can hire me $15 an hour. Sure. Well, in Hawaii, that's not bad money. And I made that before I had a bachelor's degree. Yeah, that's true. Well, let me give you a little bit of advice then. It was something that I learned. I came out of an undergraduate degree in business, and I knew I wanted to do HR. But I was caught in the catch 22 of they won't hire you if you don't have experience, and you can't get experience if they won't hire you. So you're caught. And it sounds like you may be in that realm. So here's what I did. I went through my undergraduate textbook, and I know you still have your textbooks. So go through your basic textbook and look at the table of contents and look at the functions of HR. And as you build your resume, talk about the specific things you did in each area that speak to those HR functions. So say, for example, recruiting and selection. You may not ever have been a recruiter, but that doesn't mean that you weren't a supervisor who had to hire people. Exactly. And that is HR work. And structure your resume to really point up the HR-related functions that you've done across your career. Because that does two things. It helps to alleviate the perception of what I call checkerboarding, where you've jumped from here to here to here. You're presenting yourself as belonging to one profession. And the gaps can be explained by, well, I decided it was time to go back to college, finish up my degree, then I went back for a master's, got that done, and these kinds of things that help to make people look more attractive as experienced candidates. Now, let me ask you this question because, and I wouldn't have asked, but you brought up having become a military spouse right out of high school. And that's the age thing. You and I, I think, are in a similar generation. So talk about what you experience as you become a more mature woman in the job market and competing maybe with people that are younger. What sorts of challenges do you find? Well, basically, you do find that I can only think of one thing in particular that comes to mind. And it really did happen to me, but it happened to the military surgeon, my spouse, he told me about, that when he transitioned over, he came in as an intern. And they actually told him in the safety field. And he actually got in, went to school, and then he transitioned to his employment. And it was in the civil service. And he heard his boss speaking to the boss's boss and saying, I thought that I was going to get younger interns. And so he was absolutely shocked when he heard that. And basically, it has been a real thing for me, because I do understand not only am I dealing with race and with being a female, which is totally an underserved part of society, the females. So and then the military spouse, that's another culture. It's everything that the females, military spouses, I think they probably have a little bit harder. I'm not trying to say anything about that. But basically, it is real. And I do understand that, even though I was going to school for like four years, doing a lot of education, and now I'm really getting back into it, I do understand that I'm going to have to color my resume to try to detract from the years. You and I, we have the trifecta, we're women of color and a particular age. We should be at our most attractive, and yet we find the biggest challenges. Sit tight, we're going to be back in just a minute, but we have some housekeeping to do. So everybody stay with us and take a look at some of the other fantastic programming on Think Tech Hawaii. We'll be back in a minute. Thanks for staying with us on Working Together on Think Tech Hawaii. I'm Cheryl Crozier Garcia, and I'm here with Ann Wilson, who has some good advice to share with military spouses who may have just arrived in Hawaii about how to make the best first impression on prospective employers. And thanks so much for sitting tight with us. Thank you. Welcome back. Now, Hawaii is part of the U.S., we're a state, and yet we are very, very different from the other 49, if you will. So what advice do you have now, having been a person involved in the employment market here in Hawaii for your fellow military spouses to help them navigate through the job search process? Remain positive. That's the first thing. And make sure that you are just persistent. If you know that this is something, whatever the position is, if you know that this is something that you do have the qualifications for, then just find the strategies for that position. And then also that company, that was something that I was always good about. And that actually did my first job when I came here nine years ago. I actually applied for this position. I had applied like three times online, and when they finally called me, I just started researching everything about that company. And I remember that I believe how I ended up getting that position was during the interview, I told them about what their policy said. They had a list of, you know, they have the guidelines or principles or ethics, a code of ethics that they had. And I memorized all the code of ethics. And I ended up telling them what their policy said about the code of ethics and everything and impressed the hiring manager so much. She took me straight to the general manager and I ended up getting my first job for three months. That's great. So doing some research about the company sounds like it's absolutely imperative in order to differentiate you maybe from other candidates. But what about knowing a little bit about Hawaii and Hawaiian culture? You know, because people may think, well, I've traveled all over the world, so I'm not gonna have any trouble getting along here. And then they find that they have a hard time getting along here. So what advice do you have for the military spouse that isn't really figuring it out as far as culture? Well, one thing that I can say is my first position was here and I was three months here and that was the record breaker that I actually got a job that fast in Hawaii. So I thought it was always gonna be like that. And I worked with great people, a lot of the people were Hawaiian and a lot of people had lived here all their life. And there were a lot of military spouses. And after I left that job, then I had a different experience which was totally different than what I had experienced before. And what I would say is from what I learned is that each experience is different, each company is different, and the cultures in the company are different even if it isn't Hawaii. And so keep an open mind, learn what you can about the culture. And you know, if you have great coworkers, they'll be more than happy to teach you about what the culture is like. One advantage for military spouses is that usually we already know how to embrace the culture because we have cultural awareness. And so that's, and that diversity and being able to understand and respect other cultures and other people and nationalities and races, I think that that makes us a really, really good fit in pretty much any company. So just use what we've learned abroad when we come to Hawaii. And I always say, hey, and sometimes I say, hey, I'm looking for Aloha. And if you know that there's not Aloha there, then you just go to the next company the way you would in any other state. So when we talk about this issue though of Aloha, I do think that there is a reciprocity that everyone needs to acknowledge. And that is not only are we getting people familiar with how to be a good employee in our organization, but we are also perhaps obligated to do some cultural teaching about what's appropriate, what's not appropriate. I remember a particular story where I was, it was my first executive position. And the CEO of the company was a very old school gentleman okay, from the mainland he had been hired and then transferred to Hawaii to do, to run the organization. And so my training said that I should extend courtesy to him because he's the CEO. So I would do things like we'd be going somewhere, the elevator doors would open and I would stand aside to let him go first. Or I would stand when he came into the room, this kind of thing. And he looked at me one time and he said, you know, Cheryl, you've got a real chip on your shoulder. I went, oh, wow, why? I don't understand what I'm doing that's bothering you. And he said that. His expectation was that he was a gentleman and so he was going to extend that courtesy to a lady. I was looking at it from a perspective of non-gender but the person with the senior rank gets the courtesy. So how do we work with some of those things? I think as military spouses, I'll give you an example. So you come to work at a particular company, mostly folks born and raised here in Hawaii and the senior ones are called auntie or uncle, auntie so and so, uncle so and so. As a spouse, would you immediately start calling people auntie and uncle? I can't say that. What was interesting in one of my positions that I was in is that there was, sometimes our children got to come when we did certain events for the company. And one of my, the coworkers told his son, when he introduced me, he introduced me as auntie. And I thought that was really endearing. And it did. And after that, that his son, every time he saw me, that's what he referred to me as. And so I thought that was very endearing and I understood it was a term of respect in my culture. We have similar things like that. So I felt very comfortable with it but unless someone instructed me to call them that, I would not violate that and just start calling them that unless they told me to. And I wouldn't expect to call me that unless they wanted to. Yeah, that's a liberty that can be either embraced or misconstrued as being disrespectful even. And that's a problem. How do you, when you're going into a new place, new position, new job market, new city, new country, what do you think are the two or three most important things that the military spouse should do to position himself or herself as the most qualified applicants say for any particular position? Learn the economy. And that just means doing a lot of research. Okay. And before you even get there, you can actually start researching and sometimes we're not afforded that opportunity to be able to know how much, we don't have that much time in order to be able to do some research but and we may not be able to afford to go there and scope out the place but do as much as you can to learn about that place before you get there. Do your homework, do your due diligence. If there's a certain field that you wanna work in, find out the companies that are in that area start sending out the resume. And if you have family or friends that are already in that area, get them to start doing a little networking for you. So you start just using your resources as much as possible to try to get those doors open before you get there. And then once you get there, then you hit the ground running, especially if you're doing a lot of research, you know what area you wanna live in unless you're living on base, then you try to find that area in those communities. And then you just try to network and basically some good foundations if you like societies, you can go to churches or different types of social gatherings where you can start meeting new people and letting them know that you're new to the area and you're looking for employment and then let them know what field you're in. So there are some different things. If you have to be out there, you gotta beat the pavement to stay at home. It's competitive. It's a competitive environment. Now, speaking of the economy, let's talk about money because I'm guessing that a lot of folks who come here via the military are very surprised at the wage levels or salary levels in Hawaii. It's kind of Mississippi wages with the New York City expense level. So how do you advise the military spouse about, hey, 15 bucks an hour is good money here? How would you get people to be convinced that they may not have a choice as far as the level of compensation that they receive? Well, one thing that I can say is that I was just talking to my hairdresser the other day who was a military spouse and she was telling me, now she's a hairdresser and she's much needed for her skills. She's going to school for culinary, the culinary arts. And so we got into the conversation about how you need to have more than one hustle, especially in Hawaii. So the great thing is being a military spouse, you reinvent yourself a lot. So, hey, I can make $15,000 an hour selling a lot of things. I can, so I know how to clean houses. I've started businesses before. I think I've kind of like, I've got an entrepreneur spirit. So, and I've actually also had a property management company. So when you know how to reinvent yourself, you just take the 15 and then do some other things on the side. Learn how to make it work for you. Yeah, if you've got the time, I think that's great. If you've got a supportive spouse and children that are relatively self-sufficient, you probably can have more than one hustle. And certainly there are civilian families who have more than one hustle just because we live in paradise and paradise costs money. And one other thing too, when you bought up the part about the children and everything, technology has improved so much that online, there are so many types of things you can do even online. I mean, people start selling things on eBay. I've never done it, but I've heard that you can make a little money on the sides doing that. But investigate, do a lot of research and find out what kind of things you can do to supplement your income. So it sounds like to me that the prevailing theme for a successful military spouse in terms of building a career is resilience. Totally. You have to know what you want. You have to be willing to go for it and you can't let difficulties stop you from making things happen. That's exactly right. Well, Anne, you know what? Our time is almost up. It's been a great half hour. So thank you for joining us. Thank you. And thank you to all our viewers on Tech Hawaii. I'm Cheryl Crozier Garcia and we will be back in two weeks to talk more about the effects of change on workers, employers and the economy. So take care and we'll see you in two weeks. Bye.